1) Honestly man, you have no business raising red flags to people interested in this program if you have absolutely no experience in either this program, or in the military in general. I do not take issue with you raising questions, but stating "facts" that you base off what you see "undergrad ROTC" students do is absolute nonsense.
You are obviously far too intelligent to make radical assumptions on what someone can or can't do. I am not "the exception", not by a long shot. I am much closer to "the rule" when it comes to Army officers. I would be more than happy to communicate with you outside of the public board to explain to you what I (and many others) have experienced when it comes to military servicemembers and family situations (marriage, divorce, etc.) I think some of you preconceptions might be true when you look at other populations within the military.
You mention moving every two years, but what is your experience with the Army assignment process? The assignment process in the military, especially for Officers, has lengthened to give individual officers more time at a single station. I can't speak for anything prior to 2003, but I can tell you it is not uncommon to spend 4-6 years at a single location now (with the average time on station being 3-4 years).
Many military spouses do just fine maintaining a career while serving as a military spouse. It is possible, however, as I stated in my earlier post, this is something that can be negated by making an informed decision on who you marry.
2) Please go back and read what I wrote about maintaining a certain degree of physical conditioning. When did I outwardly support the pervasive military model of physical training?
If you wish to discuss anything related to physical fitness or conditioning, I welcome the discussion, however, again you are basing your argument off of something you have never experienced yourself.
If you go back to your argument that you are speaking to the masses, you would have to agree that most people don't fall into the top 5% of physical conditioning. So my statement that you have to maintain some semblence of physical conditioning is better suited for those that perhaps don't already maintain a high level of physical readiness.
Outside of officer education schools (Basic Officer Leader Course, Captain's Career Course), Officers are generally allowed to conduct physical training on their own, and generally only take a PT test once every six months. I have been a commissioned officer for 5 years now, and I can count on one hand how many times I have had to do "standard army pt". I train on my own, and have for years, and each time I take a PT test, I score the maximum allowable score and I do so without doing a single sit-up, push-up, or run anything more than 800 meters.
You mentioned a population within the military lobbying to get the model of physical training changed. Yes that is true. Now, please look at the military's human performance optimization movement (just google search "human performance optimization"). This directive tasks the physical therapists to serve as the command's subject matter expert for the physical training of the command's Soldiers. You are absolutely right about long, slow distance running and sit-ups being exceptionally high in occurrence of injury. Again, you are obviously a well-educated individual, and I would even say that you would be an ideal candidate for the US Army-Baylor program, or even serving as a PT in the Army because the more people we have question, and then action trying to get the training paradigm in the Army changed, the faster the process will move along.
