Archive for the ‘Afghanistan war’ Category

The #Unexpectedly Chronicles, The Answer is: No Pay, No Play, No Jews No News

Posted: August 25, 2024 by datechguy in Afghanistan war, internet/free speech
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Question: Where are the feminist leaders leading large protests in the west over Afghanistan banning women from showing their faces and speaking in public?

This actually reminds me of Robert Stacy McCain’s famous phrase: “I write for money” example:

One of my rules is, I write for money, so if I’m going to expend the time it takes to write more than 2,500 words in an email, you better doggone believe I’ll publish that correspondence for the edification of my readers.

I suspect professional protesters do the same and until Qatar funds NGO’s to pay for protesters to complain about the treatment of women in Afghanistan or until such actions can be somehow blamed on Israel or perhaps Trump said silence will remain.

#Unexpectedly of course

(Of course it can be hard to protest for women if you can’t define what a woman is.)

A Navy desperate to keep…everybody!

Posted: January 6, 2024 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Afghanistan war, Blame Biden Administration, opinion/news
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Over the holiday period I didn’t bother checking the latest NAVADMINs, because spending time with my family was for more important. So when I looked this week, I saw I missed a doozy: the Navy’s message concerning retention boards.

In December the Navy announces its promotion boards, which are in January (for Captains), Feb-March (for Commanders), and April-May (for Lieutenant Commanders). Some years ago the Navy began convening the retention board immediately after these boards to decide the fates of anyone not selected for promotion. The overarching policy of retention boards is a direct measure of the health of the service, and well, the Naval Service is not healthy.

Take a look at NAVADMIN 291/23. I’ll break it down below:

Paragraph 2 states that any Captain (O-6) that has certain AQDs (basically, special training or expertise in a specific area) that relate to Acquistion can stay until 33 years of service. Normally Captains have to retire at 30 years of service. This isn’t a huge surprise, the Navy is in dire need of Acquisition Workforce personnel, so it’ll keep anyone that it can.

LCDRs (O-4s) that twice failed to select for CDR (O-5) will simply be kept until 20 years, when they can retire. They won’t even be considered for retention…it’s assumed. In the past the retention board could be used to shape manpower by removing the bottom performing LCDRs. That is not happening at all now, essentially if you have a pulse and made O-4, you can stay till 20 years.

Let’s say you’re a LCDR that is a flight instructor, chaplain, cyber warfare engineer, foreign area officer, information professional, maritime space officer, medical corps, nurse corps or supply corps. What if you want to stay past 20 years? Well, you can!

URL 1310 aviators with primary AQDs of DIP or DA5/DA7/DB2/DB5/DB6/DD1/DH3/DL3/DS2 (TACAIR), CWE, FAO, IP, and SC officers selected for continuation will be continued for a period of 3 years to 23 YOAS.  CHC, MSO, MC, and NC officers selected for continuation will be continued until the last day of the month in which the officer 
completes 24 YOAS.

That right there is a bad sign. That means we are significantly short in all those areas, and we’re willing to keep people for an additional 3-4 years to cover the gaps.

What about Lieutenants (O-3s)? Typically LTs that are passed over twice for O-4 are sent home at the end of the next fiscal year. The only LTs I’ve seen the Navy hold onto are people that were prior enlisted and needed another year to reach mandatory officer retirement criteria. But now: 

Lieutenant (LT)  Aerospace Engineering Duty Officer (AEDO), CHC, CWE, Cryptologic Warfare (CW), Dental Corps (DC), FAO, Intelligence Officer (INTEL), IP, Judge Advocate General's Corps (JAGC), MC, Medical Service Corps (MSC), MSO, NC, and SC will follow the below as applicable:
    a.  2XFOS LTs covered in paragraph 4 with less than 18 YOAS and selected 
for continuation will be continued for a period of three years, but not 
beyond retirement eligibility at 20 YOAS.

FOS stands for “Failure of Selection.”

