Dereliction of Duty – The Perfumed Princes who Sold out the US Military.

Most of this we've all heard in bits and pieces before but this is a pretty comprehensive summary of the events that have about ruined our military.

Starmann puts the start of the cancer in 1991 but I think it was twenty years earlier with the institution of DACOWITS.

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President Donald J. Trump's address to the United Nations on 09/19/2017.

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“Yes, the SEALs, when they’re not selling juicers or video games, are still eating glass and urinating napalm.”

I think you can get a prescription for the urinating napalm part.

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At least you could in my day.

‘Things’ may have evolved past that point.

Good article and summary of how we got to where we are. It’s disappointing that Mattis isn’t in control and hasn’t set about changing this cluster fk.

Re Col David Hackworth /Perfumed Princes...see also The JCS Should Be Worried... (old One...blogged numerous times thru the years...

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The generals and admirals try to justify their negligence by telling themselves that if they didn’t go along with the liberals, then the liberals would cut the budget for their branch of service.

The liberals played them like they were 8 year old boys.

I got out when I realized that some of the most bitter enlisted men were lifers. They got screwed somewhere along their path to 20+. I was just another first termer with an attitude and they were just vegetables to me. Drinking with a few of them at the NCO club opened them up.

"The liberals played them like they were 8 year old boys."

The liberals played with them like they were 8 year old boys. Pedophiles politics, one of the left's core beliefs...

In spite of all this abuse, it’s still the most powerful and effective military machine in the world.

Anyone who believes otherwise is just plain stupid.

Not arguing with you to a point...air and naval power? I would agree.

Ground troops? Questionable.

Stupid? Maybe.

There is no such thing as a purely ground force...in practice.

Because without air cover, any and all of them are little more than dead meat.

Make the The JCS SHOULD Be Worried....
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Gunny G
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Add to the reason some believe Suzie Q can just push a button and win a war the very fanciful tales of the likes of Whatever Tomb Raider kicking the chit out of a legion of burly men etc. The fanciful tale of women knocking the crap out of men in the movies went on and on and on from there.

Come on. Get realistic.

