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

Category: Big Pentagon

  • Study released on Sexual Assaults

    Study released on Sexual Assaults

    Color me skeptical but I do not believe that 1 in 25 male Sailors have been sexually assaulted.  The issue here is what criteria are they using to define sexual assault.  To some, anyone who questions the results of these kinds of studies is supporting a rape culture.

    A sailor from Navy Expeditionary Combat Command carries a pair of shoes, painted teal to symbolize victims of sexual assault, as she participates in the Aug. 25 “Walk a Mile in Their Shoes” command event at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek. (Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Lisa Reese/Navy)

    Across the services, the safest places to work were at the Pentagon or other national capital region headquarters buildings, according to the report.

    The Pentagon released the data on Friday as part of a much-anticipated report, that for the first time looks at the likelihood of sexual assault on a military installation or ship and ranks them by service.

    The rankings were commissioned by the Defense Department and aim to help military officials to better identify the risk factors for sexual assault and how to most effectively deploy prevention and response efforts.

    It is based on 2014 data that was gathered through more than 170,000 surveys of active-duty service members collected by the RAND Corporation. Because of the five-year time lag, defense officials said the rankings do not reflect what the most dangerous bases are today. The study faced other limitations too, such as that assaults reported that were linked to a base could have occurred off-base or off-ship, such as while on liberty or leave. But the information is still jarring:

    NAVY

    In one stunning example, RAND found that “on one of these ships, we estimate that close to one in every 25 men was sexually assaulted in FY 2014.”

    But RAND won’t name the ship, saying it was trying to respect the anonymity of the respondents. In the survey, RAND eliminated ships and bases with fewer than 50 survey responses, or with ship or base populations of less than 100 personnel.

    For Navy women, ships were particularly dangerous, according to the report.

    For both men and women, Navy ships assigned to the FPO code 96671 — which based on Navy data includes cruisers Champlain and Lake Erie, submarines Louisiana and Louisville, and destroyer William P. Lawrence — “are associated with risk more than 100 percent greater than the average installation-specific risk in the Navy,” RAND found.

    Navy officials did not receive an advanced copy of the RAND report but told Military Times that they look forward to working with the think tank on future surveys.

    “We are aware of the 2016 RAND Military Workplace Study Survey, and we value the approaches that RAND takes to cutting edge research,” the officials said in a written statement emailed to Military Times.

    “The Navy has further engaged with RAND to help us take a closer look at the conclusions of this report by conducting follow-on projects to provide more actionable information about where sexual assault risk is highest and lowest in the Navy.

    ARMY

    Fort Drum in upstate New York was one of the most dangerous places for both Army men and women in terms of risk of sexual assault.

    For Army women, the top five locations in terms of risk of sexual assault included Fort Huachuca, Arizona; Osan Air Base, Korea; Fort Drum; Okinawa, Japan; and Fort Riley, Kansas.

    For men, the top five locations with the highest risk were located in Italy; at Fort Myer, Virginia; Fort Benning, Georgia; Fort Drum; and Rose Barracks, Germany.

    “While the lowest-risk installations for men are dominated by small, command or support installations, the highest-risk list includes many installations with a more prominent combat unit presence,” the study found.

    “The Army remains fully committed to reducing sexual assault and sexual harassment in its ranks,” the Army said in a statement to Military Times. “RAND’s risk estimates, which are based on survey data from over four years ago, may help focus ongoing efforts to combat these harmful behaviors. While prevalence rates of sexual assault among the force have declined, the Army continues to integrate and update prevention programs.”

    AIR FORCE

    Undergraduate pilot training bases were among the most dangerous places for both Air Force men and women for the risk for sexual assault, the report found.

    For men, the top five installations in terms of risk of sexual assault were Altus Air Force Base; Laughlin Air Force Base; Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling in Washington D.C.’ Luke Air Force Base, Arizona; and Columbus Air Force Base.

    MARINE CORPS

    Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, in California, was one of the top five most dangerous places for male and female Marines for risk of sexual assault, the report found.

    Responses for male Marines showed that the other most risky locations to be assigned included Japan, Korea, and Afghanistan.

