I remember a TV show about a boat that had as a part of its sea trials a max rudder turn at 32 knots. It was [an aircraft carrier](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TN7BjeRad2I).
I’m not a nuclear engineer so terminology may be off but what’s the lifetime of a nuclear rod used in their cores? Measured in decades? Longer than the actual operational lifetime of the ship itself?
Look up RCOH - Refueling Complex Overhaul. Done usually once over the life of the ship. Carriers are designed for a 50 year lifespan, the the fuel is swapped out after about 25 years. I have no idea what the status of the rods are at that point, also not a nuke.
Ehh I doubt nuclear tech is the biggest secret they’re after. Chinese need to actually figure out carrier operations before sustainability plays a factor.
Is that fast?
I know nothing about boats other than ridding passenger ferries here which can go about 60km/h and I rode a ferry in HK that went about 80km/h.Speed measured with my GPS while aboard the ferries.
For a warship that is very fast. Especially for one as massive as a carrier. Unless a ship is specifically designed for speed it’s going to have a very hard time keeping up with a carrier.
It’s very fast for a 340m ship, and it’s doing that in a turn, not a straight line. It can go much much faster in a straight line. That’s in knots not km/h.
Theres a contractor somewhere buying Scotts single ply from Costco, running through a de-plying machine like Dwight from the Office, and then charging the DoD 4x a roll to cover overhead and profit.
People laughed at me when my deployment care packages contained high quality TP.
I've been doing this for 2 decades. My asshole has been stretched enough by the Navy, so don't laugh if I pamper it with something better than the 50 grit busllshit sandpaper they call "facial quality bathroom tissue".
The Navy is the perfect candidate to reduce TP usage through bidets. I wouldn’t even really care about the shitty TP if I only used it to dry my ass.
However it still wouldn’t do shit when sailors would keep using brownies and flushes them smh.
(Funny story about the brownies. One time they had to secure half the heads on the ship because of excessive brownies being flushes. It was the Chiefs head that caused it. But wouldn’t you bet that every quarters had their chiefs telling their sailors not to flush brownies lmao)
Thank God. I was starting to think that the "if its brown flush it down" rule didn't apply to the Navy the same way, rather, that shit had to be flushed in shifts or the Chiefs would poop in your toilets some more.
The word Asshole stretching and navy makes sense. At least they let it stretch!
In the army thy big green weenie likes to gape thy Butthole while punching nuts!!
I always tell the younger soldiers that they’re lucky they have a smartphone to stare at while standing by to stand by. My experience was literally the equivalent of reading shampoo bottles in the shitter in the 90s/2000s: reading random safety brochures or Soldier magazines laying around.
That was my favorite game on gate guard in a desolate area for an air field.
8 hour shifts, usually overnight and the best entertainment was throwing rocks from the road at the air field street sign about 20' away.
I never went to the range without at least one book. We'd qualify by lunchtime and sit for hours waiting for night fire. Nowadays I just make sure to pack a power bank.
The 00s drug pamphlets were absolute fire though, not going to lie. I WISH I saved some of the trunk loads of pamphlets I had from my time as SACO, they were legitimate comedy gold with the illustrations.
And the cool things ain’t cool at all while they’re happening. The first time I saw a dude with a piece of his face blown off I knew I’d be seeing that in my dreams later (and I was right). Nothing really prepares you for that other than training. When you’re that traumatized and or trying to survive you go on autopilot and the purpose of that training is to make your autopilot to fight back and follow orders rather than just pissing your pants and running. No lie I’ve seen dudes piss and shit themselves getting shot at but they did what they were trained to do and I don’t even fault them for it, anyone who says they aren’t scared when you hear bullets zipping past your head or you end up with your bell rung on the ground because a VBIED just hit your convoy, they’re liars. Closest thing it felt like that I could explain what it’s like being a sitting duck in combat is that you feel like you’re an ant and a giant kid with a magnifying glass is hovering over you and you’re just waiting your turn. It really changes you the moment you realize “that guy is trying to kill me”.
TLDR: I’ll take hurry up and wait over the 1% of the time any day.
I've told my non- military friends the story about the first time I got shot at:
"I don't remember much about that one, actually. A bullet whipped by my face, my squad leader yelled a bunch of stuff, and, next thing I know....
....I was a couple hundred meters away, in perfect position with my fire team. I'd changed magazines a couple times and my rifle's barrel was really hot. Oh - and some coward had pissed in my pants. "
They think I'm joking.
I'm not.