> The Real Reason the US Navy Keeps Hitting Merchant Vessels
>
>
>
> Words by Wes O’Donnell, Managing Editor InMilitary.com and Veteran, U.S.
> Army and U.S. Air Force
>
> Editor’s note: Last week, we secured an interview with a recently retired
> U.S. Navy captain who spent 20 years at sea and 10 in the Pentagon, working
> on process improvement projects. He asked to remain anonymous due to a
> number of political considerations and a need for privacy. For the purposes
> of this interview, we will call him Captain F.
>
> InMilitary: Thank you, sir, for sitting down with us and giving us your
> time. As you’re painfully aware, there have been a number of at-sea
> incidents lately, most notably the two separate collisions of the USS
> Fitzgerald and USS John McCain with merchant vessels. Sailors’ lives have
> been lost. There are conspiracy theories of Russian spoofing of GPS and
> other nonsense. Our most pressing question is: Why is this happening now and
> with such frequency?
>
> Captain F: First, the big picture. The nation, like every nation, has to
> balance guns and butter. Just a fact of life. Limited resources and
> unlimited requirements, needs and wants. Congress and the executive branch
> must lead that discussion based on the threat and the capabilities of the
> required force to meet those threats.
>
> After each war, although they do not term it as such (actually, they did
> after the collapse of the Berlin Wall), there is always a great deal of
> pressure to provide a “peace dividend” - or more precisely, to move funding
> from the military to social projects. I have been through two significant
> drawdowns in my service from 1974-2003.
>
> IM: The first drawdown was after Vietnam?
>
> Captain F: Yes, the first came after Vietnam when the Navy drew down from a
> high of about 900 ships - about 700 at the end of the war - down to under
> 500 ships. Additionally, the civilian leadership decided to shift from a
> conscription policy to an all-volunteer force.
>
> On top of that, there was significant unrest in the country after the war,
> things like the civil rights movement and the country was divided
> politically. Impacts of that shift in mentality meant that we were dealing
> with a different breed of young men that were coming into the service.
>
> It was mandated that we accept into the service a certain number of
> individuals who had a low aptitude for service, including those that were
> intellectually challenged, had drug use problems, and so forth. To a large
> extent, we became something of a social experiment.
>
> IM: It doesn’t sound like a very effective or efficient military.
>
> Captain F: There was a time in the ‘75-’79 time frame when we literally had
> a CO stabbed by a crew member. Officers could not walk through the ships
> without some kind of arms or guards after hours.
>
> The ships were deteriorating swiftly and the standards across the board were
> not being met. The largest conventional shipbuilding classes at the time
> were the Spruance Class Destroyers and the Ticonderoga Cruisers.
>
> Ships were failing routine inspections, particularly with respect to the
> 1,200-pound steamships, which were difficult to maintain and had been
> severely abused during the war. By the time the ‘80 election arrived, I had
> served two tours - one on USS John S. McCain (DDG-36), which was one of
> those ships that was failing.
>
> It took an enormous amount of work by the officers, particularly the COs and
> XOs, to get us deployed. I left that ship and helped to commission the USS
> Comte De Grasse (DD 974) in 1978. The change was astounding to me. While we
> worked hard, we also had a first-rate crew and wardroom personnel who were
> experienced. That was my first inkling of the underlying issues.
>
> IM: So the post-Vietnam drawdown had an impact that lasted for years.
>
> Captain F: Correct. Into the ‘79-’80 time frame, ships continued to fail.
> Oilers could not get underway because they did not have enough boiler techs
> to steam safely. There was a rise in collisions and groundings.
>
> Two things happened from my perspective that changed things around. One, we
> got a CNO (in ‘76, I think it was), who basically came in and said we are
> going to a zero-defect mentality. He instituted tougher standards, mandatory
> random drug testing, and held officers and CPOs accountable. We finally had
> leadership at the top.
>
> The second thing that happened was that Ronald Reagan was elected president
> and boldly said we were going to create a 600-ship navy because that was
> what the threat required. [They were] the two sides of the coin that allowed
> us to dig out - good leadership and more money.
>
> Think about the Navy we took to war 10 years after Reagan was elected; it
> performed well. Additionally, think about the things that the Navy was able
> to do - drug operations, Grenada, Panama, Libya, Lebanon, the Persian Gulf
> tanker wars, as well as all of the normal operations. This work culminated
> with Desert Storm and expelling Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait.
>
> IM: You mentioned two big drawdowns. When was the second?
>
> Captain F: The second drawdown came after the Berlin Wall fell. President
