581–590 of 608 posts
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Thanks. Quickly looking at the links, it seems all pre-WWI, mostly 19th century. Is that still true?
No, as I said the Squadron was operationally commanded by a billionaire as recently as the 1980s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Grosvenor,_6th_Duke_of_... It's still very common for upper class people to join the Army in the UK.
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You are advocating conflict escalation and expansion that will drastically shorten the decision tree that ends in the permanent end of human civilization in its present form. Given that the Ukrainians -- with Western material, financial and intelligence support -- appear to be capable of destroying the combat power of the Russian Army in the field without a direct NATO intervention, what you're in effect asking for i…
You can’t simultaneously claim I’m risking nothing while also encouraging a path with the potential for nuclear war. If the latter is true, the former is not. I am strongly in favor of military intervention.
I spent five years in the Air Force. Posts like this are really helpful, a lot of Americans are disconnected from members of the military, especially in the upper classes where people do not need to serve, or in fields (like tech) where people can often find less intrusive ways to pay for college. My favorite part of the article is dispelling the myth that in the military senior people bark orders, and don't ask for…
>None of that is true. All of that is true about my Army experience lol. If I could go back and do it again, I'd definitely choose Air Force. I agree that the military can be a positive experience and it's a good idea for some people, but the caveat with my endorsement is that you gotta carefully choose the branch and the job. I almost chose linguistics, but for some silly reason chose mechanic and paratrooper, and w…
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My feeling is that a lot of people work in dangerous workplaces, where mistakes can and do kill people. The miltary is one of those workplaces: if you look at the stats[0] you can see that ordinary workplace injuries absolutely dwarf combat-related injuries. Even in wartime[1], the number of deaths from enemy action rarely exceed those from accident. What makes this worse is that the military is a pretty dangerous wo…
We are absolutely open to criticism; my point is you don't even know WHAT to criticize. Your entire argument is predicated on a flawed understanding of what we do and the resources we have to do it. Note that I'm not saying we are perfect (or even close), and there are so many things we could do better I could write a book, but you are moving goalposts rather than addressing the points I brought up. The plain and sim…
Yeah, sure. That's what I'm responding to with all the stats. The nice thing about numbers is that they are fungible. Anybody can read a chart and tell you the US military is really bad at workplace safety, whether or not there is a war going on.
It's a bit like the US police force. You can show a bunch of figures to a LEO, and the figures for law enforcement in the US are worst in class - the US spends more and gets less from its police than almost any other nation on earth - and they'll just say straight up that you don't understand their jobs, not realizing that the figures clearly show they don't understand their jobs either.
Now, the US military is much better than the US police force, but there's the same underlying problem. It doesn't have to fix its problems because there's no soldier's unions, there's no competitor coming in to eat its lunch, and the only oversight is the worst kind of political interference.
If I was in the military, I'd see it Iraq and Afghanistan as a golden opportunity for reform, just as the Sino-Vietnamese war was for the chinese PLA. You can use defeat as a bludgeon against entrenched tradition. It's no good in that situation just saying to outsiders that they don't understand your special requirements - you want to actually encourage academics, journalists, etc, especially the unsympathetic ones, to pitch in and try and work out what went so awfully wrong.
The first step in that would be to absolutely draw every parallel and draw every lesson you can from the civilian sector, because that's your testing bed for organizational strategy. That's what people like Robert MacNamara did in WW2 - they took civilian traditions like accountancy and statistics, and applied them to the USAF, to devastating effect. If you're in a situation where you feel like there's some experiential special sauce, it needs to be absolutely pinned down, quantized, and described, so you can work out how its effecting all the other metrics.
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Thank you. Can anyone comment with regard to the Air Force? Not asking for myself. I am a high school English teacher, and I am currently helping a young man with his application to the academy. He is committed to the Air Force either way, but I try to pass along any information that I come across (with the caveat, of course, that I don’t know what I’m talking about).
I joined Air Force active duty for a 4 year hitch when 9/11 happened, and was in the Air National Guard for a few years after my initial enlistment. I mention that because some things may have changed since I've been out more than a decade, but I don't think they have. Individual job descriptions do change though, so I will only give high-level advice rather than specific AFSC/MOS. I went into Satellite, Wideband, an…
The missions I've gotten to be a part of were awesome; however, I could have experienced just as much "cyber knife fighting" in the civilian world had I taken that track (perhaps more, because less rules) and I would have had a lot less bullshit.
Now, I'm a physician, and I'd say this - my residency was more bearable than the last 19 years in the army guard. I'm happy to be getting out soon, and while I will miss the friends I've made, I won't miss the organization as a whole.
