First, everyone that is in the military gets paid, fed, and treated for medical problems whether they are in the Middle East, or sitting on their asses stateside.
Second, between missing recruiting goals and all of the people they kicked out for refusing the vaccine, the military is below their budgeted personnel strength by tens of thousands, meaning that they are under budget by tens of millions of dollars.
Third, it’s the beginning of the fiscal year. They have money.
Fourth, the nuclear powered ships don’t cost anything to deploy. Their reactor fuel lasts for decades.
Fifth, the conventional ships spend more than half of their time sailing around in pointless circles. They can do that over there at the same cost as they do on this side of the world. In fact, one of the battle groups (the Eisenhower) was scheduled to be there anyway.
In the end, we are talking about a single battlegroup and a couple of aircraft squadrons. How much can that really cost? This is posturing intended to put pressure on Republicans to give Biden his budget money.
The troops deployed to Afghanistan were told to leave gear behind. Now they are being forced to pay for what they left behind.
Dude gets ordered to leave gear behind in AFG and gets charged almost $3600 at separation for that gear? Is anybody that served still encouraging their kids to join the military at this point? pic.twitter.com/lziaPOmxJG
— š¼š. š»š“š°š³šš»šøš½š¶š“š (@Lead_Flinger) November 20, 2023
The state sees cops as āunimpeachable witnessesā meaning whatever they say is gospel unless you can prove otherwise.
For this reason, I will always side with my fellow citizen and give him or her the benefit of the doubt.
When I was in the Navy, we had a commanding officer who was incredibly authoritarian, Captain Macke. He was a douche, but retired after getting his fourth star. More on that in a minute. Why was he a douche? He would hold Article 15 (Captain’s Mast) like this:
They would put all of the accused on an aircraft elevator at the hanger deck level, maybe 20 or 30 of them, and the Captain would be standing behind a lectern on the flight deck. They would raise the elevator to the flight deck, and the Captain would say: “You all must be guilty, or your officers wouldn’t have sent you here. I find you guilty as charged. You are hereby reduced in rank one paygrade, fined one half pay for two months, restricted to the ship for 45 days, and 2 hours of extra duty every day for 45 days, to be served under the duty master at arms. Dismissed.” (This is the maximum punishment he can give without a courts martial)
The reason that this is important is that Macke believed that officers were absolutely unimpeachable. One of the things he used to say was, “If I have 100 enlisted men with 100 video cameras that show me 100 videos of something taking place, and I have one officer who tells me that isn’t how it happened, I will believe the officer every time.”
the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, Distinguished Service Medal, Defense Superior Service Medal (two awards), Legion of Merit (five awards), Meritorious Service Medal (five awards), Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal (four awards), and the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal (two awards).
I was only in the Navy for six years and received three sea service deployment ribbons. My opinions on:
Most people think that you join the military for a term of 2, 3, or 4 years. What people who haven’t served in the US military usually don’t know is that everyone really signs up for 8 years. What people think of as their 2, 3, or 4 year ‘hitch’ is merely the active duty part of their contract. You can begin serving that active duty part of it immediately, or you can wait up to 12 months to report. That’s in your contract as well. When you are done with that active duty commitment, what happens to the time that is left?
The military owns your ass for it, that’s what. If they want you to come back, you come back. That is exactly what is happening to 450 unlucky people this month as Biden issues orders to call up 3,000 reservists, up to 450 of whom can be people who recently thought they were done. Where are they headed, you ask?
Biden’s boys are careful to mention that the troops aren’t going to the Ukraine. Nope, they are joining the 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team. The base that the brigade is operating from is called Camp Herkus:
I’m sure that you won’t be surprised to find out that this camp is in Pabrade, Lithuania. Now Pabrade is just 3.5 miles from Lithuania’s border with Belarus. That also places them less than 400 miles west of the suburbs of Moscow, and 110 miles from the eastern end of Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia. The red pin is where the Brigade is based:
When you find out that the US opened the base in August of 2021, then remember that the US started moving troops into Europe at about the same time, and you can begin to understand why the Russians finally decided to get pissed off and invade Ukraine six months later. How would Americans react if the Russians decided to place an armored brigade 100 miles from the Canadian border? Perhaps Putin isn’t the dictatorial asshole he is being painted as?
Consider that an Armored Brigade Combat Team is what used to be called a heavy armored brigade. The armored brigade combat team (ABCT) is the army’s primary armored force, and is the largest brigade combat team formation with 4,743 soldiers. An ABCT includes 87 Abrams, 152 Bradley IFVs, 18 M109s and 45 armed M113 vehicles. It is a formidable unit, and carries a lot of firepower, all of it on the northern border with Belarus.
