(Followup to this post)
Read this, too.
As someone who went through the SWOSDOC--> specialty school pipeline, this is all fucking horrifying.
Whoever proposed shuttering SWOSDOC ("Baby SWOS") should be flogged. Whoever approved it should be charged with intentional sabotage during wartime and then shot. If they have passed away, dig them up and shoot them, anyway.
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8 comments:
Jesus H. Fuckng Christ! That reads as the precursor to a really ugly part two and three. The real pisser is that Donnie is in no way equipped to deal with the fallout from this and is liable to demand heads and not action, when action is so clearly demanded.
This is infuriating.
Actually, the best thing that Trump could do is to sack the CNO. That would send a message to the desk jockeys at the Pentagon that "Go along to get along" isn't the safe choice. If they can get rid of the 7th Fleet CO, they can get rid of the CNO.
No, the best thing is sack no one in response and properly investigate. The Fitzgerald prelim report showed deficiencies in training and qualification among the bridge crew, but didn't clarify what other options were available and rested, if any. When they fill billets with improperly trained individuals, the Captain is responsible for training them up, but he doesn't have unlimited resources and time...and he cannot stay awake all the time. If this was another case of a Captain driven to cut some corners, trying to make things work with the shit sandwich handed to him, I'm not so comfortable with stringing him up, at least not without plenty of company.
Let's get to the root and pull that out, along with all the Officers and Civilian Administrators clinging onto it.
Wait. They CLOSED SWO school?
Close NAS Pensacola next. Those peeps play video games, right? Who needs Aviation Indoctrination.
The more I read this the more horrified I get.
I have about 3 weeks of JOOD experience. Middy cruise. Loved every minute of it. Cheating by checking the radar plot of a contact so I'd know where to look to get eyes on before a bridge wing lookout did. Working the MO Board because the CIC was always a step behind the bridge.
Is it possible I have better seamaship skills than a first lieutenant on a DDG? Gott im Himmel.
NJT, it's likely you did. OCS back in the day was a 19 week course. Then they cut it to 16 weeks. Now it's 12 weeks, so they aren't even "90-day wonders."
An ensign back in the day may not have been able to hit the deck running, but he or she knew shit. CIC Officers knew how to do all of the jobs of CIC. Electronic Warfare officers knew that shit. ASW officers could run every station in sonar Control. Oh, none of them could do it as well as the mid-grade and senior enlisted, but those ensigns knew enough to know how it was supposed to be done and could tell when it wasn't being done right.
They could run a MO Board and a SPA-25 repeater. They at least knew their standard commands, they got some simulator time and, if the YP boas were working, they got in some time maneuvering in formation.
Sounds like new ensigns reporting aboard don't know a fucking thing. If this is all factual, then the surface Navy is badly broken.
It's beyond horrifying.
Reading the Naval Institute link is to weep (not in sadness, but in fury)
What this is all about is a crossroads encountered time and again in any enterprise. The top management (internal or external) wants champagne at the cost of beer or water. It's further complicated when said manglement is obsessed with some shiny object, like snazzy new fighters or electronics...and must have them....on the same budget. What suffers is the human and maintenance infrastructure: it ain't got no glitter. And someone further down the management chain says, "Yes, massah, you can have that shiny object and things will be muchmuch better and it won't cost hardly anything more". It's another one of those tricky tests of moral courage, of discernment, wisdom and principle that you requires one to look in the mirror and say, "I can't do this". Alas, hard-wired into homo sapiens is the ability to forget you ever faced that test (or to not even see it) and see yourself, your choices and the enterprise as the best of all possible worlds....'we had to do it that way, we had no choice' .
As Mark Twain said:
"It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare. "
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