For the Military, a Shutdown Is About a Lot More Than Just Pay
It also affects many other people, institutions, and services necessary for readiness.
THE MILITARY TEACHES THAT READINESS rests on three pillars: people, equipment, and training. It’s a neat formula—easy to brief, and the military has key metrics to provide details of each. But four decades in uniform taught me about the devil in those details. Sustainable readiness relies on families who hold everything together while their soldiers serve. It relies on the civilians and contractors who run the ranges, the training areas, and the support facilities. It relies on those who cut the orders and manage the budgets. But it relies, above all, on trust—trust that the nation will keep faith with those who make up the big machine that defends it.
That trust is what’s breaking during this government shutdown.
Many in the armed services, and even more elected officials, likely breathed a sigh of relief when they heard the administration had “shifted funds” to ensure military paychecks would continue. That’s certainly good news, but that’s only one part of the readiness story. When the government closes down, the wider ecosystem that sustains the military force begin to seize up. Many of the institutions, structures, and relationships that make military life possible—families, civilian workers, businesses and nonprofits that provide various vital services—begin to experience strain and suffering.
On the occasions when my troops and I experienced shutdowns, they were always frustrating, sometimes painful, and extremely disruptive to commands and operations. Soldiers endured them with the kind of stoicism they show whenever they are asked to sacrifice. But even in those short shutdowns, the effects beyond the soldiers were profound.
During one closure when I commanded in Europe, our training center at Grafenwöhr in Bavaria was closed. That’s because most of the people who run the ranges and maintain the complex systems there are long-serving Department of the Army civilians or German contractors—men and women who are experts at what they do when they support our maneuvers and gunnery training. When they were furloughed, the ranges went quiet, the training areas went silent. No ammunition issued, no targets reset, no safety oversight. The training readiness in Europe was, in every practical sense, paralyzed.
Units that had spent months planning their rotations suddenly had to cancel or compress exercises. Without the civilian workforce, commanders couldn’t move tanks to a maneuver location, manipulate targets on a range, provide fuel for the force, or food in the mess halls. Training that should have prepared soldiers for combat stopped because politics had stopped government. Soldiers grumbled, adapted, and carried on, but families and civilians were radically affected.
This time feels different. The tone in Washington is harder, the duration likely longer—this is already the second-longest shutdown in history, with no end in sight—and the ripple effects deeper.
When a shutdown hits, even when some money is “shifted” from other sources to the soldiers, they and their families still feel it in multiple ways. Soldiers leaving the military are “stop-lossed,” militaryese for not being able to process out of their unit to either the civilian world or their next assignment. Child-development centers—vital for young parents—close or scale back because most are operated by civilians or contractors who are furloughed without pay. The young sergeant whose spouse works is often told to keep reporting for duty while their child’s daycare is closed indefinitely. This is more than inconvenience; to commanders in the field who care about their troops, it’s a threat to readiness. Because they know, beyond the chaos at home, soldiers distracted by family stress aren’t focused on mission execution. And you can bet these kinds of issues affect the young soldier who is in the reenlistment window and thinking about extending in service or leaving the ranks.
But there’s more. Housing offices stop processing maintenance requests. Commissaries limit hours. Family-support programs, counseling services, gyms, and recreation facilities cut back or shut down. For military spouses who rely on those jobs or services, it’s a financial and emotional hit. We might call these things “quality of life” issues, but that phrase understates their role. They are the infrastructure of stability on military posts and bases. When they vanish, families lose their footing—and the military loses its edge.
Most American military bases run on civilian expertise. Mechanics, engineers, logisticians, teachers, analysts, and administrators keep the machine humming. When those civilians are sent home, the military’s institutional memory and technical capacity vanish overnight. It’s one thing to deploy a brigade; it’s another to sustain it without the civilians who manage contracts, maintain simulators, or process budgets.
I was recently reminded of how even the smallest things can be affected by a shutdown. One of my MBA students at Rollins College—a bright, mid-career civilian professional who works with the Navy—emailed to say he couldn’t complete a leadership assignment that involved interacting with his team. “I’m furloughed,” he wrote simply, “right now I don’t have a team I can talk with.” It was a small moment, but revealing. The shutdown doesn’t just hit troops; it halts the work of talented public servants across every agency—people whose daily efforts rarely make headlines but whose absence always leaves a mark.
The point is this: Military readiness isn’t just the sum of personnel, equipment, and training—it’s the product of everything that allows those three variables to function. A soldier’s focus, a family’s stability, a civilian’s expertise, a community’s trust—these are not extras. They’re the connective tissue that turns capability into competence. When the government closes, those tissues fray. Soldiers might still train on a small scale, but their families can’t plan. Equipment still exists, but spare parts aren’t processed and sometimes don’t ship. Civilians still care, but they don’t work. Readiness begins to decay from the inside out.
I’ll never forget a conversation I had with a senior allied general during one of those earlier shutdowns in Europe. Watching the paralysis from afar, he asked me with genuine confusion, “Why is it so hard for the world’s most capable democracy to keep its own government funded?” It was an honest question—and an uncomfortable one, because I couldn’t answer it. He wasn’t doubting America’s strength; he was questioning its steadiness. For allies who rely on our constancy, a shutdown isn’t just a domestic issue. It sends a message that America’s greatest vulnerability may not be on the battlefield, but in our own governance.
Everyone understands why this shutdown happened. The debate over health care is important, and the costs of providing it are real. Health care, like defense, is a public good that demands scrutiny and fiscal responsibility. But there’s a difference between debate and dysfunction. The key to leadership in a democratic republic—whether in Congress or a private-sector company—is collaboration, discussion, and compromise.
That’s how complex systems work. It’s how every military operation is planned and executed. Leaders gather facts, challenge assumptions, find consensus, and move forward together. What we’re witnessing in Congress looks less like a long-anticipated debate than like a planned demolition. Each side is more interested in scoring points than in sustaining the country they’re supposed to govern and fund. Leadership means balancing principles with pragmatism. You can hold fast to your convictions and still find common ground. That’s what’s missing now.
The next time a politician says, “We’ve protected military pay,” remember that pay isn’t readiness. Readiness is the sum of all the parts, and all that goes into them: the people, families, and institutions that make service possible. It’s the morale of a parent dropping a child at daycare, the reliability of a civilian issuing ammunition at a range, the steady hand of a commander who can train without interruption.
That’s what’s at stake—not just the dollars, but the dignity of service.
A paycheck may keep a soldier solvent. But only trust, stability, and leadership will keep our nation strong.
 | A guest post by
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