Are We Ready For This Press Conference?

What do these numbers mean?

I'm discussing over at USNIBlog. 

Come on by and ponder with us.

Libraries, Full of Keys. Where's Your Lock?

Take a moment to head over to Joe Byerly's blog and read his latest call to action in the defense of reading and knowing your history; 
Look to the Past for Lessons.

What I like about his contribution is that he pushes the importance of reading and knowing where you came from down the chain of command. Knowledge of the past isn't just for those leading armies, writing strategy, putting plans together, or wearing stars - no - it is for all leaders.

The tools may change, but the essence of the profession of arms has not changed in thousands of years. Joe gets it - and he wants other to get it too.

Just a sample;

...how can we improve our leadership abilities? By looking to the past. History is a landscape full of commanders who led soldiers through extreme conditions and faced great fear and uncertainty yet accomplished amazing feats. Their leadership made the difference, and we can improve ourselves by studying their successes as well as their failures.
...
think about the type of leader we want to be ahead of time. Nothing helps drive introspection better than studying past leaders.

Additionally, we can come loaded with vicarious experiences that will greatly improve our decisionmaking abilities. British Field Marshal Sir William Slim can help us think through the value of calm and cool-headed leadership when we are up against insurmountable problems. Gen. George S. Patton Jr. can teach how aggression on the battlefield affects enemy decisionmaking. Finally, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant can prepare us to effectively exercise Mission Command when one of our subordinates is a Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman and the other is a Maj. Gen. Gouverneur K. Warren.
...
I’ve also learned much from the horrible bosses of history as well as rising stars who fell from grace. Maj. Gen. Charles Lee, who was permanently dismissed from the Continental Army, is a great example of what happens when we fail to follow others and let our personal flaws go unchecked as we are given more responsibility. The careers of Gens. George McClellan and Douglas MacArthur should help us reflect on ego so we may keep ours from clouding professional judgment. British Gen. Sir Redvers Buller, from the Boer War, exemplifies what happens when we fail to develop our intuition through self-study.
...
When we study the leaders who came before us, we begin to reflect on the leadership traits we want to develop in ourselves. We become better prepared to respond when the need arises, and we more clearly understand what is required of us to win in battle.

The choice is ours. We can either be shaped and influenced by our narrow experiences, or we can allow leaders from over 5,000 years of combat to mold us into the great leaders our subordinates deserve.

Read it all.

Hat tip BJ.

Tom Hudner and David Sears: a Korean War Best of

Join us this Sunday from 5-6pm for one of our favorite shows from our first year with guests; holder of the Medal of Honor from the Korean War Captain Thomas J. Hudner, Jr., USN (Ret), and the author of Such Men as These: The Story of the Navy Pilots Who Flew the Deadly Skies over Korea, David Sears as they talk about the role of Naval Aviation in the Korean War.

Stuck between the Greatest Generation's high-water mark of World War II and the Baby Boomer's Vietnam War - the Korean War often gets lost in the shuffle despite its critical role is setting the foundation for the Cold War and our ultimate victory with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

When the average person thinks of the role of Navy Air in the Korean War, they think of James Mitchner's novel and movie The Bridges of Toki-Ri. As usual, the real story is better than fiction. We will talk to CAPT Hudner about his and his shipmates experiences - and will finish up with David Sears exploring what he discovered in researching his book on what happened in the skies over Korea in the early 1950's.

Join us live if you can with the usual suspects in the chat room and offer up your questions for our guest, but if you miss the show you can always listen to the archive at blogtalkradio or Stitcher. 

If you use iTunes, you can add Midrats to your podcast list simply by clicking the iTunes button at the main showpage - or you can just click here.

Fullbore Friday

Your leaders can deny you, because they value your mission.

Your press can ignore you, because they are lazy and politically compromised.

Your politicians ignore you because what you need to do embarrasses them, though they order you to do it.

In the end, it does not matter. You do your job, you do it well, and you do it for the guys to the left and right of you. The fact that you might get to work with one of those Kurdish all female battalions? Just a bonus.

