Day: February 15, 2020

What’s In a Name?

IST is your one stop reading for all things Space Force.

Spacemen? Starship Troopers?  Astro Troopers?  What shall we call our newest soldiers for space?  I like Space Cadets or Space Aces.

There seems to be a bit of a quandary on the name of the soldiers that will be serving in the new Space Force.

The Air Force calls its personnel airmen, but the Space Force isn’t planning on calling its troops “spacemen”—and “space cadets” has also been ruled out. The new branch of the US military said in a press release this week that it would like members of the military, space professionals in particular, to submit “ideas related to Space Force ranks, names for operational units and what Space Force members should be called collectively,” the Week reports. Space Force commanders say they want names that will “appropriately convey the nature of the newest Armed Forces branch and the domain in which it operates.” Air Force personnel have been invited to submit ideas here.

“As we continue to forge the Space Force into a lean, agile and forward-looking 21st Century warfighting branch, we want to provide space professionals the opportunity to influence what the members of our new service will be called,” Lt. Gen. DT Thompson, US Space Force vice commander, said in the release. “Proposals must be gender-neutral, distinctive and should emphasize a future-oriented military force,” the Space Force release said. Submissions also “cannot violate copyrights, infringe on trademarks or other intellectual property rights, or be proprietary,” which rules out “Starship Troopers,” Task & Force notes.

My choice is Colonial Marines.  Spaceships will be called “ships”…Marines are stationed on naval vessels…….what better name.

Since we will be colonizing space we need a force aptly named….Colonial Marines.

Not the loss any cash or prestige the National Guard wants in on the new Space Force……

National Guard leaders are openly questioning the Defense Department’s decision to stand up a U.S. Space Force without defining the role the National Guard will play in supporting the new service.

National Guard Bureau officials and adjutants general from five states met with reporters at the Pentagon Feb. 12 to lay out their case that a Space National Guard should be established as soon as possible as a reserve component to the U.S. Space Force.

The debate over how the Guard would support the U.S. Space Force has been simmering in the background since a year ago, when the Pentagon submitted to Congress a proposal to establish a Space Force but did not specify the role of the National Guard.

National Guard leaders press case for a Space National Guard

More money for the taxpayers to cover….the National Guard primary function is to assist the states with control and command during disasters……so unless we plan on annexing space they are NOT needed as part of this fiasco.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Was It Sean Flynn?

Saturday and I wander off my traditional path for some FYI or humor or history…..this day it is the war that I try to forget and cannot…..

Sean Flynn…..Sean Flynn could have done anything he wanted. For a while he tried to be an actor like his swashbuckling father, Errol. But the passion that drove him was to work as a photographer covering America’s deadly wars in Indochina.

The dangerous, chaotic assignment brought him excitement and fame, but it also led him to his death. Forty years ago next week, Flynn and another journalist, Dana Stone, disappeared without trace after encountering a hostile checkpoint south-east of Phnom Penh.

Flynn and Stone disappeared in April 1970 while riding motorcycles together to cover the battlefront in Cambodia. According to the Defense Intelligence Agency, they were captured by Viet Cong and then turned over to the Khmer Rouge, who executed them.At the time, Page was still recovering after he had been severely wounded a year earlier when shrapnel from a land mine pierced his skull, resulting in serious brain injuries.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/how-errol-flynns-son-was-lost-in-cambodia-ndash-all-but-a-pile-of-bones-1931662.html

Flynn was a photojournalist during the Vietnam War….what got me to thinking about this person was a story I read about the bodies of photojournalists from that war had been turned over for burial…

The legendary Life magazine photojournalist patted the empty seat next to him in the back of the South Vietnamese UH-1 Huey army helicopter. Then he invited Marine Cpl. Sergio Ortiz, a 23-year-old combat photographer, to climb aboard.

“See? There’s room,” said Larry Burrows, who had spent nine years covering the Vietnam War. “Come along if you want.”

Ortiz was tempted. The reporters on that helicopter on Feb. 10, 1971, would be the first to follow South Vietnamese troops on their invasion of Laos, then in its third day. Anyone in the Saigon press corps would have wanted to go.

But Ortiz had a separate assignment to finish for his Marine Corps editors — plus, explicit orders to stay on the Vietnam side of the border.

https://www.omaha.com/news/military/remains-of-vietnam-war-photojournalists-killed-in-copter-crash-wait/article_399e1d68-95cc-5a7e-88d3-d922ce824279.html

Sadly Sean Flynn’s remains were not included he is still listed as missing presumed dead…

May the families of these fallen Americans now get the closure they need…..

May they rest in peace.

“lego ergo scribo”