Desperate???

Quick disclaimer - this is all via the 'rumour mill'...

Last Friday night some military friend(s) of mine got some news.  For them its either good or bad news, depending on their point of view.  A very few of them will see it as a chance to get closer to the "action".  But for most, and unfortunately, its a bit shocking.  As for me it's a little earth-shattering - especially since one of them was my replacement when I left the Navy.  Quick background... when I was in the military, I was an E-2C Hawkeye Naval Flight Officer.  That means I flew around in a radar equipped plane and directed the air-war.  That's a VERY watered down description, but it covers the basics.  My friends and others that got 'the news' are of varying but similar backgrounds.  As with several occupations in the military, they have some extensive EW training (Electronic Warfare).  Which sets the stage...

It seems that they all fall into a particular category at the moment - they're all on shore duty (after being on sea-duty for several years... it's called 'payback'), and they all have at least one year left at their current duty-station.  Life right now is supposed to be focused on family, training others to do what you've done already, and supporting those in the Navy that are currently at sea.  But on Friday night, some of them got a phone call - with a twist.

By and large, they're being ordered to supplement the Army and Marines on the ground in Iraq.  That in itself isn't that strange, since the current trend has been to try and give the forces that have been on multiple deployments a break by rotating  Air Force and Navy personnel into positions that could be easily 'substituted'.  But... here's the twist.  They're manning up a new unit - made up of a mix of personnel, to become field combat teams in charge of detecting IED's.  Improvised Explosive Devices.  WTF???

I will pledge loyalty to my Navy brethren - they are capable of doing the tasks they are trained for, and then some.  But to take a Naval Aviator, teach him in a couple of months how to fire a rifle and command Army or Marine troops on the ground, and much less put him in some experimental platform to detect and disarm IED's because the Army and Marine experts are tired and out of people??  That's like asking a surgeon to become the coach of an NFL Football team!!

In my book, that's called a "Desperate Administration in a Desperate Situation".

I wish I could prove it to you.  I wish I had documentation.  But I don't.  Not yet.

Somebody out there is going to say (like my naive friend at work - notice I still call him 'friend'), "well they're in the military it comes with the territory".  To those people I say:  "You don't know what the hell you're talking about".  The military is as specialized as a hospital - you don't go throwing people into positions that they're not trained or prepared for because the doctor is out to lunch.

I wish them luck, and wonder how long till people like me in the IRR get activated.  I also wonder how long till people like YOU get drafted.  You DO know that the minimum draft age is being changed to 40, don't you??

UPDATE:  Thanks to several readers who pointed out that I made a typo on the draft age.  I was referring to the MAXIMUM draft age.

Comments

[Paul]

This is bad no matter which direction you come at it from. What the F has the US Government (for want of a better or worse description) done to its military? And now they are talking furtively about attacking Iran? Guess the Israelis will have to do that one alone this time.

[salvage]

Desperate Administration in a Desperate Situation

http://www.hairyfishnuts.com/archive/00_desperate.htm

Very much so.

[Ltgesq]

It seems the lesson that this administration has been effective in getting people to learn is:

"you fucked up, you trusted us."

I am just guessing, but i'd say that this administration is going to be the end of the volunteer military. People don't usually make decisions against their safety without some pretty signiificant reasons. That this administration can't be trusted will not help a future admistration.

[Jeff Huber]

An old Hawkeye NFO myself, I'm curious to know if this is a volunteer program or not. In any case, I'd suspect that it's being sold to the gang as a "career enhancing move."

[beemer]

Nothing wrong with the rumor mill; some governments even use it to justify the deaths of thousands of military personnel and tens of thousands of civilians...

[Laura Elizabeth]

I followed a link from AMERICAblog to your website because of this story. Deeply concerning - but then, what about this administration isn't?

I've sent a link to your site to my Dad (ex-Navy man) and asked him to check with some of his old buddies to see if their kids have been contacted.

I'd like to believe this is just a rumor, but I can't. I'm with Jeff, I'm betting this is being sold as a way to advance careers.

[Phill]

This is idiotic at so many levels.

It costs about $1.5 million to train a fighter pilot or nagivagator. Putting them in harms way for anything other than their trained specialty makes no sense at all.

