Compare that to the US Navy, where the reports from fatal accidents a few years ago show that ships were sent out missing working navigation gear.
No officers seem willing to own up to the fact that their equipment is not ready for service and personnel are not sufficiently trained. There has to be a strong institutional perverse incentive for not doing so. Makes me wonder how many units of our armed forces are actually sufficiently ready for combat, and if anyone actually knows because of the constant deceit. And once a military culture becomes corrupted by deceit and careerism like this, it's very difficult to get rid of because every incoming cohort of new officers are habituated to it very quickly.
I didn’t point out that the units doing this was America’s Guard of Honor/First Response 82nd Airborne Division.
It sucked knowing when you went on DRF1 that DRF2 and DRF3 in your brigade did not have functioning military vehicles, guns, radios to follow in 18-24 hours in relief.
Of course, most of our training was one-way ticket stuff like stopping soviet armor in the mountains of Iran or Middle East and we were told if we did not hold for 24-hours our position and the enemy would be nuked in the event of a break thru.... We ate it up thinking we wanted to slug it out with the Ruskies, or later the Iranians. Sometimes we got insurgency missions in S. America or SE Asia; these they said we had great odds of success.
Maybe our generals are drinking the Signal Corps Kool Aid where we shut down enemy communications and bomb them until they sue for peace.
I don't know if those officers who were relieved of their duties deserved this or not, but I can't help but think that there was a lot of outrage against the loss of life on the AAV that was behind the investigation and that may have led to the actions against the higher-ups.
But these men didn't die because of a decision somewhere to look the other way on a report or on a training matter; they died because of piss-poor decision-making on the AAV at the time.
The incident took place over thirty minutes. At what time does an NCO give the order to have everyone drop their gear in the troop compartment and get topside with their life vests? If it wasn't when the water was up to their ankles, or even up to their knees, when was it?
Forget about what some colonel did or didn't do. Who was in charge on that boat?