How Do Militaries Treat Their Nerds? 426
An anonymous reader writes "Cyber Warfare is a hot topic these days. A major reorganization may be looming, but a critical component is a culture where technologists can thrive. Two recent articles address this subject. Lieutenant Colonel Greg Conti and Colonel Buck Surdu recently published an article in the latest DoD IA Newsletter stating that 'The Army, Navy, and Air Force all maintain cyberwarfare components, but these organizations exist as ill-fitting appendages (PDF, pg. 14) that attempt to operate in inhospitable cultures where technical expertise is not recognized, cultivated, or completely understood.' In his TaoSecurity Blog Richard Bejtlich added 'When I left the Air Force in early 2001, I was the 31st of the last 32 eligible company grade officers in the Air Force Information Warfare Center to separate from the Air Force rather than take a new nontechnical assignment.' So, Slashdot, how has the military treated you and your technical friends? What changes are needed?"
Contract. (Score:5, Interesting)
Not THAT bad. (Score:5, Interesting)
I've had no problems in the Navy and been put on some really choice assignments because of my technical expertise. However, I've also seen some technical experts that got nothing from it and driven out of the service. If you flaunt it like sliced bread has nothing on you, yea, you're going to get treated like a prick. If you just do your thing and not care about the rest, you can do pretty darn good. Unfortunately, at some point you get forced to put down the wrench and pick up the pen, and then its just not fun anymore. Its great if you're just in for the college money, sucks later on if you decide to make a career out of it.
Re:If the military sucks, don't joint 'em. (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, not bad. (Score:3, Interesting)
I did work as a contractor for the Defense Support Program and was impressed by the way the Air Force ran the program. The IT group I was with was treated with respect by the AF personnel. Unfortunately, it was the contracting company I worked for that insisted on playing politics rather than getting the job done. If only someone could find a way to remove office politics from the workplace (and, yes, I realize that there is irony in asking that office politics be removed from a government-run program).
Military treat you fine. Civilian DOD less so (Score:5, Interesting)
The Military (USAF) always treated me
with great respect. It was the other civilians that would give you a hard time. The military members were all very hard-working and saw that I am too. They repected my expertise and knew about how to be tolerant of my lifestyle even better than civilians (who hated my lifestyle).
And military weren't trying to funnel contracts to their friends. And they didn't seek to ruin my career when I wouldn't go along with boondoggles. It was the Civilians that did this (some of them).
And worse, the ones who treated us the worst, were the people who didn't fund us, politicians who were on vendettas to move our offices (these were out of state politicians).
These were people with no concern other than empire building in their own back yards.
The Military members were always the best to work with, the hardest working, the most diverse, and the ones who understood and appreciated excellence.
Stop with the religious aspects? (Score:1, Interesting)
Technical people tend to be atheist. Isn't the air force full of Evangelicals? What about all the chaplains?
Re:How Do Militaries Treat Their Nerds? (Score:5, Interesting)
Closet Nerds (Score:4, Interesting)
A couple of weeks ago we were having some inane conversation and the topic of our respective work places came up. I work in an IS shop with a relatively young crew of developers (I'm 29, I still consider myself young) and most of us show off our inner nerd on a daily basis. You know the stuff; ringtones from old school games, anime, Star Wars, oddball wallpapers, conversations about stuff that leaves non-nerds scratching their heads. A while back I even heard someone playing StarFox a couple cubicles over on a Friday afternoon. All in all it is a pretty great environment :-D My friend's response was "You're so lucky, you work with nerds out in the open. All I have around here are a bunch of closet ninja nerds!" He went on to say that if you're a nerd in the army it's generally better not to show it. Apparently he catches more crap about his nerdy past-times than he does about anything else. Nothing serious really, just the general razzing you might expect. He re-upped a couple of years ago though, so it can't be all bad.
Re:Contract. (Score:4, Interesting)
Remember your briefings as a recruit at Lackland? Those guys are being paid 30-40 bucks an hour to do a SrA or SSgt's job. And what's up with PMEL becoming civillian-only? It was a great job and enlisted guys never had a problem with it.
p.s. fuck the OSI.
