Category: Big Army

AW1Ed sends us a link from Fox News that reports Chuck Hagel, the Secretary of Defense is going to Congress tomorrow to beg for massive cuts to personnel costs in the Defense Department, including cutting the growth of pay, increases in retirees’ out-of-pocket healthcare costs and cuts to housing allowances. I don’t see any other department heads lining up in front of Congress to slash personnel costs in their particular departments. But, there’s Hagel, the former enlisted soldier, begging Congress to screw the shit out of his employees.

“This is a real uphill battle with Congress,” said Mieke Eoyang, a former Democratic congressional aide and director of the National Security Program at Third Way, a centrist think tank in Washington.

“God bless [Mr. Hagel] for trying to get a handle on these costs,” she said. “But in this political environment, in an election year, it’s going to be hard for members of Congress to accept anything that’s viewed as taking benefits away from troops.”

Pentagon officials say that they recognize the political realities, but emphasize that declining military spending makes trimming costs even more important this year.

Yeah, God Bless Hagel for screwing his troops, the little weasel. But, not to worry, Hagel is going to request a freeze to those six-figure general officers’ pay for a whole year, so they will be seen as sacrificing along with their troops [insert eye roll here]. I wonder if any of those civilians who are driving hard to the boards for military pay cuts are offering up their own salaries and benefits to the budget axe.

Can you imagine the EPA administrator or the Education Department director making a plea like this to Congress? To slash the pay of the stank-ass hippies who work in those agencies? Or in this foundering economy, the Executive Branch asking for smaller COLA increases? Or Congress planning to reduce their personnel costs? Seriously. Why do Americans think it’s perfectly fine to screw the troops, but leave the useless bureaucrats untouched?

RM3(SS) sends us a link from the Washington Times entitled “Troops left to fend for themselves after Army was warned of flaws in rifle” a rather long article about the controversy surrounding the Army’s standard battle rifle, the M4, particularly the Colt version;

Mr. Traudt, of Green Mountain Defense, said the military paid his company a decade ago for ideas for fixing the M4. He produced his company’s product, a 2001 technical report titled “Carbine extended life barrel and selected reliability improvement components identification.”

“The M4s were substandard,” he said. “The Army paid us to find a way to improve them, improve them cheaply with a little bit of extra engineering and metallurgical changes to make a gun that was markedly more reliable than the Colt weapon. The Army took our advice and did nothing with it.”

[…]

Retired Army Maj. Gen. Robert Scales, an artillery officer who earned the Silver Star in Vietnam, is a prominent M4 critic.

He said its 5.56-caliber bullet is too small and the gas-piston firing system is prone to stoppage. He said better weapons — the German Heckler-Koch G36 and Russian AK-74 (a version of the venerable AK-47) — use superior firing systems.

“Frankly, this whole thing is scandalous,” Gen. Scales said. “We send soldiers into close combat with lousy weapons and we’ve done it since World War II and nobody complains. It’s a national outrage.

“It has no penetrating power,” he said of the M4. “It’s ineffective against vehicles, against bunkers. It’s ineffective against virtually anything except a man in the open. Put a flak jacket on the enemy and it’s virtually useless.”

I was a fan of the M16A2. It was a perfect weapon, but I guess it was too long for the close-in fighting we’ve seen in recent years. I’m heartened that the Marines still use the M16. I have a civilian version of the M4 (not the Colt – I’m not made of money) and of course, I don’t use it under combat conditions or fire thousands of rounds through in a few minutes (again, I’m not made of money) and it gets cleaned in my living room before and after firing it. So, I guess I’m trying to say that I’m no expert on the M4 just because I own one. I also have an AR pistol that I built (from all non-Colt parts). But I’d like to hear what you guys have to say about it.

Like I said, I left the Army when the M16A2 was the issued weapon and I liked that it was structurally more reliable than the M16A1 and more accurate at longer ranges. We spent a lot of time cleaning it, but, then that’s what good soldiers do, isn’t it? I’ll admit that I like the idea of a 7.62 version. My friend has one and it has a more satisfying recoil than the M4, meaning better penetration and improved target impact. But I want to hear what you think of it, you have more experience with it in combat than me.

Jerry920 sends us a link to CBS News wherein they report that Congress passed a new law that requires the US military to only use US-made flags;

“I thought it was appalling our Department of Defense would have flags made in other countries,” [Congressman Mike Thompson, author of the bill] said. “But it’s also important because we need to be making more in America.”

While the military flag rule passed, a similar bill requiring all government-purchased flags be made in the U.S. has repeatedly failed. The change isn’t cheap. Chinese-made flags cost significantly less than all-American ones.

The new requirements apply the existing Berry Amendment passed in 1941 to flags. That amendment bans the Defense Department from buying food, clothing, military uniforms, fabrics, stainless steel, and hand or measuring tools that are not grown or produced in the United States, except in rare exceptions.

After 9-11, our building manager handed out little flag pins that we could wear to show our patriotism in those uncertain days, but the little baggie it came in was stamped “Made in China”, so I refused to wear it, to the chagrin of my office mates. So, I don’t understand why the Pentagon needed to be told to buy American in the case of our flags. But, I guess they’ll save money wherever it doesn’t affect them personally.

Defend USA sends us a link to The Blaze about Gerrod Branum of Fairmont, WV, who served in Iraq. Some of his kit was lost when he returned and his commander determined that it was a “field loss”, meaning that it was an unavoidable loss as a result of war and not the soldier’s fault. Well, it seems that the IRS has decided that he still owes them the money and took it out of his refund a decade later;

Fast-forward to 2014, nearly a decade after the incident: Barnum was sent a letter from the IRS notifying him that approximately $1,600 was being withheld from his tax return on account of the missing equipment.

