DangerousDan
I could tell you but I would have to kill you
I think they are totally obsessed with rank and everything comes down to who has the most rank not who has the best idea.
Let me know if you need any gouge on whats going on.
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- Thread starter The Renegade
- Start date
I think they are totally obsessed with rank and everything comes down to who has the most rank not who has the best idea.
Let me know if you need any gouge on whats going on.
It's too bad there's not a brief gives that shows the amount of sailors deployed at any given time in the Navy and historically how many months sailors spend deployed and how many they will continue to be deployed in the future. Then you could compare those numbers to the Army's deployment track record. And I don't equate doing time in Germany during the 80's and 90's to spending 6-9 months at sea.
Not to mention that the Navy's mission is different that the Army's and just because it isn't on the news every night doesn't mean we aren't still doing it.
MasterBates
Well-Known Member
I've been asking this question myself.
When we get back on a "peacetime deployment plan" we will still be gone 6-7 months at a stretch every 18 months. The Army will go back to garrison.
We won't be manned up to the levels we need, but we also won't see any help in the manpower department from the Army.
Renegade, whats an LNO? Never heard of that one before. Just wondering.
Liaison or liaison officer. Also a generic term for somebody who works in an official capacity at a strange place to represent you and your organization, a bit like an ombudsman but different too... ie. the LNO from your command working up at headquarters, or the Navy LNO at Camp such-and-such.
FWIW the Petty Officers doing the actual nuts and bolts work for the Navy's ECRC (the command responsible for cat-herding the thousands of IA/GSA folks around the world... for better or for worse) do a lot of thankless hard work. This usually means unscrewing medical/dental/pay/other paperwork issues when somebody else dropped the ball.
I agree with the thread comments about official party line and service differences. I will say when I meet someone about to go on an IA I tell them what I learned on my IA was the Army and Navy are "different screwed up, not better or worse," and that the services are like country cousins and city cousins. You don't have to like your extended family and they probably drive you nuts but you do have to love them.
Disabuse yourself of the idea that there are distinct peacetime vs. wartime deployment schedules, surge ops notwithstanding. For the most part, deployment schedules are based on carrier availability, so this affects all the air wings and CSG players down the line. This stuff is all flowed out years in advance. Unfortunately, I don't see the IA/GSA piece going away anytime soon.
Brett
I've already served a time when that happened and I don't recall one Army individiual augmenting our squadron....not one. I give my friend and placement officer shit for sending me being he has not gone and looks like will not go. He just selected for command as well and was able to avoid an IA/GSA like the plague. He simply says, have to do what you're told, the whole military thing. True enough...though there's also that leading from the front thing. You send guys to Iraq/Afghanistan, probably should go yourself. My worthless .02 cents.
MasterBates
Well-Known Member
Perhaps you missed out on my point that we are basically going to deploy as much and for as long when/if the current ME shenanigans end.
I am but a small cog in the machine, but I think the Army has had more than enough time to un-fuck it's manpower issues. We ain't gonna get our backs scratched when we are gone like normal and they aren't doing jack save exercises.
I am but a small cog in the machine, but I think the Army has had more than enough time to un-fuck it's manpower issues. We ain't gonna get our backs scratched when we are gone like normal and they aren't doing jack save exercises.
My 2 cents...
-Good or bad and right or wrong, for the past few years having thousands of people deployed as IAs/GSAs has given big Navy one more way to avoid budget concessions to the Army.
-IAs/GSAs have unwittingly resulted in a lot of "joint" corporate knowledge in the Navy. (I say unwittingly because I doubt anybody sat down and mapped out the numbers.) Come to think of it "joint" usually means the Army way of doing things anyway, but still...
-I agree about the Army still not unscrewing its manning problems for how many years and counting... WTF... but the manning problems and IA/GSA isn't only about the other services putting warm bodies into billets. The Army's nerd pool seems tapped out for a few years now while the Navy (and Air Force) still have some depth. This is true for specialized IA billets like the techie jobs or civil affairs but not true for others like, oh, prison guard.
-Agree Germany/Korea/etc. vs warship deployment. Never heard anyone in the Navy refer to a tour in Naples or Souda Bay as a deployment.
-Not really sure if "payback" between the services is realistic years from now down the road. I mean what exactly would thousands, not dozens or hundreds, of Army guys be able to fill meaningful jobs for the Navy? Humvee drivers cross trained as coxswains? SNCOs running a 3M program? Company grade line officers standing watch at a TSC or fleet headquarters or maybe making ppt briefs? PFCs wasting their time and motivation on some crappy work detail like the nub crossing guards by the piers in Norfolk? None of the above... and never mind something as specialized as Naval Aviation. I just don't see the Navy badly needing anything like that.
-Good or bad and right or wrong, for the past few years having thousands of people deployed as IAs/GSAs has given big Navy one more way to avoid budget concessions to the Army.
-IAs/GSAs have unwittingly resulted in a lot of "joint" corporate knowledge in the Navy. (I say unwittingly because I doubt anybody sat down and mapped out the numbers.) Come to think of it "joint" usually means the Army way of doing things anyway, but still...
-I agree about the Army still not unscrewing its manning problems for how many years and counting... WTF... but the manning problems and IA/GSA isn't only about the other services putting warm bodies into billets. The Army's nerd pool seems tapped out for a few years now while the Navy (and Air Force) still have some depth. This is true for specialized IA billets like the techie jobs or civil affairs but not true for others like, oh, prison guard.
