A good follower and commenter on IST, GP Cox…….https://pacificparatrooper.wordpress.com/ ……..has brought this to my attention and wanted me to pass it along to my readers.
Fort Jackson South Carolina holds many memories for me for that is where I took my basic training in the Army….and now they are making news to help military families deal with what the soldier is dealing with in his/her service to the country.
Basic Combat Training just got a lot more interesting for one Fort Jackson battalion.
The families of Soldiers taking part in training with the 2nd Battalion, 13th Infantry Regiment, now have access to a course titled, “Basic Training for Families.” The course connects spouses and family members with Soldiers in BCT through the Army Family Team Building initiative.
“I had concerns about the type of spouses we were creating,” said Tina Justice, leader of the battalion’s Family Readiness Group. “We weren’t really teaching them to be self-reliant, empowered spouses. It’s very overwhelming when you first enter the Army life. The goal was to create a system to help families when they have questions, and give them the tools to do the work, themselves.”
I am always giving my thoughts on news that most people find not very interesting……and then I force feed them news that cannot ever use…..
This time it is news out of the military and into your PC……
The Marine Corps has said that most of its recruits need a drug waiver to enlist……
Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. David Berger said that “the vast majority of recruits require drug waivers for enlistment” in his planning guidance, which was posted late Tuesday.
The top Marine also said he was “deeply troubled” by the number of Marines who have not been booted from the Corps despite failing a drug test. Berger noted that out of the 2,410 Marines since fiscal year 2018 that have failed a drug test only 1,175 have been separated.
So is the Corps facing a major drug crisis? The data says the issue is a little more convoluted.
The number of positive drug tests among Marines has dropped from 4,776 in fiscal year 2009 to just 1,216 in fiscal 2019. The drug test figures — obtained by Marine Corps Times on July 15 through a government records request — show a general downward trend in positive drug tests over the past decade. The reason for the drop is unknown.
It looks like the debate on what age for service is possible…..they are looking at 16 years of age……
The best way to fix the U.S. armed forces’ recruiting challenges may involve dipping further into the nation’s high schools.
As the Army, Navy and other services contend with a thriving economy and a directive to expand their ranks, there is a growing debate over whether the military should consider lowering the minimum enlistment age from 17 to 16. More than a dozen countries, including the United Kingdom, already have adopted the policy.
Critics say the idea is deeply flawed and presents a host of societal problems, but supporters argue that the Pentagon needs to think outside the box if it wants to continually overcome one of the toughest recruiting environments in decades.
I have a solution to this problem…..re-instate the draft and they can get all the fodder they need for their useless wars.
Finally the military is fighting a silent killer……
Sgt. Sylvester Cline didn’t have to die. The 32-year-old Iraq veteran was training at Fort Chaffee in Arkansas in June 2016 under grueling heat when he fell ill and was rushed to a nearby hospital—where heat exposure took his life. And he isn’t the military’s only heat-related casualty in recent years, NBC News reports. Since 2008, at least 17 service members have died of heat exposure while training at US bases, and cases of heat exhaustion or heatstroke among active-duty troops rose from 1,766 in 2008 to 2,792 in 2018, per military data. But the Pentagon is still wrestling with a basic problem: how to develop a heat-prevention strategy and educate officers about it while preparing troops to fight in hot places like North Africa and the Middle East.
Then there’s climate change: “No one is going to talk about climate change because of the political aspect and who is in the White House,” says a military official who chose to stay anonymous. But Maj. Meghan, a Fort Benning doctor who calls climate change “an obvious statement of fact,” helped create an Army “heat center” for medics and wrote a white paper about the growing threat, per the Daily News. Defense officials say they’re also creating new gear and technology to keep troops cool. In Cline’s case, two officers were punished—unfairly, they say—while Cline’s mother, Shirley, is still trying to control her anger. “They know it’s going to get hot; they know it,” she says. “So when they know it, what are they doing about it?” (Read the full article here.)
Bad enough that war could kill the trooper and now they must worry about heat stroke as well…..I have a plan to eliminate that problem!
