By Major Van Harl USAF Ret
Wisconsin –-(Ammoland.com)- The mother-in-law was at the sink running water. I asked her what she was doing and she replied “washing ice cubes.”
One of the other people in the kitchen stated that what “mom” had just said about ice cubes sounded like something his old sergeant would have made him do. Keep the young airman or private occupied. We all know that empty hands are the devil’s tools. If you don’t keep those junior troops busy, even if it is doing something totally useless, such as cleaning a sidewalk with a toothbrush, they will get into trouble.
Have you ever looked at the word trouble? It and the Spanish word “trabajo” meaning work, sure look a lot a like, maybe it is that Latin derivative thing. In this case the perception is the lack of work will generate trouble.
I do need to explain that the ice cubes I am talking about are the plastic type filled with liquid and then frozen.
The discussion about make-work projects for young enlisted troops and for that matter the odd second lieutenant continued. All the veterans in my kitchen had to tell their favorite unnecessary work “war-story.” How someone with just a little more rank than they had, forced a junior veteran to perform some meaningless task, just because that senior military person could get away with it.
There is room for interpretation here depending on rank and age. What may be a genuine needed project in the eyes of the old NCO is just a lot of Bravo Sierra (BS) to the Airman. There will always be the need for “detail’ troops. Troops, who have to sweep and pick-up and haul and of course, paint the rocks.
But in today’s lean military we are running out of junior troops to do details. There just are no extra troops sitting around in the dorm idle that can be tasked to pick up litter. The number of airmen you are authorized for your unit is based on your stateside, peacetime mission.
In today’s Air Force you will get to deploy to forward bases such as in Afghanistan or other Middle East countries and now African nations.
The problem is the peacetime mission back at your home base still has to be accomplished. Gates have to be guarded, aircraft have to be fixed, people want to get paid and folks still get sick. We definitely don’t have time or manpower to paint rocks. So whom do you pull away from their regular duties for details, the cops on the gates? They are already “stealing” from other career fields to create part time (augmentee) cops. Remember in time of crisis everyone becomes a security expert and the first thing they foolishly order is “double the guard.”
Do we take the surgical technician right out of the operating room? Or, do we take the maintenance troop from that aircraft he is trying to repair and return to the “fight?” Since the downsizing of the military in the early 1990’s and the end of the cold war, the real-world mission not only failed to get smaller, it has grown. We are doing more with a whole lot less troops. I don’t even want to hear the “work smarter not harder” stuff.
The Department of Defense needs more people, if the US plans to keep up the current rate of deployment. When I observe some senior military official, either in uniform or a civilian, trying to tell the public that our military does not need more active duty troops, I just don’t believe it. We don’t have enough active duty troops, even with the Guard and Reserve helping, to meet all our future short term deployment commitments, let alone long range plans.
At the rate we are using up the Guard and Reserve we are going to cripple those organizations for years to come.
The Air Force and Navy are half the size they where back in the late 1970s when I joined the military. The problem is the current politicians do not remember five years ago let along thirty five years ago when we slashed the Vietnam era military. In the 1980s we had a 600 ship Navy. Now we have less than 280 ships.
There is no fat except flag officers (generals & admirals) travel budgets. No, nobody is going to be “washing ice cubes” in today’s military. There are no extra troops just sitting around doing nothing, waiting to be misused on make-work details. We need more troops and we need fewer rocks to paint, but more importantly we need to stop policing the rest of the world.
Good lord the French could not even move a couple of thousand troops into Mali without the US footing that bill and the air planes. Our just-in-time US mentality wants instance world wide response to any problem anywhere. You cannot realistically do that, but you most assuredly cannot even try without improved US air lift capability.
Major Van Harl USAF Ret.[email protected]
About Major Van Harl USAF Ret.:
Major Van E. Harl USAF Ret. , is a career Police Officer in the U.S. Air Force was born in Burlington, Iowa, USA, in 1955. He was the Deputy Chief of police at two Air Force Bases and the Commander of Law Enforcement Operations at another. Now retired, these days he enjoys camping, traveling, volunteering with the Girl Scouts and writing. [email protected]
What we need is less Idiot's like you, And a strong military presence and to tell the rest of the world to Kiss My A**.
There seems to be some disconnect here. The caption under the pic reads "We need more troops and we need fewer rocks to paint, but more importantly we need to stop policing the rest of the world." Not only does the caption contradict itself (why do we need more troops if we're giving up the empire?) but the article doesn't say anything about stopping policing the world. Was the caption put there by Ammoland rather than the author?
What we need, in a nut shell, is no standing military establishment & a militia based defense.