The ground crews are not wuite so expensive to train but there are still long lead times. You do not want to have someone trying to land a $40 million plane on a boat with an inadequately trained ground team.

This is not the only operational problem. Bomb disposal is definitely not the type of work that you want a hot gun type personality doing. And if someone does manage to make the switch they are not likely to switch back to hot gun mode on command.

[Jeff (no, the other one)]

It's the "people are fungible" initiative. "One uniform looks pretty much like another, we're all on the same team, so get in the game!"

Sheer stupidity on the part of the civilian leadership, I say. Their incompetence and blindness to reality will get even more good troops killed and maimed.

Same shit, different day.

[querido bobo]

I'm very sorry to hear this. I'm going through a similar "well, the janitor isn't in this week so I need you to mop toilets" situation at my desk job; the difference of course is that my job doesn't involve detecting and disarming IEDs....

[John]

When little boys (the Chicken Hawk gang)are playing with their GI Joes, specialty training doesn't mean too much. It's just another toy soldier. Picky, Picky, Picky.
Bad chess players end up letting pawns (IEDS) taking Bishops and Knights.
It is just a game to the civilians in our government. Just politics.
I am a veteran, one of the last draftees. I loathed the military. But during my time in, I did gain empathy for my fellow soldiers...even the gung ho's who enlisted voluntarily. That is why the lack of any significant military experience among the Republican chickenhawks and pundit warriors made me profoundly suspicious of their cavalier use of the military.
Unfortunately all the gung ho's got suckered in by Bush's macho cowboy bullshit three years ago.

[Dave]

I'm not convinced this is quite what you seem to be implicitly assuming (i.e., EW types crawling around on the ground clipping wires). By media accounts, a lot of these devices use radio signals of various types as a means of initiation - given that EW is all about messing about with radiated signals, who better to ask if you wanted to jam/spoof such devices? Heck, it may not even involve being on the ground, close to the potentially explosive action at all.

I think it might be wise to not discuss this in a public forum until confirmation that this isn't a situation of round peg / round hole. Yes it's terribly unfair that the round pegs are getting the shaft again, but it might not be quite a desperation move, either.

Sorry for what's probably a contentious and thorny first comment.

Matt says: Dave - no worries! It is, after all, just a rumour with nothing concrete to back it up. Your comment is level-headed... a quality I appreciate and sometimes lack. We'll see how it plays out. Thanks for reading!

[Tom Joad]

This is the Bush take on everything. There are no such things as "experts", there are only those on the team (and interchangeable, like legos) and the defectors.

This is maybe the single most alarming thing to me. The realization that in virtually every field (the armed forces, disaster control, global warming, science, anything) there are experts that know their fields inside out, but that carries no weight with this administration.

[Gridlock]

"minimum draft age is being raised to 40"

Maximum, shurely? I mean, I know things are getting desperate but it's not yet time for the 82nd Airborne to start deploying WWII vets is it?

Matty Says: Definite typo on my part. Thanks!!

[Gridlock]

"you fucked up, you trusted us."

The new meme is "Republicanism/Conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed". Judging by the number of buses approaching, there's going to be some serious recriminating this year.

[hadassah weinreb]

In hospital based situations, they "float" personel on an as-needed basis. If they all have the basic skills required for the theatre of operation they're prone to be float-bait, just ask the Surgeon General who is the head of the Public Health Service.

[Nate Morton]

I don't know much about the military. But this sounds like the case of my cousin.

A former nuclear chemist/engineer for an aircraft carrier who join the naval reservists only to be stop-lossed into Iraq. He AWOL'd 6 months ago and was arrested last weekend.

It's a shame when the military goes through such measures such as deploying experts in such small niches such as nuclear chemist sailors or Electronics airmen to take up a rifle and hand gun for land patrols.