End all the worthless wars and bring the troops home to A/C……
WE are fighting endless wars across the globe…especially in Afghanistan and Iraq and the MSM has done an excellent job of NOT showing the horrors of war while chest thumping for more.
Look how the MSM is championing the possible use of military force against Iran….
All the bravado does not seem to influence the public to want to join up and do their part to protect the country from the “brown hordes” on the horizon…..
Recruiting goals are not being met and the fiscal year draws close the Army has tried bribery…….
The Army is handing out bonuses up to $40,000 for people who join the infantry as the military’s largest branch works to meet its 2019 recruitment goal with only months left in the fiscal year.
Army leaders believe the bonuses will help them increase the size of the service’s force and attract more recruits to combat-arms positions, said Kelli Bland, the public affairs director for U.S. Army Recruiting Command at Fort Knox, Ky.
…
Recruits who select the infantry military occupation specialty could receive a bonus up to $40,000 depending on the length of their initial contract, according to Bland. The recruit would have to sign a contract for a six-year commitment in order to receive the maximum of $40,000 bonus, Maj. Gen. Frank Muth, commander of U.S. Army Recruiting Command, told Military.com.
An average enlistment contract is about four years, Bland said.
The Army needs to fill 3,300 infantry spots by Sept. 30 and decided in mid-May to increase the infantry recruiting bonus from the maximum $15,000, according to Bland. The bonus is only available to recruits who leave for basic training before the end of September.
(Stars and Stripes)
Look for more fodder for the battlefield…..sacrifices for the M-IC…..
They would not have to resort to bribery if they were not fighting so goddamn many wars.
That time again….a Saturday and time for IST News from Space…..
I know this does not interest most of my readers…but I feel obligated to keep informing my readers and trying to make sense of the space force thingy……
Besides the bureaucracy the cash needed to fund this new branch of the military will be staggering….cash needed elsewhere in the society…health, infrastructure, education, et al….but for some reason a Space Force is a priority.
The House Armed Services Committee voted to establish a United States Space Corps within the Department of the Air Force. The vote came in the overnight hours Thursday. The committee began its markup of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act Wednesday morning. After a nearly 21-hour session, the committee passed the NDAA 33-24.
The Space Corps amendment was offered by the HASC Strategic Forces subcommittee leaders Chairman Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) and Ranking Member Mike Rogers (R-Ala.). The proposal is similar to what the committee proposed in the 2018 NDAA, including the name of the new space service, U.S. Space Corps, rather than the Trump administration’s preferred name, U.S. Space Force.
Like the Marine Corps, the Space Corps would be led by a four-star Commandant who would be a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Space will be something to watch for it will siphon off more taxpayer money…..meaning that social services will be the first to suffer with cuts to pay for this adventure.
FYI
It will be hot here today…..I wrote this draft at 0300 hrs and it was already 94…..we already have heat advisories and it is only the second day of Summer…..gonna be a long Summer for us down here.
My site is one of the few blogs that shows any interest in the new proposed “Space Force/Corps”…..I am interested because it will cost the taxpayer more and more as the proposal moves forward……then the money will probably come from cuts in social programs……as always.
Looks like once again the US will be in a race to space…..this time it is not a Sputnik but rather a whole force of Space Commandos/Marines/Troopers………and the likelihood is getting closer….
Despite growing threats of space warfare, the Pentagon’s plan to create a new military branch called the Space Force faced tough questioning on Capitol Hill Thursday from both Republicans and Democrats who voiced concerns about costs, increased bureaucracy, and impact on military readiness.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. Jim Inhofe (R., Okla.) told a hearing of senior military and defense officials that future conflicts with Russia and China will involve attacks “from, in, and through space.”
The Space Force will be needed for national security…….for China is pushing the space thing as well…..
Are the United States and China inevitably headed to a war in space? That was the central question posed by members of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission at a hearing on Thursday on Capitol Hill.
In testimony, experts provided ample evidence of China’s space ambitions and cited the already well documented achievements of the Chinese space program. But while the professional consensus is that China is a rising space power with a growing arsenal of anti-satellite weapons, a future war in space is not a foregone conclusion, these experts argued.
The commission was created by Congress in 2000 to investigate the national security implications of trade and the economic relationship between the United States and the People’s Republic of China.
