The Military Thread

*hates being forced to be an armchair general*

Then get out of the armchair!

Desk Jockey, huh?

Er, no.

Then how are you an armchair officer?

By not being in at all.

Wait, huh? The last Boer War was over a hundred years ago. Do you mean something else, or is Tam 100+ years old?

edited 8th May '12 7:21:26 AM by Exploder

I'm pretty sure it's a joke.

My unit has plenty of nerds and geeks, myself included.

I don't discuss my nerdy hobbies, except in the presence of others who are into that sort of thing. We have a guy on night shift who is a World Of Warcraft nerd, he farms gold at the gatehouse in the middle of the night and sells it. I always give him shit about it since he's Korean.

One of my best friends in my unit is also a big time nerd, we play some of the same games. We have varying degrees of nerddom. You won't get razzed for being a gamer if it's just playing COD on 360 and all that other stuff that is considered mainstream, the more complex the games you play, the nerdier you look. One of my other good friends isn't a gamer, but he's super nerdy. We spend a lot of our time swapping youtube videos and funny pictures on facebook all the time.

Not all officers are asshole, and there are a few who are not in my chain of command who I consider my friends. One of them is a Lieutenant who was enlisted in my unit before he got a commission, but he now works with our headquarters element. The other is a Captain who is a flight medic, I first met him as a butter bar, and he used to be enlisted. He was a security forces augmentee and his flight chief was my dad, circa maybe 8 years ago. Most officers are usually pretty nice to your face, there's a strange sort of optimistic passive aggressive attitude that many officers in the Air Force master, where they are super polite and malleable to people in reasonable situations, but are always holding something back, sort of like a politician, they look like they are right on the brink of actually saying what they think but never do.

My partner is actually looking to get her commission soon, and we'll see how that goes. I'd been in maybe 3 years when she joined, but she's 30 now and has her masters degree, and is looking to possibly commission. That'll be weird since we've spent thousands of hours just sitting around in a gate shack or driving around in a squad car bullshitting about stuff. Our relationship towards eachother won't really change if she gets commissioned, but it's every other SNCO out there who fucks that stuff up. Her boyfriend is a good friend of mine, a S Sgt in our unit, so that may have an affect on her being commissioned. She would probably have to take a position in a different unit.

I have a funny relationship with our Commander. I first met him when he was newly minted Major, and I worked alongside him on a few different paperwork projects(he wasn't our commander then, he was the commander of the logistics squadron) and like many Guard officers, he insisted that I just call him Mike, among other things. I've never called him Mike, though he speaks to me with my first name. Whenever the two of us interact, I always see the head of every Master Sergeant and above swivel in my direction like they are just waiting for me to say something with improper decorum so they can rip my ass for it.

I know Martello would probably see that as unprofessional and by active duty standards it is. But our Commander pulls it off exceptionally well, behind that goofy friendly exterior is a seriously calculating motherfucker who spends every second in uniform like he's playing a game of Risk. He manages to never be a prick, but can throw the gauntlet down when he needs to and make it all that much more surprising because of the contrast to his normal attitude. A combination of his attitude and subtle cult of personality style of leadership has pretty much turned into a subtle form of mind control in the year and a half since he took over our unit, which has an excessively checkered past both on the base and all the way up to the state headquarters for IG complaints and causing trouble. He's forcing old useless SNCO's and NCO's with over 20 to retire early, giving input to promote the younger more promising NCO's instead of making it look like seniority is all that counts, and getting us countless high profile missions to boost the reputation of our unit. 99 percent of the squadron pretty much thinks the man is a god. And while he's walking around being informal and abandoning military decorum at every turn, he's made it pretty clear in the past to everybody that "I'm your commander, and I will always support my troops one hundred percent, but unfortunately we will never be friends because of that." He's pretty much mastered the concept of forced distance from his troops while still managing to engage them a lot.

Honestly though, I see most officers kind of like women, and think that everything they say is a carefully constructed front or often a sham, and that the O club is like a female restroom, that place where they all go and actually air all the dirty shit that they think about people. It seems like our officers never want to be the conduit of discipline except in the worst of cases, and that if they can help it they'll just tell Top so he can do all the heavy lifting instead. I find it really shady, dishonest, and overall a kind of weak and yellow bellied practice, but on the other hand I have such a supreme level of respect for my commander that I feel I can give him a pass on it.

