Posted on 08/31/2022 5:54:11 AM PDT by CodeToad
It had been a long time since I had visited my alma mater, the U.S. Air Force Academy, so I decided to bite the bullet and travel to my 30th reunion last October. I must admit, I did so with trepidation. I have a love/hate relationship with the place. Although I received a fantastic education and met some lifelong friends, it’s a nice place to visit, if you know what I mean.
I will say that I received top-notch military training and discipline when I went through three decades ago. In fact, the discipline that was drilled into me has served me well my entire life, giving me a leg up on my competition: once I start something, I just don’t quit, no matter the odds or barriers put in front of me. I credit USAFA for helping me to develop this ability. It is a learned skill acquired from four years of handling the academics and the professional military and athletic training.
During the Vietnam War, many prisoners of war shot down over North Vietnam credited their fourth class year at the Air Force Academy with giving them the fortitude to make it through years of confinement and torture. After all, isn’t that the basic skill of a warrior, to win against all odds?
Unfortunately, these skills are no longer being taught at USAFA. I’ve seen it with my own eyes, and so have my classmates.
I realized something was horribly wrong when I arrived at the bottom of the ramp to the cadet area, which used to say “Bring Me Men” above the tunnel entrance. It was an iconic quote, and we were taught at the time that “men” meant the human race, not necessarily only the male sex of such. “I’ll meet you at the bottom of the ‘Bring Me Men’ ramp” was a routine line to girlfriends, boyfriends, parents, et cetera who came to visit their cadet at the academy. I never heard any animosity against this quote during the four years of my stay at the Blue Zoo.
Imagine my shock when I saw the quote had been changed to some PC gibberish about “Integrity First. Service Before Self. Excellence in All We Do.” Ten words! At first, I laughed at the thought of some cadet telling his civilian girlfriend to meet him at the bottom of the “Integrity First. Service Before Self. Excellence in All We Do” ramp. But after a quick laugh, I felt sadness at the loss of tradition and loss of the basic masculinity of warfare being taught at the academy. It was then I knew it was gone. I also felt alarm—if they changed this, what else have they changed? This can’t be good for the training of future Air Force warriors.
My next stop, and next horror, was walking around the cadet area with my fellow classmates from the Class of ‘86 and a few others. The place looked about the same. A monument or static aircraft display was changed here or there, and there was a strange-looking obelisk sticking out of the terrazzo near Arnold Hall, but overall, the place was the same. But there was something very, very wrong.
I couldn’t place it, but then it hit me. It was October. The fourth class cadets should not have been “recognized” yet. That meant being accepted in the ranks of the upper class and the associated privileges that come with it. This entailed walking at attention, squaring corners, greeting upperclassmen, and other general military training.
None of this was happening. They were walking at rest, not greeting anyone. Actually, they were ignoring the upperclassmen walking by. I stopped one of them and asked him, “Cadet, are you recognized yet?”
“No, we are not,” was his response. He kept walking. There was no “sir” in his response. He obviously knew I was an alumnus and former military officer. The problem was that he simply didn’t care. He didn’t care because he had been taught not to care. Military bearing was absent. Completely gone. Removed.
And then, the shock continued.
{more at the article}
L. Todd Wood is an OpsLens contributor, a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, flew special operations helicopters supporting SEAL Team 6, Delta Force and others.
I appears to me that the Commies have infiltrated the military all branches.
I went thru basic Jun-Aug 1981. We did almost zero PT. There was always an excuse...to rainy...too hot.
We did do M-16 quals in a two day set.
When I went to OTS in 1990, they ran our asses off.
“...A real Commandant of Cadets looks like this:” (with a reference to the wiki entry on Robin Olds) [DuncanWaring, post 14]
“Warriors are no longer wanted. Air Force officers have become vendor managers. Everyone has rank and few have responsibilities. Lots of O-4 and O-5 without any command beneath them at all, many with no direct reports...” [CodeToad, post 19]
“Definitely a warfighter and not a Pentagon perfumed prince.” [FreedomPoster, post 38]
If forum members believe that any of the federal service academies have always been changeless bastions of American values and traditions, or repositories of rock-solid conservative values & morals, they ought to delve a bit deeper into the historical record.