He tried contacting the IRS, but his inquiries have been met with silence so far.

“As a government, you took my money in all aspects for a field loss for my service to my country,” he said. “It is not right. It is wrong and it is immoral.”

Official U.S. Army regulations state Barnum should have been charged within three months of the loss of the equipment.

Yeah, well, that’s why you keep every single bit of paper that the military gives you. If you don’t, it will come back and bite your ass. I extended my enlistment out of AIT for a year for a whopping $2500 bonus. After I served out the year to which I had agreed, some civilian finance wienie at Fort Bragg couldn’t find where I was authorized the bonus and I got a bill for the bonus. I still have every piece of paper since my initial issue inventory because my ass is tooth-mark free.

The Colorado Springs Gazette reports that the Army has announced it’s newest standards for soldiers to remain in service in regards to their ranks;

Privates will get five years to move up or move out. Specialists and corporals will have an eight-year pull date and three-stripe sergeants will have 14 years.

The move narrows the promotion windows for career-minded soldiers as the Army works to trim 80,000 troops from its ranks by 2018.

The first rank that will allow a soldier to reach the 20-year retirement mark is staff sergeant.

The only enlisted rank that can make the 30-year mark is sergeant major. I remember the last time they did this, the Army notified an E-8 friend of mine with 28 years of service that he needed to retire immediately. He had tears in his eyes as he told me that he didn’t know what he was going to do without the Army. That’s why my advice is to go out on your terms. Make plans to get out when you want to get out and don’t deviate from your plan.

The Washington Post reports that the Army is investigating the “Recruiting Assistance Program” which involved National Guard soldiers who got a bonus for convincing their friends to join the Guard;

Army criminal investigators are probing the actions of more than 1,200 individuals who collected suspect payouts totaling more than $29 million, according to officials who were briefed on the preliminary findings of the investigation and would discuss them only on the condition of anonymity. More than 200 officers are suspected of involvement, including two generals and dozens of colonels.

The alleged fraud drew in recruiters, soldiers and civilians with ties to the military who submitted, or profited from, false referrals registered on a Web site run by a marketing firm the Army hired to run the program. Suspects often obtained the names of people who had enlisted from recruiters, claimed them as their referrals, and then kicked back some of the bonus money to the recruiters.

The abuse is feared to be so widespread that Army investigators do not expect to conclude all audits and investigations before the fall of 2016.

The program started in 2005 and paid bonuses from $2000 to $7500 for each warm body that you successfully convinced to wear the uniform and was run by a private contractor, Docupak. According to the Post, it was Docupak that first noticed the signs of fraud and reported it to CID in 2007.

The Washington Post speculates that the Pentagon is moving away from tanks (they throw the Bradley Fighting Vehicle in the mix under that term) and towards drones, submarines and fighters. The Post claims that the reason we’re still buying tanks is because Congress is trying to save jobs in Congressmen’s respective districts;

The manufacturing of tanks — powerful but cumbersome — is no longer essential, the military says. In modern warfare, forces must deploy quickly and “project power over great distances.” Submarines and long-range bombers are needed. Weapons such as drones — nimble and tactical — are the future.

Tanks are something of a relic.

The Army has about 5,000 of them sitting idle or awaiting an upgrade. For the BAE Systems employees in York, keeping the armored vehicle in service means keeping a job. And jobs, after all, are what their representatives in Congress are working to protect in their home districts.

[…]

The Army is pushing ahead on a path that could result in at least partial closure of the two U.S. facilities producing these vehicles — buoyed by a new study on the state of the combat vehicle industry due for release next month.

This is short-sighted thinking. The Chinese and Russians aren’t buying fewer tanks. But, of course, I suppose the brain trust in the Obama Administration has the next war all planned out. They hope that it’s an island-hopping war in the Pacific, or that it will look like the last war.

They want to do away with the Warthog tank-busting aircraft and our own tanks – they’ve already pulled all of our tanks out of Europe, I guess, in hopes that all of the other countries in the world will do the same. Most likely, the next war will be with Iran, or with North Korea since those two are doing their best to rise up our shitlist. Both are heavily tanked-up armies. Maybe they’ll do like Hussein did in 1990-1991 and give us a chance to build up an armored presence before we attack. Only, the next time, they’ll have to give us years, so that we can build from scratch an armored force, that is if we can a manufacturer who will retool and make the commitment.

It appears that the Pentagon is forgetting the simple rule that the only ground you control in war is the ground between a Joe’s feet and they’re bound and determined to pull all of Joe’s support, so it will be like Kasserine Pass all over again – an untrained, ill-equipped force facing a better-trained, better-equipped Army paying for the politicians’ ill-considered defense policies in their own blood and lives.

The Stars & Stripes reports that the Army is opening up 33,000 positions in 32 military occupational specialties (MOS) to female soldiers in April. But the good news is;

The newly announced positions open to women do not include MOSes such as infantry, nor do they cover special operations units. U.S. Special Operations Command is conducting its own assessment of how to open additional jobs to women. According to the timeline Panetta announced, the military has until 2016 to fully integrate women into the force.

Yeah, well, that’s what Panetta wanted, he’s not the secretary of defense now. Surely Chuck Hagel, who served in the infantry during the Vietnam War is a little bit smarter than Panetta, right? Wrong.

When asked about the opening of combat unit positions to women in a press briefing Thursday, Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel shares Panetta’s commitment to integrating female troops as much as possible.

I’ve yet to hear from anyone, anywhere, how this is going to improve the Army’s ability to face an enemy on the field of battle. I’ve read how this will improve women’s careers, but then is that the sole benefit? I thought the military’s function is to force our political will on people who might not agree with us. We’ve been fairly successful in that regard for more than two hundred years, so why are we changing it all?