So now LTs can stay for 20 years until they can retire. I never thought I’d see that, but here we are. Granted, it’s not every officer, but it won’t surprise me if the retention board eligibility expands to include more officer specialties.

I want to remind everyone that this crisis was generated 100% by our own government:

  • We changed the retirement system way back in 2016-2018, which was the number one thing that kept good people in past 5-10 years of service. I predicted this would end badly, by the way.
  • Then we started losing wars, specifically Afghanistan. We drew out of Afghanistan in a horrible way, so everyone that lost limbs or part of their sanity fighting in that war felt betrayed. This in turn made them tell their kids to never join the military.
  • Oh, and we stayed around in Syria so more of our people could die needlessly. Because nothing says we love our Special Forces more than allowing them to die needlessly in a crappy country where we don’t have an exit strategy.
  • THEN, we kicked people out over the COVID vaccine. Instead of handling that crisis with care, we booted people with general discharges. But don’t worry, we’ll invite them back, I’m sure they’ll come in droves!
  • THEN, the Navy played politics and openly told Congress to go f*#! themselves and used OPTAR money to pay for abortion.

NOW, we are SHOCKED! SHOCKED! that we are in a huge recruiting. crisis. I made a prediction back in February that the Navy would use its “BINGO card” to keep people in:

  1. Not kicking people out for physical fitness test failures
  2. Waiving darn near everything, from age to non-violent felonies
  3. Asking people to pretty-please stay around a few more years
  4. Opening OCS and other admissions
  5. Raising bonuses
  6. Make life better for officers
  7. Reduce opportunities to leave early
  8. Op-Hold people

The Navy has in fact done all the things in bold. The only missing one is making life better. Maybe that’s a draw, since if you wanted free time and per diem off to go murder your unborn baby, you can now get it. The only prediction that hasn’t held was that the Navy would remove marijuana from its drug test, although it was totally an option in Congress.

My prediction for 2024: it only gets worse!

  • We’ll relax rules on marijuana, opioids and other drugs
  • Mental health rules will relax
  • Bonuses will be handed out just to get on the bus
  • We’ll create some new ribbon candy to congratulate people on passing boot camp
  • We’ll see Navy advertisements EVERYWHERE, especially on Reddit, YouTube, Amazon Prime and other streaming platforms

None of it will work. When we spend more time focused on renaming the John C Stennis aircraft carrier, continue to allow flag officers to violate rules and get away with it (remember, you can sexually assault people and not go to jail, so long as you’re a 3-star in the Air Force), and continue to allow a broke acquisition system to churn out expensive weapons, we can’t recruit the best people. The best men and women want to join the Navy to fight for their country, with people and leaders they trust and on equipment that works. They want people held accountable for their actions, and they want others to hold them accountable because that’s how they become better.

We’re doing all the wrong things, and I expect 2024 to be another terrible year for military manning.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

Someone else’s kid

Posted: November 11, 2023 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Afghanistan war
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Newsweek took a stab at writing an article about the recruiting crisis, titled “Americans Don’t Want To Fight For Their Country Anymore.” Like most of these articles, it hits the typical, overblown points (culture, war, economy, etc.) and missed some very important points (we lost Afghanistan, the eroded benefits, and the lack of job satisfaction because we promote morons as flag officers). It was another “blah” article I would normally skip, except when I breezed through it I found one gold nugget.

Eustice said that these sorts of culture war debates were unlikely to deter the military’s target generation who were “very open…to all sorts of different lifestyles.” But he added: “Some parents will be turned off by those things and maybe not endorse military service as much.”

“It’s usually a little bit of a challenge to get parents to be for it anyway,” he said. “They’re supportive of their military but would prefer it to be someone else’s child.”

Someone else’s kid.

Someone else paying the price for deciding to not win wars decisively. Someone else doing the dirty work. Someone else having the nightmares after traumatic experiences overseas. Someone else having the aches and pains from years of combat. Someone else having a difficult time connecting with their kids because they were deployed for so long. Someone else not being able to share stories because they are either classified or too raw.