The armed services are the servants of the American public, not a foolproof source of “real leaders,” and certainly not rightful masters of society. The Founders were wise enough to insist on civilian control.
In actuality, the academies have always reflected the tenor of the times and policies of political officials. Thomas Jefferson did sign the legislation creating the US Military Academy, but soon after he instituted the requirement that cadets obtain a Congressional appointment: because he feared his political opposition (already well-represented in the nascent officer corps) would gain too much power. Times changed, of course; by the 20th century political favoritism in appointments was perceived to be a problem.
The curriculum at USMA was altered in various ways at varying times; in the 1850s it was lengthened from four years to five to respond to complaints that graduates hadn’t learned enough about foreign affairs.
After its founding in 1954, the Air Force Academy was required to accept Congressional appointees, but found the situation problematic. Some of its leaders led the way in creating formal appointment boards, which (in theory) screened applicants and ranked them, lending an element at least of rationality to the process. Many Congressional Representatives thought it a good idea.
USAFA also led the way in educational specialization and vetting of faculty, pioneering creation of academic majors. USMA and USNA had long resisted those moves, and by the late 1960s found themselves at serious risk of going out. But they grudgingly followed suit.
The emphasis on “warfighting” by the USAFA leadership was not a distillation of modern military wisdom, but an anomaly of the politics of the moment: in the early 1970s, most of the military establishment was desperate to forestall the admission of women and resorted to ever more strenuous measures to keep them out. Graduates found themselves permitted to enter only an ever-shrinking number of career fields - ostensibly oriented toward actual conduct of operations. All the efforts led to a diminution of USAFA’s reputation as an engineering school. Since then, most of the nonsense has gone by the board, and the reputation has been rising again.
I attended USAFA in the early 1970s, arriving a couple months after Robin Olds left his position as Commandant. I used to worship him, as did many cadets, but now I’d have to rate him as a net negative.
I did spend just over 24-1/2 years on active duty, but came away with a dim view of senior leaders: focused on operations to the exclusion of all else, more interested in building an empire of acolytes and in giving cronies a leg up than in understanding the rest of the force. All were pilots, and fighter pilots ruled all of them. They were made successful, and kept that way, by people who were better than they were. Their only true qualification to lead was overweening ego.
Robin Olds may have inspired cadets for a little while, but he was a borderline alcoholic all his life, unruly and frequently a pain in the neck. His career spanned many years but his successes were more limited than his reputation. He tried to keep aircrew who weren’t fighter pilots from getting credit for exploits in Southeast Asia.
After leaving active duty, he refused consistently to pay taxes on income earned from his writings and speeches. And near the very end of his life, he became a public safety hazard on the streets of Steamboat Springs, driving drunk.
Not exactly the epitome of a role model.
During most of my time as a cadet, Hoyt S Vandenberg Jr was the Commandant. His tenure flirted with disaster; for reasons he never made clear, he was deeply suspicious of upperclassmen who weren’t his chosen lackeys, visiting stern discipline on violators of regs and and anybody suspected of rambunctiousness, treating them as subversives forever but one short step from overthrowing his “established order.” He flouted regs and safety rules himself; not a guy who took the slightest effort to lead from the front.
If USAF succeeds at all, I judge that it happens because of the enlisted ranks, and the mid- to lower-ranked officers. Senior officers often gave lip service to notions about taking care of people, but I cannot recall an instance where they walked the talk.
