And When She Looked There ...

In 1993 the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy was taken off of regular deployments and put into a three year maintenance cycle in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard.

There was nothing unusual about this. The three year maintenance stand-down is standard for long service ships. The sea is hard on materials and everything from fragile electronics to the very hull plates have to be recertified and inspected, a laborious and expensive process. In the case of the Kennedy it was particularly important; as the second oldest carrier in the fleet she naturally had quite a few "issues" to be resolved. And she was one of the very few remaining non-nuclear carriers. Only the Philly Yard was equipped to fix some of her particular complaints.

But, after only two years of the three year "rebuilding" process, she was pulled from the dry-dock and sent back into service. The Philadelphia Naval Shipyard was being "decommissioned" and she suddenly was moved to Jacksonville where she sat at dockside where sailors and contractors tried to fix the thousands of remaining problems. To make matters worse, she was put on the "Fleet Reserve" list both cutting her maintenance budget and putting her bottom of the list for spare parts. It seemed that she would be a dockside queen for the remainder of her time in service.

But then, whether to keep a stained dress off the front-page or in an ongoing effort to stem the tide of barbarism, take your pick, Billy Boy Clinton decided that even though our armed forces had been cut and cut again, they didn't have enough to do. And suddenly the half repaired Kennedy found herself back in regular service plowing the ocean wave. The creaky old lady, having been pulled out of the hospital, was back on the beat.

Last month she failed her basic operational readiness examination and the skipper was relieved. The fault was Clinton and the Republican Congress, but as usual the military took the blame.

This isn't an article about the Kennedy, though. This is an article about reality of which the Kennedy is just a very visible example. The reality is that units have been first stripped down below the bone then put to unremitting work and the combination is kiling us. Let's take a look at a few more examples of the shambles that are the US Armed forces.

A few weeks ago a wing fell off of a C-141 cargo plane. Why did the wing fall off? There is a pressure release valve on the fuel tank, it is manually activated from the cockpit. If the pressure isn't released, the tank swells and pushes at the wing root. The valve had been activated, but the pin that is connected to the valve and the driver line was never put in place. Why? Let me guess. Might that be a maintenance airmen (airperson?) who is overworked and undertrained? Go figure.

Once upon a time, maintenance positions were "slotted", that is if there were supposed to be eight maintenance personnel working in a section, knowing that at any time three to four of them would be away at schools or on leave or detailed to other duties, the service would assign ten to twelve people.

But, by golly, that wasn't "efficient." Remember "reinventing government?" Remember the thousands of people cut from the federal rolls? 89% were military personnel or DoD civil service. And a good few of them were people like the "unnecessary" four mechanics.

So instead of having the necessary eight there were only four or five "on duty." Since that meant that maintenance wasn't getting done, the units in question stopped sending mechanics to schools (since that was the only control they had.) Which meant less qualified mechanics trying to do more while working longer and harder hours. Which meant that when the newbie mechanics arrived from AIT, they were faced with "experts" that were half trained themselves, low on morale and not reenlisting. Good luck getting on the job training. Especially with no tools or spare parts. Spares, and tools and parts oh my!

The military is always short on spares and tools. Or at least that was the image until about 1984 when the Reagan Buildup really got in high gear. In 1983 if you needed a spare for your vehicle, you were looking at 6 months to get it. If you were lucky and availability of vehicles in the 82nd Airborne was about 70%. By 1985 it was close to 100%, simply by supplying a real sufficiency (indeed, at times an overabundance) of spare parts.

But right now we are in the same condition we were in 1983. Or worse. Only eight in ten of the helicopter fleet is operable, which is bad, but it's even worse than it appears. There are many units, by prioritization of parts and maintenance personnel, at nearly 100%, including such groups as the Special Operations Aviation Regiment and the Pentagon Wing. While at the same time there are units like the 4th Infantry Division that are at close to 20% availability. The aircraft that supported the Special Forces in Afghanistan were there at the expense of dozens of other units with grounded aircraft.

Ammunition is short; units for years have not been able to get really proficient at basic rifle marksmanship because their training allotment had been cut to what was necessary solely for qualification. Not too long ago there wasn't enough ammunition in the Army for everyone to fire for qualification at the same time. And that included war-stocks.

Parts are short; Navy personnel go down to Radio Shack for equivalent parts that they can't get though the system. And buy them out of their pocket.

We're just about out of smart bombs; the Air Force has called for three times as many to be produced in the next nine months as have been produced in the life of the program. Since it's a "crash" program, by the way, they're going to cost three times as much per unit. I'll let Iraqi intelligence do the leg-work on hard numbers. I know them. I'm not going to broadcast them.

Personnel are short. Because of the critical shortage of trained maintenance personnel, who often can get out and get paid five times their military pay on the civvie street, persons with special qualifications who are on "regular reserve" status are being absolutely screwed. Just one example is pilots.

Reserve pilots are being called up for six months, deployed to combat or peacekeeping zones, then being deactivated and sent back to the civilian world only to be called back up again. Excuse me? These aren't book-keepers from AccuTemp, guys!

They are not the only ones. From aircraft crewmen to prime power operators to MPs, persons with a regular civilian life, who have already spent their time as full-time soldiers, are being told that they have to go "fill in" because we don't have enough of the regular forces. That's LUDICROUS.

Face facts, the cupboard, in ammunition and people and parts and working weapons systems, is bare.

This is all a matter of funding. Period. Dot. End of story. The reality is that at least since the Kosovo Action we have been on a low-level war footing and since September 11th the fact of that continuance is clear. Secretary Rumsfeld and President Bush need to stop pussy-footing around and submit a real war budget. They need to start a "Reagan" style military rebuilding program that looks reality square in the face and says "this is what we need." The numbers will make the Congress, and the American people, gasp; at least a doubling of the current budget. At least. Four hundred to six hundred billion dollars a year. Deficit spending? Hell yes. If you have a problem with that, go to Ground Zero.

We're at war. Wars are expensive. And the damage to the military that Clinton did, by reducing it's support while increasing the number of operations, is going to make it much more expensive. We need to fix stuff. Big stuff and lots of it. Carriers and planes and tanks and trucks. We need more bodies to do that. We need full-time pilots, who are in the regular service and can expect to stay there for years, not months. They need flight training time, not just combat hours. We need to send SF to the Defense Language Institute for new languages. We need to send Marines and soldiers to the range. We need enough people, in every slot, that the slot stays filled and the people can still get advanced training. And stay happy enough to stay in. Good training, good missions and good leaders will turn this military around. It's... not... that ... hard.

If we're not willing to do the job right, we might as well not do it at all. And if we're not willing to do it at allSwellSdon't spend a lot of time in the Empire State Building .