> Clinton essentially sold everyone on the idea that he could reap a peace
> dividend in the ‘90s.
>
> We decommissioned a whole host of ships. Every ship I ever served on was
> gone by 2005. Spruance cans were built to last 40 to 50 years in a modular
> fashion and had the most up-to-date weapons systems on board, including the
> SQQ -89 ASW suite and the Tomahawk missile systems in vertical launch mode.
>
> The Aegis cruisers were built on essentially the same hull and were meant to
> last about 40 years as well. Most of them are now gone.
>
> John S. McCain (DDG-36) was decommissioned in 1978 and the new one was
> commissioned after the turn of the century. The FFG-7s, which were the
> smaller frigates needed to serve for escort duty, should have lasted well
> into the 21st century.
>
> The ‘90s saw the same traits as the late ‘70s and early ‘80s; the difference
> being that the major shipbuilding programs to replace the ships being
> decommissioned were pushed to the right. DDGs started delivering with speed
> in about 1990. They were to be followed by DDX and the LCS [Littoral Combat
> Ships]. Both were meant to be minimally manned units with high technology
> and built on a modular frame that could be adapted to circumstances.
>
> IM: We’ve heard of the “minimally-manned” theory, allowing technology to do
> the heavy lifting.
>
> Captain F: DDX was supposedly going to start delivering in 2012 and the LCS
> was supposed to start delivering in about 2008. Neither happened - both
> programs were troubled.
>
> So now we had a situation where you had decommissioned a large portion of
> the fleet. We are down close to 255 ships or so the last I looked, and we
> are still heading downward. On top of that, you were asking those ships we
> had to do jobs previously done by larger, better-armed and better-manned
> vessels.
>
> It did not take me long after I took command of Fleet Training Center
> Norfolk in ‘98 to realize that I was supposedly training the chiefs and
> first-class petty officers of the new ships and that I would soon be
> expected to train the lower rank 2nd class petty officers and below. In
> other words, we should have been taking into account the fact that each of
> those men was going to have to have the knowledge, skills and abilities of
> about six people in order to do their jobs. The DDX was originally meant to
> be manned by 75 people versus the 250 to 350 men found on either the DDG51s,
> Spruance cans or Tico cruisers.
>
> The LCS was even worse. They were expected to come into the fleet with a
> minimally manned ship of under 50.
>
> IM: There was a large drawdown in the ‘90s. Many military bases closed. This
> continued until 2000?
>
> Captain F: After all that was going on in the ‘90s, we also had a mandate to
> transform the Navy; build a better tooth-to-tail ratio and cut the personnel
> budgets. Think about it: if you can’t cut capital infrastructure such as
> ships, then the only place to look is manning.
>
> From my perspective in the training world, that meant we had to figure out
> how to cut the costs of training by doing it smarter and with technology. Up
> until then, all Navy schools delivered training the same way - blue smock,
> pointer and blackboards.
>
> The personnel command was meant to transform the way we assigned people to
> ships, considering the skills they had, to ensure that the right folks were
> assigned. That is how and why Task Force Excel came into being in 2000.
> Donald Rumsfeld came in as Secretary of Defense and instituted large
> transformation efforts.
>
> From the Navy perspective, the CNO was Vern Clark and he fully supported the
> transformation efforts. We did a lot of good work and instituted a lot of
> change.
>
> But as in all organizations, resistance to change can be powerful. In my
> opinion, to successfully get anything established, you should have at least
> seven years. We had that barely before the CNO retired, and a new one took
> his place and the resistance built back up.
>
> IM: So it’s a leadership issue?
>
> Captain F: What gave out was leadership. The admirals did not put their
> careers on the line and object about anything. They rolled over to save
> themselves. That is the big picture. From a more localized perspective, the
> direct in-line people, COs, XOs and MCPOs, also rolled over.
>
> There is no way on my ships that would have happened. We always had direct
> leadership. Leadership that was there, present and capable. I am willing to
> bet that those ships involved in incidents with merchants had all their
> sexual orientation, transgender training, and environmental training all
> completed at the expense of the safety and operational training.
>
> If you put the emphasis on social issues, you get a social force. If you put
> it on operational issues, you get an operational force.
>
> The mistakes I see in the latest incidents - I have read the actual reports
> on the Fitzgerald - were so simple and basic it takes your breath away.
> Technology can never replace humans in totality, especially when the law of
> gross tonnage applies.
>
> As CO, I would have been on the bridge in both those incidents. We would
