Category: Military issues

The Associated Press reports that the Camp Lejeune, NC PAO issued a press release in regards to the training accident in Nevada which took the lives of seven Marines was due to human error;

The investigation also determined that the 60 mm mortar functioned properly and that the weapon system is safe when used as designed by properly trained Marines. The mortars are back in use after training on them was suspended following the accident, officials said.

I guess that explains why the battalion commander, his company commander and battalion master gunner were fired. I’ll admit that I know jack about mortars, so I don’t know what could happened and since the Marines aren’t talking, I’ll leave it to the eleven-charleys to speculate.

Thanks to SJ for the link.

The Washington Post writes the Army is considering buying a hybrid Bradley which runs on diesel but is assisted with batteries for power. The expected weight is 70 tons, which the Post says is double the weight of the current Brad, but that’s wrong, as far as I know. I was one of the first Bradley squad leaders and as far as I know, the IFV weighs 26 tons, so a 70 ton Brad would be nearly three times the weight of the initial configuration.

In the article, the author calls the Infantry Fighting Vehicle a tank, luckily his readers straightened him out. It’s like calling an AR rifle a machine gun like the media is so fond of doing. We infantrymen stop listening to people who call an Infantry Fighting Vehicle a tank. We’re not tankers, we’re infantrymen first.

So back to the Bradley; I remember when the Bradley was first issued to TO&E units in 1983 after years of testing and we still received the systems with technical and design problems, so I can only imagine the problems that will handed to infantrymen when you’re talking about an entirely new power train system. When we got the Bradley, we had been accustomed to the M113 battle taxi which had no complicated weapons system to maintain and employ, a relatively new type of power train, fire suppression systems, fueling system, new weapons, etc… In other words, it was like moving from a bi-plane to the space shuttle. We were in training mode for over a year.

When Toyota rolled out it’s Prius, there were problems with the relatively uncomplicated system, it had problems which appear to have been fixed, but it seems to me that a 70-ton IFV would have even more problems with it’s hybrid power system than a soldier under fire, needing some organic firepower would care to deal with.

I do, however, like the idea of a “stealthy” Bradley, if it could arrive at the battle on battery power without the usual noise associated with the current diesel engine. But, I’m pretty sure that the problems with the new power train, and the Army’s traditional inability to work out problems before the vehicle is handed over to the troops, would outweigh any advantage like that.

This is a cautionary tale from USAToday for active duty military people who use social media;

Federal law enforcement officials are investigating a former Marine and several active-duty Marines after they allegedly posted threatening and lewd messages on social media sites that targeted President Obama and a California congresswoman, according to a government official informed of the investigations.

The former Marine was interviewed last week by the Secret Service for the threatening post against President Obama, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigations are ongoing.

I know there’s some weird stuff out there and I’ve seen some of F’n Wook’s stuff floating around on my own Facebook pages, and most of it is harmless, but you really don’t want to make a public record of some of the things you’re thinking in the privacy of your cranium. Most of the commenters here are pretty well grown up, and I’ve only had to delete a few outwardly sexist or racist comments, none by any of the regulars, just some passerbys. But we’re mostly older folks and pretty much police the place by the force of our opinions.

Of course, it’s dicked up that the thought police are trolling the internet looking for trouble. It looks like it’s the result of some Congresswoman’s (Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif.) complaints and of course since those of us in the military are held to higher standard than the rest of the population, it is what it is. We’re a bigger threat to the nation than those ass-monkey teenagers driving around Speier’s district shooting each other.

The Stars & Stripes does some navel gazing today about sexual harassment in the military, and, apparently the conclusion that we should arrive at is that the military needs to be feminized. Of course, they talk to morons like Phil Carter, one of the founding members of IAVA who went on to work for the Obama Administration as their chief of detainee affairs. He was fired from that job, too.