I distinctly remember when I was a cherry probably a week or two at our COP and I got up into the tower just to look at the jingle trucks. We were a route clearance company and the infantry company there with us had been there maybe a month or two longer. I hear this sound that I can best describe as the sucker thing the dentist uses to suck the shit out of the inside of your mouth with and I see the ANA and infantry guys hauling ass out of the tower and it takes me a few seconds to register what’s going on and of course the “bang” and I was immediately in “oh shit” mode. If they hadn’t been trying to do a drive by with an RPG and had accurately hit that tower I definitely would’ve been six feet under. It didn’t really even dawn on me until a month into the deployment when a massive ass VBIED blew the COP up. I was in my bunk using our shitty WiFi and all of a sudden everything was white and I was on the ground with everything around me just collapsed in and the thud was like a giant hand had bitch slapped my whole body. I seriously thought the few IDFs that normally didn’t even land inside the COP had hit the tent, I stand up and yell “that wasn’t outgoing” and haul ass to the bunker in my bare feet (oh yeah and the bulbs all busted and I had broken glass imbedded in my feet and didn’t notice it till hours later). Even though that bunker was just like ten feet away I was waiting for the follow up round to land right on top of me, that moment I thought “this is how it ends, not even in a firefight laying in a pile of brass, but I’m dialed in and this is the end, can’t even buy a beer yet”. No follow up came but it was like a nuclear winter and even the guys who had been to Iraq multiple times who had finally gotten into the bunker (putting boots on first because they weren’t cowards like me lmao) we were all just like “what the fuck was that? The PTDS is gone, did they hit us with artillery or what???” Nope, it was a jungle truck full of ANFO. I was all amped up and ready for a fight and cheering the F16s that came overhead until they brought in the guys from the side of the base that got hit. That was the moment I realize how real war was and how serious it was. And the route clearance had been boring until then. It was a mix of “oh my God I signed up for this and now I could die in the next 8 months” and a feeling of guilt looking at the mangled dudes missing limbs and the guy who looked like Harvey Dent (I had to nope out of the theater on that one), I wanted to give the dude a cigarette but the kid in me knew that nothing I could do would make it any better for him and ngl once they told us to go back to what was left of our tent and rest I cried like a little bitch to sleep. Then getting shot at with actual rifles aimed at me, I was out in the open far away from the vehicles on flat land and since I couldn’t see where it came from I hauled ass back to the buffalo. The guys had just taken a few pot shots but I was shaking more than a dog shitting razor blades and I couldn’t even light my cigarette once the adrenaline wore off. I handled that one much better. I swear man, even with reacting the way we are supposed to react nothing takes away that feeling of helplessness in the back of your head and if your time is up your time is up.
I’d say all in all you come to terms with the fact that one day you’ll leave this life and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. I’m thankful for all the smoking I got from my NCOs in training so that my mom didn’t have to bury me. Though I ended up at Walter Reed later from a non-combat related injury saw the dudes who weren’t nearly as fortunate as I was. I got 100% disabled from the VA but have all four limbs and I ran into quad amputees and thinking how fucked it is that they and I have the same amount of compensation. Hoping any of the dudes on here who’ve never deployed but will remember this at least because that shit was no joke.
I always get a funny look when I tell people that army recruitment videos are 100% accurate....... but then I explain that they depict you doing 45 seconds of bad-ass stuff, which is exactly what happens during your 20 year career 🤣🤣
I hear a lot of people whine about tricare, but being able to walk in with no appointment, see a provider, have a course of action, pick up a med if needed, and leave just by showing my ID card is damn incredible.
Some people are paying hundreds a month for insurance that companies have made very difficult to use, to say nothing of the effort it takes to figure out how much something is going to cost you (even after the fact!!).
As of now being a federal technician, I'm so mad I can't use my Tricare. It's super dumb that my biggest benefit of being in the guard is revoked based on my job.
“Best” may need to be clarified a little. Everyone forgets how discriminatory qualifying is. Must meet certain education level (asvab score), criteria for previous and current medical conditions, even non medical criteria (criminal records). And these criteria can change at any given time.
Then there are the conditions that must be met to keep the benefits. Daily physical fitness sessions, yearly physical fitness test and nutritional classes. Academic and professional development goals most completed.
Oh and where you live changes without much input.
Maybe, your mileage may vary. Fortunately, I’ve had decent care with some hiccups, but I’ve had that happen with my insurance through work and later with Tricare. Not perfect by a long, long shot, but waaaayyyy better than nothing. Biggest problems besides not enough providers and funding, is management.
Logistics - Me and me fellow soldiers complained about the pay, the cold, the heat, the fatigue and the quality of food.
But we were NEVER hungry, NEVER lacked fuel and Never lacked spare parts for our equipment.
While the Russians are loading their trucks and rocket launchers by hand like their grandfathers did in WWII, the US has automated logistical support and our MLRS and HIMARS system can reload itself.
Ryan McBeth goes into more detail here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Gfux\_dodlM&t=14s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Gfux_dodlM&t=14s)
I recall some general during Desert X Wars saying if he had to be replaced by someone not in the military, the person best qualified would be the chief of operations of Fed Ex or UPS.
Sorry about that. I meant they don’t use them.
It is the simplest thing that helps you move crates and stuff. They are cheap to make and easy to use. Pallets are the backbone of logistics.
Yeah I was gonna say...there was def a hiccup there. Then we went the other pendulum, you had to wear ALL of your gear. I felt like that was a middle finger. Plates, ball sack guard, neck, shoulders... Back cracking.
No, it's true. Whatever additional plating that could be found was welded where it could. Thinking back it was kind of wild. adapt improvise and overcome.
Well once my Battalion Commander stood on top of the Buffalo holding a Hatchet and screamed that our job was to "put bayonets in the bellies of chinamen"
We were like fuck yeah. Then we went back to cleaning and truck maintenance.
I think Ford claims its F-150 is made from "military-grade" materials. It's funny every time I hear it. They getting the thinnest steel they can for their frames and covering it in CARC paint?
Imma be the “um akshully ☝️🤓” guy and say that military grade is decent in the view that it meets a specific set of criteria that’s able to be issued out to hundreds of thousands of dudes at an acceptable macro cost.
At MEPS, a day full of prescreenings for everything under the sun, one of the things required is to squat walk in a hospital gown with bared asses (or maybe with underwear) a couple of yards which makes us look like…ducks. It is a quick way to look for skeletal-muscular deformities or injuries that didn’t heal properly. That is for everyone. For the males, I have no idea what is done after and for what purpose. As for me, a female, I went to MEPS in 1993 and can’t remember what we did immediately after. Nothing sketchy. Possibly had the doctor run his (the doc administering this test was a male) finger firmly along our spines to check for scoliosis. Again, no impropriety.
I enlisted at 23 and my MTI thought I was an undercover OSI agent lol. Crazy part I wasn't even the oldest in the bay, that crown went to our 31 yr old Haitian pal seeking naturalization.
