The staff at WATM sorts through the interwebs to find you the very best military memes out there. Here are our 13 picks for this week:
Snipers: The Waldoes of the military.
Don’t worry if you can’t find them. They’ll find you.
Remember to properly secure your firearms and Marines.
Don’t worry, guys. It probably won’t be long.
Ingenuity means different things to different people.
(If you want to make fun of them, use small words so they get it.)
This is unfair and inaccurate:
We all know SEALs start with book deals and then sell the movie rights later.
If you don’t need fixing, basic training will be easy.
Trust me, though, we all needed some fixing . . .
Speaking of drill sergeants, they’re arriving with your wake up call.
Your wake-up call will be at zero-dark thirty.
I can’t relax if I don’t feel safe.
It’s called position improvement, and if we get attacked you’ll stop complaining.
Finally, camouflage for the Navy (a.k.a. “aquaflage”) makes sense.
Reflective belts in the military are like car keys for teenagers.
You can’t go anywhere without them, the older crowd uses them to control you, and you lose them every time you want to leave.
Air Force marksmanship training focuses on real world skills.
(But don’t worry, you won’t ever get in a real firefight.)
Bring every item, even the ones you weren’t issued.
You’ll also be unpacking it at every stop for inspections. And when we get in-country. And a few more times because first sergeant wants to see it. By the way, the packing list isn’t final.
Air Force: Military lite.
Notice how the Coast Guard didn’t occur to either of them?
Keep updating social media, ISIS.
We can target off of your pictures. Please, send more.
The real bad guys these days are known as the Taliban, al Qaeda, ISIS, and others. But for decades, U.S. troops have been fighting wars against fictional enemies that only exist in training exercises. They usually have ridiculous-sounding names and strange back stories.
While we received plenty of help on social media and this post at Mental Floss on these opposition forces (OPFOR), to include name and which training exercise or location they operate in, some details remain murky.
If you find yourself fighting these forces in the future, here’s the basic intel you need to know.
The Krasnovians (National Training Center)
These are your hard-core fighters from a Soviet bloc country called Krasnovia. Unpredictable and a very non-traditional enemy force, the Krasnovians are known to switch up their tactics and quickly adapt, like stopping the use of radios and moving to cell phones to throw off U.S. soldiers they are fighting.
We’ve heard the key to beating them is by offering them vodka as a peace offering, or just send in this guy:
The United Provinces of Atlantica (Special Forces “Q” Course)
A northern neighbor to Pineland, the UPA is a former Cold War ally of the Soviets. The Atlanticans aren’t fans of the U.S. or their neighbors. That’s especially true, since they invade and take over peaceful Pineland around eight times a year.
Fortunately, Army Special Forces candidates come in and save the day on a regular basis.
The Mojavians (Combined Arms Exercise at 29 Palms, Calif.)
Not much is known about the Mojavians, except that they like to exclusively fight against U.S. Marines during a 22-day period of combined arms training at their desert base in Twentynine Palms, California. These bad guys operate in similar fashion as insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, and will rarely engage in a real fight. Instead, they rely on hit-and-run tactics.
The Centralian Revolutionary Force (The U.S. Marine Corps Basic School)
In the depths of a three-year civil war, the people of Centralia hope to have a democratic state and live in peace. But their neighbors in Montanya, and an oppressive rebel force known as the Centralian Revolutionary Force, continue to harass the local populace.
Both the CRF and the Montanyan Regular Forces continue to attack the Centralian Army and civilians in the region. Let’s all just hope those fresh Marine Corps officers are able to bring stability to Centralia, a country which has been oppressed for far too long.
Photo Credit: Facebook/Stop The War In Centralia
Arianan Special Purpose Forces (Joint Readiness Training Center in Fort Polk, La.)
A force from Ariana — an enemy nation seeking nuclear weapons and hostile to the U.S. and Israel which sounds kind of like Iran — the ASPF constantly invades its neighbor in Atropia, a key U.S. ally.
The ASPF is a threat to U.S. interests — including the consulate in Dara Lam — and it continues to support a local insurgency known as the South Atropian People’s Army. This enemy is unpredictable and employs similar tactics to enemy forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Possibly worst of all: U.S. soldiers only have 11 days to beat them and save Atropia. Good luck.
