This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Author: Hondo

  • An Arlington Article

    The Navy Times recently published an interesting, if short, article on Arlington National Cemetery.  It gives a brief rundown of the Cemetery’s history, and gives a few vital statistics.

    The article also lists a few less-well-known facts about the cemetery.  Three examples:

    • The Cemetery’s founder’s son – Lieutenant John Rodgers Meigs, son of cemetery founder MG Montgomery Meigs – is buried there.
    • Tombstones with gold lettering (there are over 400) are the final resting place of Medal of Honor recipients.
    • A 3-year-old girl who perished on board American Airlines Flight 77 at the Pentagon on 11 September 2001 whose remains were never identified is memorialized in Arlington, only several hundred feet from the Pentagon.

    There are a number of other fascinating facts in the short article, with brief explanations/background for each.  If you have a few minutes, IMO reading it is definitely worth the time.

     

    Author’s note:  as multiple commenters have noted below, the identity of the 3 year old buried in the mass grave for the Pentagon is in fact known.  As the link provided by Fm2176 notes, the name of the young girl killed at the Pentagon was Dana Falkenberg.  The original Navy Times article indicated the young girl’s remains were “unidentified” and buried in a mass grave at Arlington.  However, the Navy Times not indicate that her identity was in fact known and did not give her name. 

    In fact, no individually-identifiable remains were ever found for Falkenberg and four other individuals – Rhonda Rasmussen, Ronald Hemenway, James Lynch, and Ronald Golinski.  Falkenberg and these other four individuals are memorialized in the mass grave for 9/11 at Arlington. 

    My apologies for the error in the original article.

  • Army to Cut 30,000 Troops Over Next 17 Months

    I’ve written previously about BCTs affected by the Army’s cutback plans.  Well, courtesy of the Army Times we now have some additional information as to how the Army plans to implement the required personnel cutbacks.

    Short version:  10,000 will have to go this year.  And next year, another 20,000.

    On 1 Apr, the Army’s end strength was a hair under 520,000 – 519,786, to be precise.  By the end of FY2015, it must be 490,000.

    The math is pretty simple.  520,000 minus 490,000 equals 30,000.

    About 15% of the expected reduction is projected to come via officer and NCO early separation boards.  The source for the rest was not explicitly identified. However,  those sources can be inferred from the Army’s drawdown strategy, which

    . . . features a combination of reduced recruiting and re-enlistment missions, early outs for short-timers who are headed to college or are in units scheduled for inactivation, and strict enforcement of disciplinary and performance standards. The strategy also includes selective early retirement and reduction-in-force boards for officers, and separation and early retirement boards for NCOs who are in overstrength career fields and specialties.

    However, per the current CSA, GEN Rayomond Odierno, voluntary separation incentives are currently not a part of the strategy.  I guess R&R and $400 million helicopters must be more important.

    Well just Bless Our Hearts, It’s Christmas Almost.

  • ND:tBF Rattles His Pencil-Thin “Sabre” Again

    According to South Korean Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin, North Korea has completed preparations for it’s 4th nuclear test.  The test could be conducted it “at any moment”.

    Kim also indicated that it was possible that North Korean preparations are a bluff.  North Korea has been threatening for weeks to conduct another nuclear test in protest of what it calls US and South Korean “hostility”, along with international condemnation, of it’s recent missile test activities.

    South Korea threatened “serious consequences” should North Korea conduct another nuclear test.  Those consequences were not specified.

    Tensions on the Korean peninsula have risen in recent months.  Last week, results of a Joint US-ROK investigation into drone activity in South Korea were released.  The investigation included that 3 drones found in South Korea in March and April were in fact North Korean surveillance missions.

    Rhetoric from both Koreas these days is getting pretty damn heated and nasty, too.  North Korean leadership has recently turned very insulting and racist in its public statements, while South Korean leadership has said North Korea “must disappear soon.”

    I guess ND:tBF was tired of Boko Haram getting all the recent press, and decided to pitch a public tantrum. (smile)

    Stay tuned.  This could get interesting.

    Oh, and the photo of ND:tBF here is priceless. (smile)

  • And The Cover-Up Continues . . . .

    Title says it all:

    Eric Holder: No Plans at DOJ to Investigate Secret Waiting Lists and Veteran Deaths at VA Hospitals

    Is anyone surprised?  God knows how Holder can look at himself in the mirror.

    Holder would do well IMO to remember one thing, though. It wasn’t the Watergate break-in that ended Nixon’s Administration.

    It was the cover-up afterwards that nailed them.  And John Mitchell was one of those who ended up doing time.

  • Well, This Just Freaking Takes the Cake

    Most TAH readers know that the President’s air transportation is provided by DoD.  No issue with that.

    Most TAH readers know that the USMC provides his official rotary-wing transportation – “Marine 1”, it’s called, when occupied by the POTUS.  No real problem with that, either.

    However, the Marine VIP helicopter fleet dedicated to the task is aging.  So a contract has apparently been let to replace it.

    However, I do have a huge problem with that.  You see, the overall cost of the replacement program is estimated by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to be around $17 billion over multiple years – for 23 helicopters.  The cost for each helicopter is estimated to be around $400 million.  The rest of the $17 billion is presumably operations and maintenance costs associated with the program over its life cycle.

