Category: Big Pentagon

Bobo sends us a link to the Stars & Stripes which reports that the Pentagon has cleared the Marine pilots, Major Brooks Gruber and Lieutenant Colonel John Brow, of culpability in an April 2000 VS-22 Osprey crash which happened in Marana, Arizona and killed 19 Marines including the pilots.

“Human factors undoubtedly contributed to the Marana accident,” [Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work] said. “However, it is clear that there were deficiencies in the V-22’s development and engineering and safety programs that were corrected only after the crash – and these deficiencies likely contributed to the accident and its fatal outcome. I therefore conclude it is impossible to point to a single ‘fatal factor’ that caused this crash.”

“I hope this letter will provide the widows of Lieutenant Colonel Brow and Major Gruber some solace after all of these years in which the blame for the Marana accident was incorrectly interpreted or understood to be primarily attributed to their husbands.”

The change does not affect the official documents or the current Osprey program. The lawsuits are over, so there are no legal ramifications or further monetary gain. (Manufacturers Bell Boeing settled out of court with the families; the details are sealed.)

Yeah, if that’s not proof that the lawyers are in charge at the Pentagon, nothing does. Instead of discussing actual safety problems with an aircraft, we’re more concerned with the liability problems a crash causes. Those osprey pilots can take solace in the fact that the Pentagon won’t tell them what causes malfunctions until the court documents are filed and the case closes.

From a CNN article a year after the crash;

The April 8, 2000, accident was blamed on pilot error — investigators found the pilot landed too quickly and at too steep an angle, causing the tilt-rotor plane to lose lift under its right rotor.

According to Military.com, thirty leaders from across the services have gathered to “clean up misconduct in the ranks”;

Ethics officers and others identified a key issue as a lack of trust in leadership.

“How do we get them to trust us?” Navy Capt. Scott Smith asked to kick off the two-day Department of Defense Professionalism Summit.

Rear Adm. Peg Klein said that by bringing 30 leaders from across the military together, the Pentagon wanted to cross-pollinate budding efforts to strengthen ethics from each of the services.

[…]

There are signs of progress, though, Klein said. The admiral cited the Army and the Marine Corps for their work. The Army has started an effort to train enlisted leaders to spot and stamp out bad behavior with the online “Not in My Squad” program.

The Army program uses videos and virtual reality to put young leaders in an environment to make tough choices and learn from mistakes.

Well, see, there’s the problem, right there. The misbehavior, given what we’ve read in the news is with field grade and flag officers, mostly in the O-6 ranks – not with junior leaders. Given what’s been in the news the last few years,

I fully expect to read about misconduct at this conference in the coming months. That’s what happens when those people get together, right?

That’s across all services. To punish the junior leaders with endless hours of training videos and practical application scenarios isn’t going to influence their senior leaders. And it’s certainly not going to help the junior gain trust in senior leadership. The problem goes beyond training. You can’t train someone who is forty years old to recognize sexual assault as bad, that’s a problem of a lack of character if they don’t know that sexual assault of a subordinate is wrong. It’s a lack of proper upbringing. If you tell a bunch of privates on their first day in basic training not to do it, they won’t – except for the ones who aren’t wired properly before they joined the military. Somehow that doesn’t work on many field grade officers. That’s the problem those 30 officers in Colorado Springs need to focus on, not on brain cell-killing PowerPoint presentations for junior leaders.

The Washington Times‘ Rowan Scarborough writes that the White House has directed the Pentagon to consider “climate change” in it’s day-to-day operations. Climate change was formerly known as “Global Warming” and also the “New Ice Age”. But, in it’s endeavor to fight everything except our nation’s enemies, the White House has directed a new layer of bureaucracy to be formed in the Pentagon, you know, because there’s not enough bureaucracy in the Pentagon now.

To four-star generals and admirals, among them the regional combatant commanders who plan and fight the nation’s wars, the directive tells them: “Incorporate climate change impacts into plans and operations and integrate DoD guidance and analysis in Combatant Command planning to address climate change-related risks and opportunities across the full range of military operations, including steady-state campaign planning and operations and contingency planning.”