Have any more you would add to the list? Let us know the enemy force and where you heard it in the comments.
Army Capt. Rebecca Murga had the same goals as anyone else at gear turn-in after deployment: get rid of this sh*t and get back home. But she made a rookie mistake when she left Afghanistan without double-checking her gear against her clothing list.
Capt. Rebecca Murga tries to find a missing Gore-Tex item while turning in items at the Central Issue Facility. (Go90 No Sh*t There I Was screenshot)
That’s how she ended up at the Central Issue Facility with a desperate need to go home and no Gore-Tex. And since Army property values never match civilian price points, she’s left with the option of paying hundreds of dollars or weaving a Gore-Tex from cobwebs and unicorn dreams.
Anyone who has dealt with DoD civilians knows that it’s a recipe for frustration, but Murga manages to smooth talk her way through the facility only to find herself faced with something worse.
Something much, much worse. (Go90 No Sh*t There I Was screenshot)
See how Murga’s conscience clouds her homecoming in the No Sh*t There I Was episode embedded at the top.
During the 2016 election, Russian-linked bots and trolls on social media attempted to inflame relations among Americans by spreading fake news and highlighting vulnerable racial and political divisions. They bought ads on Twitter and shared posts on Facebook, concealing their identities while pretending to be real Americans.
But the Kremlin has another, more conspicuous way of spreading propaganda and trolling the West that doesn’t normally get as much attention.
In the last few years, Russia has used official government Twitter accounts to undermine the West and hit back against criticism, often with tantalizing and meme-filled rhetoric. The Twitter accounts of Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and its Embassy in the UK, both of which tweet in English, have been particularly active.
On March 6, 2018 for example, after UK Prime Minister Theresa May slammed Russia for planting fake stories and Photoshopping images on social media “in an attempt to sow discord in the West,” Russia’s MFA tweeted a satirical response.
(MFA Russia/Twitter)
This was one of several examples of official Russian government tweets aimed at sparking controversy among Moscow’s adversaries.
In a report published in November 2017, the watchdog group Freedom House noted that in few places is “the hypocritical link between state propaganda and legal restrictions on the media stronger than in Russia.” This gives Russia monopoly over the flow of information within its borders. Increasingly, the report says, Russia has used similar information manipulation tactics abroad.
Here are 10 other times Russia has used its official Twitter accounts to troll Western leaders and the media:
1. The Russian Embassy in the UK reacted to former President Barack Obama expelling diplomats and closing Russian compounds in December 2016 in retaliation for meddling in the US election.
(@RussianEmbassy Twitter)
2. Stories of Russian hacking and election interference became more widespread in the US, and the Russian Embassy was at it again.
(@RussianEmbassy Twitter)
3. Theresa May said Belgium was meddling in its general election — and Russia was happy they weren’t being accused this time.
4. The CIA tweeted it was looking for Americans who can speak Russian and who are interested in national security issues. Of course, Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs had a response.
(@mfa_Russia Twitter)
5. Hillary Clinton visited the UK to promote her new book about the 2016 election in October 2017, and the embassy drew a parallel between what she was condemning.
(@RussianEmbassy Twitter)
6. Newspapers reported that pundits are trying to prevent the Trump administration from smoothing US-Russia relations, and the Russian Embassy responded with a Pepe the Frog meme the alt-right uses.
7. Amid fears of spying, England said its football team would travel in Russia with a surveillance team. The Russian Embassy shot back with a zinger about England’s football team.
(@RussianEmbassy Twitter)
8. Critics alleged that President Donald Trump is a Russian pawn, and the Russian Embassy shared a meme from The Great Gatsby.
@RussianEmbassy Twitter
9. The British member of parliament leading the UK investigation into Russian election meddling talked about fake news, and the Russian Embassy egged him on with some #ThursdayThoughts.
@RussianEmbassy Twitter
10. On March 7, 2018, US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert sent a series of tweets that condemned Russia’s military involvement in Syria, and the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded with a low blow.
When a country’s founder dies, they become a lasting national symbol. But rarely has a founder’s actual corpse been the symbol.
That’s because it’s hard to keep a dead body looking good year after year, decade after decade. Just ask the Russians.
