Proactively “From the Sea”; an agent of change leveraging the littoral best practices for a paradigm breaking six-sigma best business case to synergize a consistent design in the global commons, rightsizing the core values supporting our mission statement via the 5-vector model through cultural diversity.
For longtime Midrats listeners who heard our interview with Laura Hillenbrand on Midrats, you've been waiting two years for this. Her book, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, is outstanding - and the movie looks good as well. I think Captain Louis Zamperini, US Army Air Corps (Ret.) would approve - though he probably would be a bit worried about all the fuss.
Though there isn't much snickering now, remember when Russia started to stretch? She messed with Estonia soft, Georgia hard, and Ukraine a bit harder. There were plenty of jokes about how those old, shuffling, ignored, and slightly grumpy Russia hands in the Beltway and Pentagon were all of a sudden demanding face time and wildly gesticulating with an unexpected youthful vigor after so long in the wilderness. Well, not so funny or ignored now. As the USA continues to want to pull back and/or be stuck in analysis paralysis at the POLMIL level, that vacuum will draw others in. Smoldering and quiet areas will flame up to meet whatever fuel is there. At the end of the Cold War, remember what we had deployed to the Mediterranean? The 6th Fleet was strong on the surface and subsurface. In the air, including a carrier's airwing, Navy alone had squadrons of VQ reconnaissance and VR fixed & rotary wing cargo aircraft based out of Rota, Spain and Signoella, Italy. CONUS based VP squadrons deployed to Rota and Sigonella, Italy. There were full time detachments in Souda Bay, Crete as well. The Med was busy ... in the last 20 years, notsomuch. Victor Davis Hanson thinks, like Russia, the Med might be back in play;
The Mediterranean (“in the middle of the earth”) has been history’s constant cauldron. It provided too easy access between three vastly different and usually rival continents — Asia, Africa, and Europe. And it helped birth and spread three major and often warring religions — Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Without it, there would have been no Roman or Ottoman Empire.
Most of the Mediterranean’s history, then, is one of abject violence. The unfortunate islands situated in the sea’s vortex — especially Cyprus, Crete, Malta, and Sicily — were invaded, occupied, and fought over constantly by Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Venetians, Franks, Ottomans, British, Italians, and Germans. To chronicle these islands’ history is to study massive castles and walls, which are still what first greet any visitor to port.
...
For the last 70 years, the Mediterranean has been quieter than at any other time in its long history — at least since the second century a.d., during the reign of the five so-called “good” emperors of Rome, when all the shores of the three continents were tranquil and interconnected by what the Romans called “mare nostrum” (our sea).Why?
Largely because of American warships. Except for the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, and occasional violent spillage offshore of the various Middle East wars, the U.S. Sixth Fleet, based in Naples since shortly after World War II, has been able, with its NATO partners, to keep pirates out, aggressors down, and peaceful nations in.
...
Will that always be so?
If the U.S. recedes and lowers its naval profile, it is not hard to see how the Mediterranean could once again heat up. Amid the relative peace of a divided Cyprus, we forget that the island’s fate has never been resolved. An increasingly Islamist Turkey is becoming neo-Ottoman in its relationship to Greece and Israel. If Vladimir Putin’s Russia continues to rebuild its military as the U.S. continues to downgrade its own, it is not hard to envision Russian ships leaving their now-permanent Crimean ports on new missions out of the Dardanelles.
I also very much like his reminder that this great international maritime partnership with the increasingly militarily impotent Western Europeans is a mirage;
The great European fleets of the past — the Spanish, the French, and the British — are shadows of their former selves. Some of the worst violence in the world today — the civil war in Syria, the bloodletting in Libya, the war in Gaza — takes place on the shores of the Mediterranean, but so far has not spread to sea.
Americans might think the Mediterranean is too distant to care much about. But from our very beginnings that sea had an odd ability to draw us into its turmoil. “To the shores of Tripoli” is a refrain known to most Americans, and we also remember the Barbary Coast — the scene of our nation’s first foreign fights and our most recent, in Benghazi.
In a message navalists need to be repeating as much as possible;
As we dismantle our military, we should remember that history’s natural order of things unfortunately is not peace, but instability and war. Peace, as a character in Plato’s Laws remarked, is a brief “parenthesis.” It occasionally breaks out because aggressors are deterred by the superior military forces of those committed to the general peace — and all nations understand the consequences of weaker aggressive nations’ stirring up trouble.
...
