Posts Tagged ‘Navy Grade 36’

How about the military stay out of housing?

Posted: May 13, 2023 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Uncomfortable Truths, war
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I have never been a fan of military housing, especially in the continental United States. Military housing started out as decent idea, given that many military bases didn’t have large communities around them when they were built. Now its an old concept that needs to die.

I lived in base housing a few times, and each time was a pain. First, you have to register to get housing, and your housing choices are completely based on your rank. I was selected for a higher rank once and had to send in my selection paperwork to the housing office so I could get into a bit nicer house. Granted, being a higher rank gets you more pay and thus you can afford more house, but why is my square footage based on my rank? I have a large family, but people of the same rank as me with no kids got the same size house. I mean, if we’re going to provide equitable housing, maybe it should be based on the number of people occupying it?

Once you get selected for housing, then you have to fill out paperwork. The housing offices love to make you sign away your rights to sue them. That’s how we get the mold, bugs and genuine issues that any other landlord would have to solve or face an ugly civil lawsuit. Then they want you to register all your guns, and man do they get angry if you happen to own more than a few. When I asked the lady for two more sheets to fill out, she looked at me and questioned why I owned so many weapons. My first thought was “None of your damn business,” but I replied in a more nice fashion.

Why is it a big deal that a military member owns a bunch of guns? I’m normally paid to have weapons in a combat zone. Why every single military housing office turns up its nose at me when I have weapons is just weird.

Then once you’re in, you often get treated like a second class citizen. Want to walk into the local exchange in a tank top and shorts to purchase something? Don’t try it, military police will tell you about a dress code. Have an issue with water, or bugs, or mold? Take a number and get in line. Don’t expect the housing office to fix it any time soon either.

BTW, WiFi isn’t free either…listen to Congresswoman Kiggans at the 3:40 mark.

Don’t worry though, the base commander’s house and all the flag and general officer’s homes will be picture perfect. That way, when you make a complaint that gets routed to them, they will look at their beautiful row of homes and go “Gee, I don’t see any problems with housing.”

The military needs to get out of the business of housing. It’s far cheaper and more predictable to simply pay the Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH) for all members once they are out of basic training. I could be persuaded to keep housing near big school houses where it would be hard to find housing quickly when you’re going to school, and perhaps at overseas locations where you may need to house people on base for protection. The military is already distracted enough that it can’t execute its wartime missions well, so it shouldn’t be trying to play landlord when it needs to focus on beating China in the next war.

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.

The military OPHOLDs are here!

Posted: April 29, 2023 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Uncategorized
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Truth be told, I thought it would be towards the end of the year. Guess I was wrong. Remember my list of “things the military does to fix numbers?”

  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
-Me!

Pepperidge Farm remembers too. That last bullet says OPHOLD, which means the military says “You know how we said we’d let you go? Yeah, about that…” Or, in meme form:

Now, while today’s story isn’t a true OPHOLD…it’s basically the same. The Army allowed officers that commissioned as aviators to serve two different requirements concurrently (as in, at the same time), then it said “actually, we meant to say consecutively,” and is now telling these officers they owe three more years of service. Up unitl that point, the Army’s HR department was telling officers that it was totally concurrent…until it wasn’t.

Previously, officials with Army Human Resources Command treated the flight school commitment as a contractual obligation, the letter said. That policy allowed officers to simultaneously serve it alongside their three-year branch of choice obligation and thus immediately resign six years after receiving their pilot’s wings, if they wished.

“We went back and we did kind of audit all of those out there,” he said. The general cautioned that the service is still “refining” the number of officers, estimated at “a little over 600.” They now can’t leave immediately after finishing their flight school commitment.

From Army Times

Whoopsie! Our bad! Sorry to majorly screw up your life!

I’m sure plenty of HR officers will be disciplined for this…said no sane person ever.

Here’s the crux though…the Army needs these officers more than the officers need the Army. Aviation is a difficult skillset that can’t be easily acquired. The Army seems to believe it’ll just order these officers to fly and they’ll just fly. That’s a Communist way of thinking about it…we tell people what to do and they just do it.

