Category: Army News

Glenwood Razeem “Glen” Coffee, Jr, after being a starting running back in his Junior year at the University of Alabama in 2008, became a third-round draft pick for the NFL in 2009 and he was picked up by the San Francisco 49ers. Before the 2010 season began, he retired from the sport after one year as a second stringer on the NFL team.

According to ProFootballTalk, he told the Sacramento Bee that the NFL ruined too many lives;

“As far as the NFL goes, I have a hard time putting it like this because it sounds kind of harsh, but I feel like it ruins a lot of lives more than anything else,” Coffee said. “And that goes for people who have short careers in the NFL and long careers in the NFL. Because what happens is they see that as success.”

According to the Washington Post, he found Christ and football was no longer a dream.

In 2013, he enlisted in the Army and he’s currently a specialist and part of the support staff for waterborne operations at the 6th Ranger Training Battalion at Eglin Air Force Base, near his home at Fort Walton Beach.

The Post asked him if he is going to train to be a Ranger;

“Not everyone can serve in combat arms, and not everyone can serve in a Special Operations capacity,” he said. “So that’s why I joined. I felt like I was able to do it. Physically and mentally, because there is a mental aspect to it, too.”

Although not in Special Operations…he is asked regularly if he wants to attend Ranger School himself. The grueling leadership course is a minimum of 61 days long, with minimal sleep and food and stints at Fort Benning, Ga., and the mountains of northern Georgia before arriving in the swamps of Eglin Air Force Base.

“That’s one of those things I ask myself right now, as a matter of fact,” Coffee said of attending the course. “Am I thinking about that because I want to do it out of pride, or because it would actually better me as a person? So, I’m debating that right now. I have to ask myself, why would I want to go?”

The Washington Post reports that two of the three women who attacked the Mountain Phase of Ranger School have advanced to the Swamp Phase in Florida – the last phase of the school. So to recap;

A third woman who advanced to the Mountain Phase was “recycled” along with 60 men. That means they did not advance, but will be allowed to try the course again and can still graduate later. All three women began the Mountain Phase on July 11 alongside 156 male students who also were attempting it for the first time, and 42 men who already were training in the mountains, but failed to pass there the first time. The phase includes 20 days of climbing, hiking, rappelling and patrolling in the mountains of the Chattahoochee National Forest, mostly with minimal sleep and little food.

Good for them, I hope they both make through and prove that it is indeed possible for women to graduate at the current standard. But the Army has to decide whether it’s worth the cost to the force to continue a policy that doesn’t use the course of instruction to it’s best effect. 19 women started the course and 2 may complete it. That’s about 10% who will be successful. The washout rate among men from beginning to the end of the course is less than 50%.

Thanks to Chip and Chief Tango for the link.

SSG E sends us a link to the Army Times article about the investigation in the death of paratrooper Sergeant Shaina Schmigel during a jump in May over Fort Bragg;

Sgt. Shaina Schmigel died during a nighttime static line jump May 30, 2014, over Fort Bragg, N.C. According to the investigation, Schmigel’s equipment was misrouted so that, when exiting the plane, she became a “towed jumper.” While be being towed, the subsequent jumper exited the plane and Schmigel became entangled in his T-11 parachute. Schmigel reportedly died from fatal lacerations to the throat and a broken neck. The entire incident lasted only 3 to 4 seconds, according to the investigation.

The collision has likely knocked SGT Schmigel loose from being a towed jumper and her parachute deployed normally. No one, including the jumper who had collided with her, realized that anything was wrong until she found on the drop zone and she was unresponsive.

The investigator found that the safety had only given a cursory check of her static line, and that the safety hadn’t accomplished his refresher training in a timely manner. Schmigel’s rucksack was too light by four pounds and the investigator claims that the accident probably wouldn’t have happened if she’d been jumping with a T-10.

We reported Sgt Smigel’s death last month.

The Washington Post reports that all three women who are still in Ranger School have passed on to the second phase, Mountain Phase, of the course, having successfully completed the first phase.

Army officials announced the result Friday, saying in a news release that 158 men and all three women will move on to tackle the next portion of Ranger School at Camp Merrill in Dahlonega, Ga., about 65 miles north of Atlanta, beginning Saturday. It was the third and final attempt for the remaining women, who had failed the initial Darby Phase at Fort Benning, Ga., twice before. A total of 362 men began the course with them June 21.

Well, I congratulate them. they’ve certainly accomplished more than I accomplished during my military career, in regards to the physical aspect of the course. I may be one of the few people out here pulling for at least one of them to graduate, you know, since a female Ranger is in the cards, inevitably. It’s better for that graduate and all future graduates if they succeed at the current standard rather than some politically expedient standard designed to force a female graduate out of the course.

I’ve seen folks on here asking whether it’s normal practice to allow soldiers a couple of shots at the course. I know of one fellow, before 9-11, who failed out of every phase for various reasons. He spent almost a year as a Ranger student until he finally graduated. I don’t know if they still do it, but I know that it’s not unheard of.

Yesterday, we talked about the Army drawing down to four hundred and fifty thousand troops in the next two years, but according to the Associated Press, that’s just the beginning. If the administration and the Congress can’t dismount from the sequestration pony, strength will fall another thirty thousand to 450,000 in the next few years;

If a new round of automatic spending cuts, known as sequestration, goes ahead, the Army says it will have to reduce even further, to 420,000 soldiers.

Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army chief of staff, has said he can accept the planned reduction of 40,000 soldiers over the next two years, which the Army plans to implement by trimming the size of numerous units. The biggest cuts would be to an infantry unit at Fort Benning, Georgia, and an airborne infantry unit at Fort Richardson in Alaska. Each would shrink from about 4,000 soldiers to about 1,050, defense officials said Wednesday. Those details were first reported Tuesday by USA Today. The full plan for specific cuts is expected to be made public by the Army on Thursday.

The brigade (the 193rd Infantry Brigade) at Fort Benning was used as the round-out 3rd Brigade of the 24th Infantry Division when they deployed to Desert Storm, so reducing it to the size of a Battalion takes that out of the Army’s toolbox in case of an unplanned excursion, like Desert Storm where many units were cobbled together at the last minute.

The Army complains that they can’t train and retain the force given the year-by-year funding from Congress, but it’s really not Congress’ fault entirely;

It may not get any smoother anytime soon. Congressional Republicans are proposing to give President Barack Obama the extra billions he wants for defense in the budget year starting Oct. 1. But Obama says he can’t accept their plan because it maneuvers around spending caps in a way that does not also provide spending relief in non-defense areas of the budget. This portends a September showdown between Congress and the White House.

So the White House, is going to hold defense spending hostage to fund the domestic spending, you know, like they always do. Of course, this gives our enemies hope. I’m sure ISIS thinks that these domestic political maneuvers are the light at the end of their tunnel, much the way that they thought that they could win in Iraq in 2006 when Congress changed hands because of the anti-war rantings of Reid and Pelosi.

When are Congressmen going to contribute their salaries and operating costs to the sequestration process?

Thanks to Bobo for the link.