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

Category: Military issues

  • So, How Much Money Would Using Military Labor Really Save?

    I got asked a question the other day that intrigued me.  And as longtime readers probably guessed – I decided to play with some numbers and see where they led.

    The particular question was in the context of a military logistics contract.  The question was, in effect, “How much money would DoD save by doing that with military labor”?

    Obviously, I don’t have the specifics of that contract. But I decided to make a couple of assumptions, then “run the numbers” for a contrived but IMO reasonably representative example to see where the numbers led.

    As that example, I chose a warehouse operation – two shifts, with 3 nominal 7-person teams (team lead plus 6 workers each) and a shift lead for each shift, plus a warehouse supervisor and his/her deputy.  (Let’s call the teams on each shift “receiving”, “warehousing”, and “shipping”.)  I then assumed military and civilian staffing and compared costs.

    Since costs vary by region and the logistical contract in question was in the “South”, I assumed the location was in the vicinity of Fort Bragg, NC.

    The military staffing for the operation I assumed was as follows:

    • OIC:  1 ea O-2, 3 yrs TIS
    • NCOIC:  1 ea E-7, 14 yrs TIS
    • Shift Supervisors:  2 ea E-6, 9 yrs TIS
    • Team Leaders:  6 ea E-5, 5 yrs TIS
    • Team Members:  18 ea E-4 (3 yrs TIS), 18 ea E-3 (2 yrs TIS)

    I further assumed the OIC, NCOIC, Shift Supervisors, and Team Leaders were all married; that the Team Members were 50/50 split married/single; and that all lived “on the economy” (e.g., received housing allowance and separate rations).  This was necessary because – unlike civilian industry – military personnel costs vary depending on whether or not an individual is married.

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  • Surprise! Female PT standards will have to change

    Chief Tango sends us a link to a Military.com article which reports speculation that the services will have to adjust their PT standards so that females will be able to qualify for entry into combat arms professions. The article begins with the author’s own speculation with no reference to actual spokespeople from the services being quoted, so I don’t knwo if this is an opinion piece, or what;

    The Marine Corps may have to lower its physical standards in order to put females in positions to one day lead infantry platoons in combat.

    Both the Marine Corps and the Army continue to wrestle with the mandate that former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta issued in January, directing the U.S. military to open hundreds of combat-arms jobs that have been closed to female servicemembers.

    But the article continues;

    The service conducted “proxy tests” this summer, involving 400 females and 400 males at Quantico Marine Base, Va., and at Camp Lejeune, N.C. The tests looked at tasks such as “lifting a tank round and loading it,” Krebs said.

    “The data from the performance on those proxy tests will be correlated against the performance of the Marines doing physical fitness and combat fitness test events,” Krebs said.

    “And we will kind of see … if a Marine gets a 300 on the PFT and CFT; how well they do on the MOS tasks. So we are looking at that to see … whether or not these physical standards are applicable to these MOSs.

    “Depending on what the data says, and what it shows, it will decide whether or not any of the standards for the MOSs need to change.”

    Maybe they can develop a tank round that will meet the weight standards instead of exploring the possibility that females can be trained to the standard.

  • 4 marines killed in Pendleton accident

    Veritas Omnia Vincit and Pinto Nag send us links to the news that 4 Marines were killed in an accident involving unexploded ordinance at Camp Pendleton yesterday;

    Lt. Ryan Finnegan, a base spokesman, said the accident came during regularly scheduled maintenance of the Zulu impact area, where artillery, mortar and aerial bombs strike during training exercises. Area Zulu is near the center of the sprawling, 125,000-acre base.

    Camp spokesman Cpl. Michael Iams, says there were no additional wounded. NBC News reported that the accident involved the detonation of unexploded ordnance.

    The names of the killed and the units they were assigned to were not immediately announced pending notification of family.

    A reminder that “regularly scheduled maintenance” in the military is just as deadly as combat sometimes.

  • Jeffrey Krusinski, Acquitted

    The Washington Post reports that Air Force, LTC Jeffrey Krusinski, the former head of the Pentagon’s sexual assault prevention program, was acquitted of assaulting a young woman outside of a Crystal City bar several weeks back;

    Barry Coburn, Krusinski’s attorney, highlighted what he called inconsistencies in the woman’s account of a fracas after the alleged grab, and said those were enough to give jurors reasonable doubt. He hinted that Krusinski might have grazed the woman by accident on a narrow sidewalk.

    On Tuesday, the woman, a 23-year-old American University graduate, testified emotionally about the encounter with Krusinski, saying she felt “totally violated.” She said she was on the phone with a friend outside Freddie’s Beach Bar when Krusinski came up behind her, gave her behind a “squeeze,” and “asked me if I liked it.”

    The woman said she followed Krusinksi and confronted him, pushing and punching him in the face.

    A server from the bar testified that she too was groped by Krusinski that night, along with one of her co-workers.

    That seems pretty cut and dried, but he was acquitted nonetheless. By a civilian jury. So, if there’s a problem with the people being punished for sexual assault, the problem doesn’t seem to be a strictly military problem, as the media would have us believe. Congress wants more control over the outcome of these cases regarding the application of the UCMJ, but it seems to me that, since this guy was acquitted in a civilian trial, the problem is with the justice system and not strictly a military issue.

  • Military suicides drop, but not far enough

    The Associated Press reports that military suicides have dropped 22% over last year’s 316 for the same period to 245 this year. That’s good news, but not good enough. Especially since the services, which all realized a drop, aren’t sure why;

    Military officials, however, were reluctant to pin the decline on the broad swath of detection and prevention efforts, acknowledging that they still don’t fully understand why troops take their own lives. And since many of those who have committed suicide in recent years had never served on the warfront, officials also do not attribute the decrease to the end of the Iraq war and the drawdown in Afghanistan.