How the United States invests time and resources into space over the next few decades will have long-term strategic effects.While current U.S. governing documents focused primarily on space align with the Astropolitik Model of state competition, which focuses on the employment of all instruments of national power, this appears to be incidental.Without a cohesive suite of documents to focus space efforts, the U.S. could fall behind its competitors.
The Pentagon is preparing for that confrontation in space…..
The United States is under siege in space, and we better get ready for an all-out space war.
At least, that’s the alarming scenario that a host of Trump administration officials posited on Tuesday and Wednesday at a major space conference in Colorado Springs, where Pentagon officials warned of increasingly sophisticated Russian and Chinese weapons threatening America’s hundreds of satellites and the GPS, phone calls, and internet-browsing they enable.
Will this be the first step for a colonization of space?
While the administration continues to work on a revised budget request for carrying out the new goal of landing humans on the moon in 2024, the technical plan for doing so is starting to take shape.
In a presentation at a joint meeting of the Space Studies Board and Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board here April 30, Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operations, outlined the agency’s current thinking about how it could land people on the moon in 2024, albeit in a minimalistic approach.
“We’re off building that plan, and it fits on paper,” he said. “But I will tell you it is not easy and it is not risk-free.”
While you were worrying about which lying d/bag will be president in 2020 the Pentagon is preparing for yet more imperialism but this time in space, where no one can hear you scream (I always wanted to use the)…..
And the beat goes on…..I will be watching…so you do not have to…..
There is a long history of sexual assault in our military and most of it has gone under-reported and in recent years this situation has come to the forefront of reporting (usually when there is little happening on the world stage and it is used as a filler)
Even a US Senator had been assaulted when she was in the military….
Sen. Martha McSally, the first female fighter pilot to fly in combat, said Wednesday that she was raped in the Air Force by a superior officer, the AP reports. The Arizona Republican, a 26-year military veteran, made the disclosure at a Senate hearing on the armed services’ efforts to prevent sexual assaults and improve the response when they occur. McSally said she did not report being sexually assaulted because she did not trust the system, and she said she was ashamed and confused. McSally did not name the officer who she says raped her. “I stayed silent for many years, but later in my career, as the military grappled with the scandals, and their wholly inadequate responses, I felt the need to let some people know I too was a survivor,” she said, choking up as she detailed what had happened to her.
“I was horrified at how my attempt to share generally my experiences was handled,” she continued. “I almost separated from the Air Force at 18 years of service over my despair. Like many victims, I felt like the system was raping me all over again.” McSally’s revelation comes not long after Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, detailed her own abuse and assault, and at a time of increased awareness over the problem of harassment and assault in the armed forces. Reports of sexual assaults across the military jumped nearly 10% in 2017—a year that also saw an online nude-photo sharing scandal rock the Defense Department. McSally said she shares in the disgust of the failures of the military system and many commanders who have failed to address the problems of sexual misconduct.
Even with special reports and testimony from those abused you would think that the military would clean up their act……you would think, right?
Figures show 20,500 instances of unwanted sexual contact occurred in 2018, up from 14,900 in 2016 which is the last time a survey was conducted.
Alcohol was involved in one third of cases, and female recruits ages 17 to 24 are at the highest risk of attack.
On Thursday, Acting Defence Secretary Patrick Shanahan directed the military to “criminalise” sexual harassment.
Sexual harassment can fall within other legal violations of military behaviour, but is not yet a “stand-alone” criminal offence.
The directive from Mr Shanahan was among a series of other recommendations, released in a memo on Thursday.
“Sexual assault is illegal and immoral, is inconsistent with the military’s mission and will not be tolerated,” he wrote.
I am glad to see someone trying to make a difference….but sadly I am not so sure that it will help.
Sadly the regurgitation of AG Barr was more important that the fact that our female soldiers are NOT safe even in our own military…the same puke from Barr over and over and over…..
The wheels have been set in progress for the development of a US Space Force…..
