Category: US Military

That is what the commandant of the US Coast Guard had to say recently:

The United States Coast Guard maintains “a significant force package” as part of a war plan for North Korea under which all vessels and servicemembers would be deployed, the commandant of the U.S. body said Wednesday.

“We have a campaign plan that addresses North Korea and what forces do we need to bring to bear in the advance,” Adm. Paul Zukunft of the U.S. Coast Guard said in an interview with a small group of reporters in Seoul.

“I cannot elaborate, but I will state that the Coast Guard has a significant force package, ships and coastguardsmen on our part of the campaign plan, which will augment the overall force for a campaign with North Korea,” the four-star commander said.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

I guess it is okay to wear the uniform to support social causes now:

What was supposed to be a photo to decorate the 1st Armored Division’s room for nursing mothers has gone viral online.

The photo, taken Thursday at Fort Bliss, Texas, shows 10 soldiers in uniform breastfeeding their children.

“We are officially trending on Facebook. It’s crazy,” said Tara Ruby, the photographer behind the image and a former airman who is married to a soldier.

“Today I believe we made history,” Ruby wrote on her Facebook page. “To my knowledge, a group photo to show support of active-duty military mommies nursing their littles has never been done. It is so nice to see support for this here at Fort Bliss.”  [Army Times]

You can read more at the link.

151 years ago, General Sherman gave America its best definition of war http://t.co/a77zK5otZO pic.twitter.com/u0jVxDvIGb

— Task & Purpose (@TaskandPurpose) September 12, 2015

Here is a feel good story about a Korean adoptee and US soldier stationed at Camp Casey who found her biological family in South Korea:

Sgt. Faith Vazquez calls Defiance, Ohio, home, but she also lived in Hawaii and other duty stations with her mother and Navy father. Her then-childless parents adopted her through a Seoul agency when she was 4 months old.

“I never grew up feeling adopted,” said Vazquez, 23, American Forces Network detachment commander at Camp Casey.

She joined the Army after high school graduation. Her first assignment was a one-year tour at South Korea’s Yongsan Garrison.

Vazquez yearned to know more about her heritage but let her tour pass without searching for her origins. “I was 18, and I didn’t feel mentally ready,” she said.

She then set off for three years at Fort Riley, Kan., where her husband now serves in the Army.

She returned to South Korea for a one-year unaccompanied tour in October, conflicted over whether to seek her birth family. She didn’t want to slight her adoptive parents.

But with an adopted co-worker’s encouragement, she contacted the Seoul agency that processed her adoption. Within weeks, the agency phoned: “Faith, we’ve found your family.”  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read the rest at the link.

The Stars & Stripes profiled a book released this month by Megan MacKenzie titled “Beyond the Band of Brothers: The U.S. Military and the Myth that Women Can’t Fight”.  Here is the part of the article that shows this author knows little about what she is advocating for:

MacKenzie acknowledges differences between the sexes but objects to them being cited as evidence of women’s inferiority for combat positions.

“It’s starting to get old,” she said. “We keep going back to women and men are different but ignoring that warfare is also different and physical standards also potentially need to be adapted. Most militaries around the world are adapting the physical standards because war has changed so much. Just basing standards around measuring the fitness of an average 23-year-old male doesn’t tell us much about whether someone can be a combat soldier.”

Debate over physical standards also ignores that in recent years many women have been in de facto combat positions, particularly those who were in cultural support teams attached to Special Forces and Ranger teams in Afghanistan, she said. Many received combat-action badges. Some were wounded. Two died during direct-action raids.  [Stars & Stripes]

Unless exo-skeletons are invented fitness will remain a top requirement for an infantry soldier.  Serving in the infantry is physically hard and women are at a biological disadvantage.  I have no doubt that the few exceptions like 1LT Shaye Haver and CPT Kristen Griest who recently graduated from Ranger School would be welcomed in the infantry if that is what they wanted to do.

MacKenzie like other advocates before her also continue to cite female engagement teams as evidence women can serve in the infantry and special forces.  Female engagement teams did not do the grinding daily work of infantrymen and special forces; they had their purpose and they executed it well and their purpose was not to do infantry work.  Also being in a combat position and earning a CAB is also not evidence that someone can serve in the infantry.  She is basically making an argument that sounds good to people who have never served in the military before, but those of us who have served know better.

If at your next SHARP training session you get taught that it is not okay for you to go to spouses in your unit and kiss them on the lips this is why:

As Congress wrangled with the growing clamor over sexual misconduct in the military in 2013, a Fort Bragg commander made it a practice to give the wives of subordinates unwelcome kisses on the lips at public events.

After an anonymous letter was sent to the commander’s superiors, a subsequent investigation led to his removal from his job. But he stayed in the military and was allowed to quietly retire in April 2015 – more than two years after the initial complaint about his conduct.