    Still, they offered some hope that after several years of studies, the escalating emphasis on prevention across all the services may finally be taking hold.

    The suicide rate among the troops peaked last year, but the rate also increased among all American males 25 years old to 64 since 2000 according to the CDC, so it only seems natural to me that the military would reflect the same increase. Especially since the folks committing suicide usually aren’t combat veterans. Whatever caused this decrease, I hope it continues to get better, but Mikey Moore isn’t helping when he Tweets out messages like he did yesterday;

    Mikey Moore Tweet

  • Recognition Well Deserved

    One of the primary reasons our military exists is to provide security.  That’s true whether you’re talking about the nation in general, or to specific individuals or facilities in a combat zone.

    Sometimes people die doing that job.  And while that hurts – especially for the family and friends of those lost – it’s something that can’t always be prevented.  It’s a risk inherent to the profession.

    Over time, memories of such sacrifices fade.  The fact of such sacrifices, while not forgotten, dims in or is lost to society’s collective memory.

    In November 2004, two Kansas ARNG soldiers – SFC Clayton Wisdom and SGT Don Clary – were KIA in Iraq.   They died when a suicide bomber attacked a convoy transporting a group of staff members from the Iraq Survey Group and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

    SFC Wisdom and SGT Clary were among those providing security for the convoy.  During convoy operations they’d placed their vehicle between the convoy and another vehicle, preventing it from approaching the rest of the convoy.  They were killed when the suicide bomber in that other vehicle detonated his bomb.

    Their remains were repatriated.  Their funerals were held.  The matter, while not forgotten, faded from our memory.

    That’s simply the norm.  And that’s normally where the story would end.

    Except this time, someone they were protecting thought their sacrifice should be publicly recognized – and the memory of that sacrifice preserved for posterity.

    The Defense Intelligence Agency maintains a memorial for those Agency personnel who died in line of duty at their Headquarters on Joint Base Anacosta-Bolling.  DIA has announced it will add SFC Wisdom’s and SGT Clary’s name to that memorial to honor their sacrifice, as they were killed while defending DIA personnel.

    Thanks for remembering, DIA.  Many thanks.

     

    Note:  the first two links show SFC Wisdom and SGT Clary as SSG Wisdom and SPC Clary; the last linked article indicates their ranks as SFC and SGT, respectively.  Apparently both received posthumous promotions.

  • That pesky 10th Amendment thing

    12H sends us a link from US News which tells of the problems that the DoD’s decision to grant dependent status to same sex couples is causing among the various states in contradiction to their own laws;

    Texas was the first of nine states that have said it will not issue military identity cards to the same-sex spouses of troops within their National Guard units. The Department of defense lifted its ban on gays serving openly in the military following the June 26 Supreme Court ruling that struck down parts of the Defense of Marriage Act. In September the Department of Defense began issuing full military benefits to the spouses of these gay troops.

    The state of Texas, followed by Indiana, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina and West Virginia have all declined to issue the cards to National Guard troops, citing potential conflicts between these new federal policies and state laws at home.

    Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel is furious about this, I guess, because he doesn’t understand that state governments have laws of their own because the 10th Amendment guarantees that States have a right to their own laws.

    “This is wrong,” [Hagel] said. “It causes division among the ranks, and it furthers prejudice, which DOD has fought to extinguish.”

    Under Hagel’s orders, National Guard Bureau Chief Gen. Frank Grass will meet with each of these states’ adjutant general, who commands the state National Guard when it isn’t federalized. These officers will be “expected to comply with both lawful direction and DOD policy, in line with the practices of 45 other states and jurisdictions,” the secretary said.

    I guess like everything else this administration does, they only half-assed their assessment of the scope of their pronouncement. Sending an emissary to the various states won’t change the laws, will it?

  • Two “military personnel” awarded medals for Benghazi

    In the Washington Times today, Rowan Scarborough reveals that two special forces operators volunteered to make the 400 mile journey to Benghazi from Tripoli to help rescue folks at the consulate on September 11th, 2012, despite Obama Administration claims that there were no forces in the vicinity who could arrive in a timely manner to defend the consulate;

    For months, administration officials have claimed no special operations forces were dispatched from outside Libya to Benghazi during the Sept. 11, 2012, al Qaeda terrorist attacks on the U.S. diplomatic mission and CIA annex because none was within range.

    But sources directly familiar with the attack tell The Washington Times that a unit of eight special operators — mostly Delta Force and Green Beret members — were in Tripoli the night of the attack, on a counterterrorism mission that involved capturing weapons and wanted terrorists from the streets and helping train Libyan forces.

    When word of the Benghazi attack surfaced, two members of that military unit volunteered to be dispatched along with five private security contractors on a hastily arranged flight from Tripoli to rescue Americans in danger, the sources said, speaking only on the condition of anonymity because the special operations forces’ existence inside Libya was secret.

    The two special operations forces arrived in time to engage in the final, ferocious firefight between the terrorists and Americans holed up in the CIA annex near the ill-fated diplomatic mission in Benghazi, the sources added.

    At the time of the al Qaeda attacks, the military was setting up a terrorist-hunting unit in Tripoli that included U.S. Special Operations Command’s super-secret Delta Force and Green Berets, the sources say.

    Gregory Hicks, who was deputy chief of station in Tripoli, sent the reinforcements in conjunction with the CIA. On a night when Mr. Panetta decided he did not have enough information to commit troops, Mr. Hicks decided he did.

    It looks like the administration’s whole story is falling apart. Must be one of those non-scandals.