NSA is a better choice (Score:5, Interesting)
This raises some interesting points. I've been an advocate of a separate branch for cyber war, but ironically this article has me thinking in a new direction. A former IT boss of mine used to say that in the military they take pride in the notion that if it is round you carry it, and if it is square you roll it. The article indicates this cultural problem, but isn't this a cultural pervasive in the very institution of the military? While different branches have different cultures, surely a non-kinetic warfare branch would truly be the odd one out. The military is capable of scientific rigor, certainly -- the US Army Corps of Engineers is a good example. Yet, we have all kinds of intelligence agencies under the department of defense umbrella where science is the modus operandi -- so why would cyber security go under the military, as opposed to the NSA, for example?
The military requires some degree of cyber warfare capability in the field, but I'm not sure it makes sense as the nexus of national defense efforts in the field. It further seems axiomatic that cyber security can't be reasonably split into our existing branches. This seems to be the crux of the issue: the military may not be sufficiently distinguishing operational needs from strategic needs. While each branch requires operational components, strategically the military cannot effectively pursue this goal.
I'm not convinced by the point in the article regarding the NSA. On the contrary, it almost seems like the NSA model is ideal: the military requires operational folks who rotate through the doors of the NSA to get schooled and then go out into the field. Meanwhile, I would think, the NSA is staffed by career civilian professionals who can not only devote the necessary strategic attention to cyber warfare, but can also train the military as necessary. The article seems to address an issue where military staff is used to augment an understaffed NSA. Since apparently military staff is rotated out too frequently, it is not an effective use of resources. From this description, at least, this problem seems minor in comparison to the issues of shoe horning geeks into the military.
Most heartening, however, is that these folks seem to really get it, at long last:
As a former Marine Nerd (Score:1, Interesting)
Ill tell you a few things, first the military HATES when you come up with a better solution then the one there using already. Even if the cost is actully lower then normal. On top of this the culture enforces the idea that no matter how good you are at your job, if your not a 300 PFT (top score) then your not valuable to the service.
My advice is to change how rank is given.
Right now rank is given based on the following items
PFT score (physical fitness)
Time in Service
Time in Grade
How good your superiors think you are
How good your superiors think you are over the last several years
Doing military education (programing and other things like this dont count)
(a few others I forgot)
Overall someone who spends his time at the gym is a good marine and will get promoted over a nerd. On top of this a person with a high PFT score will get ranked better by his supervisors then a nerd will. To change this you have to tell the Marines to fight smarter not harder, however this will fall on deaf ears most of the time.
A backdoor to fix this would be to add new jobs to the marines, Military programers etc who would be ranked aginst each other. However... people who hate the job will take it because there already a high PFT military member thus ensuring new blood has no idea what the heck its doing.
Given the curent culture as well as the grab to get rank no matter what, your asking a vary hard question. Truly the best solution is some 3rd outside the service contracter way so you dont have to rank things that dont really matter.
Paul
paul . brinker (at) gmail . com
A smack of personal experience (Score:4, Interesting)
Let me start with a personal disclosure: This past summer slashdot ran an article about interviewing the Air Force's cyber defense team. We submitted the answers, they submitted the replies, and most people were frustrated at the lack of transparency. But one thing they did say is that they were actively recruiting (one of the big reasons they accepted the interview request). Well, I decided to try and contact them using their website. I e-mailed them and said I was game and got bounced to a government jobs website which happened to be broken and also had none of the jobs for the program listed. After a few more hours of fruitless searching, I gave up. What does it matter how they treat their nerds if the interested ones can't even land face time with someone who knows how to screen them?
Second, our culture is radically opposed to the military culture. And I'm not talking about dropping bombs and warfare stuff that so-called "liberals" go crazy over. We play violent video games to relax. And there's more people in our community that advocate gun ownership and self-defense than in the general population. In short, while it might not be popular geek culture to be pro-military, it's not a single-digit percentage of us by any means. The flip of this though is that many of us live alternative lifestyles and conventional military thinking is that we're a security risk. If it's not our sexuality, it's our hobbies (LARPing comes to mind as one example), and if not our hobbies, than our eccentric worldviews, morality, religious preferences, etc. The very things that make us valuable -- the ability to think critically, take the initiative, and not be weighed down by conventional thinking is exactly the thing the military (like so many bureauacracies, large corporations, and organizations around the world) seems to weed out.