-Agree Germany/Korea/etc. vs warship deployment. Never heard anyone in the Navy refer to a tour in Naples or Souda Bay as a deployment.
-Not really sure if "payback" between the services is realistic years from now down the road. I mean what exactly would thousands, not dozens or hundreds, of Army guys be able to fill meaningful jobs for the Navy? Humvee drivers cross trained as coxswains? SNCOs running a 3M program? Company grade line officers standing watch at a TSC or fleet headquarters or maybe making ppt briefs? PFCs wasting their time and motivation on some crappy work detail like the nub crossing guards by the piers in Norfolk? None of the above... and never mind something as specialized as Naval Aviation. I just don't see the Navy badly needing anything like that.
Ah, so it's for the good of the Navy. The best way to ensure the Navy has its budget is to sacrifice sailors to the Army to justify their existence. Where have our leaders gone?
So it takes a year to do that? To learn joint ops. Is this information passed to squadrons or units and put into use? I did an IA back in 2000 and had to write a lessons learned. The month long IA was a complete and utter total waste of time and manpower and thus I said so in my written debrief. Of course that was not the right answer (honesty) and my CO rewrote my lessons learned so I stood corrected, it was as an absolute outstanding use of manpower and resources
Define depth? According to my placement, the most important billet to fill over all others are the IA/GSA. More important than a pilot deploying with a squadron. Don't have enough pilots, to bad, go to Iraq to sit at a desk. We had that problem at 30, had to borrow a pilot being we didn't have enough and all placement wanted was a body for a GSA. If we don't have enough dudes to fill a billet, why then do we send them on an IA?
Seems to me that if it only takes 5 weeks or so to train a guy like me with ZERO experience in EW, it must not be that difficult. I get the leadership thing, officers with experience leading men but are they really doing that? My bud, a Marine pilot, was sent on an IA to sit at a desk and answer phones for an O-6. Guess it takes an O-4, pilot to boot, to perform such a task as a secretary. I got an email from a gent who did a GSA and spoke of a Brigade EWO who was used as a gunner on a Humvee. Whether true or not, don't know. Maybe these are the miniority of cases but even just one person, just one that could be used in a squadron deploying is a waste.
There's no doubt that the approach to EW in the Army is hopelessly broken. Operationally, 1 in 20 knows WTF they're doing enough to contribute in a meaningful way to the fight. Somewhere, someone decided that your MK 1 Mod 0 aviator knows enough about electrons to be a brigade level SME on EW & EA. Guess what - it ain't working. The result is a huge waste in manpower and a significant reduction in operational capabilities. Thanks Army! Bottom line, trigger pullers on the ground aren't getting the support they need and deserve.
Brett
This was clearly NOT straight and unedited opinions from those that went on an IA.... It was a freaking cut and edited sales pitch/commercial. Smelt like an infomercial. Not saying it wasn't good stuff, but I am willing to bet that this bit came from an O-6+
I think we agree on this one...
Me I'm not sure at what point "maintain freedom of the seas for the United States and its allies" turned into "voluntell people for jobs they didn't really sign up to do."
Probably mostly good for branch of service bragging rights. Only a small fraction will actually go on and apply what they've learned on a staff job somewhere by using the experience to bully their sister service brethren during meetings and working groups.
I think there's a whole different level of institutional dumbness in your near future. No kidding I had an Army LTC tell me the three knuckleheads (being generous here to the individuals in question) he sent to the Army EW course had learned (strange and wondrous) things like "frequency deconfliction" but I hadn't learned that since I'd only been to the short course. No kidding, I truly believe the phrase confused him because of too many syllables. No mistake, this was a sister service O-5. One of those knuckleheads was his S-6 (~ COMMO) who, for example, insisted that the surveillance camera at patrol base __ was FMC even though the command post hadn't got a picture out of it in days... never mind the exploits of the other two. Different story, there was the functionally illiterate S-4 (~ SUPPO) who repeatedly briefed the last week of logistics convoys and maybe the next one or two days for weeks and weeks until finally the aforementioned LTC suggested he brief the next week's schedule.
Looking back I was probably to the short bus of maneuver units. I don't want to just crap all over the Army because a lot those guys I worked with were doing their best at jobs I don't think they were cut out for. There were also many more who lacked booksmarts but were actually great at the jobs they were trained to do. My point being this is what I mean by the "depth of the nerd pool."
Mind you, there are also plenty of brainy people in the Army. I shouldn't say that they are all purposefully busy with none wasting away on mindless billets either. Same with many of our own, sometimes way overqualified, folks we send on IAs- I know one Navy guy who got his air ops billet in Afghanistan turned off at the end of his tour there because he was wasting away doing very little work. Again though... my take on the big picture comes down to "depth of the nerd pool."
So yeah, compared to the competition a guy like you really can learn a lot on EW in 5 weeks. No, it's really not that difficult. Will your skills and talents be put to max use? Probably not. Are the grunts getting what they really deserve like Brett asked? Better than they would if a guy like you wasn't there. Is the whole approach screwed up like he also asked? Not as badly as if a guy like you wasn't there. Is there way too much kool-aid going around? Gurgle gurgle gurgle...
Not saying the manpower system isn't broken either. I have slowly realized that the IA system is being abused because it is an easy shortcut around proper planning. It's not just the volunteer/voluntold told sailors who get jammed either, their chains of command (who last I checked are primarily responsible for accomplishing their own core missions...) get jammed by having to make snap decisions about who to send. And all this is still going strong for five years and counting... gurgle gurgle