The frogs kicked over a hornet's nest!

[The Grand Nudger]

I might rather choose the Heinlein soldiers who knew the risk,loss and chaos of combat for citizens rather than drone pilots.

The mandatory service to warrant suffrage need not be military.

For Heinlen, the "drone pilots" would be the crews of the ships that ferried the infantry, with an intermediary step between the two opposed groups being the actual dropship pilots who took the infantry from orbit to the ground themselves. Don't you think?

Civil service in a militarized state is only civil in name, and it's still a two class system, of course. One group has a sanctioned voice, the other does not.

I'm not crazy about the way armies are assembled at all, given that the first thing done in basic training is to remove the individual's personality and replace it with one more to the liking of the state.

I'd say re-purposed, not removed. Also...it;s not as though it isn't something that can't be controlled, if it were, then soldiers would be much less useful to their users. For example...you only need to say the right things- with the right terminology...and the Rhythm you guys know (what little of it you know) is on the shelf, but ultimately I'm the one shelfing him (and both are decidedly "myself"). The other guy, "he's got this thaaaaaaaang...goin oooooon". Glimpses here and there, but it's largely behind me. There's this guy that will bayonet a radiator or a person with about the same regard for either, but also a guy who likes to cuddle with puppies and can be trusted to make an infant feel loved. Find a way to square that shit away in context and you'll be a very sought after person. In the way you've expressed it, training allowed a person like myself - who positively hates the state and has hated the state since the concept hit my radar- to be exceedingly loyal, violently loyal, murderously loyal..... to the very same. As a soldier, Uncle Sam say's "Shoot this guy" and I stand-at-a-fucking-tention to salute and execute. As a civilian, Uncle Sam asks me for my drivers license and I say "for what?". hrugs:

-You've gotta wonder, if you're the wondering kind...how much of that is their influence, and how much of it was already there. Is it a strictly conditioned response or simple encouragement?

I have Starship Troopers and The Forever War side by side on my shelf. In the latter, I really liked how it handled time of transit for interstellar travel and the end, "I thought you started it."

Fucking classic..right, lol? But now you've ruined it for those that haven't read it!

Of course, Air Force BMT was only 7½ weeks when I went in. To be sure, our TI did tell us he was going to "tear us down and rebuild us the way the AF wanted us", but the silent "bullshit!" reply in my head was shared by many others in my flight, to hear them tell it. We came through it with personalities intact, more or less.

I spent 12 weeks at a holding facility awaiting a spot. This gave them time to issue gear, get paperwork done, and get us acclimated to day to day service life -without- any freedoms that I would later enjoy. I went from my bunk to the defac to wherever paperwork was waiting and back - or did nothing....no calls out, no smoking, no snacks, no stores, no tv, no radio, no family...no nothing. I probably would have stabbed a motherfucker right then and there had they told me I could leave the compound if I did so. Then 8 weeks of basic. Then 4 weeks of MOS specific followed by an eval. Then 8 more weeks of combined indoctrination (their terminology, not mine...lol) and specialty specific - then off to my unit for another 8 weeks until I was deemed adequate for their gear and mission, followed by an average of 4 months of off-base training in a simulated combat environment every year at a minimum (one chunk of which had to be a 12 week sustained exercise- I was a fast tracker). This was in addition to our daily training and PT. Being deployed, relative to that...was a vacation.

Basic training changes you, no doubt. AF BMT didn't have to overcome the ingrained taboo against killing, so perhaps the training didn't have to be as emotionally destructive as Army or Marine training?

Well, we started out with paper targets made of concentric circles. Then it was black man shaped targets. Then it was 3d rubber models of a human torso with facial features and other amusing detail. All reference to the humanity of the target was scrubbed. They're not people, they're contacts, or targets. You aren't shooting at humans, you're "putting rounds downrange". You're awarded for displaying violent tendencies and shamed for leveraging any individual judgement (all the while being told that you will be taken to task if you fail to leverage individual judgement- setting up a situation in which you are always potentially in the wrong with disastrous consequences for yourself and therefore perpetually nervous/agitated).

I eventually did a brief stint as NCOIC of a MOUT range. Military Operations in Urban Terrain - this was my particular AOE within my larger MOS. Let me tell you a little about how participants got graded there. To shoot the wrong target in a breach is frowned upon (simulated non-combatant), to fail to shoot the right target is a failure condition. If you shoot -too many- of the wrong targets, you -might- be "reprocessed"...start over. If you shoot -too few- of the right targets, you -will be-. Selection bias favors the habitual trigger puller.

Here's what I used to tell the helmets (because it's what I was told). "When it doubt, take her out". It helps to keep stuff short and catchy. Keep in mind, these people were training for deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they were already used to firing at black silhouettes by cruel happenstance.

Now, I don;t think that any of that (and obviously theres more) forcibly compels a person to kill - but it smoothes the road for that final decision, which is, ultimately,m a decision that all of us are already capable of making before we ever step foot in the recruiters office.

@Steel, didn't know you coached PTSD, rough stuff - good on ya.

(now that yall got me remebering it...I do seem to recall a strange feeling at the body range, it wasn;t like the other ranges. The reality of what we were training for was peaking through the veneer, I think...but that went away...they were just body models, after all. )