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

Category: Big Army

  • Hanson: CIB Revoked, Admin Separation In Process

    Some readers may remember Jonn’s article on CPT (then 1LT) Timothy R. Hanson, who received the CIB in Iraq under circumstances that were later questioned.

    A recap, for those unfamiliar with the story.  On 16 January 2008 Hanson led a small group of soldiers (8 total) into an ambush near Balad, Iraq.  Per later investigation, during that engagement Hanson shot one of his own men, PFC David H. Sharrett.  Hanson left the battlefield via helicopter approximately 40 minutes later with two wounded soldiers.  Hanson was uninjured.

    Though wounded, Sharrett was not recovered until 20+ minutes after Hanson had departed the battlefield.  Sharrett died roughly an hour later.  (Times cited here are from my review of the initial AR 15-6 investigation report and vary slightly from those cited in the article linked above).

    I don’t know why Hanson left the battlefield uninjured before he’d positively accounted for all his men; you’ll have to ask him that question.   I’d certainly like to.

    Hanson’s CIB orders are found here.  They note only a single date vice a period of service.  That indicates that the engagement where Hanson shot Sharrett was either Hanson’s first or only actual ground combat engagement during his deployment to Iraq.  Based on what’s been made public, my guess would be “only” – but I could be wrong.

    It is not my place to pass judgment on Hanson; I wasn’t there, and I haven’t seen all the evidence regarding what happened that day.   I don’t know why or how he shot Sharrett.  In the proverbial “fog of war”, bad things sometimes happen.  Hanson’s shooting one of his own men during the heat of battle appears to be one such case.

    But I simply don’t understand Hanson’s leaving the battlefield, uninjured, before positively accounting for all of his subordinates.  Maybe there was a sound tactical reason for his departure at that point;  maybe not.  I don’t know.  But based on what I’ve seen so far, I certainly can’t see a compelling reason for him to leave at that particular point in time.

    In any case, what I think is irrelevant.  The Army has re-investigated Hanson’s conduct and found it wanting.  While Hanson’s actions that day were apparently not determined criminal, the Army has decided that he did not serve successfully as an Infantry officer in combat.  Hanson’s CIB has been revoked, and he is being processed for administrative elimination from the US Army Reserve.

    DA often gets things wrong.  But IMO, they appear to have finally gotten this one more or less right.

    Sometimes the system works.

     

    Additional Background:

    One of the AR 15-6 investigations into this incident may be found here.  It appears to be the initial investigation.  I found the site to be somewhat unreliable, so you may need to try multiple times before you can download the files and view them.   Be forewarned that the files are scanned as images and are very large – 30 to 45 MB each.  If anyone can locate the later two AR 15-6 investigations online, please advise and I’ll post links to them here as well.

  • Big Army’s “Duh” moment on uniforms

    I’m finally getting to my email from the last two days, so if you haven’t seen your tip yet, hang on, I’ll get to it. But Jason sent us a link to a Military.com article which reports that Big Army has decided that they’ll just stick with Multicam uniforms for the time being;

    After years of testing, Army uniform officials are planning to recommend that MultiCam should replace today’s pixilated design as the official camouflage pattern the service issues to all soldiers, Military.com has learned.

    Made by Crye Precision LLC of Brooklyn, N.Y., MultiCam is the pattern that outperformed the service’s Universal Camouflage Pattern, or UCP, to become the Army’s pattern for soldiers deploying to Afghanistan. UCP was nonetheless adopted in 2004, but came under congressional scrutiny when soldiers complained about its poor performance in Afghanistan.

    So, let me see if I got this right; the Army is going to decide to keep the uniform pattern they bought about two years ago and after spending $5 billion looking for a new pattern? And they can’t find waste to cut in the Defense Department that doesn’t involve raising Tricare fees? But, wait there are two options in the recommendation. One is just job security for the weenies at Natick;

    But officials running the camouflage effort are now looking at two options to recommend to the service’s senior leadership this fall.

    One option would be to make MultiCam the Army’s official camouflage pattern, sources tell Military.com.

    The second option would be to make MultiCam the service’s pattern for garrison and general deployment use, but also to have a family of approved camouflage patterns that could be issued for specific areas of the world.

    Does anyone envision any scenario in which Option 2 won’t be the choice? Yeah, no, me either.

  • Does it really matter? I mean seriously.

