I said it, I’m not taking it back.
This Tweet is real but recently deleted.
The problem was, those are British soldiers.
For those of us civilian gun nuts, we might recognize the SA80 rifles as being British and not American.
Other details like the lack of lower leg pockets found on ACU pants are more subtle but noticeable.
Real eagle eyed military people might notice things like the helmet covers and other differences in equipment and uniforms.
But Lieutenant General Maria R. Gervais didn’t notice any of that.
Which is concerning considering that she is Deputy Commanding General/Chief of Staff, United States Army Training and Doctrine Command, Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia.
The head of TRADOC can’t tell an SA80 from an M4.
Any modern Major General should be able to tell at sight a Mauser Rifle from a javelin. The superior rank Lieutenant General should be able to do better.
As it was pointed out to me by a buddy, LtGen Gervais has a Masters Degree in Human Resources.
She’s a glorified HR Lady.
I was reminded that Secretary of Defense and former 4-star General Lloyd Austin has a Masters in Counseling and Education. The same degree as your average high school principal who demands elementary school students wear masks on the playground.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley has a MA in International Relations. Arguably somewhat useful, but it’s from Columbia and is part of their business program. It’s the sort of degree earned by international corporate executives.
Human Resources, Counseling and Education, International Business Relations, not a fucking warfighter among our senior staff, just government and corporate bureaucracy degrees.
This is why we lose wars.
Our military is lead by HR ladies, high school principals, and the corporate executive who got a bonus laying you off to expand manufacturing in some third world shithole for pennies on the dollar.
Does McKinsey and Co., have a military consulting division?
Yes, McKinsey had consulting gigs in Afghanistan which mostly involved being paid millions to produce PowerPoint slides.
I long time ago I was working on a contract for the US government. I had 4 people working on the project. 3 developers and a chemist.
We were getting hammered every single week when we presented. We were getting work done but our TPoC was getting hammered by his highers for “where is the progress.
We spent about 30 minutes total preparing for those weekly meetings.
Finally I had enough. Our chemist was tasked with preparing slides for the meeting. We spent about 26 man hours per week preparing slides, printing them (Overhead projectors because nobody would pay for a computer connected projector) and then presenting.
Our productivity dropped. Having each developer spend two or three hours preparing his slides plus the time to put them all together plus the time for review plus the 4 of us attending the meeting to present.
So there was a direct billable of 16.25% per week to the contract plus everybody’s day was pretty well shot what with preparing and presenting.
So in reality, the total cost to us was around 32man hours per week.
And our TPoC loved it. His highers loved it. Nobody seemed to care how much those weekly slides and presentations cost.
I firmly believe that if our government could spend a billion on doing something or a billion on a report about maybe doing something, they’d prefer to spend it on the report.
Yes. In fact there was/is a big scandal in Germany were our former defense minister and now head of the EU parliament, Ursula von der Leyen, paid “consulting firms” like McKinseys MILLIONS for various contracts – it was extra spicey because one of her sons is employed by McKinsey.
Of course, nothing came of it in part because important documents got “accidentally” delated and the minister failed upwards.
If you look close, these guys LOOK British(to me anyway, having a mom who is British and relatives from England)….. just cause you edumacated dont mean youse is smatt…
Nowadays, the more edumacated a fascist is, the f-ing stupider they are.
Prove me wrong.
And the cherry on top: “hero’s”
What was pointed out elsewhere is there sure as hell ain’t a lot of diversity there.
Flipping the channels yesterday and Milley was being interviewed….I don’t think I’ve ever cared less about someone being interviewed. N
I see that all the times on the “news”, online or on TV. They very often misrepresent foreign militaries for U.S. ones. Just last week, there was “an official photo from the US Air Force” depicting USAF C-17s in Kabul, while in fact, it was clearly RCAF (Canadian Air Force) C-17s on the Kabul flight line…
I forget which network it was, but a few days ago one of the cable networks was illustrating a story about the
panicked retreatwithdrawal from Kabul using a photograph of Armenian soldiers… The flag on the shoulder of the soldier in the foreground was in full color and took up a good fifth of the photograph. It was hard to miss.Wokeness trained “journalist”!
There also was the report about USAF planes evacuating people, illustrated with a phone of a UAE Air Force C-130, with “United Arab Emirates Air Force” written in large letters right behind the air force.
The local news also kept repeating a video clip with a Dutch air force C-130 on it. (Interesting, because I never heard any word about the Dutch participating in that effort.)
We need to update the “Modern Major General” song to reflect modern things Powerpoint, Critical Race Theory, and other Woke nonsense.
And that is the distinctively different interior – note the square boxed windows – of an Airbus A400M Atlas turboprop airlifter, which are only operated by Germany, Spain, Italy, France, Turkey, Belgium, Luxembourg, Malaysia, . . . and the UK. By all reports our guys rode out on USAF assets.
Dear American Military Generals, Admirals, ( Ranger, SEAL, Green Beret, or Delta. -all that talk if the tuff guys, uh huh. Not so fuckin much!)
You are Worthless POS. Full Stop.
Mike just wants ya fired.
I’m not as forgiving or nice.
Follow the Japanese Business man.
Have some honor.
We now know whom are The Pretorian Guard.
Noted, Stored and Wont be forgotten.
https://mobile.twitter.com/Michael_Yon/status/1434644696811327494
https://mobile.twitter.com/Michael_Yon/status/1434641430744608771
https://mobile.twitter.com/Michael_Yon/status/1434641131099283458
Worthless Cowards.
I’m working on a Masters in IT management, Yay me, It has some merit. BUT I’M NOT USING IT TO QUAL FOR A F***ING GENERAL OFFICER’S SLOT!! OK sorry for the impassioned cap locks but I have seen the degrees you cite. When I was a tech for the local school district. Usually for teachers (as you mention) many of them who had misspellings on their blackboards. These assholes are running the military out of a project management textbook. I should know, I’ve been studying project management.
To be fair, this sort of nonsense is nothing new when it comes to peacetime or low intensity conflict armies.
When there’s not an actual, all in war going on, the ability to perform the rituals of Chicken Feces become more valued than war stuff, and Pournelle’s Iron Law predominates.
In times past, it was all about aristocratic connections and sucking up to the king; now it’s about the Correct Political Views and sucking up to the political establishment.
And as usual, the Warriors for Chicken Feces tend to dislike the rough men who can actually fight and win wars, so they usually wind up retiring at LTC.
I think that seat belt (or whatever that blue strip of webbing is supposed to be) installed that way is worse than none at all. In a low speed crash a whole bunch of soldiers will have their heads removed by that strap, when without it they might well fare better.
It’s not hard to secure people on the floor of a plane — ask any skydiver. This isn’t how you do it.