The United States depends on volunteers for its security. It is a very small percentage of the population that commits to serve their country in the armed forces, performing a duty that most refuse. A still smaller subset of these men and women commit entire careers to service; these form the enduring foundation of expertise and professionalism necessary to rebuild the forces now being reduced in every category of size, equipment and readiness. It is imperative in this environment for the nation to preserve the mechanisms that incentivize skilled volunteers to become experts in careers that differ qualitatively from any civilian experience. But these mechanisms are crumbling, one after another—threatening servicemembers’ quality of life today even as they threaten the future of the force.