As a bad example, there's a prick ass Major who nobody likes who I gave a ticket to on sunday for driving a motorcycle on base without any sort of reflective vest. He got all pissy and butthurt about it and was waving his arms wildly at me and shaking his oak leaves like it would somehow do something to me. Soon as he got disrespectful I dropped out of parade rest and crossed my arms, which pissed him off, and I told him that if I gave him a pass, how am I supposed to enforce the rules towards his own troops if he is somehow immune. I also told him that the last guy I'd ticketed was an E-8 in his unit, who accepted the ticket with good humor. Told him if his Senior Master Sergeant can follow the rules, why can't the commander? And he got fuming pissed, took the ticket, and left.

Then my Commander came through the gate and I told him what had happened in advance so the Major wouldn't surprise him with a complaint, to which he narrowed his eyes in a rare aggressive gesture and said he was going to his office to pay him a visit.(My commander is a Lieutenant Colonel)

edited 8th May '12 8:42:51 AM by Barkey

And that's how you troll officers as an enlisted.

Barkey: Do MPs often have to worry about higher-ranking officers getting their revenge by making your life harder at a later date? I know you said that the rank of someone you're apprehending for a misdemeanour of some description doesn't technically matter, but do you ever have to worry about having to be on your guard because some particularly dickish officer (like that Major) has it in for you?

Sometimes, I suppose it's complicated. People have a tendency to hate MP's by default, but at the same time we are very insulated from the rest of the units on base. Our building is in the very back of the base nestled in a nice little corner on the flight line, so nobody comes to our building unless they have a reason to. The most these officers could do is just be huge pricks to me in any future encounters. The thing is, we won't have future encounters, because our two units don't work together. Also, this Major already hates my guts. He wanted me to issue him a base sticker, but he didn't have his insurance papers yet since it was a new car, and was essentially shaking his oak leaves at me and demanding that I just give him a sticker regardless.

Now I have done that, skip on decal regs, but never for an officer. And never for anyone being such a huge dick about it. I just put my foot down and told him no, and that I could write him a 30 day temporary pass for his vehicle and that was it. He kept arguing about it and gesticulating wildly as if that accomplishes something, and I promptly brought my boss in, who is an E-7, who then had to get the Colonel involved once again. So this isn't the first time, this douche has a reputation for it. He also specifically hates me because I ended the career of one of his friends, who was a pilot. He was drinking and driving on my base, and he had a flight in 8 hours. You aren't allowed to consume alcohol 12 hours or less before you either fly or have to arm up with firearms(like my job).

So I guess the short version is that yes, they can try, but unless you're really unlucky and they catch you doing something you shouldn't, the most they can do is be a pain in the ass annoyance. Honestly though it's worth it, being able to tell an officer to fuck themselves in polite terms is a rare privilege you almost exclusively get as an MP. When the Major said "Damnit I don't have time for this, I have work to do." I was able to reply with "With all due respect sir, I don't care, you're violating both Do D Regulations and the Installation Commanders written policy." -waggles memorandum from the wing commander about motorcycle equipment regulations in his face-

I'll admit it, the shocked, helpless, and furious look on an officers face when you disrespect them and know you're getting away with it gets me hard. It's why I specifically drive around looking for officers who are driving while talking on their cell phones, because I want to piss in their cornflakes since usually they are the ones ruining everyone elses day.

Edit: That's actually the root of it I think. Officers always seem to be on this untouchable pedestal where there's maybe 30 people on my base who can make them feel small. If you're my rank, there's like 1200 people who can do that to me. I like being the 31st person to give them that feeling that they aren't used to, even for just 10 minutes. I tend to enforce the shit out of rules I would otherwise be flexible on if it's an officer involved, since supposedly they are held to a higher standard than us.(Rarely, they get away with so much shit and tend to have vastly easier lives than us on a day to day basis)

It's why if Martello was talking on his cell phone while driving I'd give him a ticket. It isn't about him, it's about the fact that I get my rocks off acting like a smarmy prick to officers and getting away with it.

edited 8th May '12 11:16:51 AM by Barkey

Your base still requires vehicle decals?

We used to, now we don't. But we share a perimeter with a navy base and there's a larger navy base 5 miles away, we don't have a PX, club, BEQ/BOQ, or a commissary on our base. So we issue our own sticker to give people access to the Navy side.

And we'll probably never get those services, because the navy base we're connected to has all of them right next door. It's just that to go on their base with a POV you have to exit our gate and come in through theirs, which requires a decal(the navy still require them). If you have a GOV, you can take the perimeter road past the flight line to the navy base.