[IED SME]

This is really about IED electronic counter-measures, which for OPSEC purposes we will just say neutralizes electronic threats... the problem with sending EWs out to man these systems is you will be rifding in a Humvee and manpulating the system, which means you will be a target ... now to deploy Navy EWs onto the Army and ground EW world is just silly ... this capability can be purchased as a stand alone system that could be used to do the same thing as a jammer box on an EA-6B Prowler aircraft or the Tactical electronic Jammers on a ship. It doesn't require a man to push buttons, except OFF and ON. In my professional opinion it sounds like absolute desperation to buff up the anti-IED capabilities of EVERY convoy moving in Iraq ... Oh, this is going to suck for those guys! I mean really SUCK!

[Phantasm]

This is not a rumor. Last week's issue of Navy Times had a rather lengthy article, quoting the CNO, that Navy personnel, officer and enlisted, are being deployed to Iraq in ground combat, security and combat support roles. The rationale is to relieve Marine and Army units.

Commander, U. S. Navy, Retired

[Nate]

Aloha... I'm ex-navy here in HI and I saw this post linked over from Americablog. I did some digging and I found this article... Here's a quote and the link.

"Trying to stay one step ahead of the enemy is the most challenging part of my job," said Lt. Cmdr. Huan Nguyen, a Navy reservist and electrical engineer at Camp Liberty, a base near Baghdad, who is helping to field new versions of the jamming equipment.

Meigs' organization, called the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Task Force, had its origins in a 12-person Army office in October 2003. The organization soon was elevated to a Pentagon office, and its budget grew from $600 million in 2004 to $1.2 billion last year. The details of this year's budget are still being refined, at about $3.5 billion, but senior officials say they essentially have a blank check.

"We will have the resources we need to pursue the programs that we need to pursue," said Brig. Gen. Daniel B. Allyn of the Army, the task force's deputy director.

Here's the link from an obscure CA paper called the Argus from 3 weeks ago.

http://www.insidebayarea.com/argus/news/ci_3480562

I'm bookmarking your page... Keep up the great work.

[james]

I think that you guys very well may be underestimating our fighting forces. I was a Marine Fire Direction Control man for Field Artillery. I was trained in everything from riot control and EPW handling to advanced combat techniques such as evac. security and CQB. I do have to say that the Navy in grossly under-trained for any ground combat, but that is the fault of the senior leadership in Navy down to the NCO level. Same thing for the Air Force. I see no reason that any member of any branch of service should not be able to defend himself in a combat zone. If the EW boys have to get off their boats and see some dying, do some killing, or even do some dying, it is nothing more part of the job. As an Artillery man myself, I know about killing from afar. It doesn’t mean that our unit wasn’t ready to do it up close. If the Navy is not ready to do this then their NCOs and above have failed them. It is called the Armed Forces for a reason.

Matty says: I actually agree with you James - and I think the Navy personnel will perform admirably. But that's not the point - it's that they're even doing filling this mission in the first place.

[VJ]

I noticed this awhile back in the casualty lists. We started to have simple airmen & seamen shoing up in surprising numbers, the specialties did not match their last reported mission either. So I suspect they've been doing this for awhile now, perhaps at least a year. And it's costing lives. No doubt about it either. Thanks for noticing. Cheers, 'VJ', ga.

[Simp]

James,

I don't see much here that challenges your assertion. The post did say that it seems unusual to put Naval aviators in this situation, but that is not the point.

Regardless if Navy personnel are capable of doing the job, the question is should they be doing the job? This administration, for all intentional purposes has broken the military.

Part of being military is trusting that your Commander in Chief will make the right decisions, to only put you in harms way when absolutely neccessary. Bush and Rumsfeld have violated that trust.

It is going to take years if not decades to regain that trust and rebuild the military properly.

[Operation Yellow Elephant Karl Olson]

Well, not all personnel are interchangeable.

College and Young Republicans, as well as Jenna's wussy beau Henry Hager, are not yet under consideration.

[Tom3]

Only a moronic Chimpylover would say that a naval EW officer is qualified to disarm bombs because he worked in electronics.

All you Chimpyloving Chickenhawks should shut the hell up and volunteer to be bomb disposal technicians in Iraq.

Anybody who voted for Chimpy is an IDIOT.

[Prissy]

I have heard this from other personnel, like Guard people, pulled into the same duty.

It isn't what they signed on for either, Bush IS a chickenhawk and help us God, does it show.

Bless our troops, bring them home and no more troop misuse!