Really, by the time anyone makes it through all those hoops -- are they really going to be a significant asset? Can the military honestly say it's retaining enough labor assets to combat what less-restrictive organizations (including criminal and terrorist organizations) will accept, and also what they're willing to pay? Seriously. They're organizing out there -- they are seriously organizing how they aquire networking and system resources, they're doing it in bulk, and those resources can be easily militarized. They're being traded amongst themselves already and while right now the targets have been primarily financial, it's only going to take a few geniuses out there to sit down at a table and put their combined skillset together and start attacking real infrastructure targets.
"Cyber defense" as it sits today is a total and complete joke. Even with chain of command decisions under five minutes from aquisition to execution, you people are still orders of magnitude too slow. And your entire strategy has been reactive in nature, because you lack the intelligence assets necessary to get on the other side of the curve and begin anticipating and analyzing potential threats before they materialize. Not only that, but the military has long been associated with the protection of physical assets and real people -- they are woefully inequipped to deal with intangible assets and virtual people. This is the new blitzkrieg and attacks can start and end faster than a single person's physical reaction times (on the order of a half second).
They not only aren't fighting the right war, they don't even have the basic sense to know how to adapt to it, or hire the people and trust them to take them in the direction they need to go. It doesn't matter how they treat their "nerds" -- they've already been hired away by private companies, organized criminals, terrorists, or simply left the field due to lack of legitimate employment. And all the while hundreds of billions in assets sit largely undefended, or defended only as well as a bunch of civilians with a hobby interest in security can do.
Re:If the military sucks, don't joint 'em. (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Nerds end wars faster than soldiers (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:If the military sucks, don't joint 'em. (Score:2, Interesting)
Where do we even begin? (Score:4, Interesting)
So, Slashdot, how has the military treated you and your technical friends? What changes are needed?
I'm not sure where to begin answering this. Let's look at the recent brouhaha about memory cards and DOD networks to understand why.
In November, the DOD instructed everyone to stop using devices like flash cards, memory sticks, etc. They didn't go into why until weeks later, and they didn't publicly release the "why" until last month, if I recall correctly. And the "why" turned out to be agent.btz, a virus released five months earlier that antivirus software should have stopped.
But beyond that, here are the problems the DOD had in allowing the agent.btz problem to get way out of proportion. First, they had people using memory sticks to transfer files from unclassified networks to classified networks, when the proper procedure is to burn a CD -- which is treated as classified the moment the door closes on the secure system's CD-ROM drive.
Second, they obviously had a massive failure to protect their classified systems against a virus that by that point should have been easily detected and removed ... which raises the question, what sort of antivirus software, if any, is installed on the DOD's secure networks?
Finally, let's look at the so-called "solution." Ban all USB storage devices from all government networks? Really? Isn't that a bit like hitting a fly with a sledgehammer? The existing procedures on transferring data to classified systems would have worked fine if it were followed and enforced, but if the DOD can't enforce those procedures, how does it expect to enforce even more draconian measures that seek to ban the use of USB storage devices altogether? No, the DOD's decision smacks of overreaction and panic.
And it's telling that the ban is still in place four months after the fact. What that tells me is that the DOD is not prepared to properly and adequately protect its own networks, much less engage in some lofty concept of "cyber warfare." The DOD is still struggling to define what cyberspace is -- how can they fight in a domain when they don't even know its boundaries?
They just don't get it. (Score:5, Interesting)
First, a bit of background. I separated from the Air Force in 2006. When I left I had a CJR (waiting list number to keep my own job) in the 280s. That means just in the quarter I would have re-enlisted, 280 people would have to leave, choose other jobs, or fill spots before I got a spot to keep my own job. I left as a 3c051, Computer communications and operations, with the rank of SrA. I actually had a line number for Staff, which I got on my first try, mostly on the strength of my career knowledge. For those not in the know, advancement up to Senior Airman is automatic, and tied to time in grade, until the NCO (Sergeant) ranks. After that point, it's based on a point system comprised of time in grade, decorations, and your results in a test on general air force knowledge and career knowledge.
My assumption was, with as little relative time in grade as I had, that taking the tests was merely a day doing something different, and why not. But my scores, primarily on the career knowledge, was so high as to overcome my lack of points for time in rank and decorations.
So, ignoring any of my own opinions about how good or knowledgeable I am, by the measures that the Air Force has, I was the top of the class. I was also assigned to an Info Warfare Flight, exactly the unit that would be concerned with the things being discussed as priorities then, and today. None of it figured into Rank, or into my skill level, or if they tried to retain me.
The fact that I could run circles around the Staffs and Techs in my unit, and they knew it and deferred to me on technical matters, was irrelevant to what even my technical skill rating was, let alone pay or rank. By the standard of the air force, they had higher skill levels in technical proficiency than I did. Quite frankly, given that I had computer knowledge coming in, I'm certain I could have passed the 7 level class without any effort. However, it's not even offered till you've had Staff on for long enough to get scheduled for it, so, basically a year, mission requirements allowing. Further, as I was processing out, the unit First Shirt (kind of an HR Sergeant) gave a little speech to the airmen, saying those in overfilled career fields should stay in and retrain to something else, that we were young, therefore it was easy for us to do different things, therefore our experience at what we already were doing was irrelevant. I found it insulting to say the least.
The bottom line is this. The military is not setup to advance and reward those with technical ability. It is setup to have standard sized cogs. One airman's supposed to be exactly equivalent to another, One Staff equivalent to another staff. And if you're thinking from the mindset that one airman could be blown up, and his or her replacement must be ready to step in, it makes a kind of sense. It also doesn't make sense to promote up the ranks based on tech ability. NCO's are the equivalent of lower and middle management, Senior NCO's middle to upper, and officers filling out upper and executive levels. Just because you're an ace with networks certainly doesn't mean you are ready to lead people.
So, the system itself isn't designed to handle individuals that have technical ability, but who aren't ready/don't want to command lower level troops. None of this even TOUCHES on the way the military lifestyle itself clashes with the general hacker mentality. About the only draw the military has at all is that they will accept just about anyone, and if you can prove a certain aptitude, you will be allowed to do computer work, no previous provable experience or training required. For some of us who don't do well with traditional education, and don't want to work up through the hell desk ladder, it's got that as a draw. But that will only keep people in for 4 and out, and they then use that experience to go get a real job. And you can't run a realistic computer defense or offense program if your best people leave every 3 years (4 years minus the training), and all that's left and
Re:Stop with the religious aspects? (Score:2, Interesting)
So I went to church and became deathly ill from other basic-training sicklings coughing and sneezing, and then insisting on holding hands with me as part of the sing-a-long. Eventually I stopped going to church and discovered that we weren't actually made to do details. Just got to sit quietly in the bay writing letters and relaxing. One of the best-kept secrets in basic training. Hell, if I knew that then I wouldn't have went to church even if I were religious!
Still, the AF is not all that bad when it comes to religion. The worst cases of Christian zealotry [blogspot.com] seem to occur [militaryre...reedom.org] in the Army [sayanythingblog.com].
Re:Badly... (Score:4, Interesting)
...Or a SPEC-5, SPEC-6, SPEC-7...
I think one of the things that the Army, specifically, did wrong was to completely eliminate that secondary path to advancement. If we're talking about highly technical specialties with little to no relationship to direct combat, then the idea to make everyone a capable sergeant doesn't fit so well.
Main reason I didn't stay in longer than I did was that I wouldn't have had the chance to do actual work in my MOS (33-T) above the rank of E-4.
The CIA is hiring geeks (Score:1, Interesting)
If you're a competent geek and want to serve your country, the CIA is a good place to be.
It's a civilian environment, much different than the military. But the work is interesting and important.
https://www.cia.gov/careers/jobs/scientists-engineers-technology/view-jobs/index.html
Re:If the military sucks, don't joint 'em. (Score:5, Interesting)
Former defense contractor here, too...
When I dealt with the customer, I tended to deal with middle-upper officers MAJ, LTC, and COL. While not nerds per se, they were among some of the most clueful and intelligent people I have worked with.
But realistically, what can you expect? (Score:3, Interesting)
IT services are not the main mission of the armed forces - flying airplanes, driving ships, and pounding the ground are. It only makes sense that those are the guys who are going to be held in the highest esteem.
However, I think it's pretty dumb that you have to compete with the fly-boys for promotion. At least in the Navy, support types (supply guys, doctors, engineering duty types, etc) each had their own competitive pools, and if you were, say, a doctor, you could hope to be CO of a Naval hospital or something.
Re:Nerds end wars faster than soldiers (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:If the military sucks, don't joint 'em. (Score:4, Interesting)
Exactly my experience, too. When I was growing up, a career in the military sounded like hell on Earth. These days, having worked directly with them as a civvie, I have a LOT of respect for those who decide to go into the forces.
Re:NSA is a better choice (Score:2, Interesting)
so why would cyber security go under the military, as opposed to the NSA, for example?
Largely because of the United States Code...
U.S.C. Title 10, Subtitle A, Part 3 (I think): Armed Forces, General Powers and Functions. Title 10 grants the Armed Forces the authority to commit potential "acts of war". In the cyber world, this means the ability to exploit, destory, degrade, or otherwise attack a foreign computer.
U.S.C. Title 50, Chapter 36: Electronic Surveillance. Title 50 grants the Intelligence Agencies the authority to collect electronic surveillance. It does not grant the direct authority to exploit a foreign computer.
Obviously, at some point, there is a need for both of these authorities during cyber warfare, or even general surveillance. Much like the government has separation of powers, the Intelligence Communities have separation of powers. And it is a good thing.
I'm not convinced by the point in the article regarding the NSA. On the contrary, it almost seems like the NSA model is ideal: the military requires operational folks who rotate through the doors of the NSA to get schooled and then go out into the field. Meanwhile, I would think, the NSA is staffed by career civilian professionals who can not only devote the necessary strategic attention to cyber warfare, but can also train the military as necessary. The article seems to address an issue where military staff is used to augment an understaffed NSA. Since apparently military staff is rotated out too frequently, it is not an effective use of resources. From this description, at least, this problem seems minor in comparison to the issues of shoe horning geeks into the military.
The model is good in theory. In practice it runs into several problems (though sometimes it does work well):
1) Military personnel are (generally) not promoted according to technical achievements. This leads to frustration when Military peers are recognized and promoted ahead of you. This also leads to frustration while working side-by-side with civilians who ARE recognized for technical achievements.
2) The pay difference. Working side by side with civilians who are paid 2x, 3x, and sometimes 4x what Military personnel can make. This also leads to frustration. At least the Military Medical personnel are paid extra for their skills.
3) There is very little visibility into achievements in the Intelligence Community. Everything is held very close to the vest and not discussed. Military reviews for promotion are often performed by those without a clearance, and even if they have a clearance, they don't have the access to read about most special programs. Your promotion paperwork will often have a generic, almost unrelated statement regarding special access achievements. This leads to frustration when passed over for promotion. You never know, did the reviewer *really* know what I accomplished?
4) After a tour through NSA, Military personnel are often deployed to the field. While there are some technical positions in the field, most are non-technical. Even if you are lucky and get a second non-field assignment, you will not be employing anything you just learned. You will likely be put in charge of a web page, or maintenance, or some database. General military commanders do not have a need for serious cyber warfare expertise.
Combine it all and you can see why this model makes if very difficult for the Military to retain their cyber personnel. They need to change things if they want to encourage retention. Of course some people stay anyway, there are always exceptions.
Creating a separate division for cyber warfare would perhaps help with these problems. An adjusted pay scale, better promotion opportunities, more peer recognition for achievements, and a continuous career in advanced technical fields.
But that is just my (biased) opinion.
Re:From a medical perspective (Score:3, Interesting)
1) You get some kind of education reimbursement/deduction
2) You get hands on experienced in medicine right out of school
3) You get leadership training
4) You get to slap on your resume' that you are an officer
5) You don't have to pay medical insurance, which is very expensive for a nubtard doctor
Cons
1) You don't get to choose your work location. You believed the recruiter who said otherwise? Maybe you shouldn't be a doctor. Better yet, I have some nice fancy property to sell you. Send me $250,000 for 200 acres of land right in DC!
2) You get to work where they need/want you to work. If you believed otherwise (refer to Con 1) then I got another 200 a cres of land to sell you smack dab in LA for another $250,000
Duh Issues
1) Yes you have to fill out medical forms - duh - you need records. You're a doctor and you don't realize why? Are you sure you're a doctor? I got more land for you btw.
2) Yes the army has insurance forms. That's to help make sure patients don't get unnecessary procedures. It is also great training for the doctor who needs to learn this for when he/she gets out. We also need to keep track where our money is going...otherwise you get situations like "where did that $2 billion we allocated go to?"