Immediately following communist leader Vladimir Lenin’s passing in 1924, scientists and technicians injected the corpse with embalming fluid and squeezed it into a rubber suit containing preservatives. The Russian government built a wooden tomb and put the revolutionary on display in Moscow’s Red Square.
The tomb has changed since then, but Lenin’s body looks as good as ever. But such unearthly beauty comes at a high cost — almost $200,000 a year.
That figure comes from an official notice from Russia’s procurement agency. It cites an annual cost of 13 million rubles for the “biomedical” procedure that keeps Lenin in a “lifelike condition.”
The cost of upkeep has fluctuated since 1924. Russian taxpayers have mostly been on the hook for the bill — except for a brief period following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Private donations kept the body beautiful until Moscow could once again take over the ghastly duty.
Attitudes toward Lenin have also changed over the years. During the Soviet years, Russians viewed Lenin as a kind of communist saint. Millions visited his tomb. But after the ’91 collapses, people were free to express opinions they’d long kept to themselves.
That catharsis culminated in a 1998 art exhibit for which artist Yury Shabelnikov baked a lifesize cake replica of Lenin’s interred body and filmed local school children devouring it. The still extant communist party called for an investigation, but its pleas fell on deaf ears.
The science behind preserving Lenin’s corpse is impressive and bizarre. According toScientific American, upkeep requires a team of five or six scientists.
Every other year, the scientists re-embalm the corpse, “submerging the body in separate solutions of glycerol solution baths, formaldehyde, potassium acetate, alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, acetic acid solution and acetic sodium.”
“They have to substitute occasional parts of skin and flesh with plastics and other materials,” University of California, Berkeley social anthropology professor Alexei Yurchak told the science magazine.
Lenin’s death-bath takes a month and a half.
Damage happens and science can only do so much. During the height of the Soviet era, more than 200 people worked to keep Lenin looking fresh. Technicians sewed artificial eyelashes on to the leader, swapped decaying chunks of the man’s face and nose with a mix of paraffin, glycerin and carotene and once replaced portions of his foot when it went missing in 1945.
Today, Russians overwhelming favor burying Lenin. But Pres. Vladimir Putin has pushed back against the idea. In 2001, he told the public that interring the corpse would send a signal to the Russian people that they’d lived under false values during the Soviet era.
Questioned about the expensive embalming in 2012, Putin deflected. “We can see holy remains in the Kiev-Pechora Monastery and in other places,” he said, implying that it’s totally normal to keep historical figures’ bodies on display, well, forever.
For decades before 9/11, Americans talked about how they hadn’t been attacked at home since Pearl Harbor, but that actually wasn’t true.
The California coast was attacked less than three months later, and two additional attacks were launched in 1942 alone. Here are five times that America was attacked at home in World War II after Pearl Harbor:
1. Japanese submarines shell California oil refinery
Japanese submarine I-19. (Photo: Public Domain)
In February 1942, Japan landed its first attack on the American mainland. Submarine I-17 surfaced off the coast of California and proceeded to shell oil processing facilities in Ellwood, a city north of Santa Barbara. The Ellwood attack was believed to have been intentionally timed to take place during one of President Franklin Roosevelt’s fireside chats.
The attack did little real damage. An oil derrick and a pump house were both hit but no personnel were injured or killed and refining operations continued throughout the war.
2. Nazi commandos land in New York and Florida
The German sabotage ring commandos assigned to attack New York and the surrounding area. (Photos: FBI)
Luckily for America, the commandos had been recruited from the civilian population and the Nazi party and they were inept. One of the team leaders had slept through much of the 18 days of special training.
The first team was spotted by the Coast Guard while burying their supplies on the New York beach. They got away, but both teams were hunted down by the FBI before they launched any successful operations.
3. A Japanese submarine shells military defenses in Oregon
An I-25 submarine ordered to patrol the American coast surfaced during the night of June 21, 1942, and shelled the coastal defenses at Fort Stevens, Oregon. Most of the rounds buried themselves in the sand on the shore and the damage to the U.S. was mostly on morale.
4. A Japanese plane drops bombs on a logging town
(Photo: Public Domain)
In September 1942, the submarine I-25 tried again, this time with a plane equipped with incendiary bombs. Many submarines at the time carried a single float plane used to search for targets or collect battle damage assessments.
