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USS Fitzgerald collision in C7F
- Thread starter Ken_gone_flying
- Start date
Fair enough. You raise an interesting point. I’m but a lowly hinge with only a paltry amount of service under my belt, but I thought our ultimate purpose was to go to war (if need be, of course). If, God forbid, we do engage in a big shooting war, you think it would have a traumatizing effect on the force? If not, What would the effect be? Also, who DOESN’T desire a less beuracratic and risk-averse Force?
Well, look at the Navy post-Pearl Harbor. That was a force which hadn’t taken serious casualties since the Civil War. The USN only lost two ships (a cruiser and a destroyer) to enemy action during WWI. Though it had a good limbering-up period against the U-Boats during the Neutrality Patrols of 1940-41, the losses during the opening months of the war did deeply shock the Navy establishment of the time. And I think the bureaucratic mindset was never really shaken off - look at the BuWeps stubbornness about submarine torpedo failures.
No doubt it shocked the Navy establishment. Was that a bad thing? Paperwork is going to be a part of any machine as large as the USN. No getting around that, but it didn’t stop us from figuring it out and trouncing the IJN. And yes, the MK14 torpedo and the way it was handled was an absolute travesty.
Brett stated that a war would be “traumatic”. That is the statement that confused me. Institutional shock and trauma have different connotations, and vastly different outcomes if not handled correctly.
It raises a very interesting question... I wonder how the force of today would handle losing an entire ship’s company of sailors-or more in an action. How would the public take it? The results of the disaster off Savo Island weren’t released to the public until months after the fact. The survivors were quarantined on Treasure Island on their return to the states, even. Much different times...
It’s an interesting debate. I really think how we - as a service and a country - would react to heavy losses would depend on the context. If it was a case of a Chinese cruise missile attack on San Diego or something, the national response would be more along the lines of 1942 than one might think.
I found the book “Those Angry Days” about the national mood and isolationist/interventionist debates during 1939-1941 really fascinating, in a “the more things change...” sort of way. In fact, a lot of people inside the service said very similar things about the 1941 Navy that we’re saying about the 2018 Navy - too slow, too bureaucratic, peacetime mindset when a shooting war’s going on, etc. It’s not hyperbolic at all to say Pearl Harbor changed everything.
They only give that to FTS, so ha!
Actually <pushes glasses up nose>, they give NOSC CO billets to AC guys, too. The XO of NOSC Atlanta right now is a SELRES on ADSW. I can't prove it with an actual example, but I'm pretty sure they've brought a SELRES on ADSW to fill a NOSC CO billet at some point. So you've been marked!
I’ll have to pick that up. I’m re-reading “Neptune’s Inferno” right now. What an absolute shit-show of a campaign that was... on both sides. I agree with your point regarding the context of the war.
Having just finished my boat tour (Hallelujah!) I have a new appreciation for how stalwart our sailors can be. It’s the public I worry about.
The problem with wars since, well Vietnam, and definitely post Gulf War, is what I refer to as the “CNN factor” where the media expects to be embedded, have access to everyone while they are doing work, and are free to report, regardless of the context or the facts.
The rush to get the first story to break out from the monotony of the 24 hour news cycle has led to a degeneration of accuracy in media. Throw in the volatility of social media, the lack of desire for Americans to learn the truth/facts about a story, and the general sense of “outrage” at everything by the media at large (Fox/CNN/Vice/etc.) we see people get whipped into a frenzy over simple shit that is often inaccurate or even patently false.
Throw the fog of war and the single defect mentality that has crept into our military, I’m afraid we will see a paralysis in action and decision making at the Operational and Strategic Level that may even infect the few tactitians at the pointy end of our military/industrial complex.
When every action and every word will be parsed in the public arena like the fucking Kennedy assassination leaders will be restricted in their ability to take risk and put real numbers of lives st risk.
Even if we are winning the battles, we may lose the war due to public perception and lack of grit by the American populace.
The war in Vietnam provided the blueprint for every undersized force since, as we’ve seen demonstrated multiple times.