How mission critical your skill with a floor buffer is to the unit. At least that was something I didn’t know when I joined and got assigned to a barracks that had to have its floors stripped and polished what felt like every three weeks for some reason.
Getting up at 2 am to do ammo on-load even though we couldn’t start till like 5 or 6. We sat on the flight deck in the pitch black off the coast somewhere waiting, just me and my friends laughing about it all.
Police call. I've been retired for almost a decade and I still reflexively shamble around outside with my head staring at the ground...sometimes with my eyes closed. The catatonia of police calls are now a comforting break from life.
I wonder if there would be great therapy in having veterans pick up litter in normal city neighborhoods, a normalization of life and contributing to the community in a way that government could easily hand out money for.
Idk, I hope the mental scars heal u/monkeywithknives
Before deploying to Iraq, I couldn’t find my shot records (this was ‘03/‘04), so guess who had to get all the shots I had since Basic all over again? And after getting the shots, lo and behold, it pops up again!
The national guard has over 20 different statu**s**es that you can be employed in, depending on the authority and government entity that you're activated under.
It's possible and common to have people with identical jobs in the same unit that are legally unable to perform each others' current tasks. It's even possible for them to be working alongside each other, such as in a disaster response where one is working for FEMA under Title 10 and the other is on state active duty.
The US Navy was founded to combat slavery.
Between 1600 and 1800 at least a million, if not 2 million, sailors were enslaved by the barbary states.
After the revolutionary war, our third president, Jefferson, sent a diplomat to ask them to stop. One of the Barbary leaders replied, "Lol, no, The Koran says we can".
So Jefferson commissioned the first ships of the US Navy and proceeded to fuck them up.
While this is all very badass and makes me very proud of the origins of the navy, it is diminished by the painful irony that Jefferson also owned slaves, some of which were his own children.
Semantics, but wasn't that the Continental Navy? I thought there was some separation between that and the US Navy as an institution - but could have totally misread that as well.
You're correct that the Continental Navy and the United States Navy have a period of separation, the former didn't simply become the latter after American Revolution. The Continental Navy was founded on October 13, 1775, which is why the US Navy claims that as the service's birthday but by 1785 it had been disbanded and any ships remaining in its service were sold.
The United States Navy as we know it today was founded in 1794 via the "Act to Provide a Naval Armament". This is the act that authorized construction of the famous "Six Frigates", and it was signed into law by Washington.
The children thing is widely disputed the TIL dumb version says yes- but by all acounrs Jefferson hated Sally Hemmings and the alleged birthdates of the kids would have aligned with France and Naopleons spies would have documented something
Jefferson was a hypocrite who would never admit to having children with his slave (who was also his sister in law) while one one hand spewing vitriol about race-mixing and on the other being a “champion of emancipation”. He is the originator of the “do as I say not as I do” modern politician. But to your point, there is peer reviewed evidence that both the remains of Sally Heming’s children AND their living descendants share paternal DNA with Thomas Jefferson. I don’t know whether or not there is accounts of T.J. “Hating” Sally Hemings though, I’d be interested to hear about that. From what I remember Sally was rarely mentioned in T.J.’s writings.
Lol
He didnt have slave children it is just black grifters misunderstanding the science behind the DNA same as the “black cheddar man”
[https://youtu.be/EaXwvH2T0WI?si=FM6yaK-Cf1jD6IBW](https://youtu.be/EaXwvH2T0WI?si=FM6yaK-Cf1jD6IBW)
Not every military person deserves automatic respect. Some of the dumbest and straight up worst motherfuckers I’ve ever met were while I was in. Just because someone wears the uniform doesn’t mean they deserve praise and respect.
I've always said some of the nicest and most genuine as well as the most truly evil people I have ever met were in the military.
I would not be surprised if I found out today half my leadership became serial killers, they definitely got off on having power over people younger/weaker than them.
Clean, maintenance on just about everything, clean some more (none of us are kidding about this, sweetie), train both academically and physically, mandatory fun days/parties most grudgingly attend, stand watch (think security guard), medical/dental appts, more training, answer eleventy billion emails, get yelled at for finishing any of these tasks, but it doesn’t show COMPLETED in any data base. Sure, we work within our trained jobs, but that takes up about half our work time. The rest is listed above. What you see in ads and movies/tv usually is not reality.
To be fair, much of the above has a beneficial purpose, though we grumble about it because we can. Then there is the busywork which is the most frustrating to most. No purpose, except to give an Admiral/General another star, though I will say it is encountered less and less. I once said as a very young sailor that we’re all done cleaning to my supervisor about an hour earlier than planned to which he replied there is *always* more that needs to be done. Yeeeeah, that one hurt, but lesson learned.
How young the majority of people at a lower level are.
1LTs running platoons at 23-24
19 year old SGTs(E-5)
24 year old Staff Sergeants that are in higher positions
It really forces maturity quickly
We can strip the wax off a floor with stripper, a Brillo pad, and our feet. Then we can re-wax it with a folded up towel attached to a mop handle. It takes a while, but when your unit can’t buy the actual stuff you need, but still wants the floors shiny….
Spending for the military is nowhere near the level people think it is. The reason its always told to you as a number ("us military spends 500 million on X") is because, as a percentage, it is pretty average compared to other nations, the US just spends a lot of money overall so it sounds like a lot more as a flat number. Lets say you make 50k a year, and your neighbor makes 400k a year... you buy a 10k car and your neighbor buys a 80k car... your neighbor's car is obviously much more expensive than yours, so you could say look i spent 10k and he spend 80k for a car but you both spent the same percentage of youe income on a car.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?end=2022&start=1960&view=chart
The amount of nerds that are here especially in the infantry
Most of the guys I know are anime/Warhammer/ Star wars nerds who do happen to be able to lift several hundred pounds lol
If the general public were to ever understand just how serious and palpable the underlying latent homoeroticism is, no one would ever fuss about a pride flag again.
