58scout
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My friend gave me this passage. He reads FP but doesn't comment very often so I offer his offering to me. A passage from Machiavelli's "The Prince." The passage comes from Chapter 6, "Of New Dominions Which Have Been Acquired by One's Own Arms and Ability" --- "It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order, this lukewarmness arising partly from fear of their adversaries, who have the laws in their favor; and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual experience of it."
The people that make the rules almost never have to follow them. Why would they?
tom you should keep track of how many articles have been written on this very subject. I can recall about five or six in the last four months.
@HUNTERS this video is a classic in the community and yes i'm taller than 6'2". We average 5-7 hours in afghanistan and you pretty much have to peel yourself out of the bird after that. Never mind the body armor and ammo on your chest. But still wouldn't give it up for the world. Love my job working for the ground guys!
@James011 HA! Thats why the majority of combat flight time is done by the Army. For every fast mover over head their are probably at least 10 helo's.
@HUNTERS No more mesh seats but still flying the same amount of time. Love the job wouldn't change it for the world!
#41 Taking off is optional, landing is not!
These still apply to aviation today, especially #40. We only get to do our job because there are ground guys!
“the biggest problems of "group think" I have seen are at the higher levels in the officer corps and senior enlisted corps, mostly due to just being sounding boards for each other and no connection to the end users. I have seen and I am sure we have all seen people making huge decisions that will have a big effect, but without a lot of thought into the long term effects or possible unintended consequences. Those policies, procedures or procurements that they come up with usually don't show the problems they have until they are already well implemented. It usually is just due to being so isolated from the ground truth and combined with what I think is a uniquely American problem of short sightedness and not looking at things for the long term.”
Dead on! I have been screaming this for years now, although I doubt will ever get leadership to admit to it!
I keep thinking about this guy. As most on here have posted it seems quite rare to have an O-6 punched out for this. I'm willing to bet their are some serious issues beyond his weight. It may have been simply the tipping point. (pun intended)
@Master Log but not free from the ridicule of being a fat leader!
@ArmyMAJ @Eric_Strattoniii I would argue that there has always been a different standard, there just not written down. Go ahead and be a light infantry squad leader and get a 190/300 on your PT test. Passing, yes. Excepted by leadership, hell no! I'm pretty sure I would have been fired for that type of performance. Thats what our privates came in with. However, walk across the street to the support BN and I bet there are multiple squad leaders and officers who barely can meet the standard. Their jobs are not ones that require daily physical fitness and therefore it is not seen as important.
@Eric_Strattoniii as with any sweeping change there is always a grace period.
@Eric_Strattoniii I don't know if your still in but the new PRT for the army is horrible. I find hilarious that our senior leaders constantly insist that we must strive to become an elite fighting force through physical fitness. No one ever asks, who has the highest level of fitness? Obviously it is almost always SOCOM. Why? Because first off they allow operators to conduct physical fitness on their own with little micromanagement, secondly the physical training they do never gets easier. Once they plateau the intensity is racketed up another notch. The conventional force on the other hand does PT to, maybe not the lowest common denominator, but close. We've asked over and over for more challenging and intense workouts but are constantly told that morning PT is for maintenance for most. "If you really want challenging PT do it on your own." I have also noticed that a units ability to sing cadence is inversely proportional to their ability to actually do PT. But thats where headed!
Dump the pet projects like F-22/F-35, cancel the entire order of new M-1 Battle tanks and a couple of these Navy boats. Boom, budget headed in the right direction. Instead our leadership is slashing promised benefits to our soldiers like tuition assistance. I would ask the Docs to get the knife out of our back's but it may take a month before they can see us. And to anyone who thinks that we all have to make cuts can file it under not my F#$%ing problem. We went to war based on certain promises. Let the austerity start from the top.
The same can be said for the F-22 and F-35. Glad we bought billion dollar per aircraft, while shorting the aircraft that were and are being flown daily in combat. But this is not a new concept to the military industry. You would think with the looming sequestration that members of congress would not be pushing for new Abrams purchases. Even more to the point we're selling our surplus tanks to our allies. Who the F is in charge of this ship . . .never mind they're in the life boat.
@Another Opinion @Gold Star Father you can't AO. You lack real perspective and the more I read the more I realize you are one of the officers I'm always talking about. You lack true ground perspective and it shows. Just because someone under your command was a KIA does not make you an expert on topic. Keep defending your buddies up in your tower. But the fact of the matter is you can only see an asshole from below.
@Another Opinion The Catholic church has been protecting their own for as long as it has been around. Only now are they feeling the heat to go after the "bad apples". Same works for any organization, including the military.
@Another Opinion It is obvious from all of your post that you are or were a senior officer. I'm sure my posts make the indication of my current place in the world. I feel like while you honestly care about the service, yet you like so many senior leaders, hear the grumblings from underneath but fail to listen to them. You get upset when leaders are questioned because they are doing "their best". F that! If you suck at your job, you should be fired. If you make a strategic error that cost men their lives, you should be fired. Just because you were good enough to lead a BN or BDE does not guarantee you deserve a star, but all too often that's the case.
Two separate cases where the MOH was awarded in Afghanistan resulted from almost criminally reckless decisions at the senior levels. Both cases resulted in catastrophic loss of life, one an indefensible COP in a valley that any E-5 could have told you was insane and another where senior leaders in a TOC refused to give fire support. But hey those guys are on the sidelines not making the hard decisions. It is obvious that their are two different sets of standards for senior military personnel and those at the lower level. If my decisions cost innocent lives, I will be held accountable career over, maybe even jail time. Senior officers are given much more latitude, and while they may not get to move to the next level, the almost certainly have their "20" in. They will be protected at the top and worst case scenario they leave and get an awesome contracting job.
That may be the way it was in your Army but I refuse to let it happen in mine.
@Another Opinion @SeattleGrunt @RVN SF VET @HUNTERS If service is service then why is there a warrior culture within the warrior culture? I deployment to Fallujah, or remote outpost in Khost does not equal a deployment to Bagram as a IT guy. All are important but you cannot accurately compare a combat arms deployment to service and support one. Nor can you compare the experience of CSM or LTC to a PFC or 2LT. Which is pretty much what I've been saying over and over. This is why we have such a large disconnect between our ranks.
Thanks to all who wrote in on this topic. I was not trying to give an extensive list of my personal dealings with this topic but more so wanted to see where everyone stood. Guessing by what I've read here, I'm feeling that I'm at least close to the mark, maybe just not as eloquent as some would like, but hey I'm a fighter not a writer. For all of the "old timers" on here, whether you like it or not, THIS IS the general feeling amongst the JOs and NCOs. I really hope that the SMA and the COS have a good game plan for this period in our military. Simply going back to the Army of the 90's and expecting all of these experienced combat vets to simply jump in lock step with a smile on their face, is going to be one up hill battle. Morale amongst the soldiers is already going down, and a lot of soldiers I know have said based on this mentality from up top, that they're punching out before they get in to deep. For others like myself I'm already over the hill so I get to ride this out, but I refuse to go quietly into the night.