The three letter follies (blm, crt, csr, dei...) spawned a generation of bureaucrats who hate America. President Trump will fix that in the first hundred hours.
Like many people, I have a dream. In addition to MLK’s dream, mine includes the removal of everyone on the E ring of the Pentagon. They have been either active members of the cabal that has brought us to our current condition, or they have been passively sitting there, accepting our current activities as the new normal. Are there a few that are positively seething at the current situation and raring to make things better? Probably, statistics being what it is. But how do we sort out the good apples from the bad? I am absolutely not suggesting some sort of loyalty oath to the Trump administration; I am suggesting a filtering and retirement process based on proven competence - and fitreps are not actual evidence of that. Show us real data of having made a difference. If we are a true meritocracy, that should be sufficient evidence.
The Houthis are "amazing" us. Really? If so, put it on the long list of "intelligence community" failures. Or is this the usual "plug for money", if we only get more funding, we can "fix" our "amazement" problem. Hm, let's see, DoD just failed another audit, but we have received assurances "we're getting better, and have momentum do even better in 2028". Intelligence community failures are clearly systemic, fixing that means admitting a problem exists, analyzing it, and determining the fix (in the face of a community that feels " it is just fine the way it is"). The repeated audit failures indicate an inability of the system to hold those "responsible" for the accounting of expenditures "accountable" for their failures. Anyone remember when someone was fired for failing a DoD audit? Again, strongly suspect this is NOT failure to perform or incompetence. People are doing what they were put in place to do in both intelligence and DoD acquisition and funding allocation. It's just that the position descriptions and their "assigned" duties are 180 degrees out from reality. "Don't ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetence, but don't rule out malice". Robert Heinlein Embracing the power of "and" is another popular trope these days...
Someone misplaces a rifle and they lock down an entire base. Someone misplaces a few billion dollars and everything is hunky dory, carry on as usual, nothing to see here.
The man has spent way too much time mingling with the power brokers of D.C. That is the only thing he knows and even I wouldn't put too much credance in the capabilities in the District of Columbia public high schoolers.
MITRE? FFRDCs are infamous for Other People's Money and Other People's Resources (OPM and OPR). Getting other people to fund and do your work is considered DoD government brilliance as you have a "cutout" which allows you to get lionized for success and "blame" the people who actually provided the funding. DoD acquisition tactics for "heads I win, tails, you lose, and nobody even knows I was involved". Brilliant!
Yet I am told to fear Orange Man’s incoming cadre when the “smartest people in the room” continue to drop the ball at every turn. Aggressive common sense defeats exquisite CV’s every. Single. Time.
Fully understand your view. I wish that between, let's say March and June 2025, an example will be made that will be worth writing down in the history books, the same way the Barbary wars are. That is what a proper first rate nation would do, not what is happening now.
LT Decatur is getting riffed when he doesn't get selected for O-4 so maybe we give Stephen and like-minded people a Letter of Marque and let them compete against the Navy. But I might worry that it'd impact recruiting and retention in the Navy and would siphon off funds because privateers will need some government financing as prizes wouldn't bring much, their cargos of weapons and khat couldn't be sold, and the head money wouldn't be much for captured 8-10 man crews. Still, if the Navy had competition, mightn't it get better? I think so. Wouldn't even need press gangs. Just hand out flyers at the VFW, buy a few beers...
Gobsmacked. But I guess we shouldn't be surprised since these are the guys who rely on one fleet oiler to support forces in the Red Sea area, manned by civilians, that has a hole in its hull from running aground. Oops!
Not so gobsmacking, izzit, Matthew? Not for anyone who ever went camping when they were 11 years old. By the second outing you have it figured out. TP √, canned beanie-weenie √, matches √, Swiss Army knife √, canteen of water √, change of underwear & socks √...
How many frigates/destroyer types do we have in ‘friendly’ NATO countries that can set up enough of a blockade to make a difference? Of course you will need to search thousands and sink the ones with weapons after they’re removed.
We managed to maintain a naval blockade of 3000 km of Vietnamese coastline on the other side of the world for eight years under Operation Market Time. Of course we actually had a sufficient number of destroyers, patrol boats, and riverine forces then. Different military, different leadership.
"Who has the guts...?" The Russians, Chinese, Malay/Indonesian pirates, privateers? Let some high testosterone BM2 named Garcia, Smith or Jefferson write the OPLAN and ROE. I served with a QM, some RD's, a GMG, an SM and one RM after the Vietnam War who'd be pushing 80 now who'd serve again if they haven't fallen off their barstool at the VFW and broken a hip lately. Me? I could teach and enforce R/T circuit discipline and have the buoyancy and Red Cross Life Guard training (at age 15 in 1963) to be a second assistant rescue swimmer.
I don't know if the ROE has changed but my old ship the USS Monterey on her last deployment in 2021 seized a massive quantity of arms from one of these dhows. You can google the ship name and the word dhow and see pictures of the rifles and rocket launchers covering the helo deck.
