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

Category: Military issues

  • Reservist aviators complain they were mistreated by the AD Army

    A complaint as old as the nation (USAToday link);

    Nearly 200 Reservists in Iraq have signed a complaint accusing the Army of mistreatment and discrimination during the months they were preparing for war.

    The soldiers say their movements and freedoms were severely restricted during a four-month training before deployment, describing it as virtually a “lockdown” confinement to base. The Army says it was pushing to get Reservists trained and denies discriminatory treatment.

    And to whom did they send the letter? Their Senator Mitch McConnell.

    The complaint was written by Capt. Brad Docimo, an operations officer with the battalion, stationed at Camp Taji in Iraq. Home on leave, he declined to comment.

    Good luck, guys. The militia complained about the way they were treated by regulars at Valley Forge, and you can see it did a fat lot of good. Maybe you should just suck it up and do what they trained you to do at Fort Hood.

  • Trooper’s death causes Army to suspend T-11 use

    T-11
    Last month, i wrote about SSG Jamal Clay who died during a parachute accident at Fort Bragg. the Stars & Stripes reports today that the Army has suspended use of the T-11 parachute as a result;

    An internal Army memo says investigators found “potential packing, inspection, quality control and functionality problems” with the T-11 parachute system.

    According to the memo, Secretary of the Army John McHugh ordered the suspension of the parachute’s use until a safety investigation is completed.

    The Fayetteville Observer reports;

    An inspection of 10 of the T-11 parachutes revealed “tangled pack assist loops, improper corner arm folds, improperly stowed bridle, twists in the top of the canopy and failed pull tests of the reserve parachutes,” according to the memo.

    “The observations are significant and pervasive enough to indicate potential systemic shortfalls,” the memo says.

    I remember the on-and-off-again phase the Army went through with the -1B, but that was mainly because of driver error – people getting entangled in each other’s parachutes because of the maneuverability of the parachute. This sounds like rigger training errors.

  • China complains that US is spending too much on military

    The Associated Press reports that Chen Bingd, Chinese chief of the General Staff of the People’s Liberation Army, told Admiral Mullen, his opposite number in the US that for the sake of the US taxpayers, the US should cut military spending;

    “I know the U.S. is still recovering from the financial crisis,” Chen said. “Under such circumstances, it is still spending a lot of money on its military and isn’t that placing too much pressure on the taxpayers?”

    “If the U.S. could reduce its military spending a bit and spend more on improving the livelihood of the American people … wouldn’t that be a better scenario?” he said.

    It sounds a little bit like he’s running for office in a certain district in California doesn’t it? I wonder if the fact that their own policy is echoed by our most dangerous enemy will have any effect on defense cut proposals coming from Congress.

    China’s military budget of $95 billion this year is the world’s second-highest after Washington’s planned $650 billion in defense spending.

    Chen said China remains more than two decades behind the U.S. in terms of military technology and Beijing still needs to upgrade by adding new hardware such as aircraft carriers.

    Well, if Congress wants to afford China an opportunity to catch up, they’re on the right track.

  • The difference ideology makes

    Remember yesterday that I wrote about Elisha L. Dawkins, an Army Iraq veteran and currently a Navy Petty Officer who was arrested for checking the wrong box on a passport application? And remember how ICE said he was going to have to defend his presence here in this country? Well, apparently, that doesn’t happen to everyone who shows up on our shores and lives here contrary to our laws;

    Venezuelan Henry Velandia came to the United States almost a decade ago to dance. The 27-year-old salsa dancer met American Josh Vandiver five years ago. The New Jersey couple legally married in Connecticut less than a year ago.

    In 2009, with the support of a sponsor and before his marriage, Velandia applied for a green card. But instead of obtaining legal residency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) started a deportation process.

    “I thought my world was crumbling,” said Velandia. His spouse, Vandiver, said “the only reason the federal government was not recognizing the marriage was the Defense of the Marriage Act.”

    Well, it seems that ICE dropped the case against Henry.

    “We are celebrating the future we just got now that my deportation was stopped,” said Velandia. “We had this enormous burden over us that my husband of less than a year would be taken away from me and we’d be torn apart. Now we are celebrating that we get to be together indefinitely in this country,” added Vandiver.

    You didn’t have to be torn apart, Henry…you could have gone to that workers paradise in Venezuela. or maybe you wouldn’t have been accepted there, either.

    Meanwhile Elisha L. Dawkins, the soldier who served his country is still facing hearings while Henry has the charges dropped. I guess ICE could drop the Dawkins case, but Henry and Elisha are separated by an ideology of service to this country. Elisha paid any debt he might have owed, while Henry just expects us to bow down to his needs.

    Thanks to VTWoody for the link.

  • Iraq vet gets deal in passport case

    A few of you sent me a link the other day about Elisha L. Dawkins, an Army veteran and currently a Navy Petty Officer who was arrested for checking the wrong box on a passport application. I figured there was more to the story than what was being reported and I was right (New York Times link);

    Petty Officer Dawkins was brought to the United States from the Bahamas as a baby and was raised in Miami believing he was a United States citizen, said his lawyer, Clark Mervis.