The pilot assigned to I-25, Nobuo Fujita, had proposed that these planes could be used in an offensive capacity.
The Imperial Navy brass agreed to the plan and he was allowed to drop incendiary bombs deep in the forests of southern Oregon. The attack was launched on Sept. 9, 1942, and the early stages were successful. The pilot delivered two incendiary bombs that detonated and spread small fires across hundreds of square yards.
Nobuo Fujita stands with his E14Y plane, the same model he used to bomb Oregon. (Photo: Public Domain)
Unfortunately for the Japanese, they had little knowledge of the weather conditions in their target area. The woods had been unseasonably wet from recent rains and thick fogs, so the fires failed to spread.
Still, the FBI and the U.S. Army worried that another attack would be more successful.
The Japanese did indeed try again on Sept. 25, but the fires failed to spread once again.
Fujita was hailed as a hero at home and served out the war training kamikaze pilots. Oddly enough in 1962, the town of Brookings, Oregon, invited Fujita to the city he tried to destroy. This resulted in a friendship that lasted the rest of the man’s life.
He gave his family’s ceremonial sword to the city and, after his death, some of his ashes were spread at the bomb crater.
5. Almost ten thousand fire balloons are floated across the Pacific
This was the first intercontinental weapon in military history — the fūsen bakudan, or fire balloon. Japan produced 9,300 of them. (Youtube Screenshot)
In Operation Fu-Go in 1944, the Japanese military tried to set America aflame by floating 9,300 incendiary bombs across the Pacific Ocean. The bombs were expected to travel on the wind for three days and then drop, setting large fires.
Only 350 bombs actually made it to the states and spread far and wide, hitting states like Michigan, Iowa, and Kansas. Most failed to start large fires. The only known fatalities from the weapon was when a pregnant woman and her five children came across an unexploded bomb in Oregon.
It exploded while the family was looking at it, killing all six.
Although the Constitution states that the U.S. military is subordinate to civilian authority, presidents and top military commanders have clashed periodically throughout American history. Presidents, who often have little or no military experience, are tasked leading and providing orders to professional warfighters with decades of experience. Still, the relationship is usually respectful and both sides work together to do right by the American people.
But, when policy disputes erupt into the public eye, it can get ugly quick. The president has a few options when this happens, the most extreme of which is to either fire the officer directly or request their resignation.
Here are 7 times that presidents felt the need to fire top military officers:
1. Fremont got canned for going rogue against slavery
Maj. Gen. John C. Fremont was known for his explorations in the American West. (Portrait: Public Domain)
John C. Fremont was a famous explorer with multiple expeditions to the American west under his belt. Lincoln tapped him to administrate the west during the Civil War and had him commissioned as a major general.
That proved to be a mistake. Fremont’s department was riddled with corruption and Fremont attempted to free all slaves in Missouri whose owners wouldn’t swear allegiance to the U.S. This created a political crisis for Lincoln. When Fremont refused to rescind the order, Lincoln overruled him and began preparations to fire him.
Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan was too reluctant to use the Army. (Photo: Public Domain)
When the Civil War broke out, the Union Army was being commanded by the 75-year-old Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott. It was obvious that he would have to be replaced quickly, and the only general racking up victories in the early days was Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan.
So, McClellan got the top job despite misgivings from Lincoln. It turned out Lincoln was right as the former railroad executive frequently failed to attack, even when he had technological and numerical advantages and the best ground. Frustrated by McClellan’s lack of progress on executing the war, Lincoln replaced McClellan on Nov. 5, 1862.
3. Richardson got sacked for arguing against the fleet staying at Pearl Harbor
Adm. James O. Richardson wanted to bring the Pacific Fleet back to the West Coast. (Photo: Public Domain)
Japan and the U.S. were the “Will they, won’t they?” couple of 1940-1941. Japan’s ever-growing war against China was ratcheting up tensions with America, especially after Japanese planes bombed a U.S. ship evacuating American citizens from a Chinese city. As the two powers stumbled towards war, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration ordered the Pacific Fleet to stay at Pearl Harbor.
The commander of the Pacific Fleet, Adm. James O. Richardson, disagreed with Roosevelt and the chief of the Navy. He argued, forcefully, that the U.S. was not ready for a war in the western Pacific and that the fleet should return to the mainland U.S. coast. In Jan. 1941, Richardson was replaced by Rear Adm. Husband E. Kimmel.
4. Kimmel and Short were booted for not properly preparing for the Pearl Harbor attack
Lt. Gen. Walter Short, at left in the front row, and Rear Adm. Husband E. Kimmel, on the right, pose for a photo with a Royal Navy officer on Hawaii in 1941. (Photo: Department of Defense)
5. MacArthur was recalled for triggering war with China
Gen. Douglas MacArthur speaks to the crowds at Soldier Field in Chicago in 1951. (Photo: National Archives and Records Administration)
While other officers on this list were fired for speaking out or for resisting presidential policy, Gen. Douglas MacArthur was fired for drastically expanding the scope of a war.
MacArthur was immensely popular in the U.S. as a bona fide war hero who came out of retirement to fight World War II. But Truman found him overly aggressive in his role as the supreme leader of United Nations forces in Korea, pressing his attack too far north despite Truman’s warnings and orders.
6. Fallon was retired early because he wanted out of Iraq
Adm. William Fallon in 2002 while he was the vice chief of naval operations. (Photo: US Navy Photographer’s Mate 3rd Class Philip McDaniel)
Adm. William “Fox” Fallon was the head of Central Command during the Surge in Iraq. As the war dragged on, Fallon became convinced that Iraq was a waste of resources. President George W. Bush’s administration continued to believe that they could salvage a victory there.
What resulted was a public debate with Fallon on one side and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Gen. David Petreaus, the commander of forces in Iraq at the time, on the other. As the last of the Surge units were leaving Iraq, Gates stated that there would be a pause in the drawdown after they left and Fallon publically contradicted him (in a cover feature in Esquire magazine). Fallon was pressured into resigning within a couple of weeks.
7. Obama fired two war commanders in two years
Presidet Barack Obama meets with Gen. Stanley McChrystal in May 2009. Photo: White House photographer Pete Souza
The public sacking of Gen. Stanley McChrystal for insulting comments he and his staff gave to Rolling Stone dominated the news for days in Jun. 2010. But McChrystal’s infamous firing was the second time the U.S. commander in Afghanistan had been fired by President Barack Obama.
Gen. David McKiernan held the job before McChrystal and was pressured into resigning by Secretary Gates in 2009 due to concerns that he was waging the war too much like a conventional military conflict instead of an anti-insurgency campaign.
Army acquisition leaders and weapons developers are increasing their thinking about how future enemies might attack —and looking for weaknesses and vulnerabilities in their platforms and technologies earlier in the developmental process, senior service leaders told Scout Warrior.
The idea is to think like an enemy trying to defeat and/or out-maneuver U.S. Army weapons, vehicles, sensors and protective technologies in order to better determine how these systems might be vulnerable when employed, Mary Miller, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Research and Technology, told Scout Warrior in an interview.
The goal of this thinking, she explained, is to identify “fixes” or design alternatives to further harden a weapons system before it is fielded and faces contact with an enemy.
“We have taken it upon ourselves to look at early developmental systems for potential vulnerabilities. As we understand where we might have shortfalls or weaknesses in emerging programs, we can fix them before things go to production,” Miller added.
Soldiers with the Army Evaluation Task Force give a demonstration of the small unmanned ground vehicle combat application to House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-MO) and fellow committee member Syvestre Reyes (D-TX) at Ft Bliss, TX. | US Army photo by D. Myles Culle
The Army is already conducting what it calls “Red Teaming” wherein groups of threat assessment experts explore the realm of potential enemy activity to include the types of weapons, tactics and strategies they might be expected to employ.
“Red Teams” essentially act like an enemy and use as much ingenuity as possible to examine effective ways of attacking U.S. forces. These exercises often yield extremely valuable results when it comes to training and preparing soldiers for combat and finding weaknesses in U.S. strategies or weapons platforms.
This recent push, within the Army acquisition world, involves a studied emphasis on “Red Teaming” emerging technologies much earlier in the acquisition process to engineer solutions that counter threats in the most effective manner well before equipment is fully developed, produced or worst case, deployed.
Miller explained that this strategic push to search for problems, vulnerabilities and weaknesses within weapons systems very early in the acquisition process was designed to keep the Army in front of enemies.