Phillip Carter, director of the Center for a New American Security’s Military, Veterans and Society Program and a former military police and civil affairs officer in the Army, said a testosterone-charged culture is to be expected in any organization of young, athletic men, but that leaders must focus that energy in positive ways.

“The military gives an elite status to the infantry in part because it had to in order to incentivize people to serve there,” Carter said. The Army gives infantry soldiers a blue cord to wear with their uniform to show their status and “encourages a certain amount of pride and chest-thumping.”

There is also some rivalry between services and between specialties in the services, Carter said — the feeling that, for instance, “anyone who’s not at the tip of the spear is, in their view, a little bit less of a Marine.”

Carter said he countered some of the rivalry by focusing on team-building, “so that the men in our units would see themselves as on the same team as the women in their units.”

Carter also expected women “to shoot as well, run as far and do everything they were required to do, regardless of their sex.

“Different standards contribute to tension within the ranks, and allowing women into combat will only succeed to the extent that everyone is held to the same standard,” he said.

So, i guess the solution to the sexual harassment problem is that we should lower the physical and proficiency standards for men, so they won’t be jealous of women. Never you mind that those standards save lives in combat. It’s more important that we force social experiments on the troops and totally disregard that their job is to survive combat and insure that the enemy doesn’t survive.

I’ve worked with women and never felt a need to sexually harass them. I expected those in my charge to perform at the same standard as their male peers. Usually, they did. Most of the men in the military treat women as equals without trolling social media to post disrespectful comments about them. Women who come to this forum are treated respectfully without enduring much more harassment than we men endure from each other.

The problem is that the people who don’t understand military service are trying force the military to eat a shit sandwich of social experimentation which isn’t compatible with military service.

Carter is so intellectually vacant on the subject, he even blames the infantry blue cord for encouraging sexual harassment. I guess he thinks that the military should just give a blue cord to everyone in the Army and that would fix everything. The Marines don’t give out blue cords, so explain that, Phil. Dingus.

In a link from Chief Tango we learn that yet another Army NCO is being charged with being a perv. SFC Michael McClendon, until recently a TAC NCO at West Point, the Military Academy, was found to have a number of pictures of cadets in various stages of undress according to the Fox News;

McClendon, who had been assigned to the United States Military Academy at West Point since 2009, was transferred to Fort Drum, N.Y. last week, said Army spokesman George Wright.

According to reports, McClendon allegedly took pictures and videotaped a number of half-naked or fully-naked women between July 2009 and May 2012. It’s unknown how he got access to all of the footage, but in some cases he allegedly entered the women’s bathroom without first announcing his presence and taped them coming in and out of the shower.

According to the West Point website, McClendon was a tactical noncommissioned officer in charge of overseeing 125 cadets.

Just brilliant. The internet is full of pictures of naked women, so he needed to get pictures of cadets. According to records, McClendon is an engineer and had two tours of Iraq from Fort Hood, TX. He is also a Desert Storm and Bosnia veteran.

The Star-Tribune reports that Brigadier General Bryan Roberts, the Commanding General of Fort Jackson, SC has lost his job because he was apparently acting like a drunk private;

The Army says Brig. Gen. Bryan Roberts reportedly was in an altercation with another woman, not his wife. Roberts was suspended from his job by Gen. Robert W. Cone, commander of Army Training and Doctrine Command, while the investigation continues.

Midlands Connect reports that there may have been more to it than that;

Harvey Perritt, spokesman for U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, says Roberts was suspended due to allegations of misconduct, including adultery and a fight.

From WLTX:

While the investigation is ongoing, Brig. Gen. Peggy C. Combs, Commandant of the U.S. Army Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear School, at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, will serve as the interim commander.

Someone wrote to us this weekend to tell us that the Odierno letter last Friday was already being implemented and that he was in the middle of an hours-long sexual harrassment/assault response program slide show while he was trying to de-mobilize. I think the wrong people are getting this training.

Thanks to Chief Tango for the links.