Carronade The Yankee Sailor Carronade

The Sea is a choosy mistress. She takes the men that come to her and weighs them and measures them. The ones she adores, she keeps; the ones she hates, she destroys. The rest she casts back to land. I count myself among the adored, for I am Her willing Captive.

FLASH TRAFFIC:
I've relocated to a new Yankee Sailor.

Thursday, June 02, 2005

A Day at Task Force Sea Warrior

The leaked minutes of a meeting at TFSW...

TFSW: Good morning, general. As you know, with Task Force Sea Warrior the Navy is trying to not just define the professional development path for Sailors, but also refocus the Sailors and our organizational culture on their personal contributions to warfighting.

Marine: Personal contributions to warfighting? What does that mean?

TFSW: How Sailors can personally contribute to the fight.

Marine: So, you’re finally going to teach them how to shoot in boot camp? That’s nice to hear.

TFSW: Well, not exactly. Small arms training at that stage will unacceptably lengthen the induction to graduation timeline and adversely impact the cost per recruit.

NETC: Also, the failure rate of our Sailors in the fleet to qualify on small arms is high enough that we’re worried about pushing that training to boot camp and increasing entry stage attrition.

Marine: Then just hold them in boot camp until they qualify. There are good Marines out there that are retreads.

NETC: We can’t do that. The training time and recruit success metrics wouldn’t look good on the monthly PowerPoint slide.

NRC: Plus, most of our recruits just don’t have an inclination for interpersonal combat.

Marine: Then change your recruiting strategy to get guys that are interested in getting in the fight.

NRC: That’s not the kind of recruit we target... we want high school grads with strong technical and communication skills and the potential to be cross-trained in two or more fields of expertise.

NPC: Also, our current Sailors and potential recruits responded in a survey that they weren’t interested in personal combat skills.

Marine: Are you kidding me?!? I’ve met a lot of those deck guys you’ve got, what do you call them? Boatswain’s Mates? And what about those guys that work in the engine rooms? Believe me, they WANT TO KILL SOMEBODY!

TFSW: Well...uh...general...um...have your staff provide a proposal with your recommendations, and we’ll...uh...staff it through all our stakeholders, generate a quick poll for the Sailors and see where it goes. Of course, we’d have to get MCPON’s approval, first....