We can see the results of the new lower profile of the U.S. fleet also in the South China Sea, as Japan squares off against China, and South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines anxiously watch. As the world heats up, and as the U.S. global deterrent forces erode, there is no intrinsic reason why history’s most contested sea might not be so again. We should remember that when we talk of defense cuts, and before we pull too many American ships out of a maritime intersection where peace has usually been the exception.
One thing he does not cover is something top of mind to Italians, Spaniards, and Greeks in their demographic dotage and economic dystopia. As Africa and the Islamic world continue to be in turmoil and are unable to meet the aspirations of their people - where is the nearest access to a Western lifestyle? North and west to Europe. How do they best get there? By sea. It has only started.
The Navy has postponed the stand-up of an expeditionary electronic attack squadron as the process awaits environmental clearance, according to a service official.
The stand-up of Electronic Attack Squadron (VAQ) 143, to be equipped with Boeing EA-18G Growlers, had been planned for October at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, Wash.
“A new date has not been set and will not be set until after the completion of the environmental impact study,” said CDR Jeannie Groeneveld, public affairs officer for commander, Naval Air Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet.
The Navy has been operating aircraft a lot more impactful to the environment than the EA-18G since Moses walked the earth, and will be until the crack of doom ... and yet. If the government autoasphyxiates itself like that as the world burns, imagine what it is doing to the private sector every single day.
LCDR Gordon "Judy" Faulkner, USN - the author of the White Paper we discussed at the end of Monday's post about Millennials and I spent the last day and a half exchanging a few emails, and he has graciously given the go-ahead to publish them for your review. I liked it so much, I decided to post his response over at USNIBlog to hopefully give his thoughts a broader airing. So, head on over there and give them a read. BZ Judy.
Alan Zarembo at the LATimes has done some good reporting on Post-Traumatic Stress (disorder), you can get a sample here, but I would like to focus on a much needed discussion area related to it - the inevitable fakers. It is not a slight topic, as each person who fakes it, takes away time and money from those who actually have it an need help. Often times, the fakers over-due their drama as well - and as a byproduct injure the image of everyone who served. They are enabled by a cabal of compassion addicts whose whole lives are spent getting attention for themselves by demonstrating to others how much they "care," a medical industry that gets bonuses by the number of people they see and not the actual help they provide, and lastly the worst - those who promote it for political reasons in order to diminish and smear military service in general, and to marginalize veterans specifically. We all know fakers are there ... they always have been (topic discussed in Stolen Valor) - but the question is - who is or is not?
The 49-year-old veteran explained that he suffered from paranoia in crowds, nightmares and unrelenting flashbacks from the Iraq war. He said he needed his handgun to feel secure and worried that he would shoot somebody.
The symptoms were textbook post-traumatic stress disorder.
But Robert Moering, the psychologist conducting the disability examination at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Tampa, Fla., suspected the veteran was exaggerating. Hardly anybody had so many symptoms of PTSD so much of the time.
As disability awards for PTSD have grown nearly fivefold over the last 13 years, so have concerns that many veterans might be exaggerating or lying to win benefits. Moering, a former Marine, estimates that roughly half of the veterans he evaluates for the disorder exaggerate or fabricate symptoms.
Depending on severity, veterans with PTSD can receive up to $3,000 a month tax-free, making the disorder the biggest contributor to the growth of a disability system in which payments have more than doubled to $49 billion since 2002.
For those of us who have experience with the VA, it quickly becomes clear that much of the disability ratings are off balance. It really is a case of overdoing the original concept ... and it encourages bad behavior.
To get paid for PTSD, veterans must link their symptoms to trauma that occurred during their service. In 2010, the VA expanded what situations could qualify. Credible fear of being attacked — without actually suffering or witnessing violence — became sufficient.
The VA also dropped its requirement to support each case of war-related PTSD with records of the underlying trauma. Those veterans are now taken at their word.
After the changes, the number of new PTSD claims rose 60% to more than 150,000 a year, and approval rates jumped from 55% to 74%.
Again ... here is the problem. For every dollar the government takes from taxpayers or borrows from their grandchildren to give benefits to people who shouldn't be receiving it, that is a dollar that is not going to someone who truly needs it.
Of the 572,612 veterans on the disability rolls for PTSD at the end of 2012, 1,868 — a third of 1% — saw a reduction in their ratings the next year, according to statistics provided by the VA.
Even some veterans whose diagnosis falls under deep suspicion have managed to keep their disability ratings.
In one case that Moering reviewed in 2009, he searched military records and concluded that a Navy veteran on the disability rolls for PTSD had lied to VA clinicians about having served in the elite SEALs and concocted his combat history.
The VA responded by reducing his PTSD rating from 50% to 30%, records show.