    In a statement, the Marines said more research is needed to understand whether increased risk is really tied to an installation.

    “The RAND study documented differences in sexual assault risk across installations; the reasons for the variations in the levels of risk is not highlighted in this report,” said Marine Corps spokesman Maj. Craig Thomas. “There are many possible causes for differences, such as command climate, alcohol availability and price, crime rates in the surrounding civilian communities, or the transitory presence of one or more sexual offenders. Although the current study cannot identify the relationship between risk factors and risk estimates, additional research may help answer these questions.”

    Working to reduce risk

    Galbreath said that now that DoD has the data, it will be able to look for installations where additional steps can be taken to reduce the risk of sexual assault. For example, around 2015, at Great Lakes Naval Base near Chicago, DoD noticed a spike in sexual assault reports and decided to take a closer look.

    “What the Navy found out is that, locally there, on the weekends, all of the recruits were going off base and having hotel parties. And a lot of these hotel parties involved alcohol. And a lot of those situations ended up with sailors getting sexually assaulted,” Galbreath said.

    With that, and training initiatives, Galbreath said, the numbers started to improve.

    “Sexual assault began to fall,” Galbreath said. “So that’s the kind of local work [that can reduce risk of attack]. But there’s 270 places that we have to do that at.”

    The next survey is currently getting sent to respondents now, Galbreath said, and the results should be available in April.

    I do not have the time this weekend to read and research this study.  I may not be a smart man but I know what bullshit smells like.  Somebody or bodies are making a fortune publishing this kind of nonsense.  1 actual sexual assault is 1 too many, diluting what sexual assault is and having no means testing to verify numbers brings skepticism to the issue.

     

    Link to published Study

     

     

     

     

  • Pentagon Wants Army, Marine Corps to Select Higher-Caliber Grunts

    Pentagon Wants Army, Marine Corps to Select Higher-Caliber Grunts

    We don’t make this stuff up,  there are people who do it for us.   From military.com

     The Close Combat Lethality Task Force is trying to identify “best-of-breed science and programs” to find young Marines and soldiers who have the right mix of physical and mental endurance to excel in close combat, according to Sgt. Maj. Jason Wilson, the senior Army enlisted representative for the task force.

    WTF is a Close Combat Lethality Task Force?   Do they get a Patch, Tab, Pin or some kind of Tiera?  The thought of this CCLTF makes me tingle in naughty places.

    “We want to be able to get those soldiers identified early, to find out, ‘Do you have the leadership potential to be in the infantry, do you have the mental stability to be able to be in the infantry’ and do they have the resilience and the mental capacity to be able to handle some of the things that they may see in the infantry — to be able to overcome that adversity and bounce back,” Wilson told a group of defense reporters Wednesday at the Pentagon.

    Defense Secretary Jim Mattis launched the task force in March to find ways of helping the services as well as Army Special Operations Command become more lethal at their craft.

    “Close combat is an environment characterized by extreme violence within line of sight of the enemy, where historically the vast majority of military combat casualties occur,” Wilson said. “It is a tough job for anybody, to be able to … close with and destroy the enemy. … That is our purpose.”

    There we have it, we need to fix this combat environment so it’s not so scary.  Who wants to be so up close and personal with the enemy anyway?  And, all those casualties…that is just uncalled for.

    But the infantry has often been characterized as a career field that does not require high intelligence.

    “We are looking to get the infantry to where it is not a place where we send soldiers that don’t have the mental capacity to do other jobs,” said Wilson, who has been an infantryman for 23 years. “I’m not saying that everybody in the infantry is bad, but we want to get away from close combat forces, you know, being a place for soldiers that don’t meet the requisite criteria to be an intel analyst.”