I'll say the unpopular but hard truth. Relative to other nations, US DoD Cyber Forces by and of large part are woefully inadequate and unprepared for the real cyber fight. Sure, bright exceptions exist at the 3 letter agencies, and the occasional few people in the uniformed services - but these folks are rare, and they rarely stick around long. There is a lot of Cyber "showmanship" and BS, and most people are dis-incentivized from telling the truth about how bad at is - because they all want the prestige to help them attract high paying civilian jobs. I get it. But, I'll say the US taxpayer should be very concerned about how so much money was spent for frankly so very little.
The average US Army Cyber soldier can't even explain how an exploit works, technically. Moreover, they have a complete lack of cloud training or concepts or really any depth at all. Yet, they have all convinced themselves that if "cyber 9/11" happened - they'd somehow be useful to civilian companies, city governments and utilities beyond getting the people who know what they're doing some coffee. And this is a shame, because 15 years ago the potential existed for this to be much better; but a lack of new leaders who understand tech, greed and the DIB machine have made the situation unbearable.
I feel sorry for the United States. We could have done so much better, but real systemic change in the Army seems absolutely impossible. I still hear racist, homophobic and sexist jokes on the regular - despite the big push for "zero tolerance". The DOD hasn't, and likely won't ever change. It is simply too big and too slow and too entrenched.
I spent five years in the Air Force. Posts like this are really helpful, a lot of Americans are disconnected from members of the military, especially in the upper classes where people do not need to serve, or in fields (like tech) where people can often find less intrusive ways to pay for college. My favorite part of the article is dispelling the myth that in the military senior people bark orders, and don't ask for…
Some reserve units in the US are highly technical too. I did a cyber education course at AFIT when I was in Air Force ROTC and there was a particular reserve unit somewhere in Maryland I want to say nearish NSA that had a lot of super smart security researchers that came to guest lecture us including Raphael Smudge (creator of https://github.com/rsmudge/armitage )
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>None of that is true. All of that is true about my Army experience lol. If I could go back and do it again, I'd definitely choose Air Force. I agree that the military can be a positive experience and it's a good idea for some people, but the caveat with my endorsement is that you gotta carefully choose the branch and the job. I almost chose linguistics, but for some silly reason chose mechanic and paratrooper, and w…
Were these injuries in training or in War ? I thought that paratrooper training was made really safe nowadays with extensive basic training done by Sergeant Airbornes in the BAC course. (assuming US)
Airborne training is "safe" in the sense that they thoroughly teach you all the steps and do lots of ground training before getting in a plane. But by no means does that mean your body won't get wrecked by doing jumps.
The parachutes are designed for combat: their goal isn't a soft landing, it's to get you out of the sky as fast as possible.
I was stationed in Alaska. Wintertime jumps were a toss-up in terms of landing in a big pile of snow — or solid ice.
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Obamacare created new gaps that absolutely sucked - made over 58k and self employed? No subsidies for you and paying a skyrocketing premium higher than any reasonable home mortgage with a 10k deductible. Completely unrealistic. And then the IRS hit you for thousands in penalties via the individual mandate. I lived through that, uninsured, for five years or so as a business owner - to “rich” to get subsidies, too poor…
That's horrible, my sympathy. Personally, I think Obamacare fixed more than it broke, even immediately. In particular, it was a huge relief to get rid of the possibility you could be permanently uninsurable after even a tiny gap if you have a "pre-existing condition". I wanted Medicare for everyone (still do), but politics...and lies about "government death panels"...
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Obamacare created new gaps that absolutely sucked - made over 58k and self employed? No subsidies for you and paying a skyrocketing premium higher than any reasonable home mortgage with a 10k deductible. Completely unrealistic. And then the IRS hit you for thousands in penalties via the individual mandate. I lived through that, uninsured, for five years or so as a business owner - to “rich” to get subsidies, too poor…
I see how this sucks for you. Just out of curiosity I calculated roughly the cost in Germany. If you were self employed and made 5.000 € a month your health insurance would be somewhat around 900 € per month. Partly tax deductible if I am not mistaken. So quite a bit of money. But probably manageable for many/most people. I am lucky. As I only do freelance work on the side I am insured via what I pay from my main inc…
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>Yeah, just not in any combat duty That is false. Middle and upper class are more likely to serve in combat roles than lower class. >Combat is for the lower classes, preferably rural poor Complete opposite actually.
Just define "upper" class at 65k/yr household income, and boom! Lots of upper class households serve!
Unless you have sources that claim otherwise, my original claim stands.
Facts don't care about your feelings.