President Donald Trump signed Space Policy Directive-4, directing the Department of Defense to draft a legislative proposal to establish a Space Force by 2020 as a sixth branch of the armed services under the Department of the Air Force — similar to how the Marine Corps is its own military service under the Department of the Navy. The directive makes clear this is an interim step toward eventual full independence for the Space Force: “As the United States Space Force matures, and as national security requires, it will become necessary to create a separate military department, to be known as the Department of the Space Force.”
Organizational design theory predicts several worrisome outcomes of a Space Force created either as a separate service or an independent department. The granting of independence to the U.S. Air Force in 1947 and the establishment of U.S. Special Operations Command in 1987 share striking similarities with the Space Force debate in terms of the general security environment and the specific re-organizing proposals. In each case, unique mission sets were differentiated at the highest levels — that is, they were insulated from outside control and elevated within the organization.
Slowly but slowly Trump is expanding our presence in space……Trump is hedging his bets in case Congress does not give into his desire…..
The Trump administration may not ultimately get to create the highly-anticipated Space Force — that will fall on congressional shoulders — but the White House has made strides in expanding the U.S. military’s role beyond the Earth’s atmosphere anyway.
Per CNN, defense officials confirmed on Tuesday that four star Air Force general, John Raymond, will head up the newly established U.S. Space Command.
I have always pointed out the cost to taxpayers for this decision……and it continues to grow…..
Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan on Wednesday said his pitch to skeptical lawmakers on the need for a U.S. Space Force is that the Pentagon needs to move fast to keep up with pacing threats from Russia and China in space.
Speaking to audiences during a Center for Strategic and International Studies event in Washington, D.C., Shanahan said he envisions “15,000 to 20,000” individuals defending and protecting U.S. interests in the domain. In its fiscal 2020 budget proposal, the Pentagon said the branch will have 15,000 people, making it the smallest of any service.
While the Space Force will not need roughly $12.9 billion over five years to resource personnel and infrastructure for the branch like the Air Force originally proposed, Shanahan said the $2 billion over the same timeframe proposed to Congress is a “parametric estimate,” meaning one that uses historical cost information and analysis of previous conditions to arrive at a figure.
I have posted on this earlier…..China and US in a race for space domination……
Fifty years after the first moon landing, an American triumph that gripped the world, China marked the start of 2019 with its own lunar achievement. Chang’e-4, a Chinese probe, landed on the far side of the moon in early January, broadcasting – for the first time in human history – images of the cratered surface that faces away from Earth.
Chang’e-4 has been billed as a friendly explorer, the latest step in humanity’s mission to better understand and exploit the universe around us. But space exploration has always been about power. Beijing’s lunar feat represents the latest development in the space race between China and the United States – a conflict that will be “important to modern warfare,” according to a US Defense Intelligence Agency report released in January that identified China as a “threat”. The Chinese foreign ministry responded by calling the report “reckless” and “totally groundless,” insisting that China “opposes militarisation and an arms race in space.”
All this “urgency” for a Space “unit”….could this be another war prep by the US?
Staying ahead of space trends – from satellite manufacture to new launch options – is daunting. Six trends – at least – are at work. To what exact end they vector is unclear, but watching is important. These trends will affect American investment in space, national security, our modern standards of living, and our wider economy.
First, heavy satellites are getting heavier, as more capability is attached to each satellite. Capabilities are commercial to national security, communications to climate prediction, crisis response to territorial protection, real-time analysis to event anticipation.
All this talk about a Space Force……will it be legal according to international treaties? Of course Trump can do what he always does disregard any treaties he does not like…..stay tuned I will be posting on “Space Law” soon. (There are laws about space….believe it or not….)
We all know of the damn silly event of the border wall and the national emergency that has been declared by our Beloved Leader…..an emergency without a reason….not a credible one anyway.
So if Trump succeeds where will the money come from? Which program will have to suffer because of a presidential ego trip?
Looks like we have an answer to that question……military pay and pensions may suffer……
The Pentagon is planning to tap $1 billion in leftover funds from military pay and pension accounts to help President Donald Trump pay for his long-sought border wall, a top Senate Democrat said Thursday.
The development comes as Pentagon officials are seeking to minimize the amount of wall money that would come from military construction projects that are so cherished by lawmakers.
Durbin said, “Imagine the Democrats making that proposal — that for whatever our project is, we’re going to cut military pay and pensions.”