The crew of the dhow were relieved of their cargo but then given food and water and released.
The Honorable Dr. William A. LaPlante's exposition to Axios is a long-winded way of telling the American taxpayer "We take nearly a trillion dollars from you every year and we are incapable of executing a naval blockade along 600 miles of coastline in Western Yemen." That ought to give the political leadership of Tiawan all kinds of warm fuzzies!
Was Dr. LaPlante giving a brutally honest Casandra warning or was he saying that we're doing pretty darn good job given our other commitments to important Green, Climate and Woke initiatives?
After the first missile was fired I asked why not take out their radar and mine their harbours? I’m not nor ever was in the navy but I do understand, it seems, more then our best and brightest. One more thing I haven’t heard considered is that the more you practice the better you get. We have let the Iranian’s practice a lot. It will not end well.
Perhaps an apples to oranges comparison, but more than a few similarities between this situation and our ill-advised incursion to Vietnam. A technologically superior military force could not defeat the enemy (also supported by a US enemy) due to poor military and political decision-making. If course, as with many other issues since then, lessons to be learned we're not.
Vietnam was a war of choice. Vietnam did not threaten us in any way. This is not a war of choice because Yemen sits alongside a strategic corridor and the Houthis have been trying to shut it down.
Reposting from above: MITRE? FFRDCs are infamous for Other People's Money and Other People's Resources (OPM and OPR). Getting other people to fund and do your work is considered DoD government brilliance as you have a "cutout" which allows you to get lionized for success and "blame" the people who actually provided the funding if the effort fails. DoD acquisition tactics for "heads I win, tails, you lose, and nobody even knows I was involved". Brilliant!
The three letter follies (blm, crt, csr, dei...) spawned a generation of bureaucrats who hate America. President Trump will fix that in the first hundred hours.
Hopefully
Like many people, I have a dream. In addition to MLK’s dream, mine includes the removal of everyone on the E ring of the Pentagon. They have been either active members of the cabal that has brought us to our current condition, or they have been passively sitting there, accepting our current activities as the new normal. Are there a few that are positively seething at the current situation and raring to make things better? Probably, statistics being what it is. But how do we sort out the good apples from the bad? I am absolutely not suggesting some sort of loyalty oath to the Trump administration; I am suggesting a filtering and retirement process based on proven competence - and fitreps are not actual evidence of that. Show us real data of having made a difference. If we are a true meritocracy, that should be sufficient evidence.
"Fire them all. God will surely know his own."
Yup
The Houthis are "amazing" us. Really? If so, put it on the long list of "intelligence community" failures. Or is this the usual "plug for money", if we only get more funding, we can "fix" our "amazement" problem. Hm, let's see, DoD just failed another audit, but we have received assurances "we're getting better, and have momentum do even better in 2028". Intelligence community failures are clearly systemic, fixing that means admitting a problem exists, analyzing it, and determining the fix (in the face of a community that feels " it is just fine the way it is"). The repeated audit failures indicate an inability of the system to hold those "responsible" for the accounting of expenditures "accountable" for their failures. Anyone remember when someone was fired for failing a DoD audit? Again, strongly suspect this is NOT failure to perform or incompetence. People are doing what they were put in place to do in both intelligence and DoD acquisition and funding allocation. It's just that the position descriptions and their "assigned" duties are 180 degrees out from reality. "Don't ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetence, but don't rule out malice". Robert Heinlein Embracing the power of "and" is another popular trope these days...
Someone misplaces a rifle and they lock down an entire base. Someone misplaces a few billion dollars and everything is hunky dory, carry on as usual, nothing to see here.
My favorite story: Someone typed an extra "0" in a budget line item, so everyone was looking for the "missing" 90% of the appropriation.
I bet the Undersecretary would be shocked at what a US high school could accomplish.
The man has spent way too much time mingling with the power brokers of D.C. That is the only thing he knows and even I wouldn't put too much credance in the capabilities in the District of Columbia public high schoolers.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/11/30/president-biden-announces-defense-acquisition-nominee/
I would not be surprised if he's never worka hard day in his life.
https://y.yarn.co/dabc1ee7-f919-4c7f-ae6f-3d4963e0c262_text.gif
MITRE? FFRDCs are infamous for Other People's Money and Other People's Resources (OPM and OPR). Getting other people to fund and do your work is considered DoD government brilliance as you have a "cutout" which allows you to get lionized for success and "blame" the people who actually provided the funding. DoD acquisition tactics for "heads I win, tails, you lose, and nobody even knows I was involved". Brilliant!
Yet I am told to fear Orange Man’s incoming cadre when the “smartest people in the room” continue to drop the ball at every turn. Aggressive common sense defeats exquisite CV’s every. Single. Time.
The dhow you used is the one that cost two or three Navy Seals their lives. What was on it or did their commanders throw them away like a used tissue?
