The lack of consistent equipment modernization has also impacted on readiness. I have units within my organization that are spending more and more training time in the motor pool, working to maintain their 1960's and 1970's vintage equipment. It is not the high visibility systems you see at the AUSA conventions and in the Advanced Warfighting Experiments that hurt us. It is maintaining the old trucks, engineer equipment, and other less glamorous systems that our soldiers must use every single day that constitute the bulk of our soldier maintenance efforts. To do right by soldiers, we must train and equip them with the proper equipment needed to sustain the force.
Soldiers expect and want top-notch equipment and training.
We must ensure they have it. The primary concern of the soldiers with in my Brigade is pay, housing, medical care, erosion of benefits and the many other facets of their every day existence that detract from readiness. We are losing the confidence of our middle career NCOs as they watch the benefits of our retirees erode. We ask much of these fine men and women and of their families who endure tremendous hardships. Soldiers aren't paid enough to maintain the same equivalent living standard as that of their civilian counterpart.