Security Forces has an old AMXS building that we live in now. There's been talk about building our own shop for the last decade or so but it's never happened. We all want a bar on base, and there is food processing plant right next to us which is the size of a small compound. We always talk about buying them out and making the entire compound a bar on the first floor and security forces on the second. One of our guys even said we could keep the farm functioning for MWR money, since we have enough mexicans in the unit to do so. ;)

edited 8th May '12 11:21:22 AM by Barkey

Ah, that would explain it. I thought the halt to decals was Do D-wide, but yeah, I can see that making sense.

We wouldn't issue them otherwise. The Navy base requires all the paperwork and has zero flexibility, and the process at their visitor center takes like an hour. So instead we still have our own Air Force decal we spend money on because none of us want a navy sticker on our cars, and we can do the process in 5 minutes if you have all required paperwork.

It sucks, we have a very co-dependent relationship with the Navy. There's Port Hueneme, which is the home of the Seabees and a very large training base. Then there's Point Mugu, which is a naval air station which they are moving all sorts of pet projects to in an effort to keep it open. They actually talked about closing it down(several times) but our presence has actually gotten the State of California to kick and scream for the Department of the Navy to keep it open, because we need their control tower and runway to function, and we're the entire state of california airborne firefighting mission, something which in a state with as many fires as ours, is extremely important.

We're slowly expanding though, there's talk of turning our base into a joint training center, building a multimillion dollar C-130J simulator here, and bringing a small active duty unit here.

To be honest though, we don't want the active duty unit. It won't be security forces or anything, but we're Guard and we do things differently. There's a lot of hate between us right now because Active Duty keeps trying to take our fucking planes. The people who want the increased budget want the active duty unit, which I guess means it's a win-win in a way. Bigger budget = good, but if we don't get a bunch of nitpicky assholes showing up on our base and acting like they run things, I won't be sad.

It would explain why our security manning is going up though, adding 7 positions as Department of the Air Force Police at some point in the next year from what I hear, which is a considerable jump in our manpower.

edited 8th May '12 11:38:05 AM by Barkey

Informative Barkey is Informative.

I apologise if this has been asked before, but I'm curious - what are your physical requirements, both in terms of fitness and ailments? Are asthma sufferers forbidden from joining? And what is the educational requirement for Officers? If there is one - for British Regulars there is, but I'm not sure about anywhere else. And have you ever been on tour/deployed? (I apologise if the answers to these are obvious; don't meet a lot of actual servicemen + women from other countries).

edited 8th May '12 11:41:31 AM by Minister

My theoretical question of the day*

You are in command of a company in the middle of some major battle and a thunderstorm drops a tornado drops and hits a section of the enemy line*

Considering the insane unperdictability of tornados in general, I'm not sure that you could immediately use it to your tactical advantage - on the contrary, I'd probably be wanting to safeguard my own forces against such an occurance from happening to my men.

Notify higher echelons of inclement weather and see if they had any special instructions. In the absence of orders to the contrary, I'd probably order my forces to button up and seek cover so they don't get clobbered by falling debris, flailing screaming enemy soldiers dropping out of the sky, and other crap.

Once the wind dies down to acceptable levels, exploit the demoralized state of the enemy force with an assault against their last known positions. Probably take a number of their forces as POW's, so I'd have to coordinate with higher command for receiving the captured enemy troops and all that happy crap that goes along with that. (safeguard the captured troops, evac them to the rear, let higher command interrogate them as they see fit)

(disclaimer: I was only an E-4 when I was active, so there's likely a huge rash of stuff I'm overlooking.)

^^ Asthma will keep out out of the Army, last time I checked. Provided that you can pass a basic physical heath test and aren't really under/overweight, Basic will whip you into a pretty toned package in about two to three months.

edited 8th May '12 12:22:03 PM by pvtnum11

Lol@ calling a tornado "inclement weather".

It probably depends on a couple of factors. Hell, a brigade from the Kansas or Missouri National Guards would probably roll their eyes at a tornado as "mildly windy". If the opposition is used to it they'd probably respond likewise; otherwise, it'd be better than an artillery barrage for general panic purposes.

Inclement weather is the catchall term for anything beyond a stiff breeze in the military. No joke.

Now I cant stop thinking of an army base hit by a hurricane shrugging it off as a little drizzle.