    Beretverde sent us a link to an MSNBC article about the Army wasting $5 billion on research for the perfect camouflage uniform for soldiers.

    According to insiders, the design was selected after the Marines had switched to an eye-catching pixel-driven pattern. “That’s what this really comes down to,” the editor of Soldier Systems Daily said. “‘We can’t allow the Marine Corps to look more cool than the Army.’”

    Yeah, I really don’t get this whole discussion. I’ve never seen a camouflage pattern that hides soldiers, and after a few hours in the field, all uniforms look the same – dirt. Of course, the last line of that paragraph above is what it’s all about anyway – the coolest pattern. So uniforms are a recruiting tool now, functionality is secondary.

    With so many other things they could be spending money to protect the force, things like training which effectively make up for the fact that uniform camouflage patterns don’t do anything, why is Big Army mostly concerned with fashion?

    And if a trainee is more attracted the Marines than the Army because of a camouflage pattern, does either service really want such a superficial dork anyway?

    All it really is about is job security for those POGs at Nattick.

  • ‘Kelly Temps’ In Uniform

    Yeah, I’m about to get a bit long-winded – and some might say, “wax ignorant” – again. And this article is somewhat (but not exclusively) Army-specific, so read on at your own risk. (smile)

    Much of the readership here at TAH has a military background. (Duh!) But even within the military, experiences and commitments vary. There’s a huge difference in terms of experiences, careers, and commitments between those who on active duty and those who serve “part time” – e.g., in the Reserve Components.

    That dichotomy is largely by design, and is to be expected. So is a substantial back-and-forth banter – and at times, some animosity – between the Active and Reserve Components. The roles are different, and what’s required and expected of each is different. The Active Component is there 24/7/365, and provides the primary military response in times of crisis.  The Reserve Component, by design, is there to augment the active forces when required.

    At least, there’s a difference during peacetime service. During wartime, when serving together those distinctions blur. My background is Army, so I’ll discuss the Army; other services may be different.  When you serve on active duty and deploy to a combat zone, the uniform says “US Army”; it doesn’t say “Active Army”, “Army Reserve”, or “Army National Guard”. So when it hits the fan, so to speak, the distinctions fade. Mission and imminent threat forces that.  But the distinctions resume when one redeploys.

    There’s no argument that the Active Component forces have the harder role. They’re required to be fully ready 24/7/365, and to deploy and fight on much shorter notice than the Reserve Components. They train more, and suffer more as a result – e.g., earlier casualties, more time away from family due to training, more peacetime training injuries, etc . . . . They’re doing their job full time; it’s their livelihood and (for many) their career. Yes, the Active Component forces have a more comprehensive support infrastructure. So? They’re serving full-time, after all. The Reserve Components aren’t.

    That was once clearly true. But is that really quite true any more – particularly for the Army?

    Time for a historical sidebar. And yes, it is related – though it might not initially seem relevant. (more…)

  • Big Army kowtows to Spencer Ackerman’s breathless ignorance

    Last month I wrote about Spencer Ackerman’s piece at Wired which totally mischaracterized materials from a course offered at the Joint Forces Staff College. the PowerPoint presentation merely set up a scenario in which Islam had morphed into a cult which threatened the United States and the US military had to meet the new challenge. Ackerman and his lapdog, Noah Schachtman, took quotes totally out of context to make it appear as if the instructor, Army Lt. Col. Matthew A. Dooley, was making policy pronouncements instead of just framing the discussion for the scenario.

    Instead of telling me how I was wrong, Ackerman merely went on Twitter and said I was wrong, mostly because I wasn’t wrong and he was afraid to confront me.

    Apparently Big Army was afraid to confront Ackerman, because at a link that Zero sent us today, they’ve fired Dooley and reconfigured the course;

    Colonel David Lapan, a spokesman for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Wednesday a review of the course found that “institutional failures and in oversight and judgment” led to the course being modified over time in a way “that portrayed Islam almost entirely in a negative way.”

    “The inquiry recommends the course be redesigned to include aspects of U.S. policy and reduce its reliance on external instruction,” Lapan said in a statement. It also recommended improving oversight of course curricula.

    “The elective course’s military instructor has been relieved of his instructor duties until his permanent change of station, which was previously planned for 2012,” Lapan said.

