The depletion of the Argentine Armed Forces is no longer measured solely in empty hangars, ships moored for lack of fuel, or bases without gas. Today it has a human face and a component of institutional degradation unprecedented in the history of the Republic: the Ministry of Defense has formally authorized soldiers, non-commissioned officers, and officers to hold second private jobs in transportation, delivery, or private security companies in order to make ends meet .

The measure, disguised under a cynical narrative of "expanding individual freedoms," is in reality the death knell for military professionalism. The national government is legitimizing what was already an open secret in the barracks: military salaries are insufficient to cover basic necessities .

The collapse of real wages

The suspension of the salary scale—a policy that aimed to equalize military and security force salaries—has plunged Army, Navy, and Air Force personnel into a terminal crisis. Since December 2023, military salaries have lost more than 80% of their purchasing power relative to inflation , resulting in real purchasing power that is now 25% lower than at the beginning of Javier Milei 's administration.

The direct consequence is mass desertion and a brain drain from national defense. Pilots with thousands of flight hours, naval mechanical engineers, military doctors, tactical operators, and cyber defense and communications specialists—profiles whose training cost the Argentine state millions of dollars—are abandoning their military careers to turn to the private sector or, now, to self-employment regulated by foreign algorithms .

The perversity of design: Empty in order to deliver

This decline is not a management accident; it is a deliberate dismantling policy. When we connect the dots of the investigation this publication has been conducting, the delivery matrix is laid bare:

By destroying the operational and moral capacity of the Argentine soldier, the Executive Branch artificially creates the "need" to accept foreign tutelage. This is the perfect justification for the signing of the pact between Admiral Romay and Rear Admiral Sardiello (U.S. Fourth Fleet): since the Argentine State "cannot" sustain its sailors or its ships, it hands over the eyes and brain of South Atlantic surveillance to the Southern Command through Program 333 and the doctrine of the "Common Goods."

An affront to Memory and Sovereignty

It is a profound humiliation for those who bear the constitutional responsibility of safeguarding national sovereignty, the bi-oceanic route, and our projection toward Antarctica to have to finance their family's basic needs by driving for Uber. Meanwhile, just a few kilometers from our shores, the United Kingdom is consolidating and funding NATO's military presence in the Malvina Islands with multi-million dollar budgets and plundering our fishing resources.

Milei 's model is transparent: Argentina provides the territory and the legal waiver of the 200-mile limit; the United States provides the strategic direction of the South Atlantic until 2030; and the Argentine military is reduced to an underfunded auxiliary staff who, when they are relieved of their duties, have to go out and drive a car to make ends meet .