A full war of attrition with a top tier military (Russia/China/India) will not be pretty, especially with all of the initial handwringing that will take place.
The rush to get the first story to break out from the monotony of the 24 hour news cycle has led to a degeneration of accuracy in media. Throw in the volatility of social media, the lack of desire for Americans to learn the truth/facts about a story, and the general sense of “outrage” at everything by the media at large (Fox/CNN/Vice/etc.) we see people get whipped into a frenzy over simple shit that is often inaccurate or even patently false.
Throw the fog of war and the single defect mentality that has crept into our military, I’m afraid we will see a paralysis in action and decision making at the Operational and Strategic Level that may even infect the few tactitians at the pointy end of our military/industrial complex.
When every action and every word will be parsed in the public arena like the fucking Kennedy assassination leaders will be restricted in their ability to take risk and put real numbers of lives st risk.
Even if we are winning the battles, we may lose the war due to public perception and lack of grit by the American populace.
The war in Vietnam provided the blueprint for every undersized force since, as we’ve seen demonstrated multiple times.
A full war of attrition with a top tier military (Russia/China/India) will not be pretty, especially with all of the initial handwringing that will take place.
I have a buddy from the Fleet who is SELRES on ADSW as XO of a mid-size NOSC right now. I’ve seen a bunch of CO/XO NOSC billets advertised on govdelivery. My not-supported-with-actual-numbers impression is that NOSC front offices are roughly 60-40 FTS-SELRES with some AC cats and dogs in there.
That was the most striking thing about “Those Angry Days” - after hundreds of pages of the public and Congress railing about conspiracies of British imperialists and Jewish financiers to drag America into a foreign war, accusing FDR of everything from carelessness to treason, on and on. Then Pearl Harbor happened and literally overnight all public opposition to entering the war vanished.
Anyway, very interesting book and has a lot of very good context to the decisions the US made before and in the first months of the war.
If you look at the press in the US and the UK from the Crimean War on you’ll see that things really have changed much in terms of the press when it comes to trying to break the story and a lack of accuracy among some. If anything the media has gotten a lot more accurate since Vietnam by being able to verify many things independently from the military and government.
And I wouldn’t give our grandparents or theirs too much credit for being smarter than us when it came to what was happening in the world or their lack of faux outrage over stupid shit that was really nothing in the end.
I don’t think the current American populace is markedly any better or worse than the ones that come before it, I think the vast majority of folks have displayed plenty of grit when confronted with a crises. Just look at New York City on 9/11 and afterwards, where the city as a whole picked up the pieces moved forward while remembering those it had lost.
It will not be pretty for anyone but far uglier for the other folks on the other end than us given their vulnerabilities and weaknesses which are much greater than ours.
Well that's a pretty negative outlook on the world.
Neither positive nor negative, just the facts as I see them.
I still believe, in a no-shit unlimited warfare scenario, the US (and Allies) would win. The problem is when we get into these little limited campaigns with restrictive ROE and a press hungry for a story.
The enemy will always find a weak spot to exploit, ours isn’t the fighter on the front line, it’s the voter back home with no real idea about the realities of fighting a war and access to 24 hour coverage with ads to sell and a slant (right or left) to push...
They are the real target of many tactics by the OPFOR.
Holding the people you serve in contempt is a bold move.
Nowhere in “support and defend the constitution” does it say I can’t think the average American is an idiot.
Having been raised in the VFW and American Legion halls by a Vietnam Vet and his fellow vets in the 80’s, my view is a little more sharply focused on the subject of the divide between the populace at home and those serving overseas.
I think the current example of Russian infiltration into social media to spread discord and influence an election(s) lends context to my argument.
Having been raised in the VFW and American Legion halls by a Vietnam Vet and his fellow vets in the 80’s, my view is a little more sharply focused on the subject of the divide between the populace at home and those serving overseas.
I think the current example of Russian infiltration into social media to spread discord and influence an election(s) lends context to my argument.
Not to mention the political forces that aggressively seek to sow that same discord and influence in our own country.