Not to worry though….this president only wants whats best for our troops, right?
To that I say BULLSH*T!
Maybe his damn silly proposal for a Space Force and the cash it will take for the start-up would be a better place to start…..after all it is a simple thing…he is just looking for something to hang a plaque on that bears his name……so the “Wall” is more important than anything happening in space, right?
Just more screwing by the Supreme Leader…..and you allow it…..
There have been stories of insurgents around the world that use child soldiers……from Africa to the sand of the deserts of the Middle East….child soldiers are still a problem….I have written about this situation before……
I bring this up again because the study made of child soldiers involved in war worldwide……
The number of child soldiers involved in conflicts globally has increased 159 percent within five years, with almost 30,000 verified recruitment cases since 2012, Child Soldiers International, a London-based human rights organization, said in a press release on Monday, February 11.
“Ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and persistent unrest in Somalia, South Sudan, DR Congo, Central African Republic and elsewhere are all leaving children increasingly exposed to recruitment,” the release said. “Boys and girls are routinely being used as fighters and at checkpoints, as informants, to loot villages and as domestic and sexual slaves.”
Child Soldiers International analyzed United Nations annual reports on Children and Armed Conflict issued in 2013-2018, recording 29,128 verified cases of child recruitment in 17 countries. Even though a significant number of cases usually take place in Africa, about half of them happen outside the continent, in countries like Syria, Iraq, Myanmar, and Colombia.
Child recruitment in 17 countries……that should be unacceptable to the world….but instead they look the other way and allow this assault on childhood go unpunished.
Time to go and do what my Honey needs me to do….the garden needs work before the veggies go in…..
I have been one of the few bloggers that show any concern over the proposal for a 6th branch of military service, the Space Force, as Trump has labelled it.
Then I read about the need for a Space Command…..is this the same as the Space Force or yet more waste of the taxpayer money?
Pentagon leaders wanted U.S. Space Command, a new joint combatant command for space warfighting, up and running by the end of 2018. Two full months into 2019, Congress has yet to repeal a law that is preventing the command’s creation, according to defense and Trump administration officials.
Here’s the problem. In the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, lawmakers ordered U.S. Space Command to be subordinate to U.S. Strategic Command, the same way U.S. Cyber Command started out under STRATCOM. But the administration wants Space Command to begin its organizational life as an independent unified command.
The Space Force proposal has been sent to Capitol Hill……..
Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan on Wednesday sent to Capitol Hill a legislative proposal and a “strategic overview” of how the Pentagon plans to organize a U.S. Space Force as a separate military branch. The information was emailed to the staff directors of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, as well as the House and Senate Appropriations defense subcommittees.
The proposal is the culmination eight months of work since President Trump directed the Pentagon to draw up a plan to create a Space Force. Shanahan already had been designated by Congress as the point man for the space reorganization and he has overseen every step of the process.
Now that the proposal has been kicked over to Congress, DoD faces what could be a harder-than-expected job communicating the plan to Congress and the public. One of the challenges for DoD will be to argue that Congress should authorize a Space Force for reasons of national security, not just to satisfy the commander-in-chief’s directive.
As this proposal moves closer to reality….I ask how much of the taxpayers money will be wasted this time?
The Trump administration plans to spend $2 billion over five years to create its Space Force, according to a Defense Department proposal released Friday.
Once again yet another way to expand the DoD budget while asking the nation’s population to make the sacrifice in services and entitlements…..
To make the case for justification for a Space Force…..National Security……
We quickly learned that America no longer owns space. We operate there along with every other space-capable nation, including adversaries like China and Russia. We learned that they are doing everything in their power to interfere with our operations. We learned that future wars will take place in space.
And we quickly realized the grim truth that we aren’t ready.
China and Russia, in particular, are aggressively pursuing space-based capabilities. China successfully destroyed an old weather satellite in a test in 2007, creating a debris field of more than 3,000 pieces, which could have damaged countless other satellites in orbit. They’ve stayed at it, continuing to work on anti-satellite weapons including lasers, signal jammers, and other ways of blinding our assets in space. In some areas, they are beating us.