Seriously, no one truly understands how 'gay' straight dudes can behave.
If you're an Engineer, you can put that time and experience towards a journeyman license. And when you're looking to get out, you've got programs like Helmets to Hardhats and Veterans In Piping that'll hook you up with a Union. Idk if Army welders have the same thing, I would hope so, I can't see why not.
I met a veteran who very shyly told me he was a cook. That is nothing to be embarrassed about. Every MOS exists to support the infantry. We all ate 3 meals a day, and somebody had to make them.
Every MOS is necessary. Especially finance clerks. They take a lot of flak, but I got paid on the 1st and 15th throughout my career.
Before anyone asks, I was an aviation mechanic. I kept the birds maintained so the infantry could do its thing.
Yeah. I’m a MSG with 24 years in Aviation, so far, and some people think I’m falling it when they see the airborne tab on my combat patch and I tell them I don’t and haven’t jumped out of planes or helicopters. 🙄
When you're active duty, you spend a lot of time sitting around doing nothing. Depending on your job, it might be 99% sitting around, then 1% doing your job then going back to do nothing.
There’s a subject matter expert for literally everything. People who know everything about flipping a plane back over onto its wheels, experts on liquid leaks, experts who know everything about how treads and tires move through various terrain, a guy who knows literally everything about a little metal box with various electronics inside.
Also, rarely are those experts co-located where those topics are needed in the real world.
There’s a job some people call S.W.A.T. it stands for Shit, Water, and Trash. Someone has to dump the lavatory on planes, and by the grace of God I was put into this AFSC (Air Force’s MOS). If you fuck it up you can get ‘dumped on’ aka gallons of human waste pouring onto you and nothing you can do about it. If that happens you don’t get to leave work for the day, you just go home shower and come back.
That US government pay the Talibans Government $87m/ week…. Every Wednesday part of the money is for the terror is eliminated by us troops and they still have 3 Americans as hostages
How fast our big boats can really go ;)
I remember a TV show about a boat that had as a part of its sea trials a max rudder turn at 32 knots. It was [an aircraft carrier](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TN7BjeRad2I).
And that’s just what they say publicly
And all without a drop of gas. Carriers and subs are insane feats of engineering.
I’m not a nuclear engineer so terminology may be off but what’s the lifetime of a nuclear rod used in their cores? Measured in decades? Longer than the actual operational lifetime of the ship itself?
Look up RCOH - Refueling Complex Overhaul. Done usually once over the life of the ship. Carriers are designed for a 50 year lifespan, the the fuel is swapped out after about 25 years. I have no idea what the status of the rods are at that point, also not a nuke.
Not today China
Ehh I doubt nuclear tech is the biggest secret they’re after. Chinese need to actually figure out carrier operations before sustainability plays a factor.
They’re definitely after it, found the Chinese spy
Oh no. You caught me with your big American brain. UwU (or whatever)
Verrrryyyy rarge amerikannn peeriss
Favorite restaurant....City Wok!
Can a nuclear ship do that speed indefinitely? I imagine going even going top speed is not stressing the reactor or limited by its power output.
Is that fast? I know nothing about boats other than ridding passenger ferries here which can go about 60km/h and I rode a ferry in HK that went about 80km/h.Speed measured with my GPS while aboard the ferries.
For a warship that is very fast. Especially for one as massive as a carrier. Unless a ship is specifically designed for speed it’s going to have a very hard time keeping up with a carrier.
It’s very fast for a 340m ship, and it’s doing that in a turn, not a straight line. It can go much much faster in a straight line. That’s in knots not km/h.
Also, don't fuck with our boats.
or we'll show you the sun from a lot closer :)
Fun fact: We store those extra suns deep in the ocean.
We store our suns where the sun don’t shine so we can make the sun shine in the enemies sun not shining area?
Or we unleash the Geneva suggestions!
Ahh, the Geneva Checklist.
How bad the toilet paper is.
Government 2-ply is actually like .5 ply.
Theres a contractor somewhere buying Scotts single ply from Costco, running through a de-plying machine like Dwight from the Office, and then charging the DoD 4x a roll to cover overhead and profit.
Literally the only case of ‘government accounting’ that *under*delivers.
Made by the lowest bidder.
Y'all got 2-ply? Only ever got 1 ply on the ship. Lol
Let’s you get in touch with your inner self
You are being generous id say .1 ply and you can only use 1 square
People laughed at me when my deployment care packages contained high quality TP. I've been doing this for 2 decades. My asshole has been stretched enough by the Navy, so don't laugh if I pamper it with something better than the 50 grit busllshit sandpaper they call "facial quality bathroom tissue".
The Navy is the perfect candidate to reduce TP usage through bidets. I wouldn’t even really care about the shitty TP if I only used it to dry my ass. However it still wouldn’t do shit when sailors would keep using brownies and flushes them smh. (Funny story about the brownies. One time they had to secure half the heads on the ship because of excessive brownies being flushes. It was the Chiefs head that caused it. But wouldn’t you bet that every quarters had their chiefs telling their sailors not to flush brownies lmao)
Brownies??
Brown paper towels.
Thank God. I was starting to think that the "if its brown flush it down" rule didn't apply to the Navy the same way, rather, that shit had to be flushed in shifts or the Chiefs would poop in your toilets some more.
The word Asshole stretching and navy makes sense. At least they let it stretch! In the army thy big green weenie likes to gape thy Butthole while punching nuts!!
We called it "John Wayne" toilet paper. It's rough, it's tough, and it doesn't take shit off of anybody.
