I have a question for Captain Ralph, although, General Beare, you might also have some views on this.
I've heard this a lot—not just in this study, but in many studies about transition. Veterans, particularly when they're medically released—they didn't want to leave but they were medically released—feel that their identity has been taken away. They planned on having this military career, being part of the military family, as it were.
Something that I've been advocating for in many studies—and there are places that do this, other nations—is the issue of universality of service. We've heard a number of veterans say that they have some injury, whether physical or mental, and that they're not able to do everything they could when they joined, but there are still a lot of useful things within the military they could do, but because of universality of service, they're discharged.
A lot of veterans actually were not coming forward with their complaints. The paratrooper was not coming forward with their low back pain because they thought “I won't be able to jump out of a plane. I don't meet universality. I'm going to be out” or “I'm starting to have nightmares. I have PTSD. If I can't go out onto the battlefield, they're going to throw me out” and these types of things.
Would not scrapping but modifying the universality of service principle—particularly if it was for a subset of people to serve in a modified capacity or modified deployment—ease a lot of the problems with people who could work very well in the Armed Forces, who just couldn't do everything they could beforehand?