Thursday, August 2, 2018

NAILED IT

I often think that the Air Force is a parody of a joke. Every time they do something else to prove me right it's like the first time. In this article it appears to state that the Air Force could really make stuff happen if they were just relieved of their duty as the Air Force.
“Operational squadrons in Alaska and Hawaii have F-22 pilots sitting alert in order to address the 24-hour per day alert commitment,” GAO says. “During this time they are not able to train for their high-end air superiority missions. Further, the squadrons must dedicate a number of mission-capable aircraft to this mission, which is more challenging for squadrons with a smaller number of aircraft. Squadron officials from one location estimated that they could generate hundreds of additional training sorties on an annual basis if they could use the aircraft that are currently dedicated to the alert mission.”
I dread to think what they would do if they got off the hook for actually assigning aircraft to a mission. Would they get around the golf course under par? The world wonders.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Defiant, there is nothing new to see here. It is the same bad thinking that allowed an admarial's son to remain in the navy and obtain flag rank after he shot down a USAFE F-4 during peace time manuevers.

It is the same bad thinking that allows officers of the deck to not post lookouts while underway in heavily trafficked sea lanes.

It is the same bad thinking that gives the army their new fitness test or allowing extras for the XX chromosones to graduate from ranger school to fill PC quotas.

You know that the list goes on and on with our PC directed armed forces.

Dave

HMS Defiant said...

You are quite right.

The Navy damned nearly promoted to admiral a scumbag who viciously wounded and nearly killed two air force officers in the jet he thought he was for some reason allowed to shoot down. What kind of idiot does that?

I served as an OOD on 5 ships over the years. I was the senior watch officer on 3 of them. SWO is chore and it can be damned onerous when 25% of the watchbill changes every single month. I had a full time job as CHENG but was the man that wrote the watch quarter and station bill. They were small ships sort of like in the picture above but the crew of about a hundred changed every single month.

All the ships were at wartime steaming, Condition III. That meant that a full 50% of the ships weapons were always loaded, manned and ready. There was no way back then to short the watch. We had an OOD, a JOOD (sometimes a Petty Officer) a lookout forward and we always had a lookout aft. The gun mounts were manned and the way it worked on my ships was the watchstanders took it in turns. Every hour or so they would rotate positions. The COLREGS and the Navy demanded lookouts to be posted and they were.

What happened to those destroyers was criminal incomptence by the OODs and by the CICWO. There was no excuse for that. I think the navy has fucked up by the numbers. When I left the captain's cabin with his cert and blessing as an OOD he made it very very clear to me that I and I alone was responsible for the safe navigation of the ship and all the people on it. I think USN has about 15 people doing the same job now and not a single one was tasked with the sole purpose of safe navigation and the safety of every single person on the ship. They fucked up. They split responibility to a dozen officers.

I remember, as an ensign on my first ship getting that letter from the captain that declared that I was an OOD(F) capable of safeguarding the ship and crew in the darkest night or the worst storm you can imagine. It meant a lot to me. I don't think it means the same thing anymore.

I sat next to a petty commander and his sychophants in the Blue Room in the bunker in Chinhae when he started tossing off orders to the LCDR commanding officers of the two mine sweepers under his cognizance. I worked for about 15 commanding officers on ships not one of whom would tolerate that idiot declaring them his serfs able to do only what he ordered.

OTOH, I suspect the navy has now reached the point where, for the good of the fighter pilots in it, everything must by controlled by bean counters at home.

The rule for my generation was, literally control by negation. I suspect that it is now control by doing precisely what you're told. I preferred the old rules.