To our Shipmates and fellow Americans doing what they do best - Fullbore to you today. If you can get one of those patches to me, I'll trade it for a bottle of the Catoctin Creek product of your choosing.

Ever since U.S. President Barack Obama decided to send 250 more Special Forces to the Syrian battlefield against the so-called Islamic State, they’ve been easy to spot on the front lines in Hasakah, Tisreen Dam, and near Raqqa, the capital of the “caliphate” that’s also called ISIS, ISIL, and Daesh.

In a base close to the town of Ayn al-Issa, U.S. soldiers are not only advising, they are also assisting the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) very closely in targeting ISIS positions with mortars and laser guided air strikes.

Now photographs have surfaced of some of the American soldiers wearing the bright red, yellow, and green patches of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) that have proved some of the most committed and effective fighters on the ground against ISIS.

Even Laz Wouldn't do This For LCS

Sorry Laz, just playing ... I think. The news on the Diversity Front is so depressing I think I will take a break. If you knew what NAVAIR was doing for .02% of the population, it would just ruin the entire Memorial Day Weekend vibe.

Oh, and sorry to the front porch for the visual about Laz in context of the below story (he would not look good with a wig) - but this is so perfect; I've got nothing for what Brock Vergakis is feeding us this AM.

The executive assistant at shipbuilder Austal USA planned to meet Navy Capt. Jeff Riedel at a hotel east of Mobile, Ala., the evening of Jan. 24, 2012. From there, she was going to hop into his rental car to go to an out-of-the-way restaurant 45 minutes away in Gulf Shores, where prying eyes wouldn’t spot them together.

Loving said her orders were clear: She needed risque photographs with Riedel so the company president could use them as leverage over the officer who oversaw acquisition for the troubled littoral combat ship program, which Austal had been awarded a $3.5 billion contract to build in 2010.

The ship was under intense scrutiny in Washington because of mounting costs, design and construction problems, concerns over the vessel’s survivability in combat and its ability to perform its missions effectively. The speedy ships, designed to operate in shallow water, are a major component of the Navy’s future, especially in Asia.

Riedel was in Alabama to help review the program.

But instead of resolving the problems, Riedel saw his 26-year military career quickly unravel. Riedel and Loving spent that night in his hotel room, although they said nothing happened. Both lost their jobs within days. Austal USA President Joe Rella resigned a few months later.

Important note besides the obligatory, "This explains a lot." At least this Sailor learned by his sophomore year in college that the, "Really, I spent the night in a hotel room with a young attractive woman who was trying to seduce me and nothing happened ... " didn't work around adults drunk or sober.

Speaking of sophomoric behavior between the sexes;

“If you get me drunk, I am like a wild lady, and I had made sure I was drunk. ...If I’m going to do this I’m not going to do this (expletive) sober,” Loving said.”I tried to sit on his lap. I stood up and leaned between his chair. He’d asked me to sit down. I kept drinking more and more and more and more. I was way drunk, way fun, way hanging off of him. And then we went back and I informed him I couldn’t drive.”

Riedel said he had one beer. Back at the hotel, there were no available rooms for the intoxicated Loving, and neither had cash for a cab. Riedel offered one of his room’s two beds, “a huge error in judgment,” he said later.

I just need to stop. People really need to get out more when they are young.

I'll take Riedel and Loving at their word that they are the only grown man and woman who would get themselves in this mess, but both need to get their life-PQS books confiscated and dropped back a class.

See that guy? Don't be that guy.

That is all.

Hat tip C.

Bad Sulu Moves to Pakistan

There may be an asterisk in that "Thousand Ship Navy."

I'm pondering over at USNIBlog. 

Come on by!

From Those to Whom Much is Given

Wrongs can be put right. In a free society, it can just take time - but more often than not - you get there.