    Yes, you read that correctly.  $400 million. Per. Freaking. Helicopter.

    To put things in perspective, that’s about the same unit cost as the Air Force One Boeing 747.

    The USMC and Navy have been down this road before.  They previously spent $3.2 billion on a failed effort to replace the Marine VIP helicopter fleet.  That effort was terminated because it was “too costly”.

    Adding that cost, the total spent to replace the Marine VIP helicopter fleet comes to a cool $20 billion.

    Oh, and did I mention that the new helicopters won’t be ready until 2022?  Or that the program cost does not include the cost of maintaining and operating the existing Marine VIP helicopter fleet until the new aircraft are available?

    You know, it just seems to me that we could have negotiated a better deal than $400 million per helicopter.  But I also have to wonder just hard we really tried to negotiate – seeing as only one firm (Sikorsky) bid on the latest contract.

    And in case you were wondering:  yeah, Sikorsky builds the current VIP fleet.

    Sheesh.  Perhaps the best comment I’ve heard on the situation was from a former senior DoD official, who quipped that at that price, “Marine One should be able to have a solid gold toilet for the president – except that it would add too much weight.”

    Further details are found in this UK Daily Mail article.  Don’t read it unless you want to get royally p!ssed.

    But I guess in a way this is good news.  After all, like I said yesterday:  this means DoD – and especially the USMC and the Navy – must be absolutely flush with cash, right?

  • A Cultural Icon Ceases Print

    Last week, an American cultural icon ceased print publication.  After 60 years, Jet Magazine announced last Wednesday that it was moving to an all-digital business model.  It will cease publishing a printed edition.

    I’ll be the first to admit that Jet wasn’t my “cup of tea”.  But I did on occasion look at it – and when I was younger, it was fairly common.

    Jet was indeed a US cultural icon.  In its early days, it was instrumental in helping the Civil Rights movement get traction, publishing the photos of Emitt Till’s badly disfigured body to show how he’d been abused when he was killed.  And it provided Black America with a source of news and commentary not readily found elsewhere.

    Declining readership finally did Jet in.  Recent years haven’t been kind to most brick/mortar/paper magazines, and Jet was no exception.

    The US will survive without Jet, of course.  And one can argue whether it’s a loss worth mourning or not.

    But regardless of ancestry, IMO we’ve all lost something.  I can’t help but feel we’ve lost a bit of Americana with Jet’s passing.

  • Nice to See DoD Has Plenty of Money

    I guess that must be the case.  DoD has decided to play around with R&R leave rules.

    Yeah – again.

    Now, it seems as if anyone who deploys prior to 1 June 2014 to “the land areas of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan” will be “grandfathered” for R&R.  Specifically, it means if you deploy before 1 June 2014, you’ll be authorized non-chargeable R&R leave, complete with paid transportation to/from the leave location.

    Deploy on or after 1 June 2014 to those areas, and you’re SOL.

    The reason those 9 areas were losing R&R authorization was that they’re also losing “combat zone” designation on 1 June 2014 – and thus most “combat zone” bennies.  They still are.

    Personally, I think that’s long overdue.  If there have been shots fired in anger in any of those 9 countries during the past decade, I certainly haven’t heard of it.  They’ve IMO been nothing but a remote unaccompanied tour for at least that long.

    Sheesh.  It seems to me that using a little common sense was all that was required vice yet another exception to policy.  Specifically:  if you had spent enough time to qualify for R&R under the “old rules” as of 1 June 2014 (6+ months, if I recall correctly), then you should get R&R.  If not – well, as JFK said, “Life is not fair.”  Maybe that’s just me.

    But I do have to wonder how anyone reporting in on 1 June is going to feel now when the guy or gal who got there a week earlier goes on R&R – and they realize they won’t get to do the same.

    Still, it’s nice to see that DoD has a bunch of extra money laying around.  They must have in order to pay for things like this.

  • Nigerian Scammer Gets “Punked”

    We’ve all seen and heard the Nigerian scam e-mails.  In general, they’re of the pattern:  “Just send me some (money/merchandise), and I’ll (cut you in on the proceeds from an illicit deal worth many times as much).”

    Well, a few years ago one man turned the tables on one of those scammers.  In this case, the scammer wanted some laptop computers.  So the scammer’s intended target claimed to have a computer company – and promised to send him some promotional models, provided the scammer did two things:

    • paid for shipping to Nigeria, and
    • made an English-language commercial for the man’s company – Anus Computers -– using a script the man provided to the scammer

    In reality, the guy then shipped the scammer a large block of wood.  (Another version I’ve seen says he also sent a load of broken computer parts.)  And the “commercial” that resulted is a classic.

    Without further ado – the “Anus Computer Commercial”.  Audio level is pretty low, so you’ll need to turn up the sound a bit.  There are multiple takes; the better ones start at about 1:30.

    Unfortunately, the original source – scambaiter.com – seems to have gone on to that great bit-bucket in the sky. However, the video of the “commercial” remains available on YouTube.

    Enjoy.  And don’t forget to use the patented “wipe it clean” software afterwards!  (smile)