That may or may not be true, but it doesn't mean that it's not their goal.
Here in the UK the Army's advertising is all about people who joined up and learned skills. I think the current one is about a girl who joined the Royal Signals and 8 years later she's an expert in "telecommunications" (it's an ad, so they're no more specific than that). By contrast the Royal Marines advertising is simple: "99% need not apply".
Functionally, ex-military folks often end up in DC doing government contracting or consulting related to military agencies and intelligence. So that's mainly for signals and intel guys. They earn way more money doing the same old job.
For everyone else, their skills are useless although pretty much everyone I outprocessed with were angstful stop-lossed guys wanting to go into law enforcement in their old towns.
Besides, the incentives are to keep people in the military, not train them to get out...so it's really either DC or bust.
I think you are mainly right. There are a small subset of us ex-Army folks with special skills that weren't signal or intel guys. That number is dwindling every year, partly because those highly skilled jobs (mine was calibration related) are being pushed to the DA civilian side. Also (as you correctly mention), you can do a short 4 or 5 year active tour, then get out into the civilian world and make literally 3 times the salary doing the same type of job.
I think the Army tries to pride itself on training people to get out ("Hey we pay for college, we help find you jobs when you are outprocessing!"), but the reality of the situation is that most of the Army isn't getting trained for their exit to the civilian world.
I know a couple navy engineers and air force computer techs who have gone on to successful private sector careers working on basically the same stuff they did in the military.
Don't forget about the medical people. Army Doctor/Dentist to civilian Doctor/Dentist is not a hard transition.
Anyway, I work in DC with a lot of army people (I am even typing this on an Army PC) and the biggest difference is Army people say I was a _ in the Army but the Marines just say I was in the Marines.
Here in the UK the Army's advertising is all about people who joined up and learned skills. I think the current one is about a girl who joined the Royal Signals and 8 years later she's an expert in "telecommunications" (it's an ad, so they're no more specific than that). By contrast the Royal Marines advertising is simple: "99% need not apply".