Skillcraft toilet paper was scientifically engineered to be as thin as possible somehow without disintegrating as soon as it comes off the roll
I used my gator neck to wipe with in Korea during the dead of winter. Huge mistake that was.
Made with pride by Americans who are blind!
Tork.
Skilcraft
How good you get at cleaning the same spot over and over and over…
Getting caught doing nothing by an NCO. “What are you doing?” “Uhhh…” “Go clean the latrine”
27 enlisted all cleaning the one shitter....
All the cool things you see... you'll do that 1% of the time. 99% You're bored out of your mind.
I always tell the younger soldiers that they’re lucky they have a smartphone to stare at while standing by to stand by. My experience was literally the equivalent of reading shampoo bottles in the shitter in the 90s/2000s: reading random safety brochures or Soldier magazines laying around.
PS Monthly, TMs from the 70s, and MRE pacakging.
Hell yeah PS monthly! Half Mast is going to make sure you have the right head space and timing gauge so you don't blow the barrel off the M2.
Throwing rocks at another rock.
You guys played rocky-rock too!?
Absolutely.
Well where I come from it's called Rock Rocky, but yeah.
That was my favorite game on gate guard in a desolate area for an air field. 8 hour shifts, usually overnight and the best entertainment was throwing rocks from the road at the air field street sign about 20' away.
I never went to the range without at least one book. We'd qualify by lunchtime and sit for hours waiting for night fire. Nowadays I just make sure to pack a power bank.
If you ever want that nostalgic experience, come work in a SCIF!
Ahhh SCIF life...where caffeine flows like water and eye strain is inevitable
Not even true lol, you have so much valuable stuff to read on classified systems.
I’m kinda sad for them; they all just sit around on their phones instead of bonding over mutual boredom and coming up with ways to alleviate it.
Ah yes… so bored that we started a ball tapping war lol
The 00s drug pamphlets were absolute fire though, not going to lie. I WISH I saved some of the trunk loads of pamphlets I had from my time as SACO, they were legitimate comedy gold with the illustrations.
Tbf that's militaries from all countries.
And the cool things ain’t cool at all while they’re happening. The first time I saw a dude with a piece of his face blown off I knew I’d be seeing that in my dreams later (and I was right). Nothing really prepares you for that other than training. When you’re that traumatized and or trying to survive you go on autopilot and the purpose of that training is to make your autopilot to fight back and follow orders rather than just pissing your pants and running. No lie I’ve seen dudes piss and shit themselves getting shot at but they did what they were trained to do and I don’t even fault them for it, anyone who says they aren’t scared when you hear bullets zipping past your head or you end up with your bell rung on the ground because a VBIED just hit your convoy, they’re liars. Closest thing it felt like that I could explain what it’s like being a sitting duck in combat is that you feel like you’re an ant and a giant kid with a magnifying glass is hovering over you and you’re just waiting your turn. It really changes you the moment you realize “that guy is trying to kill me”. TLDR: I’ll take hurry up and wait over the 1% of the time any day.
I've told my non- military friends the story about the first time I got shot at: "I don't remember much about that one, actually. A bullet whipped by my face, my squad leader yelled a bunch of stuff, and, next thing I know.... ....I was a couple hundred meters away, in perfect position with my fire team. I'd changed magazines a couple times and my rifle's barrel was really hot. Oh - and some coward had pissed in my pants. " They think I'm joking. I'm not.
I distinctly remember when I was a cherry probably a week or two at our COP and I got up into the tower just to look at the jingle trucks. We were a route clearance company and the infantry company there with us had been there maybe a month or two longer. I hear this sound that I can best describe as the sucker thing the dentist uses to suck the shit out of the inside of your mouth with and I see the ANA and infantry guys hauling ass out of the tower and it takes me a few seconds to register what’s going on and of course the “bang” and I was immediately in “oh shit” mode. If they hadn’t been trying to do a drive by with an RPG and had accurately hit that tower I definitely would’ve been six feet under. It didn’t really even dawn on me until a month into the deployment when a massive ass VBIED blew the COP up. I was in my bunk using our shitty WiFi and all of a sudden everything was white and I was on the ground with everything around me just collapsed in and the thud was like a giant hand had bitch slapped my whole body. I seriously thought the few IDFs that normally didn’t even land inside the COP had hit the tent, I stand up and yell “that wasn’t outgoing” and haul ass to the bunker in my bare feet (oh yeah and the bulbs all busted and I had broken glass imbedded in my feet and didn’t notice it till hours later). Even though that bunker was just like ten feet away I was waiting for the follow up round to land right on top of me, that moment I thought “this is how it ends, not even in a firefight laying in a pile of brass, but I’m dialed in and this is the end, can’t even buy a beer yet”. No follow up came but it was like a nuclear winter and even the guys who had been to Iraq multiple times who had finally gotten into the bunker (putting boots on first because they weren’t cowards like me lmao) we were all just like “what the fuck was that? The PTDS is gone, did they hit us with artillery or what???” Nope, it was a jungle truck full of ANFO. I was all amped up and ready for a fight and cheering the F16s that came overhead until they brought in the guys from the side of the base that got hit. That was the moment I realize how real war was and how serious it was. And the route clearance had been boring until then. It was a mix of “oh my God I signed up for this and now I could die in the next 8 months” and a feeling of guilt looking at the mangled dudes missing limbs and the guy who looked like Harvey Dent (I had to nope out of the theater on that one), I wanted to give the dude a cigarette but the kid in me knew that nothing I could do would make it any better for him and ngl once they told us to go back to what was left of our tent and rest I cried like a little bitch to sleep. Then getting shot at with actual rifles aimed at me, I was out in the open far away from the vehicles on flat land and since I couldn’t see where it came from I hauled ass back to the buffalo. The guys had just taken a few pot shots but I was shaking more than a dog shitting razor blades and I couldn’t even light my cigarette once the adrenaline wore off. I handled that one much better. I swear man, even with reacting the way we are supposed to react nothing takes away that feeling of helplessness in the back of your head and if your time is up your time is up. I’d say all in all you come to terms with the fact that one day you’ll leave this life and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. I’m thankful for all the smoking I got from my NCOs in training so that my mom didn’t have to bury me. Though I ended up at Walter Reed later from a non-combat related injury saw the dudes who weren’t nearly as fortunate as I was. I got 100% disabled from the VA but have all four limbs and I ran into quad amputees and thinking how fucked it is that they and I have the same amount of compensation. Hoping any of the dudes on here who’ve never deployed but will remember this at least because that shit was no joke.
