General Colin Powell on the Modern Army | American War Generals

we saw that we were in a market to find
labor
no more conscripted free talent and free
labor we had to go compete in the
workplace and to compete in the
workplace you had to make the work more
attractive you had to appeal to young
men and women to join the Armed Forces
of the United States because it was a
noble thing to do but beyond the
nobility you also had to give them
conditions that were more suitable for
an open labor market so living in a
barracks forty troops to a single floor
all jammed up that had to go we started
to build barracks that looked like
community college campuses and some of
us were a little taken aback by this you
know and what happened to the old army
well the ol Army’s going hmm we’re gonna
have a great army but it has to be a
relatively different kind of army we are
finding that in order to get young men
and women who are willing to come in the
military and stay there coming in now
with families when I be was a young
second lieutenant and my first
assignment the standard speech was the
army wanted you to have a wife they’d
have issued you one so you know don’t
ask us to do anything for some wife that
you have but by time the volunteer army
came along and we were transforming our
army that was changing another major
feature of that period was the increased
number of women in the armed forces in
the United States especially within the
army and we had to have childcare
centers we had to have opportunities for
women to have jobs or for men spouses to
have jobs and so an entire
transformation was necessary to deal
with a new reality