And, just in case you thought the matter was up for debate;

Mr. Obama says there is no debate on the existence of man-made global warming and its ensuing climate change.

The directive calls for changes to tactics and techniques of war-fighting which explains why we’ve been so slow to destroy ISIS – apparently no one has done the Environmental Impact Statement on killing thousands of terrorists in a virtual wasteland.

Stars & Stripes reports that Republican representatives Duncan Hunter and Ryan Zinke, Hunter a former Marine and Zinke a former Navy SEAL, wasted no time crafting the Draft Americans’ Daughters Act to fully integrate females into the military service. The bill would require draft-aged women to register for conscription ninety days after bill is signed by the President.

“If this administration wants to send 18, 20-year-old women into combat, to serve and fight on the front lines, then the American people deserve to have this discussion through their elected representatives,” Hunter said in a released statement.

I am opposed to a draft, speaking as a former platoon sergeant, but hey, since everyone wants to be equal these days…. Women should take the bad things about equality with the good.

Jimmy Carter reinstituted the draft in 1979 to respond to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, just seven years after Richard Nixon presided over the last draft lottery. The hippies filed a law suit that they thought would end the selective service by demanding that women should be drafted, too, souring Americans on the whole idea (remember this was in the days of the Equal Rights Amendment).

In 1981, the Supreme Court in Rostker v. Goldberg decided that since women were excluded from combat, there was no compelling reason for Congress to draft them. Well, that restriction has been lifted now that the social justice warriors have prevailed in the halls of the Pentagon.

I’m surprised that the social justice warriors aren’t lining up behind this – it’s all about equality and it probably won’t affect any of them – the same reasons they wanted the policy changed.

And the service chiefs recommended the change to draft policy just a few days ago.

The Pentagon can’t give you a pay raise of any consequence, but they figure that they can make up for that by storing your reproductive material in the event that you’re injured and can’t make progeny after years of service, they’ll have it ready for you, according to the New York Times. They’ll store your sperm, or your eggs, for use later. Somehow, that will entice you to reenlist, despite poor pay and benefits.

As part of an initiative to make military service more appealing and family friendly, Mr. Carter has created a pilot program that will pay for troops to have their reproductive cells preserved.

The goal is to give those in uniform the peace of mind that if they are hurt on the battlefield — hundreds of veterans suffered injuries to their reproductive organs in Iraq and Afghanistan — they would still be able to have children.

The program is also meant to encourage women to stay in the military during their 20s and 30s, a time when many leave after giving birth. By freezing their eggs, they will have the flexibility to remain deployed overseas or otherwise pursue their careers and put off having children.

Women who reach 10 years of service — what Mr. Carter called “their peak years for starting a family” — have a retention rate that is 30 percent lower than their male counterparts.

I’m sure there are a bunch of costly legal issues here. Not to mention the fact that the Pentagon and Congress have a pretty poor history of keeping promises.

“Freezing sperm and eggs is not like freezing chicken for dinner,” said Arthur Caplan, a professor of bioethics at New York University’s Langone Medical Center. “What happens if you die — can your wife use it? And what if your mother wants grandchildren and your wife doesn’t, does that mean the sperm can be used with a surrogate? If you’re cognitively disabled, can it be used? And what happens if the company housing your sperm or eggs goes bankrupt?”

Dr. Caplan said that the practice of freezing eggs had become widespread only in the past five years, and that it could be more problematic than preserving sperm, which has been done for decades. He said the Pentagon should inform service members that the freezing of eggs is not always successful and can cause complications.

Everyone has a story about how poorly their records were maintained during their service, do you want those same clerks determining which sample of genetic material is yours to impregnation your wife with a child that may or may not really be yours? Once there was a clerk who mis-coded one of my language proficiency exams and made the Army think that I spoke Serbo-Croatian, when actually I spoke Castillian Spanish. Imagine the screw ups that could happen with baby gravy.

It could also give the Pentagon the ability to create a race of super soldiers. The stuff of science fiction.