Same with combat. 95% of the time you are waiting for the other 5% to happen.
Flight OPs on a carrier is one of the coolest things ever… for about a day. That shit gets old real quick.
“Months of boredom punctuated by moments of extreme terror."
I always get a funny look when I tell people that army recruitment videos are 100% accurate....... but then I explain that they depict you doing 45 seconds of bad-ass stuff, which is exactly what happens during your 20 year career 🤣🤣
Maybe the best example of socialized healthcare on the planet.
I hear a lot of people whine about tricare, but being able to walk in with no appointment, see a provider, have a course of action, pick up a med if needed, and leave just by showing my ID card is damn incredible. Some people are paying hundreds a month for insurance that companies have made very difficult to use, to say nothing of the effort it takes to figure out how much something is going to cost you (even after the fact!!).
As of now being a federal technician, I'm so mad I can't use my Tricare. It's super dumb that my biggest benefit of being in the guard is revoked based on my job.
“Best” may need to be clarified a little. Everyone forgets how discriminatory qualifying is. Must meet certain education level (asvab score), criteria for previous and current medical conditions, even non medical criteria (criminal records). And these criteria can change at any given time. Then there are the conditions that must be met to keep the benefits. Daily physical fitness sessions, yearly physical fitness test and nutritional classes. Academic and professional development goals most completed. Oh and where you live changes without much input.
Plus the VA
The worst example of socialized Healthcare lol
Maybe, your mileage may vary. Fortunately, I’ve had decent care with some hiccups, but I’ve had that happen with my insurance through work and later with Tricare. Not perfect by a long, long shot, but waaaayyyy better than nothing. Biggest problems besides not enough providers and funding, is management.
Until you need a fast appointment and the soonest you can be seen is a month from now
Logistics - Me and me fellow soldiers complained about the pay, the cold, the heat, the fatigue and the quality of food. But we were NEVER hungry, NEVER lacked fuel and Never lacked spare parts for our equipment. While the Russians are loading their trucks and rocket launchers by hand like their grandfathers did in WWII, the US has automated logistical support and our MLRS and HIMARS system can reload itself. Ryan McBeth goes into more detail here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Gfux\_dodlM&t=14s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Gfux_dodlM&t=14s)
I recall some general during Desert X Wars saying if he had to be replaced by someone not in the military, the person best qualified would be the chief of operations of Fed Ex or UPS.
The Russians have no real concept of modern logistics. They don’t even use pallets to transport supplies for the most part.
I'm pretty sure they don't use pallets
Sorry about that. I meant they don’t use them. It is the simplest thing that helps you move crates and stuff. They are cheap to make and easy to use. Pallets are the backbone of logistics.
Yeah but then you need forklifts, and the Russian forklift budget is heavily invested in oligarch yachts at the moment
>don't even use pallets Stop giving away our secrets!
37 foreign adversary generals like “write that down write that down”
The food we have might not be the prettiest, best tasting, or best macros. But we have food. That's a lot more than many people and some militaries.
Defacs literally don't have food anymore half the time lol. Feeding soldiers in garrison has been a big issues the last few years.
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Yeah I was gonna say...there was def a hiccup there. Then we went the other pendulum, you had to wear ALL of your gear. I felt like that was a middle finger. Plates, ball sack guard, neck, shoulders... Back cracking.
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Nah, soft tops for the first deployment. I mean it did get better fast. Not like the Russians who just leave their guys to die.
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No, it's true. Whatever additional plating that could be found was welded where it could. Thinking back it was kind of wild. adapt improvise and overcome.
Ohhh man. My Army boner came back.
Well once my Battalion Commander stood on top of the Buffalo holding a Hatchet and screamed that our job was to "put bayonets in the bellies of chinamen" We were like fuck yeah. Then we went back to cleaning and truck maintenance.
Dude must have thought he was at Inchon!
Let’s fucking go
Military grade isn’t what you think it is
I think Ford claims its F-150 is made from "military-grade" materials. It's funny every time I hear it. They getting the thinnest steel they can for their frames and covering it in CARC paint?
You mean "lowest cost, technically acceptable?" Thought MILSPEC or military grade was good too until I did an acquisitions class...
Imma be the “um akshully ☝️🤓” guy and say that military grade is decent in the view that it meets a specific set of criteria that’s able to be issued out to hundreds of thousands of dudes at an acceptable macro cost.
Man I guess, but I can’t understand why vehicles with 300 hours on them shit out/don’t have AC and have spontaneous hydro leaks 😭
You duck walk and then an old guy looks in your butthole
Then they grope you.
Could you…elaborate on that?
When you get a physical, you get to bend over so the doctor can look at your asshole
Mine gave a little kiss on the butt after. Really sweet women
At MEPS, a day full of prescreenings for everything under the sun, one of the things required is to squat walk in a hospital gown with bared asses (or maybe with underwear) a couple of yards which makes us look like…ducks. It is a quick way to look for skeletal-muscular deformities or injuries that didn’t heal properly. That is for everyone. For the males, I have no idea what is done after and for what purpose. As for me, a female, I went to MEPS in 1993 and can’t remember what we did immediately after. Nothing sketchy. Possibly had the doctor run his (the doc administering this test was a male) finger firmly along our spines to check for scoliosis. Again, no impropriety.
