Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire West Point's Decline

Exceptional Soldiers, Sailors, Airman and Marines are still out there and they will always succeed with what they have and where they are. There are just less of them in proportion to the people that are trying to hold them back with BS. There is no doubt that our armed services are a superb force but they simply don't have them numbers we used to. We can do what we have to but in a whole lot less places and missions simultaneously than we used. to.

Pugs,

I dunno. I gave the USN four years back in the '60s. The MOSs with the technical skills requiring some education to exercise those skills had a pretty decent percentage of those people who were good at what they did. Officers from full bird and up tech disciplines or not tended toward a higher percentage as well. Below that level of training and time in service, they were by my estimation a pretty sketchy lot. Enlisted were an even more mixed bag. I have known E7s that were truly impressive, but most were just lifers and of little use. Over all, the majority of the people I worked for had no idea of what it was that I did, much less how I did it or why.

only to the unenlightened. The "going to hell comments" usually come from those who've been there, done that, now retired, therefore no ax to grind. The "best we've ever seen" comments are from those in charge now with definite skin in the game, are protecting their retirement (three stars and above have to be approved by the Senate to retire and cash in at that rank), or not going to put themselves on report,because they don't have the balls to stand up for their principles because they want to promote. Pretty simple, really, and above the company level (in ground combat) we haven't been tested. Same for my MOS. Doesn't take a whole lot to fly CAS where one has air supremacy, or in the off chance they launch something at you, it's not many or in the case of another airplane, it's some gomer with about as much experience and training as a student pilot.

No more:

Admiral Arleigh Burke
General Curtis LeMay
General George Patton
General Chesty Puller

The services have all undergone significant and multiple changes since then although some of what you have written remains true. The 60's where we really could "make it up with volume" and had a Navy truly scaled to perform it's command of the seas mission and limitless manpower however many of which were there to avoid being infantry (not a bad plan!) .

This was followed by the post-VN era with a Navy about the same size but with no Operations and Maint budget so many ships, subs and aircraft sitting and useless. The sailors were a mix of post-draft and volunteers.

The Reagan era brought in O&M money, volunteer service members and crack down on drugs and the vision of America an it's place in the world. It was truly an amazing Navy and one that no one on the planet could touch. If the "Somali pirate" problem occurred that era we would have covered the Indian Ocean in fast frigates with a robust supply chain to keep them there and the message and actions would have been loud and clear. "Don't tread on me" TJ would have been proud.

After Desert Storm the "Peace dividend" hit, despite the world being perhaps even more dangerous, and we saw the combined hit of massive ship and squadron decommissions, personnel cuts and Operations dollars cuts. We did have some new weapons that helped mitigate it but those did no good pierside in Norfolk so they really didn't help with presence in troubled areas. Standards were replaced by diversity and we generally ended up with people who fit bins not people picked for capability. Certainly we got some good ones but social engineering drove enlistment quotas and OCS/Service Academy population. This has been followed by overloading the Navy with training and administration that doesn't help fight the ship or jet and a promotion system that self perpetuates in moving people that achieve certain "other duties as assigned" up and skipping those that work hard on real warfighting skills.

As I said. The good ones are still out there but they're drowning in a sea of military snowflakes who see the path to promotion is being special and not being lethal.

As always, eloquent and 100% on the mark,