74 Comments
Jan 11·edited Jan 11

It seems that women have made great strides and there are fewer glass ceilings. Even Saudi Arabia now allows women in the army. It seems that the problem is mostly outside what we consider to be (pardon the expression.) civilized cultures and societies. Perhaps we can get some perspective from some female members of Boko Haram.

By analogy, this is like campaigning for the environment and ignoring China and India, while going after countries that are changing.

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founding

Gah!! Perhaps our new CNO can get the President of the NWC to actually implement her direction for the Navy?? Have a curriculum that is actually about what the NWC was created for?

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founding
Jan 11·edited Jan 11

Perhaps the CNO should first dress like she is actually in the Navy...

https://www.fedweek.com/wp-content/uploads/franchetti_cno.jpg

Of course, there will be the tsk tsk from the folks who say it doesn't matter. In general, the same folks (people, nonbinaries, etc.) who look at rusted out ships, and see some kind of 'salty' fleet.

What they are blind to, is that picture is a post card from an organization that has -literally- lost its identity.

There is no *Navy* today. Instead, as seen above, there is a loosely federated gaggle of 'Communities' .... each adorned in their own garb... that comprise some kind of "Naval Enterprise".

In the CNO's priority list, there is zero emphasis on what a "Navy" can bring to the fight.

Ask your average American taxpayer what they see, and it will be some Army soldiers and Air Force flyboys in a meet and greet (and some old retired guy who probably wears brown shoes with a navy blue suit... a fashion faux pax that actually does get some attention from some prominent Navalists). There nothing there to point to leaders of a "Navy".

So its no wonder that the NWC is worried about everything other than fighting a war on, in ,or from The Sea.

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founding

I bow to no one in my dislike for current USN uniforms. Even the Service Dress uniforms for women now look stupid, because they make them wear male hats. The Nasal Radiator flaunting his "Bag" is no better.

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The meter maid cover made women look taller and slimmer. I do not understand why it was done way with.

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Yes. Agree. As a person who wore a flight suit for 24 years I made it a habit to never get too causal and wore my Johnny Cash as enlisted or my khakis 4 out of 5 days a week as a CPO and Warrant. I also wore coveralls in lieu of the flight suit. I also was never a “top three” guy. I think formality has a place and is important. Sure I encouraged flight suit Friday but never ascribed to flight suit every day of the year.

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Starched and pressed wash khaki's. No finer uniform. Except for those tailored gaberdine khaki's with a 32" waist I bought in 1974. Damn pants shrank in 6 months.

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I loved the wash khaki. My favorite uniform. Yea I wore a flight jacket with mine sometimes either green or leather but the wash khakis were a comfortable and sharp uniform.

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Wash khaki were the best. Went to a intel seminar at Treasure Island in early 70's with USN, USARCPAC, USA, reserves and active duty. One evening at O'Club one Army LTC opined that if you lined up 1000 Naval Officers in khaki ,there would not be any two that match. He questioned our uniformity.

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Well, now we can all agree diversity of uniforms (clearly word play) is not strength. I DID like the Johnny Cash and liked to wear it in the winter. But we change uniforms because it is easy. We do not imbue our troops with a fighting ethos.

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What? I thought those guys gave it a rest after that Tailhook scandal in Las Vegas back in 1991.

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Remember that Main Rousseau Bocher received the Navy Meritorious Public Service Award for his design of female uniforms for the Navy and Coast Guard. I would suggest money could be spent to do something similar but looking at what our current crop of top fashion designers is putting on the runway, it could be that baggy camoflague is the better alternative afterall.

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founding

Yeah. This all comes from the "Women need to be just like men" nitwits. The same ones that put enlisted females in crackerjacks.

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I remember the uniform shop at Norfolk NOB was selling female dolls in SDBs. Shocked even me. That said I really wanted to buy one due to the novelty. They were about a foot high and cost over $20 in 84’ - had higher priorities for my $20K base salary at the time.

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In another three years we may have evolved the nitwit thinking into "Men need to have uniforms that look just like womens." I doubt that would be khaki utility kilts.

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founding

I sure wish I thought that was a total joke.

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Dude! I am watching sailors waddle down the P-way. And yes, the women are FAR fatter than the men. Oh suuuuure YOU can defend the Constitution (with a strongly worded statement... maybe)

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Many of our female enlisted sailors look like they have eaten another enlisted sailor. Absolutely huge. While I am a fat-ass at this point, I am not THAT fat, and I am also not 21 and on active duty.

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So you are saying the competition should be limited to highly regarded plus-size fashion designers only. I'm not sure how to write that into a FOA without eliciting calls of discrimintation.

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BDUs hide fat

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founding

True enough. Also flight suits.

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why on earth is the CNO wearing utilities? She's not a Marine, she's not in a tactical environment, she's not on a work detail, and, frankly, she looks like crap. Where is the pride of uniform and appearance?

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Oh come now. She has as much command presence as SECDEF Mattis.

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that's a theory

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Such the likes of Reeves who championed naval aviation as the future of naval aviation in the midst of battleship zealots? Like that? No, that requires courage. It’s safer to submit to gender studies and other prattle than actually be “warfighters” learning the art of war. Everything else falls pathetically short. If I was a flag officer, I’d make waves as Admiral Burke did or go home. Our Navy vessel has no one in command. Not truly.

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Wut?

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From 2000, so 1. We'll all get along through trade and stuff. 2. Anyone who doesn't go along will be bombed into submission for their own good. 3. Complaining will be allowed about 2, as long as it is ineffective. 4. Don't worry, because we won't do 2 very often, just when the Bad People are real close.