...
Marines whose symptoms were fading expressed concern that medical records documenting their progress would be used against them in disability exams. One with mild PTSD was contemplating putting off college because he worried attending would make him appear too healthy.
Wilschke worried that some patients weren't being honest with her.
Several VA mental health providers said the incentives of the disability system have undermined their relationship with patients and inhibited them from fully engaging in treatment.
In 2005, the VA office of the inspector general looked at 92 cases of PTSD and found that while most veterans received treatment when their disability ratings had room to rise, visits dropped off after their ratings topped out at 100% disabled.
...
Of the 572,612 veterans on the disability rolls for PTSD at the end of 2012, 1,868 — a third of 1% — saw a reduction in their ratings the next year, according to statistics provided by the VA.
Even some veterans whose diagnosis falls under deep suspicion have managed to keep their disability ratings.
In one case that Moering reviewed in 2009, he searched military records and concluded that a Navy veteran on the disability rolls for PTSD had lied to VA clinicians about having served in the elite SEALs and concocted his combat history.
The VA responded by reducing his PTSD rating from 50% to 30%, records show.
This too is a VA scandal. I wish more people than just Zarembo would cover it.
There is something in the trans-generational water and it is rather fetid, and I don't much care for it. I'm not sure why - but it seems that in the mad grasping for answers, some people are looking to blame using the cheap grace of trendy pop-sociology. In the specific; the present target as the scapegoat for the problems we face seems to be not just the most innocent, but in fact the victim - the Millenials. This round started at all places over at USNI's Proceedings by CDR Darcie Cunningham, USCG; "Millenials Bring a New Mentality: Does it Fit?",
Ungh. Nothing good ever comes from being inspired in this way;
Recently I attended a webinar titled Manage Millennials and Keep Them Engaged, and my concerns were validated: ...
Really? That is in the same book as, "Until I went to a Tony Robbins seminar, I didn't know I needed to walk on fire in order to motivate myself!" Pretend for a moment I never mentioned Millenials. Do these complaints sound familiar?
The younger generation postures to work only the bare minimum number of hours required.
They have an expectation of accelerated advancement through the organization, without regard for the value that experience provides to those in leadership positions.
Rather than saying “Yes Sir” or “Yes Chief” when tasked with a project or simple task, our newer members frequently question why they have to do it.
Customs and courtesies are eroding.
...jumping the chain of command ...
That is the substance of the author complaints. That is also what I heard Papa Salamander (a Forgotten Generation member) say of the Baby Boomers growing up. It is what the Baby Boomers had to say about my generation, GenX. No. I'm sorry, but I am getting rather tired of this. Sure, each generation has a different reference point and their quirks, but none of it forms the basis for an excuse as outlined in these, "Blame them for my problems." or "I don't want to look at harder causes, I'll blame miasma." articles.
Maybe it is because I am a fringe early cohort GenX that I don't think there is anything specifically "off" about the Millenials - though I do understand trans-generational difference and issues. For many of the reasons our muse outlined almost a quarter century ago, I have issues with the Baby Boomers and even "The Greatest Generation" ... but "GenY" Millenials? No, I really have no issues. As I have mentioned often here and over at Midrats, one of the things I miss the most about being on Active Duty was working with the young men and women in the Fleet. I greatly enjoyed working with them and any issues I saw was not with them, but the standards and conditions of the leaders, regulations, and processes that were put in place by their superiors to lord over and in theory support them. If one wants to make an argument that we have a problem between the leaders and the led - I put my bet with the masters. The problem is never with the led, the problem is with the leaders. In summary;
There are no bad regiments; there are only bad colonels.
- Napoleon Bonaparte
Darcie's article brought forth quite the response from the aggrieved party - one example is from our friend LT Matt Hipple (who helped a bit with this post's research). Read is all. Wait though ... monkeys are not through throwing poo. Another case of blaming the victim, we have the well meaning yet mildly out of his element, LCDR Gordon "Judy" Faulkner, USN. He is trying hard ... but again, the young men and women are not the source of what vexes you. I actually like what he is doing here as he has some good intellectual work invested. He truly cares for the institution and is trying to get a grip on the issues. Read close, I recommend twice, and you will see woven in some threads pointing to the real problem he is dealing with. He is not happy with the condition of the swimming hole he is playing in and has a rough idea that the issues are upstream ... but besides a sniff and a passing glance, he has not started asking - or at least feels he has the top-cover to even bring up - the harder questions of "why" these personality types are floating down to his part of the river. I would love to see a full demographic breakdown of the problem children. If it is anything like the ones I did in the 1990s and early 2000s, then we have the same problem, but probably even worse ... and compounded by the tyranny of accountants.
