Category: Navy

Rurik sends a link: Tar and Feathers for Ray Mabus

Jed Babbin served as a deputy undersecretary of defense in the George H.W. Bush administration so he has a very useful perspective.

Back in the Reagan days, the phrase “personnel is policy” revealed an insight on how Washington works. Any administration is more likely to succeed if it hires the best people who are ideologically oriented to its goals. If your agenda is radically-liberal, as Obama’s is, you would choose someone like Ray Mabus, a former Mississippi governor, to be your Navy secretary.

Navy Secretary Mabus, like Obama, believes that our armed services are political tools, playthings to be splashed about like toys in a toddler’s bathtub. Yes, they are all too willing to bask in the glories of DEVGRU (aka, SEAL Team 6), but the credit for those achievements is JFK’s, not theirs.

Under Mabus and Obama, our Navy has shrunk to World War I levels, women are serving on submarines and we are spending untold millions or billions on “greening” the navy. The Marine Corps is about to be cut massively and the navy’s shipbuilding program is being delayed, resulting in a force that may be over-stressed or even incapable of doing its job in the next crisis.

Right now we have more admirals than ships. The fleet stands at about 285 ships, down from the Cold War level of nearly 600. We have about 336 admirals. And some of them are interesting picks.

Babbin continues in some detail so take a minute to read it. There’s little new for most TAH readers, but he does a fine job putting it all together.

And a reminder of  one thing we can do short of tar and feathers…

No Murtha Ship!

Disclaimer: I knew UDT types back in the day. Larry Bailey is the first SEAL I met.

This showed up on FB this evening:  Just a Sailor.

BIGELOW, acting instantly as the deadly projectile exploded into fragments which penetrated the No. 1 gun magazine and set fire to several powder cases, picked up a pair of fire extinguishers and rushed below in a resolute attempt to quell the raging flames.

Nothing to add. Except that Just A Sailor is swiped from a pal.

I have mixed feeling about this story. In fact, I was hesitant to post about it.
Navy: 8 tossed from Bonhomme Richard for hazing

SAN DIEGO — The Navy discharged eight sailors after a hazing incident aboard a San Diego-based amphibious assault ship that was captured on video and included the choking of a fellow sailor, a Navy spokesman said Saturday.

The eight received general discharges following allegations they assaulted and choked the sailor aboard Bonhomme Richard as part of a rite to initiate the sailor into a new department, said Lt. Cmdr. David McKinney.

McKinney said the assault, which took place Jan. 17 in the ship’s berthing area, was videotaped, and the victim treated for injuries.

Boys will be boys,  and the Navy is just over-reacting in this modern PC climate would seem a valid appraisal at first glance.  Indeed Doc Bailey makes this point over at his place.

However, there is one line in the Navy Times  story that seems to belie that take?

The injuries were not serious, but the sailor sought treatment and reported the incident to his superiors, leading to the discharges, McKinney said.

Once this “harmless horseplay” rises to that level the NAVY has to do something! Imagine if his superiors had said something like “Don’t be such a crybaby!” and dropped it? Do we really need the kind of headlines that would likely engender?

In truth I still ain’t sure what “hazing” is nowadays, but the words “assault”, cover-up, and “climate of brutality”  wouldn’t look too good in the press. That is quite clear.

American hostage in Somalia rescued by US Navy SEALs in overnight raid

In a daring nighttime raid Tuesday, U.S. Navy SEALs rescued two hostages, including one American, who were being held by kidnappers in Somalia, U.S. officials tell NBC News.

American Jessica Buchanan, 32, and a 60-year-old Dane, Poul Thisted, were working for a Danish relief organization in northern Somalia when they were kidnapped last October. U.S. officials described their kidnappers as heavily armed common criminals with no known ties to any organized militant group.

According to the U.S. officials, two teams of Navy SEALs landed by helicopter near the compound where the two hostages were being held.  As the SEALS approached the compound on foot gunfire broke out, the U.S. officials said, and several of the militants were reportedly killed. There is no word that any of the Americans were wounded.

Not much worth adding. Bad guys down. Innocents saved.

Oh yeah, for you Army types BZ:

This is a naval signal, conveyed by flaghoist or voice radio, meaning “well done”; it has also passed into the spoken and written vocabulary. It can be combined with the “negative” signal, spoken or written NEGAT, to say “NEGAT Bravo Zulu,” or “not well done.”