Something about the Gods of the Copybook Headings?

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I'm so old, I remember when "peace and security" was more simply defined.

The role of Naval Warfare was to kill the enemy and sink their ships.

If we do that effectively, we have "peace and security" until the next time Naval Warfare is required.

"Trauma" is also important.

Effectively traumatizing the enemy lengthens the duration of "peace and security."

Any questions?

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Different America.

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Given that others seem not to have forgotten this, though, perhaps not that different a world.

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Trauma informed teaching? Sounds like something the PO1 gave to his sailors with the understanding if the pupil didn't master the skill in short order that their liberty was in peril.

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Unless women have inherently more strategic sense, they have no particularly useful insight into combat operations or NatSec. We do not make such decisions based on feelings or "personal trauma" (wtf?). Sure, my "trauma" informs my actions so far as objectivity will allow, but I don't find another's more informative than my own. I'm educated through your education and experience, not the subjective s**t you survived. Has it come to this at Carlisle Barracks, too?

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I was going to respond to this but I think my post from yesterday fits perfectly and succinctly here as well. Why even have a naval war college? Reeves and Stockdale weep…

The navy’s decline in the last 15 years has been exponential. The forced social justice training and the emphasis on looking for a problem that doesn’t exist institutionally such as labeling your subordinates as potential rapists, racists and extremists has inculcated a ROT in the ranks. The flags have not only condoned it silently, they perpetuate it by demanding the stop light charts be green in all areas of this so called “ training” when they are too ignorant or complicit in seeing that it’s not training, it is actually indoctrination. The group punishment because of the actions of one had also manifested itself in the festering puss wound of Marxism. As one ensign once wisely described it to me: “one person shits his pants, we all have to wear the diaper..”.

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Well, if this is what the Naval War College does, then it needs to be defunded and the money transferred to something useful, like training CHT system technicians, or welders, or something that adds value to fleet readiness, like buying more ammo and missiles.

Worse than the monetary cost is the irreplaceable opportunity cost where senior leaders are denied developing strategic or tactical thinking relative to war-winning, and instead force fed sh!t sandwiches with the admonition that "Women, Peace and Security" is all you need to know.

Somewhere, Comrade X has probably been quietly awarded some high level "Order of the Hidden Dragon" award for their success degrading American naval readiness to confront hostile forces. The same award presented to those engaged in facilitating the flow of fentanyl into America, and whoever is flowing military age Chinese men across our border in ever growing numbers.

Note that most of the cancer in NWC is imposed by Executive Orders, and above the pay grade of CNO to remove. But, she might be able to cancel wasting time and money sending anyone there, "due to pressing operational priorities."

Our present CinC, SECDEF and SECNAV clearly are 100% on board with spreading the NWC cancer, and must be changed before we can hope to make it a useful institution again.

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CDR, I am sorry, I didn't read all the detail in your post. I did see the topic for "Rape as a strategic weapon of war." Will they use Hama attack of 7 October as an example? Are they in favor of it?

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Instead of recognizing that such has been the case since the beginning of time, these people will use 7 October as another reason to denigrate men.

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The Republic will fall. The United States cannot survive with such stupid people making stupid decisions - politically, academically, AND militarily.

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Just follow the lead of Israel, and expand the draft to include women.

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I ams sure that Israeli female soliders are smart and brave, but from the pictures I have seen it is the men who are going into the booby trapped HAMAS tunnels and flushing out the terrorists.

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The experiment with women near the vanguard failed for them. They/Them/Shim like to point to it, but they do not dig into what actually happened, so...

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You may not question the use of women in combat. Though Crime.

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"Vegan Warfighting and Other Ways of Knowing in the Electromagnetic Spectrum: An Intersectional Feminist Perspective on Neurodivergence in Marginalized Software-Defined Radio Communities"

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For the win!

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Tsk. Winning is a cisheteropatriachal colonialist construct that does actual harm to neurodivergent vegans from indigenous communities

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Sal has a new tag line. LOL

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Hmmm.. we never spend any time on the male side of this, just the situation and effects and individuals involved, not their "maleness" Would seem to me you could cover this in a day and then stick to what the institution is there for, the planning, tactics and prosecution during an event involving the Navy. We don't need to carve out something specifically to a gender, just the impacts to the PEOPLE involved. Unfortunately this adds nothing to prosecuting a combat event or other military action. Leave this to the NGO's and maybe a portion of the state department since they seem to be in tune with this sort of things. The Navy is there to project force and ultimately if necessary kill people and break things and eventually to deliver Marines to continue it ashore as necessary.. Leave it at the "people" level or "non combatants" gender really doesn't matter all that much in our base mission, it's a follow on task for someone else.

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Is a rainbow good camouflage?

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Only if you are a leprechaun or an unicorn…

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founding

That will get cancelled over at USNI.

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Men are from Mars, women are from Venus. Mars is the god of war; Venus isn't. Class dismissed.

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It's very interesting. They start with a very generic thing such as "should women (in general) be also involved in negotiations"? Of course, sure, it's not a purely-male domain. That statement in general is fine, if taken to mean - nobody should be excluded purely for reasons of sex (or race, etc.)

How they get from that to "Gender Analysis Framework" (which deepens, not removes gender separation), "Feminist Foreign Policies" (rather than, e.g., human foreign policies), "full participation in all phases" (so 50%-50%, rather than - whomever is interested), etc. And "foregrounds the gender perspective". Let's not forget “Trauma-Informed Pedagogy?”. WTH?

I'm amazed at the capability to take a generic statement such as "snow is white" and from that deduce "winter is racist".

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