Tuesday, February 25, 2014

LEADING TO TROUBLE CAUSES TROUBLE

:UPDATE:

The navy revealed that the smaller ship shown below momentarily fetched up on the rocks during this little protective sojourn. In terms of "providing security" it was kind of like the President's advanced security detail of Secret Service agents ending up fired for consorting with members of the opposite sex while not on duty. The Navy has inarticulately fired the ship's Commanding Officer because, "The investigation hasn’t turned up any egregious mistakes by Volpe," said Navy spokeswoman. "So far Volpe is the only person implicated."

Gads! It just makes you want to run down to the nearest recruiting station and sign up doesn't it?

----------------------------------------------

One of the articles that caught my eye this morning was from the world famous Navy Times. I admire the Times for its ability to choke on every real news story and inflate, conflate and mistake everything else.

Two navy warships have entered the Black Sea to assist the Russians with Olympic security. Here they are:
The Fleet's Flagship from an era when we had a Mediterranean Fleet
The US Mediterranean Fleet in the shape of a fine little ship which is rivaled in size by its flag



These will be a comfort to Americans in Russia should something go awry in Sochi. One is stuffed with senior officers and very little else and has no other purpose but to move officers around. The other is an escort class ship to see that little or no harm comes to the first ship. As you can see from the article, they are there to offer "security assistance." This is becoming a joke isn't it? Whenever our government or State Department speak you can feel their tongue probing your pocket, leaving a trail of slime behind and you know they are being dishonest and deceitful.

4 comments:

OldAFSarge said...

I'm sure that the presence of those two (ahem) "war ships" will certainly deter the usual suspects from making trouble in the region. (And really, Mount Whitney, a "war ship"? Alrighty then...)

HMS Defiant said...

Yep. What you said. I used to see it banging around the east coast as 2nd Fleet's flag ship and nobody ever wondered what the hell 2nd Fleet needed a flag ship for. At 5th fleet we canned ours and NOBODY thought it was worth replacing. It was my first ship and a fine ship but it had 4 3"50 caliber guns, 2 CIWS and an unarmed helo. It sucked up most of MIDDLE EAST FORCE to provide it with an escort to keep it from harm.

It's counterpart drags all over the Far East hauling senior officers from liberty port to liberty port where it consumes the lion's share of the fleets OPTAR and security funding. The first thing I'd do as CNO is give both LCC back to the Marines after stripping them of my sailors and invite them to enjoy them.

virgil xenophon said...

Would be savagely blackly funny if it all wasn't such a disgusting waste of tax-payer $ and combat readiness via mis-allocation of forces...

HMS Defiant said...

The navy is always bleating about not having enough money but they cheerfully spend $83/gallon to buy crappy biofuel for their ships and are spending hundreds of millions to be able to buy the same gunk to put through their aircraft engines. The ships don't have any capabilities at all and yet off they go as if they mean something. Between the 2 of them those two warships have as much ability to shoot down a jet as the old Cossacks had.