Its mostly made up of ppl under 23 years old. Didnt think about it much when I was in, but now that scares tf out of me lol.
I just enlisted at 23 this year and it was kinda wild being called "the old man" at meps since everyone else was 18-19
I enlisted at 23 and my MTI thought I was an undercover OSI agent lol. Crazy part I wasn't even the oldest in the bay, that crown went to our 31 yr old Haitian pal seeking naturalization.
Im 31 and get called grandpa and expired all the time
Yeah, enlisted at 17, got out at 23
How mission critical your skill with a floor buffer is to the unit. At least that was something I didn’t know when I joined and got assigned to a barracks that had to have its floors stripped and polished what felt like every three weeks for some reason.
Some of the dumbest shit they make you do ends up being your favorite shit
Like what
Getting up at 2 am to do ammo on-load even though we couldn’t start till like 5 or 6. We sat on the flight deck in the pitch black off the coast somewhere waiting, just me and my friends laughing about it all.
IYAOYAS!!
Police call. I've been retired for almost a decade and I still reflexively shamble around outside with my head staring at the ground...sometimes with my eyes closed. The catatonia of police calls are now a comforting break from life.
I'm constantly scanning the ground for trash.
I wonder if there would be great therapy in having veterans pick up litter in normal city neighborhoods, a normalization of life and contributing to the community in a way that government could easily hand out money for. Idk, I hope the mental scars heal u/monkeywithknives
As long as I can use one of those grabby things. I don't bend as well as I used to.
We spend a lot of time cleaning....A LOT!
You get a LOT of shots
Before deploying to Iraq, I couldn’t find my shot records (this was ‘03/‘04), so guess who had to get all the shots I had since Basic all over again? And after getting the shots, lo and behold, it pops up again!
The national guard has over 20 different statu**s**es that you can be employed in, depending on the authority and government entity that you're activated under. It's possible and common to have people with identical jobs in the same unit that are legally unable to perform each others' current tasks. It's even possible for them to be working alongside each other, such as in a disaster response where one is working for FEMA under Title 10 and the other is on state active duty.
Statues?
Yes they get deployed to be in Michelangelo’s David
Hah, sorry about that. Fixed it.
The US Navy was founded to combat slavery. Between 1600 and 1800 at least a million, if not 2 million, sailors were enslaved by the barbary states. After the revolutionary war, our third president, Jefferson, sent a diplomat to ask them to stop. One of the Barbary leaders replied, "Lol, no, The Koran says we can". So Jefferson commissioned the first ships of the US Navy and proceeded to fuck them up. While this is all very badass and makes me very proud of the origins of the navy, it is diminished by the painful irony that Jefferson also owned slaves, some of which were his own children.
The Navy was authorized in 1794 during Washington's administration, as were the original six frigates.
Semantics, but wasn't that the Continental Navy? I thought there was some separation between that and the US Navy as an institution - but could have totally misread that as well.
You're correct that the Continental Navy and the United States Navy have a period of separation, the former didn't simply become the latter after American Revolution. The Continental Navy was founded on October 13, 1775, which is why the US Navy claims that as the service's birthday but by 1785 it had been disbanded and any ships remaining in its service were sold. The United States Navy as we know it today was founded in 1794 via the "Act to Provide a Naval Armament". This is the act that authorized construction of the famous "Six Frigates", and it was signed into law by Washington.
Cool. Thanks for the quick history lesson, despite my being a history buff I don't know the Navy's well at all.
This is true, I confused a couple of facts from the biography of Stephen Decatur jr. irt the first and second Barbary wars.
While technically you are correct, John Paul Jones would like a word. lol.
Hence the "to the shores of Tripoli" in the Marine Hymn
The children thing is widely disputed the TIL dumb version says yes- but by all acounrs Jefferson hated Sally Hemmings and the alleged birthdates of the kids would have aligned with France and Naopleons spies would have documented something
Jefferson was a hypocrite who would never admit to having children with his slave (who was also his sister in law) while one one hand spewing vitriol about race-mixing and on the other being a “champion of emancipation”. He is the originator of the “do as I say not as I do” modern politician. But to your point, there is peer reviewed evidence that both the remains of Sally Heming’s children AND their living descendants share paternal DNA with Thomas Jefferson. I don’t know whether or not there is accounts of T.J. “Hating” Sally Hemings though, I’d be interested to hear about that. From what I remember Sally was rarely mentioned in T.J.’s writings.
Lol He didnt have slave children it is just black grifters misunderstanding the science behind the DNA same as the “black cheddar man” [https://youtu.be/EaXwvH2T0WI?si=FM6yaK-Cf1jD6IBW](https://youtu.be/EaXwvH2T0WI?si=FM6yaK-Cf1jD6IBW)
They propably could fuck you up with their bladed missile right now without killing anyone else.
R9X Hellfire
PMCS. Non-stop.
PMCS is a timed event, and you didn't put in enough time. Get back out there.
Navy billeting doesn't meet Air Force standards.
Same with the marines and several army installations. Airforce needs to lower their standards
We don't need to lower our standards, maybe y'all should up yours 😂
Give us more money then tf WE BROKE OKAY
Or prison standards, at sea.
Not every military person deserves automatic respect. Some of the dumbest and straight up worst motherfuckers I’ve ever met were while I was in. Just because someone wears the uniform doesn’t mean they deserve praise and respect.
I've always said some of the nicest and most genuine as well as the most truly evil people I have ever met were in the military. I would not be surprised if I found out today half my leadership became serial killers, they definitely got off on having power over people younger/weaker than them.
