As a Veteran, I am Appalled

Democracy

Wilbur said:
Jammer is not being obnoxious. He (or she...don't know which) is writing what he believes is right. That's what we all do. As it turns out, most do not agree with what he wrote here, replied as such, and Jammer is kinda defending his thoughts. This happens now and then and there's really no immediate solution.
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Wilbur, I am not an American but I have been following this discussion with interest (from Australia).

It is pleasing to see that you have an open mind and let a bloke have his say whether you agree or not.

That's one thing that I admire about democracy, everybody can have their say, but we all have the choice to chose whether to listen (or not).

Let the voters decide matey.

Well done!

* doghunter *
 
If you go back and read my original post, it had nothing to do with international waters or the circumstances.

It was about the conduct of this officer.

Maybe things have changed. When I was in the Army, we always complained that the Officers had the good life, got the good food, lived in nice apartments, etc.

But, they were also held to the higher standard. Commissioned Officers knew that if they messed up, there were rarely 2d chances. They knew that the oath they took was serious, and the Military expected them follow the Code of Conduct with no reservations.

Perhaps the Officer Corps has changed. There certainly does not seem to be that distinct line of demarcation between the Enlisted Men and Commissioned Officers as there used to be. I see on TV at events where Officers and Enlisted Personal are carrying on informal conversations, chatting, co-mingling so to speak.

I had a group of Coast Guard Members come by our shop a while back. They were part of a group that would be inspecting vessels under the new Sub Chapter M Guidelines for Inland Tugboats. There was a Lt JG in command of the group. The enlisted men talked to him like he was just one of the guys. That did not seem right to me.

That did not happen when I was in the Army.

We have dummied down everything else in this Country. Perhaps Commissioned Officers in our Military no longer hold the prestige and responsibility that they used too.
 
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Chism G said:
You don’t break a Law for being a Racist. You break a Law for discrimination because of Race,Sex,Religion,Ethnic Origin. These discriminations have to be proven in Court.

I have been a victim of racial discrimination many times in my life. If you’ve never experienced it before, you have no idea how dehumanizing it really is.

Albert Einstein said in the 1940’s that we are all a little bit racist,I tend to agree.

Following the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, I refused to get on a Commercial Airliner with travelers that I thought were of Middle Eastern descent. I actually cancelled several flights at the airport because of my suspicions. I guess I’m a Racist . My refusal to fly on those airlines was a personal decision that I felt justified in making.

Racism is a complex topic. The Civil Rights Act 0f 1964 was an attempt to address a problem that is as old as civilization.

I’ve got better things to do than sit around and worry about Racism. I think, for the most part, we all just want to get along. There are a few idiots in the bunch that keep getting in the way of progress.

I've got brass to turn.




Glenn
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Well said Glenn
 
gentlemen,
i stayed out of this as there are little facts KNOWN to us.
i did not read all the posts, if this has been posted, feel free to delete.





Jan 14 Lonsberry Column----I agree. Something is amiss here]

THIS is the best on the NAVY boat deal





The account of two U. S. Navy vessels being seized by the Iranian navy earlier this week seems completely implausible.

No part of it makes any sense.

The story is that two river patrol boats – bristling modern-day incarnations of the Vietnam swift boats – were navigating south from Kuwait to Bahrain.
At some point, via some means, the two boats, with their contingent of five sailors each, surrendered to the Iranians.

Two accounts have been offered as to how that happened. The first was that one of the vessels lost its engine and that they both then drifted into Iranian waters.
The other was that the two boats had been operating fine, but inadvertently navigated into Iranian territory.

Simply put, they got lost.

Neither account seems possible.

First off, if one of the boats broke down, and the sailor aboard trained to tend the engine couldn’t fix it, the other boat would merely take it in tow and they would proceed on their way.
That is not a novel maritime undertaking.

The second scenario – oops, we got lost – is even less likely. It turns out that navigation and navigation equipment are kind of a high priority for the Navy.
Boats don’t get lost. Highly technical navigation equipment on both boats would have told crewmembers exactly where they were.

And in the unlikely event that both boats lost all electronic navigational equipment, and the compasses lost track of magnetic north,
there is the simple fact that sailing from Kuwait to Bahrain pretty much involves nothing more complex than keeping the shore on your starboard side.
And should you lose sight of shore, and can remember that the map has safety to the west and danger to the east,
you’d think that the position of the sun in the sky or the fact that prevailing winds in the Persian Gulf in the winter are northwesterly,
would somehow have allowed our sailors to find the Saudi shoreline instead of Iranian waters.

