Posted on 06/19/2018 3:34:19 PM PDT by Rummyfan
I should correct myself: in PEACETIME, being able to read a computer screen and push buttons is fine.
But like the old saying about a ship in a harbor is a safe ship, but that is not what ships are for, a warship during peacetime may indeed be a push button endeavor for many (though surely, not all) but that will change as soon as an adversary is shooting back.
Police, military,fireman,rescue. Is that enough?
” Have you ever served on a combat vessel in war where the crew is fighting to say afloat and save their own lives and the lives of their shipmates?”
I’ve been to the Persian Gulf during the hostage crisis and the Iran-Iraq War but never saw combat. Have you served on a combat ship that was fighting to save it’s life?
“It is the logistical aspects including things like segregated berthing spaces and heads to things women need that men don’t ranging from feminine hygiene products to birth control pills, “
The ships I served on had segregated quarters. One for the officers, another for the chiefs and the rest for the junior enlisted. Any member of the crew could get condoms from the ship’s corpsman. And now with gays being allowed to serve, sex will be an issue on combat ships even if their are no women on board.
damage control officers were usually some of the biggest and strongest men aboard, able to close hatches, shore up damaged areas with timbers, etc. The Fitz’s damage control officer was also a woman, and she never left the bridge.
Uhhh, no! The damage control officer sits in DC central and directs damage control efforts. It requires knowledge, brains and the ability to direct others to action. If the DCA is out closing hatches and shoring bulkheads, he/she is not doing zir job, acting as the nerve center for bringing the ships resources to bear. I am not taking a position on whether a female damage control assistant (an officer) can do the job.
There were three idiots who allowed this accident to happen. The CO who qualified her as the OOD, the XO who didn't train her, and she herself. The TAO might or might not have been doing her job, and if the ship was standing into danger had an independent duty to call the CO. But the only reason anything bad happened here is because the OOD was incompetent. All the rest is backup to the OOD and that failed too.
Jude Eden, a female US Marine who served in the Middle East wrote this article which bears reading:
Women in Combat - The Question of Standards
This is a key passage if you don't want to read the whole article:
“Then I’m surprised that you underrate the stamina required.”
I don’t think I underestimated the stamina required but then I was a twidget and not a deck ape or snipe.
As I said, open homosexuality and women in combat and on combat ships is a large net negative. There is no redeeming value in having either of them in that situation.
Sure, as long as there have been ships, there has been homosexuality. But it has never been open and encouraged as it is now. That alone is a disaster IMO.
I have never been on a warship that had to fight for her life, thank God. But I boarded a warship several months after a refit to repair damage caused by a collision that killed eight men and nearly sunk one ship, burning nearly her entire superstructure to the deck.
It was clear to me from the seriousness of the lessons we were taught in that direct aftermath, the way they were taught, and discussions with the young men I served with who were there, that damage control in a burning warship most definitely is not a push-button endeavor.
All that said, I do agree some of the comments in that article were a bit silly, and I didn’t like the inference about the women not talking to each other implying more than just incompetence.
I thought it both slanderous and unnecessary.
I generally agree with you. I had back then and still have today the opinion that combat ships and submarines ought to be male only. The next time the shit really hits the fan, mixed gender ships and subs may be done away with as with mixed gender ground combat units. But in peacetime, the issues with mixed gender combat units aren’t grave enough where President Trump can get away with ordering such a thing.
I think that is the nut of the problem...a peacetime Navy is a very different thing than a wartime Navy. And unfortunately, that truth won’t become evident until after bad things happen. Sadly.
Right now, it is a combination of social experimentation and job program with actual war fighting a distant third.
But if I am honest, that isn’t that unique...probably that way between all wars, and all lessons will have to be learned again the hard way.
I suppose it will always be that way.
“But like the old saying about a ship in a harbor is a safe ship, but that is not what ships are for, a warship during peacetime may indeed be a push button endeavor for many”
Even in peacetime, stuff happens.
For instance, a ship could suffer an oil-spray fire in one of its boiler rooms while engaged in loading SAMs with nuclear warheads.
“I don’t think I underestimated the stamina required but then I was a twidget and not a deck ape or snipe.”
Well, there you go.
Some divisions work 24 hours a day and sleep on their own time.
Very true.
Even truer is, that open hostilities often break out without warning. It was amazing it didn’t happen more during the Cold War, and it isn’t hard to imagine something like that happening with the Chinese navy in one of these contested areas.
One never knows when you will find yourself inside a flooding compartment in a sinking ship where just a few hours before, you were thinking of your next port of call.
...and that’s across all branches not just the Navy. The burning question is when the big hammer comes down from a major hostile state, will our military be able to fight and win?
What will we be fighting for at that point? Transsexual equality? Homosexual pride? Equal opportunity for the physical weaker female sex to play infantry so they can feel special?
All this gender bending training and throwing combat training standards out the window is going to bite us back big time.
“I suppose it will always be that way.”
When I was going through Travis on my way to my first ship, there was a Master Chief heading into retirement. He was a veteran of WWII, Korea, and Viet Nam.
He said that every time peace breaks out, the back-stabbing office politicians weasel their way into power and drive the warriors out. Then, inevitably, when war comes they had to get rid of those guys and bring the warriors back.
I wonder the same thing, TADSLOS. The same thing.
if there was lack of training, lack of achievement, lack of ability, that is on the Officers who placed them in that position....
it goes directly to the poor quality of officer recrutiment under the 16 yrs of the Toon and barry bathhouse...
just look at that pipsqueak communist that just got booted out...but it took 4 yrs of free education and a yr on duty to get the stupid leadership to do it....
there were two ships that collided recently and do we know who was in charge of the second collision?...
incompetence is absolutely at fault...
Hard times create strong men.
Strong men create good times
Good times create weak men
And, weak men create hard times.
No.
They got their letters out in the fleet, but the ladies in our class had no problem with it for the most part.
Has not changed much except half the cast or more is dead. Cheech and Chong are still kickin.
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