Serious food for thought. In my 1970's Navy Boot Camp I saw a weapon for 6 hours in boot camp. That was sufficent for my job. Afterward for some extra money I joined the guards. I held my first M-16 at that time. No formal combat training. I was assigned as an ammo driver. They held a class on map reading and I was offered forward observer because I could read a grid map and shoot an azmuith. Though I only stayed in the unit a year I realize the danger I would impose on others in an active combat unit. That was when National Guards were kept home for the governors use. The Reagan years.
After Reagan left office we started a dangerous and downward precedent in military deployments. Reserve unit deployments were the norm rather than the exception to the rule. The origional intent of most reserves was filling in state side billets not reliefs for comabt missions. In a World War yes I can see sending all you have that can walk. But to continue this charade that this somehow equals the military strenght to operate as we have been the past 12 plus years is insane. Look at the carrier that just came home. 150 days at sea without a port. No days off away from it. Folks thats dangerous. Bad hours, bad tempatures, and bad tempers typical of a 6 month deployment under good conditions compounded by a battle ready material condition.
A steaming carrier is a 24 hour a day operation 7 days a week. Keeping one at battle stations for that long equals in time worked by the crew over 2 years in a normal work enviroment. It's not good to work a crew or equipment like this. Look for it to be re-deployed by this time next year instead of 18 months home.
A worse symptom look at the KENNEDY. Some brass in the Pentagon should have been ripped of stars for that one. KENNEDY is the newest conventional powered carrier we have. Our ships are literally either being neglected {underfunded and under maintained} or ran to early graves to cover these extended deployments.
We and our government ask those who fight the enemy their very best in preformance. We owe them the means to do so in the safest and most reliable manner possible. I've read another horror story about readiness along the lines of the KENNEDY it occured in mid 1993.
For those of us in here who are Navy vets we have to wonder why a ship like the COLE was 2 days out from fleet alone? We have to wonder why it could not refuel at sea. Why are we taking our most valued Naval assets through the Suez as a common means to cover the Indian Ocean? I'm still asking the same questions I was over 2 years ago and see no answers to these problems coming. We had a 911 wake up call that we are indeed a nation subject to attack on our very soil.
Pearl Harbor brought a sleeping military to full force in days and rapid build up. We slacked between WW1 & WW2 Japan saw us as weak. We did enjoy two hemisphere readiness capacites up till about 1992. Since then it has been a mad race to see who can reduce and cut our military the quickest. That actually started in 1989. Sure there was pork then. Now we are scrounging for used parts. Answers are not going to be cheap and neither is a standing ready military. It's past time for a reality check in Washington, DC and start addressing these issues as serious matter and not short term problems.