'How to Succeed with Brunettes': The Mad Men-style dating video shown to Naval Officers during the Vietnam War


The stereotyping of NCOs in this video is pretty clear: the first video shows a petty officer lacking manners and then the second video shows a young Naval Officer making Emily Post proud. The petty officer and young Naval Officer is played by the same actor - the only thing that changes is the uniform and rank displayed.

Army Fitness

Rising number of soldiers being dismissed for failing fitness tests

This isn't surprising, but I wonder how many of these Soldiers are the victims of the outdated mode of body fat computation the Army uses.

Death Star Petition

This petition makes as much sense as many of the defense projects we pay for with our tax dollars each year.


White House Petition: Secure resources and funding, and begin construction of a Death Star by 2016

Another Day, Another $678 Million Stealth Jet Wrecked

First US military unit to be continuously stationed in Poland activated

Pretty cool...

Defense cuts

Obama goes on offense over defense cuts

"Partly motivated"

Navy Special Forces units: How many are needed?

It is great to see that the Navy is adapting to the 21st Century and increasing its focus on special operations. One thing I was shocked to read in the Pincus article linked to above is:

The Navy has other groups prepared to take part in irregular warfare. One is the Coastal Riverine Force, whose roots go back to the Vietnam War. In June, it merged with the Maritime Expeditionary Force to create units that perform “core maritime expeditionary security missions in green and brown waters . . ."

The great blue water U.S. Navy is actually improving its ability to operate in the littorals! Pretty amazing given the service culture.

Romney calls for a 17 percent increase to the DoD budget

Romney wants defense spending to be much, much higher. The public doesn’t.

My only comments here are, "Why?!," and "With what money?" See graphs below:

Lockheed Martin: Price of F-35 going up

U.S. seeks to ease concerns over F-35 delays, costs

The U.S. Defense Department is restructuring for a third time its $382 billion F-35 program with Lockheed Martin Corp to allow more time for development and testing.

And we need a new fighter jet that costs this much because  ???

More DoD waste... but fraud being investigated!

Fraud investigation targets recruiting program for Army National Guard, Reserve

On its face, I thought this program was wasteful when my Nattie G brigade mandated that everyone sign-up to become Recruiting Assistants. Now, my instincts have been proven correct.

Basically, Soldiers were "hired" (hired = signed himself up for the program) as 1099 employees of DOCUPAK and given the title Recruiting Assistant (RA). Soldiers (aka newly hired RAs) in the ARNG could bring in recruits, ask them a few questions, submit a form online, and then hand them off to a local recruiter. If the recruiter signed a recruit up, then the Soldier/RA who brought the recruit into the recruiting pipeline got paid. It seems that despite all of the warnings given to the Soldiers/RAs when they signed up for the program about how they could not split any of the money they received for recruiting someone, it occurred. The cases cited in the article probably represent only a small portion of the fraud that was actually committed. One case mentioned outlines a blatant fraud. First, a local recruiter would recruit someone and not enter any of the recruit's information into their recruiting database. Instead, they would tell an RA to input the recruit's information into the DOCUPAK recruiting website. Next, the recruiter would receive a referral from the DOCUPAK website and then sign the recruit up... this made the RA qualify to receive a payment for recruiting a Soldier. In this particular scheme, the local recruiter and the RA opened up a joint bank account to which the RA's commission was paid, clearly violating the policy that you cannot split the proceeds paid by DOCUPAK. These idiots didn't even try to hide what they were doing - they opened up a joint bank account allowing the authorities to track the payments electronically!

Waste undoubtedly occurred elsewhere within the program. For example, RAs received points to order recruiting items that could be used to help market the ARNG and entice potential recruits to a recruiting table... this too must have cost the Army millions. I wonder how much of the marketing budget allocated to each RA was actually used to recruit Soldiers and not just used by the RAs to get free tchotchkes to give to their friends and relatives, who were anxious to say they knew and supported someone involved in the war effort being waged by less than one percent of the American population? Now, keep in mind, this program was started when the Army could not recruit enough Soldiers and junior officers were leaving the Army in droves, but still, how could someone not have figured out from the beginning how wasteful this program would be? It operated outside of the military chain of command and the RAs never even met with or saw anyone from their new employer, DOCUPAK. How sad.

S#!t Civilians Say to Veterans

Congressional hearings on the defense budget can be a bore . . .

Defense budget hearings: Lots to learn for those who pay attention

Hoya Saxa!

Georgetown Army ROTC ranked top in the nation

The Optimism of GEN Westmoreland persists...

Another Vietnam? Maybe a bad analogy.

It seems that, once again, senior leaders of the military are painting a rosy picture of progress in a war zone. What do you expect from career officers who lead the most can-do organization in the world?  The can-do attitude of the America military is both its greatest strength and weakness. Here is an excerpt from the article describing the reaction of DNI Clapper, who is himself a retired 3-star USAF general that has fully embraced the goatee and a less rosy picture of progress as DNI, to testimony regarding the sentiments expressed by the operational commander in Afghanistan, the CENTCOM Commander, and the EUCOM Commander (as well as Ambassador Crocker):

Well, yes [there are differences in opinion], Clapper said, those officials “took issue with the NIE on three counts having to do with the force structure, didn’t feel that we gave sufficient weight to Pakistan and its impact as a safe haven and generally felt that the NIE was pessimistic” about the situation in Afghanistan and “the prospects for post-2014,” when troops are to withdraw. Clapper tried to ease Levin’s concerns. “If you’ll forgive a little history, sir,” he began. “I served as an analyst briefer for General Westmoreland in Vietnam in 1966.” Clapper said he learned there that it’s typical that the “operational commanders sometimes don’t agree” with the intelligence team’s assessment of their efforts.

Here is an example of how foreign armies view the American can-do attitude:

The Revolving Door

Retired general had no conflict of interest, Panetta says

Robertson had been the top officer at U.S. Transportation Command and Air Mobility Command before retiring in 2001. He went to work for Boeing, retiring as a vice president in 2010. He did not respond to a request for comment.

A USA TODAY investigation in 2009 found that 80% of 158 mentors, retired officers hired as advisers, had ties to the defense industry, including Roberson. Panetta assured McCain the Pentagon has taken "many steps" since then to "impose controls on senior mentors." Among them: They must disclose business ties and have had their pay capped, and they are subject to confict-of-interest rules. Those restrictions were not in place in 2008, when Robertson participated in the war game.

Absolutely Shocking!!!

Pentagon, Lockheed see price of F-35 going up

ONCE AN EAGLE rated number one by Army junior officers

What do Army junior officers actually recommend reading?  Their own top 10

The Next Generation of Warfare

A cyber risk to the U.S.

If this doesn't scare you, I don't know what will.

Though the Pentagon has a cybercommand, it does not cover the domestic civilian economy, including vital infrastructure systems such as the electric power grid, water supplies and the financial system. Many of the computers controlling those utilities lack adequate security measures and could be devastated by viruses launched by hostile states or even hackers. As it is, U.S. companies, from defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin to e-mail carriers such as Google, are under continual assault from China and Russia, which seek to steal industrial or national security secrets and probe for infrastructure weaknesses.

Unfortunately, instead of more adequately funding programs that can protect the U.S. from cyber attack, our elected leaders continue to choose to fund wasteful programs like the Joint Strike Fighter, dubbed The Wild Blue Squander by The New York Times.  Here is a GAO chart illustrating the cost history of the Joint Strike Fighter: