- Joined
- Jan 13, 2016
- Messages
- 38,083
- Reaction score
- 22,575
- Location
- Norfolk Virginia area.
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Independent
We used to do all of those things in the 80's and 90's, did we not? The only difference now is that we expect the Navy to defend as much of the ocean as it did then with a much smaller force than we had 40 years ago. We expect it to do increasingly varied missions for longer periods of time, using increasingly more technologically complicated equipment... but at the same time we reduce the incentives for retaining experienced personnel. Something has got to give here.
New sailors today won't put up with it for very long, and they will just leave when their EOS is up.
I don't blame them.
We accepted whatever the Admirals told us back then even if we knew they were full of shit.
I did a entire Med cruise (8 months) that turned into 157 straight days 3 miles off the coast of Somalia, then 4 weeks off of Bosnia/Croatia without a single port visit other than the typical snail wash down in Rota Spain on the way home. We were home for 12 days only to get sent to Port aux Prince Haiti for another 9 weeks.
We had a 450 ship navy back then and we were the only ship ready to go to Haiti?
****ing bullshit!