Recruiting Crisis? DS Logon (DSL) Account Rants

Not here to say that military benefits are inadequate. Just stick with whatever was offered when people signed up to stay on for multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and we’re good.

A new email arrived advising:

“Your DS Logon (DSL) account will be deactivated in 30 calendar days due to inactivity.”

You must go and set up a new user name and password every so often. Or do I have this wrong?

A tortuous process awaits.

This whole thing should be no more tricky to use than an Amazon account.

People have been using the web at home for 25 years. Any changes during this time should have been for the purpose of making things more simple, faster, easier, etc.

20 years ago, there would have been various rants posted by people offering up critiques on TRICARE/DS Logon protocols. Today, alternative views have been mostly scrubbed away.

If you change up your search you can see what some people are thinking.

Getting somewhere now:

“The whole system is fucked. You can’t log in to Tricare west via a CAC DS logon. It can only be done via a Username/Password DS logon for some fucking reason.

I lost my phone and this my authenticator app so lost my old DS Logon account (help desk said they couldn’t recover it and had to delete old account and have me create a new one).

But you can’t create a username/password account anymore if you have a CAC. You can only make a CAC account. Which in turn doesn’t work for Tricare West.

It’s mind blowing.”

TRICARE

You have earned health care benefits with your career/job. You have made subscription/dues payments during the year to keep your health care turned on.

It almost seems like they create steps to make it difficult and confusing to use the benefits you have already earned and paid for.

High level politicians from both major parties have been talking for decades about fixing/supporting veterans health care benefits.

Somebody shared from the web:

Just the other day:

Air Force Times Dec 6, 2023

DOD watchdog report warns of issues across military health care system

“Both the Air Force and Navy IGs pointed to a lack of medical providers willing to accept TRICARE — the global health insurance program for troops, retirees and their families — and a general lack of specialty providers.”

We have run into this several times over the years. Providers we like will say they left or are leaving TRICARE because the paperwork requirements are too big for the money they get paid from TRICARE.

Recruiting Crisis/Reality Check

Thousands of American families have had a loved one in the regular or reserve US Armed Forces who did one or more tours in Iraq or Afghanistan. National Guard too.

If we can just get the veterans, parents and grandparents of the USA to recommend an enlistment to the young family members in their life, things will be looking up.

The US Dept. of Defense spent the last 30 years squandering prestige and credibility overseas and at home.

If DOD was an NFL team, sports talk radio would feature comments like:

The Dept. of Defense was nowhere to be found on 911. We haven’t won a war since.

Four-star officers, high level DOD civilians, policy think tanks and the press will avoid being honest about how DOD has been used over the past 30 years. They tend to avoid discussing a track record that is not attractive to the parents, grandparents, young people and veterans of America.

Decades after the lessons of Vietnam, it feels like the Pentagon specializes in undeclared/unwon wars. The DOD brand has been wrecked.

It’s all about freedom folks.

Biden honors Americans who ‘stood on the front lines of freedom’ in Veterans Day remarks

CNN Nov 11, 2023

Some Americans may be asking:

Mr President,

How would American freedoms today be any different if US troops were never sent to Iraq?

Uncle Sam is having a hell of a time finding people to sign up for the US Armed Forces. Pretending that decades of undeclared/unwon wars are linked in any way with American freedoms is the kind of dishonesty that will snuff out the energy American families once had for encouraging young people to enlist.

Good luck with your US Armed Forces recruiting crisis.