In America, you have to compete for skills, and if someone doesn’t want to provide their skills, there is little you can do about it. I predict that we’ll see the following behaviors:

  1. A lot of aviators will smoke weed in the hopes of being kicked out. This, ironically, might make the Army legalize the substance.
  2. Plenty of officers will begin having “headaches” or other symptoms that stops them from flying. A few sharp officers will conveniently fly enough to stay off the radar, but do little else. The Army will either have to punish them, which could result in dismissal and them leaving when they wanted, or relax the medical rules and put expensive aircraft at risk.

No one will outright strike…that would be a stupid move. Instead, people will deny the Army the use of their skills, and the Army’s aviation effectiveness will drop. On paper, the Army will look OK, but the force will be hollow, and it’ll simply be a matter of time before the Army fails against one of our adversaries.

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.

Remember when we cared about classified information?

Posted: April 22, 2023 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Uncomfortable Truths, war
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Not that long ago, I punished a Sailor for disclosing classified information. He was a pretty nice guy with a nice family. Unfortunately for him, he liked to brag, and so he bragged to more than a few people about some of the cool things he did while he was deployed. Had it been one or two innocuous items, it might have resulted in a severe a$% chewing, some signed papers and “never do this again” speech, but his material was high enough that these actions weren’t sufficient for NCIS. After busting him down a rank, he was separated from the military, and although he avoided jail time, he did have to pay back significant bonus money.

Flash forward only a year and Hillary Clinton gets away with gross violations of compartmentalized information. Not just something that is Top Secret, but items that are secured in such a fashion that maybe only hundreds or even tens of people are read-in to see it. No punishment. None. Not even a red-shirted staffer offered to appease the FBI-gods (and they like to think of themselves as gods, hence cracking down on good Catholics that don’t worship them). That case made me pause and wonder if I had booted a good Sailor by mistake.

And here we are today, with the rapid arrest of a National Guardsman for spilling what I’m guessing is the Chairman’s Daily Brief, which for anyone familiar with it, is posted daily on a website on a classified system. At other commands I’ve sent intelligence items for inclusion on that brief. It’s a pretty good daily laydown of big issues, and like most intelligence products produced by real intelligence people (i.e. not the FBI in Richmond) it should be accurate, even if that accuracy isn’t popular.

After all the leaks by political hacks and all the bad storage practices by people from both parties, I don’t know whether to care anymore. In bureaucratic fashion the Navy put out ALNAV 032/23, reminding. everyone of their responsibilities to protect classified data. I personally wouldn’t disclose anything because I care about my country. But if a young Sailor asked me today about the disparity between the “important” people in power, who get away leaking whatever information they want, and the little people, who get swiftly arrested and punished, I wouldn’t know what to say in response. How do you answer that question?

Nothing is going to change until we start protecting classified materials like they actually matter. Until that happens, its just an opinion subject to the whims of the people in power.

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. To the FBI and NCIS people reading this, NO, the author doesn’t condone disclosing classified information, and has never disclosed classified information, because unlike the FBI and NCIS, the author actually cares about this country. If you’d like to get an understanding of the author’s character, why don’t you go to Amazon and purchase his book?

Air Force recruiting…crashing and burning

Posted: April 15, 2023 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Afghanistan war, war
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Military recruiting is just the gift that keeps on giving. No matter how many incentives you throw at it, when young people watch our generals, admirals and politicians throw away American lives, fail to win wars, cut benefits and create a system that is hostile to a large chunk of the population, they tend to vote with their feet and not join. This comes as a surprise to absolutely nobody with an IQ over 60, and apparently that doesn’t include any of the aforementioned people.

Since I should be more joint in my criticism of recruiting, let’s talk about joints…

How did I miss this one??? It was likely buried under all the other bad news on recruiting. You can read the whole article, but essentially the Air Force will let you retest in 90 days if you pop positive for THC. The smart people on the internet tell me THC leaves your system after about 30 days, so if you don’t smoke for 3 months, its pretty likely you’ll pass the test.

I’m not surprised, and I predict that by the end of the year, we’ll have either an outright waiver on THC, OR the military services will be begging Congress to move marijuana off the controlled substance list. Plenty of fellow military members told me “fat chance of that happening,” which, speaking of fat…

The Air Force relaxed its body fat to 26% for men and 36% for women. If you are like me and wondered what that actually looks like, I found pictures, courtesy of UltimatePerformance and DavidKingsBury.

So the Air Force won’t win any more body image awards, but maybe they’ll take the cake, so to speak, in body positivity…

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. If you liked this post, why not donate to DaTechGuy or purchase one of the author’s books?

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