    I have been a Platoon Sergeant in Combat Arms, you can not imagine the wasted intellectual might that hides in reserve.   I had some real Einsteins in the crowd.  I figured there were a couple of Ph.D.’s hidden in those Platoons.  When they were not licking the urinal cakes I had them practicing the manner in which they were going to charge an enemy machine gun nest.  We used to sit in the field at night, nestled in the swamp with the fog of mosquitoes swarming about and regurgitated  Nietzsche quotes.  I used to thank an imaginary God every night that those Grunts had not figured out how to lick their own balls or nothing on the Lt’s fictional training schedule who have been accomplished.  The horror, the horror…

    Yep, bursting with covert Intel Analysts…that’s the plan.  Who is going to burn the shitters in this new age of intellectual giants?   Every Grunt is really just a bag of brains.  FMTT

     

     

     

  • Security concerns led to “weeding out” foreign-born troops

    According to the Military Times, Pentagon officials were concerned that foreign-born recruits had falsified their backgrounds when they tried to enlist. For that reason, they started culling the herd of recruits;

    In a statement filed by Roger Smith, branch chief for personnel security policy at the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, DoD argued that regular reviews of the program found security holes, including that some applicants could not be vetted because the U.S. lacked “access and the ability to conduct standard security screening and interviews with associates, friends, and family members, as many [Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest (MAVNI)] soldiers are from nations who remain hostile to the United States or do not have data-sharing agreements with the United States.”

    In addition, in his statement Smith said that through a 2016 review, DoD found that “(1) a number of individuals accessed into the military based on receiving fraudulent visas to attend universities that did not exist; (2) some MAVNI recruits attended, and later falsified transcripts from, universities owned by a Foreign National Security Agency and a State Sponsored Intelligence Organization (notably, most of the university classmates of one MAVNI recruit later worked for the same State Sponsored Intelligence Organization); and (3) one MAVNI recruit who entered the United States on a student visa professed support for 9/11 terrorists and said he would voluntarily help China in a crisis situation.”

    Another MAVNI recruit had family connections to foreign military entities.

    In DoD’s judgment, these examples indicated that sufficient vetting of MAVNI personnel was not occurring at the accessions stage, contrary to the goal of avoiding altogether the accessions of individuals who present potential counter-intelligence, security, or insider threats.

    I guess Associated Press reports aren’t as interested in the story now as they were a few weeks ago.

  • Mattis: 2 Military bases to house illegal immigrants

    According to the Associated Press, Secretary of Defense James Mattis announced that two unnamed military bases are preparing temporary camps to house as many as 20,000 unaccompanied illegal immigrant children;

    Speaking to reporters traveling with him to Asia on Sunday, Mattis said the military has housed people in the past, including Vietnamese fleeing their country as well as Americans needing shelter in the wake of natural disasters.

    “We consider that to be a logistics function that’s quite appropriate” for the department, Mattis said.

    The request for temporary shelter — amid a growing political battle over detained migrants — was made by the Department of Health and Human Services and accepted by the Defense Department.

    HHS has assessed facilities on four military bases: Little Rock Air Force Base in Arkansas, plus three bases in Texas: Dyess Air Force Base, Goodfellow Air Force Base and Fort Bliss.

    The Defense Department won’t operate the facilities, that function falls to the Department of of Health and Human Services from July until the end of this year.

  • Trump takes Mattis’ recommendations on transgender ban

    According to Stars & Stripes, President Trump signed an order yesterday that was aligned with recommendations from Secretary of Defense James Mattis in regards to allowing transgender recruits in the ranks of the military;

    The decision revokes a full ban that Trump issued last summer but disqualifies U.S. troops who have had gender reassignment surgery, as recommended by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.

    “By its very nature, military service requires sacrifice,” Mattis wrote in a memo to the president that was released Friday. “The men and women who serve voluntarily accept limitations on their personal liberties – freedom of speech, political activity, freedom of movement – in order to provide the military lethality and readiness necessary to ensure American citizens enjoy their personal freedoms to the fullest extent.”

    Current transgender service members who have not undergone reassignment surgery should be allowed to stay, as long as they have been medically stable for 36 consecutive months in their biological sex before joining the military and are able to deploy across the world, Mattis recommended.

    Mattis recommended that anyone diagnosed with gender dysphoria, the condition of wanting to transition gender, since the Obama administration ended the Pentagon’s longtime ban on transgender service in 2016 may continue to serve. The decision amounts to a “grandfathering” of those affected by the new policy.

