Category: Military issues

Zero and Old Trooper sent us a link to Bloomberg which says that, in order to reduce the Army’s ranks by 67,000 warm bodies in the next five years, they may force people out.

The military will first try buying out contracts or offering bonuses for people to leave, while working to keep those with valuable specialties such as cyber warfare and acquisitions, according to Travis Sharp, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington policy group, who attended a Pentagon briefing for analysts last month.

“I was surprised that they were going to complete the reductions to the Army and the Marine Corps in just five years,” Sharp said in an interview before the budget was released. “What they told us is that they will try to use those types of positive incentives to the greatest extent possible, but that involuntary separations would probably still be necessary.”

Yeah, I remember the early 90s when they tried the same thing, then a few years later, they were begging us to come back, because the mission wasn’t getting completed with a force that was depleted of the experience.

And you can be sure that they’ll be forcing out the trigger pullers and not the paper shufflers.

The Life of Duty folks from Brownells and the NRA pay tribute to those who have the toughest job – waiting at home while out of the communication loop.

The Stars & Stripes recounts a discussion that Lt. Gen. Jack Stultz, chief of the Army Reserve had with 75 reservists with the 7th Civil Support Command at a town hall meeting last week at Daenner Kaserne in Kaiserslautern.

“The word I’m getting from the very top is, ‘Hey, we don’t want to touch the Reserve; you’re too important. We’re going to rely on you even more.”

“What it means is, you’re more relevant than ever,” he said.

He says that like it’s a good thing. It’s been my experience that most soldiers who go into the Reserves aren’t looking for the full time employment of the active duty force. They’re looking to transition to civilian jobs and finish college after doing all of that full time stuff for several years. But, here it looks like the Defense department and the Obama Administration is planning on filling the deployment gaps caused by drawing down the active force with Reservists who are going back on rotation schedules.

Yeah, if all things remain constant, it’s a good plan…well, except for when Reservists start leaving when their hitch is up because they’re tired of not being civilians, and recruiters can’t fill the positions, because they discover that folks who want to be deployed would rather be on active duty, not ripping up their roots every other year to deploy on some AfriCom deployment to hand out MREs to AIDS patients.

The goal, he said, is to create a five-year model in the Reserve, whereby soldiers would train and build readiness for four years, and in the fifth year, be available to mobilize for a contingency or other missions, Stultz said in an interview after the town hall meeting.

Yeah, that didn’t work so well for those Marines who ended up in the battle at the Chosin Reservoir. Funny how reality always intercedes in the best laid plans of men. I don’t know how you “build readiness”, but it sounds interesting. Enjoy your sky-pie.

I don’t what I can say about this I haven’t already said but here’s the story at Stars & Stripes;

Citing defense officials, the AP reported that the new rules are expected to continue the long-held prohibition that prevents women from serving as infantry, armor and special operations forces. But they will formally allow women to serve in other jobs at the battalion level, which until now had been considered too close to combat.

AP said the changes would formally allow women to be assigned to a battalion and serve in jobs such as medics, intelligence, police or communications officers.

About twenty years ago I wrote a letter to the S&S when the military was contemplating this move after the Gulf War. I said then, like I say now; that’s fine and dandy with me, except that if they’re going to start putting women closer to the fight, they have a responsibility to train them for it. That means eliminating gender-specific standards for training. If they’re going to do men’s jobs in men’s environment, they have to do it to the same standard.

Combat doesn’t discriminate. Bullets don’t don’t go less far or slower for women.

From Associated Press;

“We believe that it’s very important to explore ways to offer more opportunities to women in the military,” Pentagon press secretary George Little said Thursday. “This review has been thorough and extensive,” with input from all branches of the military.

It’s not a matter of career opportunities, it’s more related whether you’re going to train to an acceptable standard that doesn’t discriminate. This isn’t the movies where men are trying to keep women out of our boy’s club. Generally, when women get trained to a man’s standard, they cry that they’re being treated unfairly.

Take that cow, Shannon Faulkner, who spent years battling for her chance at The Citadel who dropped out after a few days because she thought she was going to be treated differently and spent not one minute preparing for the rigors of the college. In a 2009 interview she still blamed men for her one week tour of duty;

She spent just one week at the Citadel. During that time, Faulkner battled extreme physical and mental stress, and passed much of the week in the infirmary, suffering severe dehydration.

Yeah, you don’t get dehydrated from stress, you get dehydrated from not being prepared. Women every where are celebrating this decision by the Pentagon, but they need to understand that there’s a price still to be paid.

ROS sends this trailer to the upcoming film “Act of Valor” which purports to include real SEALs in the cast of performers;

Coincidently, Tman sent us link to an article about Lt. Gen. James Vaught who confronted Special Operations Commander Adm. Bill McRaven on the media cooperation that the SEALs have enjoyed in their recent successes;

“Since the time when your wonderful team went and drug bin Laden out and got rid of him, and more recently when you went down and rescued the group in Somalia, or wherever the hell they were, they’ve been splashing all of this all over the media,” Vaught, 85, said. “I flat don’t understand that.

“Now back when my special operators extracted Saddam [Hussein] from the hole, we didn’t say one damn word about it,” he continued. “We turned him over to the local commander and told him to claim that his forces drug him out of the hole, and he did so. And we just faded away and kept our mouth shut.

I understand that the media attention can be intoxicating, well, until you fail at something. But I sort of agree with the good general. Saddam Hussein used Black Hawk Down as a training video for his commanders on how to fight American soldiers.

Vaught continued;

“Now I’m going to tell you, one of these days, if you keep publishing how you do this, the other guy’s going to be there ready for you, and you’re going to fly in and he’s going to shoot down every damn helicopter and kill every one of your SEALs. Now, watch it happen. Mark my words. Get the hell out of the media,” he concluded….

I’m not going to stick my neck out and say “Mark my words…” but it should certainly be a consideration in some of these cooperative projects. By the way, if it does happen, and I pray every night that it doesn’t, I hope the SEALs don’t expect to get some sympathy from the media.