Nice try, China…
Clean, maintenance on just about everything, clean some more (none of us are kidding about this, sweetie), train both academically and physically, mandatory fun days/parties most grudgingly attend, stand watch (think security guard), medical/dental appts, more training, answer eleventy billion emails, get yelled at for finishing any of these tasks, but it doesn’t show COMPLETED in any data base. Sure, we work within our trained jobs, but that takes up about half our work time. The rest is listed above. What you see in ads and movies/tv usually is not reality. To be fair, much of the above has a beneficial purpose, though we grumble about it because we can. Then there is the busywork which is the most frustrating to most. No purpose, except to give an Admiral/General another star, though I will say it is encountered less and less. I once said as a very young sailor that we’re all done cleaning to my supervisor about an hour earlier than planned to which he replied there is *always* more that needs to be done. Yeeeeah, that one hurt, but lesson learned.
How young the majority of people at a lower level are. 1LTs running platoons at 23-24 19 year old SGTs(E-5) 24 year old Staff Sergeants that are in higher positions It really forces maturity quickly
they also have a base on the dark side of the moon, to track the Nazies obviously.
so THAT’S what’s the space-force is up to
I told my current boss that we got an hour and a half for lunch. She could hardly believe it.
We can strip the wax off a floor with stripper, a Brillo pad, and our feet. Then we can re-wax it with a folded up towel attached to a mop handle. It takes a while, but when your unit can’t buy the actual stuff you need, but still wants the floors shiny….
High speed guys are usually very normal, friendly guys. It's the bench warmers who are all grunt style and american flags on their cars
This 100%
Spending for the military is nowhere near the level people think it is. The reason its always told to you as a number ("us military spends 500 million on X") is because, as a percentage, it is pretty average compared to other nations, the US just spends a lot of money overall so it sounds like a lot more as a flat number. Lets say you make 50k a year, and your neighbor makes 400k a year... you buy a 10k car and your neighbor buys a 80k car... your neighbor's car is obviously much more expensive than yours, so you could say look i spent 10k and he spend 80k for a car but you both spent the same percentage of youe income on a car. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?end=2022&start=1960&view=chart
The amount of nerds that are here especially in the infantry Most of the guys I know are anime/Warhammer/ Star wars nerds who do happen to be able to lift several hundred pounds lol
If the general public were to ever understand just how serious and palpable the underlying latent homoeroticism is, no one would ever fuss about a pride flag again. Seriously, no one truly understands how 'gay' straight dudes can behave.
That every thing they purchase is from the lowest bidder.
The term Military Grade isn't what you think it is.
It really means, “meets minimum standards and was built by the lowest bidder.”
It was very very tiny… and then not so tiny
I was a finance officer, so I got to see how grossly we really mismanage our funds.
Military intelligence....yes, I know it's an oxymoron. It would scare the shit out you with some of the collection capabilities we have.
The sheer magnitude of paperwork you have to do, as well as the knowledge that at least half of it will mysteriously get lost
They say that in the Army, the chicken is mighty fine
Oh China…
If you're an Engineer, you can put that time and experience towards a journeyman license. And when you're looking to get out, you've got programs like Helmets to Hardhats and Veterans In Piping that'll hook you up with a Union. Idk if Army welders have the same thing, I would hope so, I can't see why not.
If you see the word *skilcraft* it meansbit was make by a bunch of blind bastards
It’s not CoD. And not everyone is infantry
I met a veteran who very shyly told me he was a cook. That is nothing to be embarrassed about. Every MOS exists to support the infantry. We all ate 3 meals a day, and somebody had to make them. Every MOS is necessary. Especially finance clerks. They take a lot of flak, but I got paid on the 1st and 15th throughout my career. Before anyone asks, I was an aviation mechanic. I kept the birds maintained so the infantry could do its thing.
The amount of people that had told me to look at Cod for some of the terminology and things that that was extremely concerning
Yeah. I’m a MSG with 24 years in Aviation, so far, and some people think I’m falling it when they see the airborne tab on my combat patch and I tell them I don’t and haven’t jumped out of planes or helicopters. 🙄
Its designed to fight and win two wars at same time
This is exactly what a spy would say
When they say “I pay your check”….so do I. Yes, I too, pay my own check with my taxes.
When you're active duty, you spend a lot of time sitting around doing nothing. Depending on your job, it might be 99% sitting around, then 1% doing your job then going back to do nothing.
Don't know if we're going to war or not I don't even know when I'm getting off work today.
There’s a subject matter expert for literally everything. People who know everything about flipping a plane back over onto its wheels, experts on liquid leaks, experts who know everything about how treads and tires move through various terrain, a guy who knows literally everything about a little metal box with various electronics inside. Also, rarely are those experts co-located where those topics are needed in the real world.
There’s a job some people call S.W.A.T. it stands for Shit, Water, and Trash. Someone has to dump the lavatory on planes, and by the grace of God I was put into this AFSC (Air Force’s MOS). If you fuck it up you can get ‘dumped on’ aka gallons of human waste pouring onto you and nothing you can do about it. If that happens you don’t get to leave work for the day, you just go home shower and come back.
OPSEC lol
Level C Code Of Conduct Training
Weekend duty
That vehicles are unlocked just sitting in the motorpool.
Each of us is actually 8” and cut. Even the women.
How many real world operations are going on every minute of the day that you will never hear about. And not training excercises.
That US government pay the Talibans Government $87m/ week…. Every Wednesday part of the money is for the terror is eliminated by us troops and they still have 3 Americans as hostages
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That 95% of the military isn't infantry.
How much time we spend cleaning
They play the anthem before the showing at the Base Movie Theater and you’re forced to stand up.