    He was indicted in Miami while he was stationed at Guantanamo and arrested soon after his return for falsely checking a box on his passport application that wrongly stated he hadn’t applied for a passport in the past. Now it seems he was, unknown to him, an illegal alien as well.

    But the prosecutor has taken into account that he served in the Army in Iraq and holds a security clearance with the Navy and offered him a term of probation in exchange for dropping the charges.

    Of course, ICE, who won’t deport regular illegal aliens who haven’t done a thing for this country, is being a bureaucratic dick;

    Dani Bennett, a spokeswoman with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said on Tuesday that Petty Officer Dawkins did not have an immigration hold on him, meaning he would be free to leave the federal detention center if he agreed to the pretrial diversion program. Once his criminal case is resolved, he will have to fight a separate battle to sort out his immigration status.

  • Obama to balance budget on national security

    Stars & Stripes’ Leo Shane writes that President Obama plans deeper cuts to Defense on top of the $400 billion that have already been proposed by outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates;

    “I, as commander-in-chief, have to have difficult conversations with the Pentagon, saying ‘There’s fat here, we have to trim it out,’” he said. “[Defense Secretary] Bob Gates has already done a good job identifying $400 billion in cuts, but we’re going to do more.”

    Last month, Gates told lawmakers that the goal of cutting defense spending over the next 12 years will require fundamental changes to military pay and benefits, force structure and mission capabilities.

    Pentagon planners have already outlined about $78 billion in reduced spending over the next five years, which includes reducing the Army’s and Marine Corps’ combined end strength by nearly 70,000 servicemembers.

    So, they plan on cutting 70,000 personnel during a war in which just a few years ago they claimed that the force was overstretched. Notice those personnel cuts are coming out of the two trigger-pulling services. Have you read about any personnel cuts to the EPA, the Education Department, the Commerce Department? No, me either. But while there’s a war against terror going on, we’re going to cut trigger-pullers.

    But, don’t worry, they have a plan to use ninja robot zombies to defeat the Taliban.

    He talked of hitting Al Qaeda “hard enough and often enough” with increased numbers of Special Operations forces and speedy deployments of “unique assets” (presumably drone aircraft), and he underscored that military commandos and intelligence operatives were working more closely than ever before on the battlefield.

    “It will take time, but make no mistake, Al Qaeda is in its decline,” he said in a speech at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.

    But this wide-ranging strategy — relying on often unreliable allies, sometimes sketchy intelligence and a clandestine American force already strained by a decade of secretive wars — has its limitations, American officials have said in recent days.

    Yeah, this is like Clinton’s plan to defeat our enemies with airstrikes from 15,000 feet and standoff shots of cruise missiles. There’s only one way to secure victory and that’s with firepower, maneuver, and boots on the ground.

    And where are they going to get “increased numbers of Special Operations forces”? Are they going to recruit from the ranks of phony soldiers like General Baxter, General Ballduster McSoulpatch and MSG Soup Sandwich?

    And then next year when we have to replace those 70,000 troops who are gone, will the Democrats blame the new Republican President for a Defense spending spree?

    I remember in the 90s when the Clinton Administration bought out career soldiers in ’93 and ’94 and then when they discovered that cuts had been too deep, they begged those careerists to come back and the Defense Department ate the buy outs.

    More criticism from Uncle Jimbo.

  • Paratrooper dies in Ft Bragg accident

    Ponsdorf sends an article from Military.com about a young paratrooper, SSG Jamal Clay who fell 800 feet to his death Saturday night on Sicily Drop Zone on Fort Bragg, NC;

    Clay was carrying a gun and his rucksack. He was wearing the Army’s new T-11 parachute, his third jump with it. The new square canopy is supposed to reduce injuries by creating a slower, more controlled descent.

    Testing of the parachute showed a 70 percent drop in injuries compared with the last Army parachute, the T-10.

    The T-11 parachutes were first used on Fort Bragg in December 2009. By 2014, the 82nd Airborne Division will have 14,000 of them.

    Clay is the first 82nd Airborne Soldier to die using the new parachute.

    So he was carrying a “gun”, huh? I wonder if he had a rifle, too.

    All stand for an abbreviated version of “Blood On The Risers”

  • Navy buys Chinese microchips

    Marinescoutsniper sends a Business Insider article that accuses the Navy of buying counterfeit microchips from the Pacific Rim which turned out to be from China;

    …the chips weren’t only low-quality fakes, they had been made with a “back-door” and could have been remotely shut down at any time.

    If left undiscovered the result could have rendered useless U.S. missiles and killed the signal from aircraft that tells everyone whether it’s friend or foe.

    59,000 faulty chips.

    Wired says they’re looking for a way to close the barn door now that the horses are out;

    One way [Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency (IARPA)], would like to make chips from foreign foundries safe is by splitting up the manufacturing process. Under this scenario, the front-end-of-line (FEOL) stage of manufacturing would take place at offshore foundries, while the back-end-of-line processing would finish up at a more secure U.S. facility.

    Seems to me that someone would have come up with a way to secure the process before we bought technology from some third world shit hole that uses slave labor and influenced by Chinese intelligence services. I noticed that the Bureau of Industry and Security added some Pacific Rim tech companies to their Commerce Control List a few weeks back. I hope it included some of these manufacturers.