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Salamander has a superb piece over at the USNI blog. He makes critical examination of Admiral McRaven's recent commentary on the politicization of the Inspector General's process, and in doing so, asks the most pertinent question imaginable.

Where were all those First Flag Officer in the Chain of Command and up the chain further who swore when younger that when they were senior leaders, they would not be part of watching innocent junior leaders flayed alive like we saw after Tailhook?

Where were they in the last decade when RDML Gaouette, CAPT Honors, CAPT McWherter,CDR Jackson and others were thrown bound and gagged in in front of the Star Chamber?

Indeed.  The absence of backbone, of the moral courage demanded of others, has been nothing short of sickening.  Salamander does, however, err slightly in his commentary.

Unfair to McRaven? Perhaps, as this is not his fault.

Unfair?  Admiral McRaven, like every GOFO who sat on his hands or stared down at his appointment book while combat readiness, fairness, and then justice itself was subverted by those politicians who so loathe the military, aided by the sniveling sycophant lap dogs in uniform (Casey, Dempsey, Mullen, Roughead, Locklear, Amos, Clark, et. al.) who lent these corrosive policies legitimacy, shares responsibility for what our military has become.  

Over at USNI, I submitted a comment that may or may not be approved, referencing the following scene:

Those Social Justice Warriors, activists, and advocates who demanded and continue to demand that the "rights" of their special victim group comes before the rights of all others, and before combat effectiveness, unit cohesion, morale, and espirit, claim incessantly to be on "the right side of history", a phrase bandied about by the Social Justice Warrior empty suits in the White House and in the SECNAV chair.  Their demand for absolute fealty and obedience, and their ruthless destruction of those who even hint at dissent, puts them on the same "side of history" as the Brown Shirts goose-stepping shoulder to shoulder under torchlight.  Except that the banners are rainbows, and perhaps, the boots have high heels.  

And men like McRaven should watch the character of Dr. Veeck in the above clip over and over again.  And then ask themselves the same questions he was asked. 

The Angry Staff Officer has a good post up over at The Strategy Bridge about recruiting Millennials for the 21st Century Army.

The so-called “Me Generation” gets a lot of bad press. A simple Google search of “Millennial” will bring up keywords such as, lazy, self-obsessed, and narcissistic. None of these are qualities you want in a military servicemember. However, this stereotype, like all stereotypes, fails to paint a full picture. Consider that the majority of servicemembers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan as company grade officers and below are Millennials. Despite the social media memes questioning whether Millennials would have the guts to hop off a landing craft on Omaha Beach during the 1944 D-Day invasion, Millennials have fought, bled, and died in fierce combat from Fallujah to Marjah. If you take 1982 as the beginning of the Millennial generation, six out of the eleven servicemembers to be awarded the Medal of Honor for operations in Afghanistan have been Millennials. There is no lack of fighting spirit.

It’s worth your time to read the whole thing.

As with any generation, there are some great folks eager to serve. TASO points out that a propensity to some sort of service is strong in the Millennials, and good recruiting can convert that into a propensity to serve in uniform.

That’s not to say there aren’t some awful Millenials.

**click at your own risk**

UMass Amherst students throw temper tantrum at free speech event: https://t.co/3402H4dEwR pic.twitter.com/hYfHUYOvPk

— Campus Reform (@campusreform) April 26, 2016

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

We sometimes forget that this… thing… is only in the news because they are so outside the mainstream. We forget that they are emblematic of the fringe, not the mainstream.

For my money, the real challenge with recruiting for the 21st Century isn’t the Millennials attitude, but rather atrocious physical fitness of the generation as a whole.

TASO brings up one other point I want to address.

Some might complain that Millennials make poor employees since their experience they always want to know the “why” and “so what” behind each task. Rather than seeing this as a downside, leaders can exploit this as an opportunity to create a desire to be more involved in the organization, to generate what some might call buy in.”

For the most part, as a leader, I loved it when a junior soldier would as me “why?” The Army does a lot of things that aren’t always exactly intuitive. And while some things it does are objectively stupid, or “that’s just the way we’ve always done it” usually, there’s a reason the Army does things the way they do. Those reasons just tend not to be immediately visible at the lowest levels of the organization.

Having been around the Army a while, I was often able to glean, through reading of field manuals and various regulations, why some task was performed the way it was. And I was happy to share that with my soldiers. And as my soldiers understood that what they were doing wasn’t, in fact, pointless, but legitimate, they tended to perform those tasks better.

As an added bonus, when I simply didn’t have the time to explain to them why something had to be done, they could take it on faith that there was, in fact, a reason.

I guess this is what happens when you get your biscuits at the 99c cent store.

A Navy sailor charged with sharing classified information to Taiwan and China—allegations that carry a potential life sentence in prison—could still avoid a full military trial and end up with a shorter sentence, defense officials told The Daily Beast.

It will all depend on who fears the prospect of a trial more—the military lawyers who have to navigate painstaking administrative procedures in order to admit the very classified information that Navy Lt. Cmdr Edward Lin allegedly shared. Or Lin, himself, who faces such serious charges that he likely could only avoid a lesser sentence by cutting a guilty plea deal.

The legal complexities of charging Lin have some Pentagon officials already suggesting that he could avoid a trial of his peers.

via www.thedailybeast.com

When the news of Lin's indictment and pretrial confinement first surfaced, I suggested that a deal was likely in the works.