    Of course the Palm Center isn’t happy;

    Applying a single standard to all service members is not only the sole legal option, but is the best way to promote military readiness. Transgender troops have been serving openly in the U.S. military for nearly two years, and have been widely praised by commanders. All available research, including the military’s own extensive study of the issue and the results of a thorough study by the RAND Corporation, indicates that inclusive policy promotes readiness by ensuring equal treatment and drawing on all available talent.

    According to the Stars & Stripes article, Mattis believes that Rand Corp. study to be inaccurate;

    “It referred to limited and heavily caveated data to support its conclusions, glossed over the impacts of health care costs, readiness and unit cohesion, and erroneously relied on the selective experiences of foreign militaries with different operational requirements than our own,” Mattis wrote. “In short, this policy issue has proven more complex than the prior administration or RAND assumed.”

    Basically, the order grandfathers-in transgender troops who are currently in the military while it limits the number of recruits they will accept in the ranks to the more stable people. I guess they don’t want to spend tax payer dollars on a social program that benefits only a few while it sucks away training dollars.

  • Pentagon gets marching orders

    According to CBS News, the Pentgon received instructions from the White House to prepare for a military parade on November 11th to commemorate both Veterans’ Day and the 100th anniversary of the end of World War One;

    The president told Fox News’ Jeanine Pirro Saturday night in an interview that a parade would have lots of plane flyovers. Mr. Trump suggested either Veterans Day or July Fourth.

    Mr. Trump has said he was inspired while he was in France last year and observed the Bastille Day parade.

    “The generals would love to do it, I tell you, and so would I,” he said.

    The generals love parades because they don’t have to do anything – it’s all up-side for them. They get to look good while everyone else does the work. Right down to their aides setting up their uniforms.

  • Mattis and the non-deployable policy

    The Military Times reports on Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’ comments on the DoD policy to eliminate from the services folks who remain non-deployable for more than twelve consecutive months;

    “You’re either deployable, or you need to find something else to do. I’m not going have some people deploying constantly and then other people, who seem to not pay that price, in the U.S. military,” Mattis told reporters Feb. 17 in his first comments on the issue since the new policy was formally introduced.

    “If you can’t go overseas [and] carry a combat load, then obviously someone else has got to go. I want this spread fairly and expertly across the force.”

    It only makes sense – the job of the military is to fight our wars and if you’re incapable of that, why would you even want to stick around?

    I’d take it a step further and boot anyone who turns down a leadership position. A master sergeant who turns down a first sergeant job, or a staff sergeant major who turns down a command sergeant major position should find themselves on the street the next day.

    But, tiny steps, I guess.

    USNI published the guidance from the Deputy Secretary of Defense;

    Service members who have been non-deployable for more than 12 consecutive months, for any reason, will be processed for administrative separation in accordance with Department of Defense Instruction (DoDI)1332.14, Enlisted Administrative Separations, or Instruction 1332.30, Separation of Regular and Reserve Commissioned Officers, or will be referred into the Disability Evaluation System in accordance with 1332.18, Disability Evaluation System (DES). Pregnant and post-partum Service members are the only group automatically excepted from this policy.

    I anticipate many people coming off a medical profile becoming pregnant. Half of our Support Battalion’s ambulance platoon were pregnant by the time we deployed to Desert Storm.

  • Mattis moves to protect military dreamers

    Mattis moves to protect military dreamers

    According to Military Times, Defense Secretary James Mattis has arrived at an agreement with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to protect military Dreamers;

    “Anyone who is in the delayed enlistment program, in other words they are already signed up and they are waiting to go into boot camp, anyone on active duty and anyone in the active reserves and anyone with an honorable discharge is, right now, except for two possible exceptions, they will not be subject to any kind of deportation.”

    “The only two exceptions would be if for some reason they have committed a serious felony, and I realize even a low-level felony apparently does not put you in that category … that could jeopardize them. They are just like any other citizen,” Mattis said.

    The other exception would be “if a federal judge has signed a final order of deportation — that would be a judicial action that obviously we obey,” Mattis said.

    As it should be.