    And this is why Leon Panetta shouldn’t be the Secretary of Defense;

    Navy Captain John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, said in April that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta was deeply concerned about some of the materials being taught in the course, such as the slide suggesting the United States was at war with Islam.

    Yeah, just throw your officers under the bus, there, Leon, on the word of an idiot serial goat tongue-kisser like Spencer Ackerman.

    That’s not the way it should have been played at all. Big Army should have taken the time to explain it, instead of playing it like they had a loose cannon running around the Joint Forces Staff College trying to formulate a policy against the religion of Islam. Spencer Ackermann remains an ignorant douche nozzle and Big Army looks like the PC pussies they really are.

    I’m standing here by a plate glass window just hoping Ackerman comes by and pushes me through it. In fact, the night I wrote that piece, I stood by a plate glass window all night at the Arlington Westin Hotel…no Ackerman, though he was in the neighborhood. So he’s still not a milblogger, and he still doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

  • Big Army recommends NJP for Koran burners

    The Associated Press reports that an investigation of the Koran burnings that triggered a slew of protests against US presence in Afghanistan recommends that up to nine soldiers involved in the accidental incident should receive non-judicial punishment.

    Altogether, two Navy and nine Army service members in Afghanistan were sent back to the United States in conjunction with the Koran burning shortly after it happened. But, based on the investigating officer’s report, several would not face any punishments.

    Yeah, none of them should face punishment. Big Army admits that it was an accident. The Korans had already been defaced by prisoners who were writing in the Korans to pass messages inside the prison walls, which is considered defacing by the adherents of that religion. Burning a Koran is an accepted method of destroying defaced copies.

    If the Army is punishing these folks just to mollify the Afghans, well, that’s not justice at all, is it? It’s certainly not to send a message to other soldiers that burning Korans isn’t acceptable, they already know that. It isn’t to teach any meaningful lesson to the perpetrators – it’s just to send a message to the Afghans that we’re willing to bow to their every whim, irrespective of the validity of their complaints.

    Let the troops live their lives without the burden of this in their records and make the State Department do their job and deal with the Afghans.

  • SFC Walter Tayor support

    Just Plain Jason sends us a link to the Facebook page set up to support SFC Walter Taylor, the young sergeant we talked about here who mistakenly killed an Afghan doctor who was acting suspiciously in the middle of a firefight.

    Apparently his Article 32 hearing (a military grand jury) starts tomorrow. The Facebook page is impressive – former trainees he influenced as a drill sergeant have expressed support along with his current troops.

    But there’s a Paypal link over there if you’re moved to help, but if nothing else, supportive words would probably do more good at this point. I know I’d hate to face Big Army under these circumstances and it would help to know that real soldiers understand the decision that SFC Taylor made in a tough situation.

  • Outrage over the Johnson verdict? No way!

    If you haven’t heard, Col. James H. Johnson III, the former commander of the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team, who we’ve discussed twice in the last few days was sentenced in his trial for forgery, fraud, lying and bigamy yesterday. He got a wrist slap of a $300,000 fine for his plea of guilty to 13 charges and conviction on two others. Johnson keeps his rank, his current pay and his retirement.

    Well, Stars & Stripes discovered that some folks are outraged over the little pat on Johnson’s rump the court calls punishment;

    “Once again, it appears there are two different standards for officers and enlisted in the Army,” [Greg Rinckey, a former Army judge advocate general] said. “If this had been an enlisted soldier, you have to believe there would have been a reduction in rank and jail time. And that perception of different rules does become a problem.”

    But Fidell said the verdict appeared mainly to be an attempt to protect the family that Johnson left behind.

    “Obviously they wanted to preserve his pension so that his wife — one of his wives, anyway, the legal wife — could get the benefit,” [Eugene Fidell, military law expert who teaches at Yale University] said.

    In some cases, the court-martial panel feels the need to send a loud and clear message, but this likely wasn’t one of them, Fidell said.

    “It’s a freakish case,” he said. “I don’t think they’re going to have to worry about an upsurge in bigamy as a result of this.”

    Yeah, I’m sure they were thinking of Johnson’s first wife, but how much would they take into consideration a wife of a sergeant guilty of that much malfeasance? I think it’s the greatest miscarriage of justice in the history of military justice. The thing is that Johnson wasn’t thinking about the welfare of his first wife, so why should Big Army consider it? Because it’s not their money they’re giving her – it’s the taxpayers’ money.