Strange things are afoot (as usual) inside the Beltway…
Reader Craig points out the issues of maintenance and inability for the Navy to decom ships… From Military.com…
The Navy is stuck with a number of poorly performing ships it wasn’t permitted to scrap but can’t afford to fix because Congress hasn’t resolved its budget stalemate.
Four Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruisers were on the Navy’s decommissioning list for 2013 because repairing and upgrading them would cost billions of dollars. But Congress objected to the cuts and instead authorized money to maintain three of them.That money has yet to materialize.
Congress failed to agree on a 2013 budget and instead placed government spending under a continuing resolution — a Band-Aid measure that keeps the government running at 2012 budget levels, with no new appropriations.
That leaves the Navy responsible for keeping three cruisers operational, including the Norfolk-based Anzio, without setting aside money to maintain or repair them, much less do necessary upgrades. As a result, the Anzio and two other cruisers — the Vicksburg, based in Mayport, Fla., and the Cowpens, in Yokosuka, Japan — are operating at diminished levels and with minimal staffing, able to do some local tasks, but not considered suitable for deploying overseas.
Now I happen to know for a fact that the USS Cowpens IS forward deployed… So how is ‘that’ working out? Not well…
Full article HERE.
And the key, as I’ve said before is the LACK of maintenance funds… A couple of years ago the figure was ~$450M shortfall, so ONLY the pre-deployers were getting fixed… And we’re still having ships fail INSURV (THE major service inspection).
In other news, proof that CJCS and especially Gen Dempsey have drunk the koolaid, there will be an announcement by Panetta tomorrow that women will be ‘allowed’ to go into combat by 2015 in the Army and Marines.
Women in all branches of the military soon will have unprecedented opportunities to serve on the front lines of the nation’s wars.
Leon Panetta, in one of his last acts as President Obama’s defense secretary, is preparing to announce the policy change, which would open hundreds of thousands of front-line positions and potentially elite commando jobs after more than a decade at war, the Pentagon confirmed Wednesday.
The groundbreaking move recommended by the Joint Chiefs of Staff overturns a 1994 rule banning women from being assigned to smaller ground combat units. Panetta’s decision gives the military services until January 2016 to seek special exceptions if they believe any positions must remain closed to women.
“This policy change will initiate a process whereby the services will develop plans to implement this decision, which was made by the secretary of defense upon the recommendation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” a senior defense official told reporters on condition of anonymity.
Full article HERE.
What’s NOT being said, is this will not be an ‘optional’ assignment… If you (the female) end up in a combat MOS, like it or not, want it or not, your butt WILL be in combat. The really scary part is that the ‘plan’ is to open all elite forces to females; if this is true, what are they going to do with the minimum standards required today for admission to these units???
AND one more, as if your BP isn’t high enough already…
This one is for all you ex-Air Force folks…
From Military Times online.
The objective of the inspection was to ensure a professional work environment in the Air Force and reflect the high caliber of Airmen serving in our Air Force.
/snip/
Over 100 Air Force installations were inspected. Commanders of thousands of units inspected the workspaces of almost 600,000 Air Force military and civilian personnel. Commanders looked for and removed three broad categories of material: pornographic; unprofessional; or inappropriate or offensive.
According to the results, in the three categories, the Air Force found 631 instances of pornography (magazines, calendars, pictures, videos that intentionally displayed nudity or depicted acts of sexual activity); 3,987 instances of unprofessional material (discrimination, professional appearance, items specific to local military history such as patches, coins, heritage rooms, log books, song books, etc); and 27,598 instances of inappropriate or offensive items (suggestive items, magazines, posters, pictures, calendars, vulgarity, graffiti).
Identified items were documented and either removed or destroyed. In some instances, findings were turned over to OSI where appropriate. The areas inspected were all government workspaces and shared common areas such as briefing rooms, break rooms and computer drives.
The inspections are one in a series of initiatives the Air Force has undertaken to combat sexual assault. The Air Force conducted bystander intervention training service-wide, examined supplementary training for commanders and made multiple avenues of support available to every victim of sexual assault. Support services include counseling, medical, mental health, and safety services and victim’s advocate among other things. Also of note, the Air Force has launched a pilot program designed to provide legal assistance to victims of sexual assault will begin later this month.
Full article HERE.
I don’t have a problem with stopping sexual and other abuses, it should have been done a LONG time ago. What I DO have a problem with is that apparently the USAF is removing it’s history from the spaces. When squadron coins, patches and class pictures are deemed inappropriate, what is next??? And in a conversation, apparently the ‘bystander intervention’ also includes reporting anything the bystander doesn’t like (e.g. posters, plaques, cups, etc.)…
I wonder what he would do with these???
The Cubi O’Club Bar, transported to the Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola.
The NAVY understands tradition, and how to balance tradition with progress… Just sayin…
h/t Craig, Les, and Don