Someone else should pay the price so I don’t have to. Someone else should get their kid to volunteer so I can vote for politicians that needlessly break these people in unnecessary wars. Someone else should be a Gold Star parent so that I can feel good about admirals and generals that prioritize killing babies over terrorists.

Veterans Day becomes a harder and harder day to truly celebrate every year. I know that people mean well when they thank me for my service, and I always reply “Just doing my job.” I know most people do care at least a little when they offer to pay for a meal, or offer me a discount at their business.

But it increasingly feels cheap because the American people continue to tolerate politicians and senior military leaders that put our military personnel in losing situations. Time and again we go somewhere with a half-baked plan because a politician won’t accept the realities of war, we get shot at, and then in the end, we spent a lot of money to make the CEOs of the military industrial complex wealthy, while too many parents grieved over their child being laid to rest. I understand the sacrifice when we go somewhere to win and stop the advance of evil. Are we really doing that in Syria? How did we not do that in Afghanistan?

This Veteran’s Day, I’d invite you to do something far more important than buying a meal. Start questioning our senior leaders in government about the overseas voyeurism. This is a problem on all sides of the political aisle. We wouldn’t have the recruiting problem we have now if we had actually won our nation’s wars. We wouldn’t be shelling out so much money in VA benefits if we didn’t break those veterans in the first place. And perhaps more than anything else, that would be the best gift you could give next year on November 11th.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

More disincentives for veterans to report mental health problems

Posted: September 9, 2023 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Afghanistan war
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As a military member, reporting mental health problems is a Catch-22. On one hand, everyone is encouraging you to speak up when you need help, but then you tend to get punished when you do.

For example, it used to be if you claimed any sort of mental health problem, from depression and anxiety to even trauma due to a sexual assault, it would cause your clearance to be suspended. Thankfully, that isn’t true anymore, and on my last security clearance questions, I noticed that the interviewer only asked if I had schizophrenia or other delusional-type illnesses.

The stigma is still very real, and most vets won’t seek treatment because they think something bad will happen to them. And for those that are pilots, another shoe dropped. From the Washington Post:

Federal authorities have been investigating nearly5,000 pilots suspected of falsifying their medical records to conceal that they were receiving benefits for mental health disorders and other serious conditions that could make them unfit to fly, documents and interviews show.

The pilots under scrutiny are military veterans who told the Federal Aviation Administration that they are healthy enough to fly, yet failed to report — as required by law — that they were also collecting veterans benefits for disabilities that could bar them from the cockpit.

Sounds bad right? So what sorts of disabilities did they find pilots not reporting?

“If they’re going to shine a light on veterans, they need to shine a light everywhere,” said Rick Mangini, 52, a former Army pilot who has been grounded from his job flying for a cargo company since his medical certificate was not renewed last month. The FAA notified him in May that he was under review for failing to disclose sleep apnea, for which he receives VA disability benefits, Mangini said. Although he checked the box on his application that asked if he receives any government disability benefits, Mangini, who lives in Killeen, Tex., said he was not aware he had to provide specifics.

Sleep apnea. Yup. They also look for depression and anxiety, but its not an automatic grounding if you have those:

Pilots who have been diagnosed with depression, anxiety or other mental health conditions are not automatically prohibited from flying. But the FAA requires them to be closely monitored because their conditions and medications can affect their ability to safely handle an aircraft.

Now, you would think given the size of the investigation that we have lots of suicidal pilots out there, but according to the article, we haven’t lost a passenger plane since 2009, and while the article indicated there is suspicion that some pilots may have deliberately crashed in other countries, its not 100% confirmed.

So what’s going to happen? Well:

  1. Military pilots will stop reporting mental health problems, and will not get the help they need.
  2. These guys and gals will pay a lot of money to people that specialize in VA claims that will get them benefits without having to be reported.
  3. At some point, a veteran pilot is going to commit suicide and leave a note that says he was afraid of getting help because he wouldn’t be employable anymore.

There is already a stigma that being in the military causes mental health problems, and this is going to further push people away from joining.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

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