A key concept is, of course, to avoid a circumstance wherein soldiers in combat are using weapons and technologies which have “fixable” problems or deficiencies which could have been identified and successfully addressed at a much earlier point in the developmental process.
As a result, weapons developers in the Army acquisition world and Science and Technology (ST) experts spend a lot of time envisioning potential future conflict scenarios with next-generation weapons and technologies.
Miller emphasized how the Army is increasingly working to develop an ability to operate, fight and win in contested environments. This could include facing enemies using long range sensors and missiles, cyber attacks, electronic warfare, laser weapons and even anti-satellite technologies designed to deny U.S. soldiers the use of GPS navigation and mapping, among other things.
As a result, Army engineers, acquisition professionals and weapons developers are working now to ensure that tomorrow’s systems are as effective and as impenetrable as possible.
“We need to better understand vulnerabilities before we design something for our soldiers. We need to see if they have inherent glitches. We now face potential adversaries that are becoming technically on par with us,” Miller said. “We are asking the ST enterprise to think ahead to a scenario where our enemies might be using our technologies against ourselves,” Miller said.
Soldiers with Bravo Troop, 3rd Battalion, 71st Calvary Regiment of 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, fire their 120mm mortars during a live-fire at Forward Operating Base Lightning, in Paktia province, Afghanistan. | Photo by U.S. Army Capt. John Landry 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division Public Affairs
One recent example which advanced the Army acquisition community’s strategy to look for and address vulnerabilities early in the developmental process involved an assessment of Forward Operating Base, or FOB, protection technologies used in Afghanistan.
The “Deployable Force Protection” program focused on protection systems including sensors, towers and weapons systems designed to identify and destroy approaching threats to the FOB. These systems were being urgently deployed to Afghanistan in a rapid effort to better protect soldiers. The Army performed useful assessments of these technologies, integrating them into realistic, relevant scenarios in order to discern where there may be vulnerabilities, Miller explained.
Teams of Warfighters, weapons experts, engineers and acquisition professionals tried to think about how enemy fighters might try to attack FOBs protected with Deployable Force Protection technologies. They looked for gaps in the sensors’ field of view, angles of possible attack and searched for performance limitations when integrated into a system of FOB protection technologies. They examined small arms attacks, mortar and rocket attacks and ways groups of enemy fighters might seek to approach a FOB. The result of the process led to some worthwhile design changes and enhancements to force protection equipment, Miller explained.
“We have focused on small bases in Afghanistan and did Red Teaming here (in the U.S.) to make sure the system was robust. We’ve taken that whole mindset and now merged it into a new program concept,” Miller said.
Military veterans are getting unlimited access to college assistance under legislation President Donald Trump has signed into law.
The Forever GI Act removed a 15-year limit on using the benefits, effective immediately. The measure increases financial assistance for National Guard and Reserve members, building on a 2008 law that guaranteed veterans a full-ride scholarship to any in-state, public university, or a similar cash amount to attend private colleges.
Purple Heart recipients forced to leave the service due to injury are eligible for benefits, as are dependents of service members who are killed in the line of duty.
Veterans would get additional payments for completing science, technology, and engineering courses, part of a broad effort to better prepare them for life after active-duty service amid a fast-changing job market. The law also restores benefits if a college closes mid-semester, a protection that was added after thousands of veterans were hurt by the collapse of for-profit college giant ITT Technical Institute and Corinthian Colleges.
USMC photo by Sgt. Melissa Marnell
“This is expanding our ability to support our veterans in getting education,” Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin told reporters at a briefing after Trump signed the measure at his New Jersey golf club following two nights at his home at New York’s Trump Tower.
Trump is staying at the New Jersey club on a working vacation. Journalists were not permitted to see the president sign the bill, as the White House has done for other veterans’ legislation he has turned into law. That includes a measure Trump signed at the club August 12 to provide nearly $4 billion in emergency funding for a temporary veterans health care program.
The August 16 signing came the day after Trump was rebuked for continuing to insist that “both sides” were culpable for an outbreak of violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend between white supremacists and counter-demonstrators. One woman was killed.
Photo by Michael Vadon
Also, two Virginia state troopers died in the crash of their helicopter. They were monitoring the rally.