An Army investigation – triggered by an anonymous letter to Lt. Gen. Daniel Allyn, commander of the 18th Airborne Corps at the time – reveals that Col. Chad McRee, former commander of the 16th Military Police Brigade, violated five of eight core expectations for Army leaders, made inappropriate remarks toward officers and noncommissioned officers and was unfairly authoritative toward Family Readiness Group members, officers and noncommissioned officers. [Fayetteville Observer]

You have to read the whole thing at the link to appreciate how outrageous this Colonel and his wife’s behavior was in regards to spouses in their unit.

The Stars & Stripes has a report stating that troops still feel like they are being retaliated against for reporting sexual assaults:

Too little progress has been made in countering perceptions of retaliation felt by those who report a sexual assault, and all the services must take measures to protect victims and others who report wrongdoing from reprisals, especially from peers, Pentagon officials concluded from an annual report on sexual assault in the military.

About two thirds of female troops who are sexually assaulted and report those attacks believe they experience retaliation afterward, according to the report.

“We’re not making enough progress on countering retaliation,” Defense Secretary Ash Carter said at a news conference when the report was released Friday. “Too many servicemembers, the data shows, feel that when they report or try to stop these crimes, they’re being retaliated against in some way.”

The retaliation numbers, which are unchanged from 2012, come from a survey done late last year, and were first released in December. At the time, then-Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced new training and an additional study designed in part to prevent retaliation.  [Stars & Stripes]

I think to really understand this issue you have to define what retaliation is?  Is retaliation the command going after you with UCMJ and other measures or is it simply people in the unit not talking to you?  With an issue like sexual assault people may be uncomfortable talking to someone who made a report and that could be interpreted by someone as being retaliation.

The sellout of the military retirement system to Wall Street is almost complete:

The old, reliable military retirement system is about to be retired.

House and Senate lawmakers are moving ahead with dramatic plans to replace the current 20-year, all-or-nothing deal with a “blended” compensation system, complete with a 401(k)-style investment plan that promises all future troops will leave the service with some money for retirement.

The moves echo recommendations from the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission earlier this year, which pushed for changes to recognize the estimated 83 percent of service members who leave the military with no retirement benefits.

But some outside advocates still worry that, while well-intentioned, the change could decimate the senior noncommissioned and officer ranks, by giving them too much incentive to start a civilian career earlier and not enough incentive to stay to 20 years.  [Army Times]

You can read the rest at the link, but can you imagine how much money the Wall Street crew is going to make from transaction fees for doing little to nothing to manage all the money that will be flowing to them for these 401k’s? They are going to have a financial windfall at the expense of less money going into the pockets of US servicemembers.

This is just another example of someone thinking the entire US is like the South:

Army officials are investigating a diversity training briefing at Fort Gordon, Ga., in which a slide about “white privilege” was inappropriately shown to soldiers, according to an Army spokeswoman.

The Equal Opportunity briefing took place Thursday for about 400 soldiers of the 67th Signal Battalion, Capt. Lindsay Roman, an Army spokeswoman, said Friday. The slide titled “The Luxury of Obliviousness” has bullet-point items about “white privilege.”

One item reads, “Race privilege gives whites little reason to pay a lot of attention to African Americans or to how white privilege affects them. ‘To be white in America means not having to think about it.’ ”  [USA Today]

You can read the rest at the link, but when I was growing up and since then living in various majority Hispanic communities I was very aware of being white.

It is interesting that for fixed military pensions it is okay to turn these into 401k’s, but the minute someone mentions turning Social Security in a 401k suddenly the claims of throwing grandma at the mercy of the Wall Street casino comes into play.  So how come it is okay to throw servicembers retirement at the mercy of the Wall Street casino while it is not for grandma?  The answer is a lot more grandmas vote compared to servicemembers:

President Barack Obama announced Monday he will back sweeping overhauls to the military retirement and health care systems as a way to ensure the costly benefits survive into the future.

Obama said he will provide Congress a list of proposals by the end of April that will be based on the recommendations of the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission, a panel created by lawmakers to find solutions to ballooning personnel expenses.

The panel has advised the military to eliminate its 20-year pensions in favor of a 401(k)-style retirement system, and replace Tricare health coverage with a wide variety of private insurance plans. Those and a list of 15 changes to military compensation — including a consolidation of commissaries and exchanges — could save almost $5 billion next year and up to $10.4 billion per year by 2020, the panel claims.

“I believe the recommendations are an important step forward in protecting the long-term viability of the all-volunteer force, improving quality-of-life for service members and their families, and ensuring the fiscal sustainability of the military compensation and retirement systems,” Obama wrote in the letter to Congress.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but just think how much money Wall Street is going to make off of “service fees” for all these new 401k’s.  Those guys always win.