After accumulating experience on bomber aircrews, and at low to middle levels of supervision of technical support organizations, I’m in not impressed with L Todd Wood. He spent a few years breezing around as a pilot, then made a pile on Wall Street, and now eases his conscience by poormouthing service academies and writing fiction. What gives him the notion that spit-and-polish, obsequiousness, and tufthunting turns youngsters into Real Men? It’s quite evident that he never had the slightest notion about the technical support structure that made his privileged life possible. Less than surprising.
The biggest problem with the USAFA is that it is not needed. Air Force officers have been best when they have been civilian school graduates, and that includes results in the pilot programs. When there is little need for something it then flounders looking for an identity, as the USAFA has for its entire existence.
P.S. I lived just a few miles north of the academy until recently. It is by far the best of the bunch as far as resources and location, and without question it is something someone should make real use of before it goes away.
Hoyt Jr. would never have made Major if his last name wasn’t “Vandenberg”.
“The biggest problem with the USAFA is that it is not needed. Air Force officers have been best when they have been civilian school graduates, and that includes results in the pilot programs...” [Code Toad, post 44]
A mildly interesting notion. Where did you come by it? Propaganda from the two senior services, who claim superior wisdom and pride of place just because, well, they’re senior?
It’s logically impossible for the senior services to develop a better and more complete view of national defense. They think in two dimensions only. What really riles them is that air power demonstrated execrable manners by coming along in World War Two and win it - while still at a relatively primitive level of development.
I speak as an air power advocate, not an apologist for USAF as currently equipped and led.
The parlous state of USAF senior leadership is perhaps most colorfully embodied in the Two Johns - John Rosa and Johnny Weida, Superintendent and Commandant of Cadets respectively, in the first few years of this century. They were bedeviled by the largest sex harassment scandal to hit USAFA, but suffered no real punishment. One was a Citadel grad, the other a USAFA grad. Both enjoyed prior assignments as fighter pilots. One - I forget now which - infamously commented that “It is the Air Force Academy, but it isn’t our Air Force Academy.” I was told by several colleagues that their only qualifications for their jobs at USAFA was the ability to fly really good four-ship.
“Hoyt Jr. would never have made Major if his last name wasn’t ‘Vandenberg’.” [DuncanWaring, post 45]
You have a gift for understatement.
I harbor doubts that if he hadn’t been the son of Hoyt S Vandenberg Sr, he’d never have gotten that appointment to USMA.
Hoyt Jr was quite savvy. He married the daughter of Leon Johnson, the commander of 44BG who fearlessly countermanded his lead nav on 1 August 1943, during the epic low level attack against the oilfields near Ploesti. The nav was right and Leon was wrong, but he ordered the bomber stream to turn anyway. Much higher attrition and lower strike success. He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.
In 1976, Hoyt Jr was assigned to the the MAAG in Iran. They kicked him out of the country. I’ve never learned why.
we’re past that now
very true
It is sad to think two generations Gen Z and the Millennials are lost to liberalism. The Dark Ages are here. Knowledge and technology will be lost. They will die from silly things.
Not new. USAF basic training was a joke during Viet Nam. The AF never got its head on straight about basic military training from the start and when Korea broke in 1950 it simply swamped the training base. There literally was no basic training for 2-3 years. That is why tech school was such crap for decades, petty harassment there was supposed to make up for no real basic training. This is completely different from the RAF in which basic training is real basic training concluding with real tactical military problems using Royal Army units as aggressors or red force. The goal is to inculcate ‘regimental spirit’ and a sense of being a part of a military service.
When many women went into the military they chose the Air Force. We know a few.
This was bound to happen.
Knowledge and technology will be lost.
“Knowledge and technology will be lost.
We’ve already lost the knowledge/technology to make leakproof fittings in hydrogen fuel lines.”
Yep. Sad.
“When many women went into the military they chose the Air Force. We know a few”
Yep. Not that women don’t have a place in many career fields, but the feminization was the issue, not women in general.
That was the “unintended” consequence.
I guess that is better than a lot of other unexpected consequences we are experiencing in our brave new progressive world.
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