How is Loyalty defined in the modern military today? Loyalty is a characteristic and trait that cannot be forced upon a soldier nor feared into them. Loyalty is rather created and developed on the basis of trust from others around you including your superiors. Instilling and creating a trusting bond will allow the soldier to develop loyalty to oneself, their unit, and their chain of command. Per Dictionary.com Loyalty is defined as, “Characterized by or showing faithfulness to commitments, vows, allegiance, obligations, etc.” (“Loyalty", 2012, p. 01-01). When one initially joins the military, takes an oath and swears in; you state that you will bear true faith and allegiance to your country, the President of the United States, and the officers appointed over you. You essentially take a vow to be faithful to your commitment to the military which includes everything from vowing to be loyal to your unit, leadership, and of course to oneself. Oftentimes though, I have been told by senior enlisted members that the “new army” is non-argumentatively greatly different than what it used to be. And, typically the junior enlisted will ask why? What is different now than what it used to be back then? What is told to us, is normally a general consensus amongst the senior enlisted and that is that personnel whom joined the military back then (I’m going to say starting five or six years ago but don’t quote me) were of a different type of breed of Americans. Generation Y (my generation) are greatly different than Generation X. “Gen X leaders (of which we have a notable example in our own President Obama) are pragmatic, cunning, and hard to fool; they 've seen it all and aren 't much for bullshit. Generation Y is used to refer to people born in the 80s and 90s. Their archetype is the Hero generation, an honor they share with the "G.I. Generation" who fought WWII. Compared to Xers they practically led a charmed life; their parents had ready access to birth control, so
References: Halsall, A. K. (2011, May 4). What are the differences Generation X and Generation Y?. Quora. Retrieved August 22, 2012, from http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-differences-between-Generation-X-and-Generation-Y Kaurin, P. M. (2006). "Identity, Loyalty, and Combat Effectiveness". ISME. Retrieved August 22, 2012, from http://isme.tamu.edu/JSCOPE06/Kaurin06.html Loyal. (n.d.). Dictionary. Retrieved August 22, 2012, from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/loyal?s=t