And all of that presumes that these two boats were operating alone in the open seas, which they presumably were not.
There is, in fact, a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier battle group operating in the Persian Gulf.

The USS Harry S Truman owns the Persian Gulf these days, and the significant American military presence in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait –
lands immediately proximate to the waters where our sailors were operating – makes us the biggest dog on the block.

And we’ve got radar and helicopters and airplanes and stuff like that.

And if an American vessel breaks down at sea, or strays from course, under those operational conditions,
there are a lot of American assets that would both notice the problem and be able to offer relief.

Yet no one did.

We’re supposed to believe nobody radioed a couple of inexplicably lost boats to ask where they were going?
When one of them supposedly broke down, a carrier battle group had no means to come to their assistance?

That makes no sense.

It’s completely unbelievable.

So is the apparent conduct of the sailors in the face of a supposed challenge by the Iranian military.

If one of the vessels was disabled, as is claimed, and hostile craft are approaching, bringing with them the prospect of capture and captivity,
don’t you put all 10 sailors on the able boat, sink the disabled boat, and race the bad guys back to international waters?

From the Iranian video, it looks like two or three bass boats and four guys in mismatched uniforms, with a couple of AKs,
captured two far-larger and better-armed American boats, both of which were bristling with mounted machine guns.

Here’s a fact: When you’re kneeling on the deck of your own boat, with your hands clasped behind your head,
and some guy’s shouting at you in terrorist language, things didn’t go right.

And yet, that’s exactly what supposedly happened here. Ten American sailors, successors to Captain James Lawrence,
are on their knees next to their unfired guns, in the face of a smaller and less well-armed opponent – with little American flags snapping in the breeze.

This is not the stuff of Commodore Perry and Admiral Farragut.

And you wonder whose call it was.

How far up the chain of command did they have to go to find the cowardly lion who ordered this genuflection before a bunch of savages?
Did this get bounced all the way to the Pentagon, or the Situation Room?
Which secretary of what made the decision not to put a squadron of naval aviators above those two boats to keep the camel jockeys at bay?

It is shameful, a worldwide embarrassment for the nation and the Navy.

And it is topped off by an obsequious videotaped apology, and pictures of our sailors, captive in hostile hands, the female with a towel over her head.

The president can ignore this.

But we can’t.

We got pantsed. We got humiliated. We showed either weakness or incompetence. And unfortunately either one only invites aggression against us.

It is inconceivable that you could find 10 Americans willing to surrender themselves and their equipment without a fight.
It is not plausible that any young man or woman entering into the naval service would willingly kneel on the deck of a combat-capable ship.

Somebody told them to give up.

And that somebody, and the philosophy he represents, will be the death of us.

- by Bob Lonsberry © 2016
 
CMaier said:
....... snip............
The other was that the two boats had been operating fine, but inadvertently navigated into Iranian territory.

Simply put, they got lost.

Neither account seems possible.

.......... snip..............It turns out that navigation and navigation equipment are kind of a high priority for the Navy.
Boats don’t get lost. Highly technical navigation equipment on both boats would have told crewmembers exactly where they were.

........ snip..................
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Actually, simply getting lost is, to me, a plausible explanation and even the most likely. Certainly it's not impossible. Here's why:

True, they have excellent navigation gear on those boats, but they're run by humans. That's the short answer. Here's some background.

I'm reminded of the time I delivered an F-8 Crusader (single seat, single engine, fighter) from California to Viet Nam many years ago in the days before GPS. We were a flight of two aircraft. I was still an Ensign and the flight leader was a Commander. I was tasked with the navigation duties which involved mostly Dead Reckoning with only a hundred miles or so of Tacan (radio) navigation at the start and end of each leg. It was exciting and challenging and I took my duties very seriously which included many hours of pre-planning, gathering wind information from airliners, calculating wind drift, etc. etc. etc. I remember that when we made landfall in Hawaii on the first leg, we we had an error of 30 seconds in our ETA (estimated time of arrival) and a course error of 3 miles south of track. I received a letter of commendation for that mission which lasted for 10 days.

For shooters not familiar with dead reckoning navigation, it's sort of like taking a rifle zeroed at 100 yards and, after consulting a ballistics book and estimating the winds, adjusting the scope and taking a shot at 1200 yards AND hitting the target.

At the same time our flight of two F-8s were crossing the Pacific, a flight of six F-4 Phantoms were doing the same thing using the same aerial refueling tankers. But they were otherwise not associated with our mission in any way.

The Navy F-4 has a Radar Intercept Officer in the back seat who also functions as a navigator. The RIO in the lead aircraft used his rudimentary on-board navigation computer (something we F-8 guys didn't have) which relied on radar returns from the air-intercept to measure the wind drift and determine the proper heading to fly. This is something I did manually using a hand held "wiz-wheel". On the third leg the RIO of the lead aircraft input some inappropriate route points and got lost. ALL FIVE of the remaining aircraft were simply following the leader and nobody was doing back up navigation or cross checking the work of the lead navigator. For those who don't know, when conducting dead reckoning navigation out of range of land based radio navigation systems, once you get lost you have no easy way to re-establish your position. In other words, you're more or less screwed. Through some amazing luck and some fancy radio direction finding by one of the Marine Corps C-130 tanker navigator, the flight of 6 Phantoms was saved.

We heard this cluster-f**k on the radio and when we landed in Guam my flight leader, a very senior Commander, tracked down the F-4 group and gave the leader an a$$ chewing the likes of which I had never seen before or after. We were astounded that twelve qualified airmen, 6 aviators and 6 RIOs would risk their aircraft and their lives in such a stupid way. Even though my flight leader was not in the direct chain of command, he restricted the entire F-4 flight to their quarters for the night and ordered them all to develop a detailed navigation plan for the next leg which he would examine the next morning. Meanwhile, we went to the Officers Club for a few drinks to toast our precision navigation efforts. Later on, the F-4 flight leader received a letter of reprimand in his permanent file.

The point of this too-long sea story is that sophisticated navigation gear is no guarantee of success. There are countless examples of airliners landing at the wrong airport, and in the case of Korean Air Lines Flight 007, they got shot down by the Russians and 269 people died. That was because the pilot navigating tried to engage his inertial nav system with an offset of greater than 7.5 miles, so it remained in the armed mode without ever engaging. They simply flew along fat dumb and happy with nobody cross checking anything until a Major Gennadi Osipovich put a missile up their rear-end.

I'm guessing somebody screwed up the navigation of the lead boat and everyone else was doping off and not paying attention. That's a good recipe for getting your teat in a wringer, for those old enough to know that that means. ;)

State-of-the-art nav gear will not, by itself, keep you out of trouble especially if the humans running that gear aren't doing their duty.
 
I agree about Crews making mistakes. IN the mid-60's I was a KC-135 Flight Simulator operator. Sadly you have good pilots & poor Pilots, just like drivers. When the B-52's went to SE Asia the KC-135's had to go with them. The Tankers made the same hops you describe on the way over, starting with Hickam. Of course the crews had letdown plates for each stop & we'd set up approaches for each Airfield on the way over so they'd at least be a bit familiar with each stop. Sometimes, as a test, on approach we'd clear them to descend to below a hill (clearly marked on the plate) & they'd sometimes fly right into the ground. Air traffic controllers can make mistakes too, but the good pilots aren't going to let that kind of mistake kill them.
 
When I was in the military, I read maps on a regular basis. I don't know if I had a knack for it but always knew within 50 meters of where we were
by comparing visual reference points relative to my position and finding those points on the map.
However, we had people that could not of told you what country they were in. I don't know if they simply played follow the leader out of lack of map
reading skills or if they were simply too lazy to do the navigation. It never caused us any major problems but could have. It is hard to ask for help
if you don't know where you are.
 
D. E. Laneer said:
However, we had people that could not of told you what country they were in. I don't know if they simply played follow the leader out of lack of map
reading skills or if they were simply too lazy to do the navigation. It never caused us any major problems but could have. It is hard to ask for help
if you don't know where you are.
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And therein lies the answer.............some people are too lazy to give a $hit or maybe too stupid. I say thank you to several of you guys that gave an answer from the experiences you had.


Thanks
Dave
 
Dave Coots said:
And therein lies the answer.............some people are too lazy to give a $hit or maybe too stupid. I say thank you to several of you guys that gave an answer from the experiences you had.


Thanks
Dave
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As a pilot it pains me to say this, but immediately after an airplane crash, the FAA and Media both rush to blame it on Pilot Error. Sad to say, they're usually correct.

I strongly suspect that the guys doing a boat delivery simply weren't giving navigation the attention it deserved, went off course, and got captured.
 
The two boats that were detained by Iranians that are now free, wouldn't it be better if we knew the full story before we get into these FOXNEWS type rants. This morning on Hannity they were raving and ranting about things that happened 20 years ago!!

.
 
It was reported that the Sims from the 2 Sat phones were missing....whether we disposed of them or what happened it doesn't say.
 
They probably realized john kerry was the one responsible for gettin em back. Id be crying too thinking back to the last time they had hostages
 
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