A wide range of veterans groups supported the education measure. The Veterans of Foreign Wars says hundreds of thousands stand to benefit.
Student Veterans of America says that only about half of the 200,000 service members who leave the military each year go on to enroll in college, while surveys indicate that veterans often outperform peers in the classroom.
The expanded educational benefits would be paid for by bringing living stipend payments under the GI Bill down to a similar level as that received by an active-duty member, whose payments were reduced in 2014 by 1 percent a year for five years. Total government spending on the GI Bill is expected to be more than $100 billion over 10 years.
The maroon beret on your truck dash and the airborne wings tattooed to your chest are pretty good indicators that you’re a paratrooper. Still, if you want more proof, just check yourself for these common symptoms of airborne.
1. You consider any day that you get to exit an aircraft a good day.
What a view!
2. You’re always prepared to deploy.
3. You believe jumping is a group activity.
A member of the 82nd Airborne Division and British paratrooper prepare to jump from a tethered balloon in preparation for a jump into Sainte-Mere-Eglise, France, on on the 40th anniversary of D-day, the invasion of Europe.
4. You don’t think it’s fast unless it can be anywhere in the world in 18 hours.
5. A lot can happen before you get excited.
I mean, you jump out of planes. It’s hard to top that.
6. If you walk away, you figure it went pretty well.
Secretary of the Army Eric Fanning and Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley during a press conference at AUSA. (Photo: Ward Carroll)
WASHINGTON, DC — The U.S. Army’s two senior-most leaders tag-teamed responses to questions posed by a gathering of military journalists at a press conference held on the first day of the Association of the United States Army’s Annual Meeting and Exposition here, and in the process the pair presented a mixed bag of concerns and optimism.
“Across our force, we have soldiers and civilians living and working in 52,000 buildings that are in poor or failing condition because of the $7 billion of deferred maintenance that we’ve aggregated over the last few years,” Secretary of the Army Eric Fanning said. “Since 2011 the Army’s modernization program has decreased by 33 percent. And today our modernization program is $36 billion less than the next closest service. These are the kind of tradeoffs we’ve made over the last few years to meet our responsibilities.”
“We, the U.S. Army, we don’t have to get it exactly right, but we have to get it less wrong than any potential adversary,” Gen. Mark Milley, the Army’s Chief of Staff, added. “Up until now, we have essentially mortgaged the future of readiness for modernization.”
When asked about Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s plan to grow the Army to 548,000, Milley replied, “We do all kinds of studies. We do a lot of analysis. We do a lot of rigor. I’m not going to share those numbers, but it’s not about so much numbers. It’s about capability. We need to make sure we have the most capable Army to deliver specific effects on the battlefield. . . What does it say in the defense planning guidance, etc.? Those will vary depending on the contingencies you’re looking at.”
“One of the dangers we see with this debate taking place the Army told to maintain a force structure greater than we’re planning on without any additional resources to do that,” Fanning added. “That would put us out of whack.”
Questioned on the service’s plan to retain the right talent in the face of large drawdowns and budget challenges, Fanning answered, “Right now it is bureaucratic and bureaucracies are additive by nature. Something bad happens and you create a process to prevent it from happening again and you layer that upon another one upon another one upon another one. You don’t really have a process to cull through all that and simplify it. We’re trying to squeeze all the risk out of the process. As we draw down we need to focus not only on whether we have the right people in the force, whatever size it is, but that we are opening up the institution, the bureaucracy, to doing business in a different way.”
Milley contextualized the Army’s talent requirement against the future threat, using words like “non-linear” and “non-contiguous” to describe the battlefield and “elusive” and “ambiguous” to describe the enemy.
“Leaders are going to have to be self-starters,” he said, the opening line of what turned out to be an extended monologue of sorts.
“Leaders are going to have to have massive amounts of initiative,” Milley continued. “They’re going to have to have critical thinking skills well beyond what we normally think of today in our formations. They’re going to have to have huge amounts of character so that they make the right ethical and moral choices in the absence of supervision and the intense pressure of combat.
“They’re going to have to have a level of mental and organizational agility that is not necessarily current in any army, really. I would argue that the level of endurance of these individuals is going to have to be something that we haven’t trained to on a regular basis, where individuals are going to have to be conducting small unit level operations without higher level supervision, and they’re going to have to do that day in and day out, week in and week out, month in and month out . . . a long time.
