u/Freelancer135

As an infantryman, I regularly go to the field a lot.

I understand the battle drills both on the whiteboard and executing them during the daytime. During the day iterations, I can move fast confidently, know when and where to move, and when and where to shoot, all the different formations, and when to get into each one depending on the terrain, all the different hand and arm signals and what they mean, etc.

But the second it comes nighttime, it's like I already know I'm screwed. The NODs my unit has (as a mechanized unit, all we get are the hand-me-downs, same as basic, the PVS-14s) are completely ass. Even the simplest battle drills, like reacting to contact and breaking contact, become nearly impossible for me during a night iteration. I only see through a fuzzy green scope (due to the fog in my eyepro caused by the sweat evaporating), and more than half the time, the loom is not good, so I'm going through this nearly blind.

As an E-4, I don't really have any influence to try to get the unit to adopt higher-quality NODs. If it were allowed, I'd even be willing to shell out some of my own money if we were allowed to bring our own NODs in the same way we're allowed to bring our own BFAs, and just store them in the arms room and bring them out when it's time to head to the field. Sure, it's expensive, but I would argue it's the biggest soldier investment anyone could make.

I have high physical and mental capability to go really far, but my poor performance on night iterations with shitty NODs always holds me back more than anything else.

For those of y'all in my situation, how do y'all deal with this? I feel like if Hegseth is relaxing the gun laws on military bases, then he should also do the same with NODs and allow everyone to just bring their own because PVS-14s always screw me over.

I was in-person at college for the first 2 years, before choosing to go on active duty in the Army. I took a gap year for training purposes and am now continuing on with my degree remotely after getting settled into my unit.

I'm seeing people who started college later than I did now graduating right now, while I have 2 more semesters (summer and fall) to graduate. I'm proud of them, but I can't help but feel behind and inferior due to graduating from college late.

I get that comparison is the thief of joy, and we should all just focus on our own lives, but I can't help but feel like the typical super senior degenerate that nobody likes.

Have any of y'all been in that boat before? Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

I am active duty army finishing up last two semesters of college on the side to earn my bachelors degree.

Younger brother (19 M) is full time in college on campus, ending his sophomore year.

Both of us moved away from our parent's place and had been living separate lives ever since.

I have a smoking habit as well as a habit of going to strip clubs. He doesn't approve of it and told me I live like a degenerate. My parents know about me having gone to the strip clubs, but not the fact that I still do it occasionally whenever I go home (but have no idea about my smoking stuff). I'm dependent on my parents for financial support through school because Army TA has been too complicated and too long of a process and I want to get this degree out of the way this year because next year my unit is heading to Europe as part of a training rotation.

For context, I live in the barracks and constantly surrounded by all men 24/7 365. Not to also mention I've never had a relationship and the loneliness of not having a girlfriend doesn't go away with self improvement (learning new things, hitting the gym, etc) as the typical "focus on yourself" advice has promised. I've been in college in-person and now here I am being an active duty soldier, and I can say with full certainty the army life is a lot more stressful. I am highly physically fit and can lift weights and run very fast for miles, so my lungs and body are strong. But between balancing the day-to-day bullshit with active-duty life with setting myself up for after the contract ends (education, skillset, certs, etc), I'm chronically exhausted from this dual life that forces me to be on high alert all the time. I come from a stressful day of work to once again have to turn my brain on for the other stuff, and then once again go right back to work the next day. So yes, if I wanna smoke and budget for the occasional strip club visit to ease the loneliness and stress, then as a grown ass man I say I have the full right to do that. The financial support my parents give me is strictly for college and occasionally coming home, and I use my money for everything else.

I've tried to talk to him man-to-man, and describe how my life is vastly different from his to try to get him to understand. And that in the same way he doesn't want me micromanaging every little thing he does, he has no right to do so with me regardless of whether he agrees with it or not. It'd be one thing if it was me using parents' money to do these things but I only use my little earnings from my own hard work busting my ass with the infantry.

But almost every single time I talk to him, he always has this sense of moral superiority because he has a girlfriend and because of my bad habits, and supposedly he claims that he doesn't even eat sugar.

I got off the phone with him a couple days ago and he's giving this ultimatum that if I don't stop smoking and hitting the club then he would tell mom and dad, and that it would be me hurting them because of what I choose to do, not because he chose to tell them. He's even told me that I'd be dead in 5 years if I kept up the smoking habit and that I have no right to decide anything for myself and should just only listen to him, mom, and dad.

The only reason why I haven't told him to go fuck himself is because I still need to keep a stable relationship with parents so that coming home on leave doesn't feel awkward. And I also don't wanna risk ruining the financial support my dad is giving me for school. Not to also mention that my family is grieving a loss right now and last thing they need to worry about is a civil war breaking out.

Even if this is his way of showing concern, it's giving off strong vibes of arrogance and manipulation and a condescending nature. Both me and my parents want for me to get this degree so I don't think they would stop supporting me at least for this degree even if they did find out about my coping mechanisms. So part of me wants to just tell him to go ahead and tell them anyhow because he's not blackmailing me into his bullshit of making me even more miserable.

How exactly do I deal with this?

I am two semesters away from graduating with my cybersecurity degree. I spent a good number of years learning and practicing the Java programming language (the basics, OOP, MVC architecture, server-client networking, data structures and algorithms, etc) and building side projects here and there. I've learned networking and covered Kali Linux as well as using common tools like Wireshark to study data moving across the wire, using nmap to understand more about a network I am looking at, and experimenting with telnet and ssh, and using Wireshark to observe the encrypted security feature that ssh provides that telnet does not.

One thing I've kept in mind is not to rely solely on college to understand your craft, because, from what I feel, college classes are well behind the industry, and only focusing on the degree means you've only scratched the surface. Henceforth, I'm learning more Python and figuring out ways to use it to automate existing tools on Kali as well as getting my certs (CompTIA+, Security+, Network+, etc). Additionally, I'm also an active duty soldier right now and plan on leveraging both my military background as well as my cybersecurity learning path to work for a federal agency after my active duty contract ends.

I obviously have a long way to go, but one thing that really bothers me is AI (Grok, ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, etc). It always stings on the inside, knowing that anyone who has never touched a computer can write up a simple prompt on ChatGPT and create better software than the work I've done in the last 4 years. I've literally been able to use Copilot to write up a whole SRAR report (Staff Report and Recommendation) with the BLUF and the executive summary with perfect grammar and format and everything, within only a few seconds.

On one hand, some input I get from people is that cybersecurity, as well as IT as a whole, is going to be obsolete within the next 5 to 10 years. Elsewhere, others are claiming that AI has simply been overhyped by startups and investors alike, and apparently, now a lot of companies are supposedly losing millions due to flaws in the overhyped AI tools.

I want to believe the second group belief, but I find it hard to reject the first one because having experimented firsthand, I've seen firsthand that any Joe on the street can literally use existing AI tools to write up better software and cybersecurity products than what I can with all my effort and learning. A friend of mine believes that right now, with all the layoffs, there would only be so few jobs with the many people who hopped on the tech trend, and those few jobs would only encompass troubleshooting AI.

I want to be successful, but also want to be realistic and not do anything to avoid ending up homeless on the streets. Should I pivot to my infantry background and start a PMC after my contract is over, and make money that way or is there still a hope for cybersecurity? If there is hope, how can I use AI exactly to multiply my output, as that was another point I've come across, too.