> have had highly qualified officers and petty officers on watch.
>
> So if you can follow my logic here is what I conclude. There was a
> confluence of leadership failures:
>
> First, there was a failure by the nation and particularly the executive
> branch of the government to recognize that by using the armed forces as a
> social change agent, as well as denying them the tools (forces) to do the
> job, will always cause the forces to break. We are at the breaking point and
> it shows.
>
> Second, there was a failure in naval leadership writ large from the time we
> tried to transform the forces to meet the threat to today. Not enough senior
> leadership was stepping forward, ready to sacrifice themselves, so our
> sailors would not be.
>
> In addition, it has been obvious to me that SECNAV Mabus was able to
> transform naval leadership in a way to conform to his world view; [that he]
> fired or relieved those who did not conform to his views and promoted those
> that did. I think the top leadership is pretty rotten, although I am sure
> there is “good wood” in there somewhere.
>
> Third, the direct chain of command must have been weak - 7th Fleet down
> through the commodores of the squadrons - or these ships would not be having
> these problems. Either the standards are too low or they are worrying about
> other things. I suspect they are worrying about other things, such as the
> social experimentation going on and how they get through so they can
> continue to survive themselves.
>
> Fourth, the ship climate and command structures were obviously out of whack.
> COs don’t get to sleep in in heavy shipping waters, [that’s] just a fact.
>
> Fifth, while it might be convenient or popular to string some kind of
> conspiracy theory, the mistakes made were all simple things: basic ship
> handling, navigation and seamanship stuff. Destroyers do not get run down by
> merchants; they are faster and much more maneuverable. No, they were not
> hacked; they were not run down on purpose. They just were asleep at the
> wheel.
>
> Sixth, I am surprised and will continue to be surprised if some of these
> folks in leadership positions are not court-martialed. There is a good case
> for manslaughter in my mind.
>
> And lastly, we need to truly transform the services, not from a social
> viewpoint but rather from a warfighting viewpoint. Capabilities are
> available for us to reduce crew manning and use distributed systems, but
> like anything [else], we have to be serious about doing it. Perhaps that
> will be the one good thing coming out of all of this.
>
> The last thing I will say is that the Navy has a very difficult issue
> transforming. Since it is capital-heavy, it needs to do more to bring down
> shipbuilding costs, while at the same time work assiduously to transform our
> personnel into distributed nodes with authority, that is transforming the
> personnel force. That is a tall order and it takes people not only with
> leadership skills but also imagination and vision, which is a commodity in
> short supply.
>
> When I was the ACOS at OPTEVFOR, I was in charge of the testing for the
> entire surface Navy, so I had Tomahawks, harpoons, surface-to-air missiles,
> ASW, AAW and SW, as well as all of the platform-specific stuff.
> Interestingly, I also had the drone programs. I had them because the Air
> ACOS and company could not be trusted not to kill the program, because they
> viewed it as a threat to manned air vehicles and rightfully so.
>
> Our Navy should now be something like I described back in 2000 - lots of
> drones, surface, subsurface and air, being controlled by nodes which take
> the info back quickly to centralized areas for decisions on action. The
> weapons can be delivered by drones as well.
>
> Why we are still dropping iron bombs on top of targets before they are
> softened up is beyond me. Iron bombs have their place, and so do manned
> aircraft, but they are truly expensive to lose. We need to do better. We can
> do it better.
>
> IM: Again, thank you for your time and your insight. Most importantly, thank
> you for your years of dedicated service.
>
> Captain F: My pleasure.
>
>
>
>
>

Mattis is an Obama General and he is in control, hence the cross dressers are still in the military, women in combat and homosexuals all over the place.

This retired Army Officer will tell you the article is absolutely on target, right down the line. Trump proclaims to the UN and the world that our military is the best EVER. BS. Pure BS. It is a shell of its former greatness, rotten to the core with insane policies and worthless leaders. It is half the size it was at the time of Desert Storm and not nearly as capable. The only thing I would add to the article is Mattis has proven to be a paper tiger. He was advertised by Trump as “Mad Dog” and was going to be the savior of the military. In fact, all he has done is countermand Trumps cross dresser orders. He is just as PC as the rest and only concerned with himself. The state of the Pentagon and the lack of effort to fix it is my #1 problem with Trump.

You are wrong. I served a full career and hate to say it but you are wrong. It could be with a major house cleaning and money to rebuild but it is not #1 right now. Sorry.