As a part of the enhanced Forward Presence (eFP), four NATO multinational battalion battlegroups are stationed in Poland, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. On the eve of the summit, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, in addition to expanding the high readiness force with 40,000. up to 300 thousand soldiers announced to increase the potential of the battle groups to the level of brigades.
Biden is pushing for a war with Russia, and Russia will have little choice but to use nuclear weapons in the face of division sized armored forces pushing towards his capitol city. If the US does the stupid thing, there is little chance of avoiding the use of at least a few tactical nukes.
I am old enough to remember when the Democrats were opposed to nuclear war.
The military supply system is stupid and messed up. Everything has a stock number and a description. They frequently don’t make sense. For example, a flyswatter is referred to as “Exterminator, Insect, Manual.” When I was a new E-4, I was forced into the role of Supply Petty Officer for the workcenter by the E-4 who was previously the most junior. He was glad to be rid of the job. I was soon to understand why.
On July 1, 1941, a requisition was submitted for 150 rolls of toilet paper by an officer aboard the submarine USS Skipjack (SS-184). As the boat patrolled the Pacific, the requested item never arrived. In March 1942, Lieutenant Commander James Coe took command of the Skipjack. As Coe settled into his new role, he learned of the missing toilet paper. On June 19, Coe received a canceled invoice for 150 rolls of toilet paper. The request was the original from July 1941 and was stamped ācanceled-cannot identify.ā Coe wrote a response that is famous within the Navy today.
1. This vessel submitted a requisition for 150 rolls of toilet paper on July 30, 1941, to USS HOLLAND. The material was ordered by HOLLAND from the Supply Officer, Navy Yard, Mare Island, for delivery to USS Skipjack.
2. The Supply Officer, Navy Yard, Mare Island, on November 26, 1941, cancelled Mare Island Invoice No. 272836 with the stamped notation “Cancelled—cannot identify.” This cancelled invoice was received by Skipjack on June 10, 1942.
3. During the 11 1/2 months elapsing from the time of ordering the toilet paper and the present date, the Skipjack personnel, despite their best efforts to await delivery of subject material, have been unable to wait on numerous occasions, and the situation is now quite acute, especially during depth charge attack by the “back-stabbers.”
4. Enclosure (2) is a sample of the desired material provided for the information of the Supply Officer, Navy Yard, Mare Island. The Commanding Officer, USS SkipjackĀ cannot help but wonder what is being used in Mare Island in place of this unidentifiable material, once well known to this command.
5. SkipjackĀ personnel during this period have become accustomed to use of “ersatz,” i.e., the vast amount of incoming non-essential paper work, and in so doing feel that the wish of the Bureau of Ships for the reduction of paper work is being complied with, thus effectively killing two birds with one stone.
6. It is believed by this command that the stamped notation “cannot identify” was possible error, and that this is simply a case of shortage of strategic war material, the SkipjackĀ probably being low on the priority list.
7. In order to cooperate in our war effort at a small local sacrifice, the SkipjackĀ desires no further action be taken until the end of the current war, which has created a situation aptly described as “war is hell.”
J.W. Coe
Coeās letter caused quite a stir and was circulated throughout the fleet. When the Skipjack returned to Australia after her patrol, she was greeted by quite a sight. The pier was stacked seven feet high with boxes of toilet paper instead of the usual crates of fresh fruit and ice cream. Toilet paper streamers decorated the dock, and a band greeted the boat wearing toilet paper neckties and toilet paper flying out of trumpets and horns. The men of the Skipjack would not have to do without toilet paper again, as they were greeted upon every return with cartons of the precious paper.
Back to my story: we had an upcoming deployment, and I had to order supplies to get us through the first six months. I was told to order some superglue and some wooden handled cotton swabs. I looked them up, and the superglue was listed as “adhesive, cyanoacrylate” with a unit of issue of CS (meaning case) and a unit cost of $1.44. The cotton swabs were listed as “applicator, cotton tip, wood handle” with a unit of issue of BG (bag) and a cost of $0.29. No mention in either case of how many were in a case or a bag. At the time, the military was known to be paying $400 for a hammer, so I had to guess.
I guessed that there were at most 2 tubes of superglue per case, and ordered 12 units of superglue, and that there were at most 10 swabs per bag, so I ordered 100 bags of them. What it turned out was that there were 144 tubes of glue per case, and 100 swabs per bag. I wound up with 1,700 tubes of superglue and 10,000 cotton swabs. This mistake was legendary. I caught shit about it for the entire deployment.
When I passed the job on to the newly promoted guy a few months later, I was evil about it. We sent him down to supply to get a can of eh-eye-arr. He came back to supply with a bottle marked “Air, room temperature.” He got the best of me.