In one of the more shameful events of a shameful time in our nation's history, it a fit of self-serving narcissistic pique, those who were receiving the greatest advantage in life from the greatest nation on our little planet decided that the hard work of ensuring liberty was for the little people;

As a young chemistry professor at Yale University in 1969, Gary Haller voted to boot the U.S. military's Reserve Officers' Training Corps program off the Ivy League school's Connecticut campus.

Like many American schools at the time it was gripped by protests against the Vietnam War. Yale's faculty considered the presence of ROTC, which trains future officers and provides college scholarships, to be tacit support for an unpopular war.

"People were just so outraged," Haller said.

The actual reasons and motivations were a bit more nuanced than that, but we should let the past be the past. Let them comfort themselves with their little fairy tales - they and we know their reasons.

Regardless, that has changed - and for the better for us all;

Four decades on, however, he views the ROTC through a different lens. “We want to produce students who are leaders in every segment of our society," said Haller, now an emeritus professor who led a faculty committee that helped pave the way for the ROTC's return to Yale. "Whether you like the military or not, it is a big segment of our society.”

On Monday, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter visited his alma mater for the first commissioning since the Vietnam era of cadets and midshipmen who participated in the program for all four years of college.

The ceremony is the latest evidence of a sea change in the attitude of elite universities, which shunned the military for four decades in part because of its controversial "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy for gay personnel. Now they have come to realize that their graduates should have as much influence on a major instrument of American power as they do in the halls of the White House or the trading desks of Wall Street.

The return of ROTC to Ivy League campuses is a return to the norm that prevailed for more than 200 years, when graduates routinely marched, flew and sailed from campus to combat.

"I really do believe deeply that ROTC needs to be back on campuses like ours so that our students can have a truly hands-on, active role in shaping the next military," said Yale College Dean Jonathan Holloway, whose father served in the Air Force.

John Lewis Gaddis, a prominent Yale historian who supported ROTC's return, said he was always struck by how few students had ever met anybody in the military.

Carter referenced that in his speech on Monday, noting that the ROTC graduates had "helped bridge a divide that has persisted for too long." "For some of your classmates, you're the first member of the military they've ever gotten to know."

For the record, the DADT excuse was just a holding action from the last holdout red diaper brigade, which we all knew at the time.

A small but correct gesture is to get ROTC back, even in small numbers. For those who wrongly like to badmouth this generation of young men and women, they are showing by their actions how they feel about serving their nation compared to those who came before. Keep that note handy.

Having more people from Yale and other top-tier schools serve will help bring the full perspective to citizenship to the Ivy League that needs to be there. For better or worse, those schools produce a high percentage of our nation's leaders, this will help everyone.

As a Southerner, my worldview towards service was skewed by the Old South and Tidewater sub-cultures I was raised in; military service in the upper-middle and even upper classes was not that unusual. In many families, it is almost mandatory. Once in the Fleet, it became apparent to me that other parts of the nation did not share the same feeling of obligation or interest in serving.

Spend some years in the military and you see that wardrooms are not balanced. Those of us who came from well to do families were almost all from Old South, Tidewater, and a higher than expected percentage of upper-Midwest families. Most were from land grant university type schools, with a few Washington & Lee, VMI, Citadel, William & Mary, Sewanee etc types thrown in for flavor. Part of that is culture, part of that is opportunity. When you included the not insignificant percentage of, "the military is a family business" officers - an upper-class Ivy League Yankee was along the lines of a unicorn sighting. 

We now have one less excuse for the part of society to whom much is given, to do what is expected. This in a small measure will produce a more well-rounded military, and a better perspective of military service among what, sadly, we can call the ruling class.

Back in July 2004 (yes, I have been blogg'n that long), I summarized this issue in a more personal way;

...a big advantage to getting more of the elite to VOLUNTEER to serve their country for a few years so I will have more people at work that understand Lacrosse and field hockey.

A little confession here; sorry Shipmates, I faked interest in NASCAR when the topic came up. One has to do what one must do to survive.

Enough of me. Bravo Zulu to the new Ensigns and Second Lieutenants.  You, your country, and your peers will all be better for your service.