In return for a plea, he'll have to cooperate to show exactly what information was compromised.

Capt. Kristen Griest, one of the first women to earn the coveted Ranger tab, will once again make history by becoming the Army’s first female infantry officer.

Griest is expected to graduate from the Maneuver Captain's Career Course on Thursday wearing the distinctive blue infantry cord, officials confirmed to Army Times.

"Like any other officer wishing to branch-transfer, Capt. Griest applied for an exception to Army policy to transfer from military police to infantry," said Bob Purtiman, a spokesman for the Maneuver Center of Excellence and Fort Benning, Georgia. "Her transfer was approved by the Department of the Army [on Monday] and she's now an infantry officer."

via www.armytimes.com

Well, good luck to her.

But it's still stupid.

There’s some adult language, so NSFW, but he’s spot on:

First up, an essay in USNI News on Offensive Aerial Mining, and using precision guided weapons as naval mines.

In September of 2014 Pacific Command (PACOM) demonstrated the Quickstrike-ER, a modification of the 500-lb. Australian winged JDAM-ER. Dropped from a B-52H, this was the first-ever deployment of a precision, standoff aerial mine. Now a parallel Joint effort between PACOM, the Navy and the Air Force has had its first success in the form of a 2000-lb. Mk-64 Quickstrike-J laid by a B-52H. Dropped in two variants, the Quickstrike-J can be laid from any altitude, by any aircraft equipped to drop the GBU-31 JDAM. In the case of the bombers, an entire minefield can be laid in a single pass without even passing directly over the minefield. The mines come in two variants, the Mod 0 with the legacy Mk-57 TDD and the Mod 3 with the new Mk-71 TDD. Both variants are assembled entirely out of components already in the US inventory, making these weapons possible without a protracted acquisition process.

Next, a rather alarming look at the Air Force’s cuts post-Desert Storm, and the challenges they now present to penetrating defended airspace:

Desert Storm remains the benchmark for a modern air campaign. In 40 days, a diverse assembly of coalition airpower managed to shatter one of the world’s largest military establishments, paving the way for the mere 100 hours it took ground forces to eject the Iraqi military from Kuwait. The air campaign was preceded by the most effective defense suppression effort ever, dismantling the Iraqi air defense system in 72 hours. In the aftermath of this successful campaign, the Air Force doubled down on its commitment to electronic warfare, fielding replacements for the aging F-4G Wild Weasel and moving the mission systems from the EF-111A into a new airframe. The Wild Weasel school, scheduled for closure, was revitalized and staffed with a talented cadre possessing recent combat experience. By 1996, the Air Force had demonstrated that it recognized the reasons for its recent success and prepared itself for the advanced air defense developments sure to follow the unambiguously decisive use of airpower in the Gulf.

No it didn’t.

What really happened was that the Air Force dismantled a wildly successful “Electronic Combat triad,” consisting of the EF-111A, the F-4G, and the EC-130. The EF-111A Raven was an unarmed conversion of the F-111 fighter-bomber capable of jamming air defense radars. The F-4G Wild Weasel was the last of the Air Force Phantom conversions, intended to hunt down and kill radar-directed missile batteries and guns. And the EC-130 Compass Call was a powerful communications jammer. Not a single aircraft was lost to a radar threat in the Gulf War while an armed F-4G Wild Weasel or an EF-111 Raven was on station. F-4Gs alone fired a thousand anti-radiation missiles and took down over 250 radars, a hit rate unequaled before or since.

In a push to instill more discipline among its newest soldiers, the Army is looking to its drill sergeants for help.

With their iconic hats and hard-nosed reputations, Army leaders are taking a serious look at whether drill sergeants should make a return to advanced individual training.

The move, if approved, would mark a huge reversal for the Army and mean an end to the service’s lesser-known, underrated AIT platoon sergeants, who do much of the same work as drill sergeants without any of the perks.

The Center for Initial Military Training is conducting research and will present a recommendation to Training and Doctrine Command senior leaders by early summer. If the proposal moves forward, any changes must be approved by senior Army leaders.

via www.armytimes.com

The title is rather misleading.
Up until 2007, soldiers in AIT usually had Drill Sergeants assigned, in addition to the training cadre at their school.

But in 2007, the decision was made to replace the Drill Sergeants with AIT Platoon Sergeants.

But the AIT Platoon Sergeant has most of the responsibilities of a Drill Sergeant, but none of the perks.

And that the AIT Platoon Sergeants are struggling is more an indication that doing away with Drill Sergeants in AIT was a bad decision, rather than any particular reflection on Millennials.

So, I mention at the beginning of the video that I haven’t posted any of my battles, as they have tended to be somewhat dull. Ironically, right after I recorded this one, I had a pretty dang good battle. I’ll edit and narrate it tonight and post it tomorrow.

In the real world, the USS Des Moines and her sister ship USS Newport News were the last all gun heavy cruisers in the US Navy.  Their auto-loading 8”/55 guns had a stupendous rate of fire, and provided long and valuable service.

In World of Warships, the guns fire fast, but are nerfed a bit in range. And very often, the high rate of fire means Des Moines is often singled out early on and ground down. They tend to be bullet magnets. But in this fight, the enemy fleet seems a bit uncoordinated, and Rusty is able to put the guns t good effect.