First, the title is horrible. Get past that click bait nature of it all, read as asked above, and you find the real problems. What he is seeing is not new. I heard similar problems about 20-somethings when the Millenials were still in diapers, No, the issue doesn't have to do with the Millenials per se - just that they happen to be the ones being put though the present matrix of leadership, policy, and programs we have at the moment. Problems Judy outlined? Here are two main ones: 1.
The author graduated flight school after flying 291 hours in T-34, T-2 and T-45.1 Today’s
average Category One pilot receives 240 hours in a primary flight trainer and the T-45.2 The loss of the third platform materially detracts from the adaptability and flexibility inherent in having to learn three platforms vice two. Coupled with the loss of 50 hours of flight time, the effect is significant.
2.
Externally a recent shift to the MPTS grading system in the Training Command created difficulty in properly evaluating student naval aviators (SNAs), resulting in lower quality students matriculating from the Training Command.
3. I think many of us can put good money on the backstory here:
VFA-106 recently received a Category One RP who came from the Training Command with several emails offering apologies and trying to explain that after many attempts to attrite said aviator, he ultimately remained in the system and matriculated due to perceived pressure from the squadron’s Commanding Officer.
Also: look to his solutions section: 6/7 have nothing to do with generational issues - they all have to do with the real problem - the system set up, run, and led by non-Millenials. The problem is not with the Millenials - it is with senior leadership's inability to select, cull, and lead junior personnel. Do that, and any "problem" people simply won't show up. That is the rub. Setting standards from officer accession, entry in to aviation pipeline, and then each milestone along the way. Not just aviation either. We have seen it in all pipelines. I think it is just more acute in aviation. You can hid a sub-par SWO in the watch schedule - in a single seat jet, notsomuch. There is also the problem of second guessing of who can or cannot meet standards. The multiple chances and training jackets measured in inches of thickness and pounds of weight ... the pushing to the right and the next command people who should be invited to find another way to serve their country earlier on - wasting their time and the Navy's money. That story is not new. May be worse - but not new. I would also offer that what is suggested as bugs in the Millenials are actually features if we know how to utilize them. That or we can push much of their best and brightest out just like we did with other generations. In any event - especially when you have Gen X (mostly in their 40s) types complaining about the Millenials (nee GenY), I have roll my eyes. Hey cohorts, lighten up Francis. Besides the fact that most of us in the older GenX cohort are generally unmedicated as youths and have that difference, we have a lot more culturally in common with Mellinials than we do with Baby Boomers. We should know how to work with them - not sound like Sir Harry Highpants sniffing at the whipper-snappers and their crazy outfits. If you are having problems understanding and dealing with Mellinials, then you need to look closer at yourself. You are most likely the personality type that has little interaction through a broad spectrum of the general society. You tend to see things in black and white, and more often than not - have a bit of a large opinion of yourself compared to others. You have little tolerance for messy personalities and thought habits. You sir, are the problem. If you are not given the tools to force shape those that float down stream to you, then your bosses are the problem. A lot of people are making money trying to help people understand the younger generation - this has been a closet industry for decades. Keep that in mind when you watch seminars, offered books, or worse - consultants, to help you do what Vince Lombardi would simply call blocking and tackling. As Steven Rosenfeld over at AlterNet (yes, yes, I know) put it;
Throughout history, there’s always been generational tensions. They can be seen in the phases and arc of each person’s life, and in society in the newest music, books, inventions and values that people embrace. Astute psychologists not only say that these generational tensions are normal and healthy, but that they unfold like the seasons—on a individual level over a lifetime, and across society as the decades turn into historical eras.
Generational warfare. Sure, what do you think Brian?
The large standing Army and active duty military we have known in our lifetime may seem the norm - but it isn't.
Is there a way to maintain a strong military capability - available and scaleable if needed - without the structure we have become accustomed to?
Is there a better way to balance our Reserve and National Guard forces that is better in line with our economic, national security, and yes - Constitutional requirements?
Join us with our guest, General Ron Fogleman, USAF (Ret) for the full hour. Using his article in Defense News, Going Back to the Future: Militia Model Could Cut U.S. Expenditures as a starting point, we will discuss these ideas and more as we look for a way to maintain strength and options as the budget crunch starts.
Originally aired 19 FEB 2012. Join us live for this best of if you can at 5pm Eastern today, but if you miss the show you can always listen to the archive at blogtalkradio.
, is outstanding - and the movie looks good as well.
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