Fully understand your view. I wish that between, let's say March and June 2025, an example will be made that will be worth writing down in the history books, the same way the Barbary wars are. That is what a proper first rate nation would do, not what is happening now.
This is the way. Shouod have been the way day 1.
Close all ports sink all ships heading for & supporting Yemen no matter where they are.
This not rocket science.
Stephen Decatur wouldn’t make it past O3 in todays woke navy.
LT Decatur is getting riffed when he doesn't get selected for O-4 so maybe we give Stephen and like-minded people a Letter of Marque and let them compete against the Navy. But I might worry that it'd impact recruiting and retention in the Navy and would siphon off funds because privateers will need some government financing as prizes wouldn't bring much, their cargos of weapons and khat couldn't be sold, and the head money wouldn't be much for captured 8-10 man crews. Still, if the Navy had competition, mightn't it get better? I think so. Wouldn't even need press gangs. Just hand out flyers at the VFW, buy a few beers...
Gobsmacked. But I guess we shouldn't be surprised since these are the guys who rely on one fleet oiler to support forces in the Red Sea area, manned by civilians, that has a hole in its hull from running aground. Oops!
Not so gobsmacking, izzit, Matthew? Not for anyone who ever went camping when they were 11 years old. By the second outing you have it figured out. TP √, canned beanie-weenie √, matches √, Swiss Army knife √, canteen of water √, change of underwear & socks √...
How many frigates/destroyer types do we have in ‘friendly’ NATO countries that can set up enough of a blockade to make a difference? Of course you will need to search thousands and sink the ones with weapons after they’re removed.
Who has the guts to do this.
We managed to maintain a naval blockade of 3000 km of Vietnamese coastline on the other side of the world for eight years under Operation Market Time. Of course we actually had a sufficient number of destroyers, patrol boats, and riverine forces then. Different military, different leadership.
"Who has the guts...?" The Russians, Chinese, Malay/Indonesian pirates, privateers? Let some high testosterone BM2 named Garcia, Smith or Jefferson write the OPLAN and ROE. I served with a QM, some RD's, a GMG, an SM and one RM after the Vietnam War who'd be pushing 80 now who'd serve again if they haven't fallen off their barstool at the VFW and broken a hip lately. Me? I could teach and enforce R/T circuit discipline and have the buoyancy and Red Cross Life Guard training (at age 15 in 1963) to be a second assistant rescue swimmer.
I think things are about to drastically change for the Houthis and Iran.
I don't know if the ROE has changed but my old ship the USS Monterey on her last deployment in 2021 seized a massive quantity of arms from one of these dhows. You can google the ship name and the word dhow and see pictures of the rifles and rocket launchers covering the helo deck.
The crew of the dhow were relieved of their cargo but then given food and water and released.
The Honorable Dr. William A. LaPlante's exposition to Axios is a long-winded way of telling the American taxpayer "We take nearly a trillion dollars from you every year and we are incapable of executing a naval blockade along 600 miles of coastline in Western Yemen." That ought to give the political leadership of Tiawan all kinds of warm fuzzies!
Was Dr. LaPlante giving a brutally honest Casandra warning or was he saying that we're doing pretty darn good job given our other commitments to important Green, Climate and Woke initiatives?
After the first missile was fired I asked why not take out their radar and mine their harbours? I’m not nor ever was in the navy but I do understand, it seems, more then our best and brightest. One more thing I haven’t heard considered is that the more you practice the better you get. We have let the Iranian’s practice a lot. It will not end well.
Mining Japan's Inland Sea in WWII was brutally effective.
Many of bureaucrats have no understanding of history. Just my opinion.
Perhaps an apples to oranges comparison, but more than a few similarities between this situation and our ill-advised incursion to Vietnam. A technologically superior military force could not defeat the enemy (also supported by a US enemy) due to poor military and political decision-making. If course, as with many other issues since then, lessons to be learned we're not.
Vietnam was a war of choice. Vietnam did not threaten us in any way. This is not a war of choice because Yemen sits alongside a strategic corridor and the Houthis have been trying to shut it down.
Mr. Laplante's bio;
https://www.acq.osd.mil/leadership/as/dr-william-laplante.html
1. He either went full hyperbole at the Future of Defense summit.
or
2. His official bio also went full hyperbole.
Reposting from above: MITRE? FFRDCs are infamous for Other People's Money and Other People's Resources (OPM and OPR). Getting other people to fund and do your work is considered DoD government brilliance as you have a "cutout" which allows you to get lionized for success and "blame" the people who actually provided the funding if the effort fails. DoD acquisition tactics for "heads I win, tails, you lose, and nobody even knows I was involved". Brilliant!
In the land where only The Credentialed matter, is it really wrong to go "full hyperbole" on your resume?
An Obama Retread. I saw them coming and retired!
A lot of people need to be fired. Admiral King where are you?
A few need to be recalled to active duty and indicted.
Wasn't it George Marshall who instituted the "plucking" program that attempted to remove old, incompetent officers just prior to us entering WW II?
Yes, he did.