“Last thing is that senior leaders are going to have to implicitly trust supported leaders’ judgement because of the degraded environment we’re not going to have control of the supported environment in the true sense of the word as we think of it today; we’re not going to have push-to-talk communications back in forth cause it’s going to be degraded. So these leaders are going to have to be independent of higher day-to-day instructions. I just described to you talent management that is fundamentally different than any army undertakes today. And I’m talking about an army in the field about 15, 20 years from now. I’m not talking about next week. But that’s where we’re going to have to go. And that’ll be a high standard to meet.”
The Navy announced Wednesday the establishment of four new ratings for active duty Sailors, yeoman submarine (YNS), logistics specialist submarine (LSS), culinary specialist submarine (CSS) and fire controlman Aegis (FCA) in NAVADMIN 021/17.
(Photo: U.S. Navy Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Jonathan T. Erickson)
This realignment was made to improve management of ship manning and personnel inventory for both the Surface and Submarine ratings.
The new ratings will be effective:
– Sept. 2, 2017, for E-6
– Oct. 17, 2017, for E-7 through E-9
– Nov. 28, 2017, for E-1 through E-5
Sailors serving as Aegis fire controlman and yeoman, logistics specialist, culinary specialist submarine Sailors will be converted to their applicable service ratings by enlisted community managers with no action needed from the member.
The new ratings are for active duty Sailors and billets and will not be applied to the reserve component. Additionally, there will be no changes to Sea/Shore flow resulting from the new ratings.
An advancement exam will be created for each new service rating. The first E-7 exam for these ratings will be given in January 2018. For E-4, E-5 and E-6 exams for these new ratings will be given in March 2018.
More information and complete details can be found in NAVADMIN 021/17 found at www.npc.navy.mil.
Capt. Jonathan Lewenthal and Capt. Eric Scheibe, AV-8B Harrier pilots with Marine Attack Squadron 231, Marine Aircraft Group 14, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing (Forward), fly over southern Helmand province, Afghanistan after conducting an aerial refuel Dec. 6, 2012. VMA-231 deployed to Afghanistan to provide close air support for counter-insurgency operations. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Gregory Moore)
Dubbed the “widow-maker” in some aviation circles, the AV-8 Harrier is as dangerous to America’s enemies as it is to the pilots who commandeer it.
From its commissioning to as recent as 2013, there have been about 110 fighters involved in Class A mishaps — accidents causing death, permanent injury or at least $1 million in losses.
“Measured by its major accident rate per 100,000 flight hours, which is the military standard, the Harrier is the most dangerous plane in the U.S. military,” said Los Angeles Times reporter Alan C. Miller in the video below. “Overall the Marines have lost more than one-third of the entire Harrier fleet to accidents.”
The first Harrier model, the AV-8A had a Class A mishap rate of 31.77 accidents per 100,000 flight hours. The Marines improved the rate to 11.44 per 100,000 hours with the introduction of the AV-8B in the mid-1980s, according to Miller.
By contrast, the Harrier has more than twice the accident rate of the F-16, more than three times the rate of the F/A-18, and about five times the rate of A-10.
Despite its astronomical accident rate, the fighter is beloved and remains in service more than 40 years since its introduction in 1971.
“One Marine general who flew the plane early on described it as an answer to a prayer,” Miller said.
An AV-8B Harrier jet aircraft assigned to the air combat element of the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit (13th MEU) performs a vertical landing on the flight deck of the amphibious assault ship USS Boxer June 16, 2013. Boxer is conducting amphibious squadron and MEU integrated training.(U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Mark El-Rayes)
The Corps’ need for an aircraft with a vertical landing and short takeoff capability can be traced to the 1942 Battle of Guadalcanal. The Marines lost over 1,000 men during that fight and felt abandoned by the Navy to fend for themselves.
“Since then, the precept that the Marines in the air should protect the Marines on the ground has been an essential part of the Corps’ ethos,” Miller said.
This History Channel video shows how the Harrier supports the Marine Corps’ mission to fight anywhere, anytime regardless of the risks:
Maj. Gen. John C. Fremont was known for his explorations in the American West. (Portrait: Public Domain)