3) Performance evals - what are you thinking when you don't realize all military personnel get evaluations? As a doctor and an officer you would, duh, be required to evaluate your staff. Then your boss wants to see those. Don't forget to evaluate the area you work in. Again - this is just what will happen in the real world.
For a doctor, who went through the craziness of medical school you 1) don't appear to know much about the real world (including military) and 2) are fairly lazy. Did you think the moment you finished medical school you could sleep the rest of your life away? Doctors are one of the hardest professions to maintain (let alone get into). And that offer of land is still there...call me!
Re:If the military sucks, don't joint 'em. (Score:3, Interesting)
Current defense contractor here, and I agree with you. However, I've also noticed that the DoD Civilians are usually the opposite. Rarely do I get to work for or with DoD Civilians who are mission oriented, diligent, and competent.
I was an Army Computer Programmer (Score:4, Interesting)
Technical people are not given commissions. If they are, they are usually expected to take on a supervisory role only. During my 4 year stint as an Army programmer I met an MIT CompSci grad who got a commission and was never given a technical assignment. He was the XO for our data processing unit but that is only an administrative position. He was rightly pissed during his enlistment. It was a complete waste of his talent.
I also knew a guy who had a masters from Yale who became a programmer. They offered him a commission but he turned it down when he found our that he would not be doing programming work. He took the training, let the army pay off his considerable student loan and left with 4 years of experience under his belt and a masters degree.
Keeping programmers past their enlistment period was so hard that they changed the minimum enlistment period to 6 years. In my opinion they should have at the very least made highly technical positions warrant officer positions so they get more pay, more respect and with that, longer retention.
But the problem with the army is their heirarchical thinking. An enlisted position has very little chance of becoming anything more. If you do real work, you are considered less than an officer who largely does pretend work.
Re:How Do Militaries Treat Their Nerds? (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was in the Canadian military it was a common "initiation rite" for new soldiers in a unit to be given ridiculous tasks to see how bright they are or how much attention they paid during training. One popular one at my unit was to send the newbie out to get Diesel Sparkplugs for one of our diesel trucks. Diesel engines do not of course require sparkplugs, but most newbie soldiers wouldn't know this, so off they would go to the unit Supply section only to be told there were none in stock but they could try Base supply - who would immediately know what was up and send them off to a different unit supply in the hopes of begging some etc. With luck this could keep a particularly ignorant soldier busy for half a day before someone pointed out to them that they had been "had". Smart ones would of course catch on immediately and point out that such a thing didn't exist etc.
What always got me was that some people would fall for items which should have been immediately obviously bogus - like sending someone out to a reel of 100' of Shoreline - as if it was a type of rope etc. However every year along would come some private asking if we had any shoreline...
I can't say as Canadian forces basic ever had you trying to solve a problem lacking all of the required resources but there were definitely similar tests that required you to solve a problem that appeared to be unsolvable as an attempt to build up cooperation and resourcefulness.
The one I will always remember was waxing the floors in the barracks during basic. Essentially the floors had to be waxed in preparation for the morning inspection (about 6:30 AM). Since we were often kept busy until 9:30 PM and lights out were at 10 PM (and the instructors came through to ensure that everyone not on Fire Picket was in bed and all the lights were out at 10 PM), there was simply no time to actually strip and wax the floors. The solution: immediately after the Instructors came through the barracks (walking on the floors of course), the Fire Pickets woke everyone up and we all used tape and garbage bags to cover up all the windows in the barracks so that no light would escape. Then everyone got up in their underwear and we rewaxed the floors and cleaned up the shower areas etc, with an array of blankets making a walkway up and down the barracks. Once everything was completed, we all got back into position in our bunk areas, remade our beds (including ironing the sheets and pillow cases so they were perfect), then the fire pickets turned out the lights and we removed the garbage bags and tape and hid them again. We then slept on the beds in reverse (your head went at the foot end and you used the spare blanket that had formed your walkway earlier and your feet went at the head end (it made less of an impact on the ironing). In the morning you got up, got dressed ready for inspection, then replaced the spare blanket carefully at the foot of the bed, picked up the pillows off the floor and put them in place then stood ready for inspection. All in all you got about 5h sleep each night, but the floors were perfectly polished, the bathrooms were clean etc all with zero time apparently devoted to the process. All completely chickenshit stuff, but it built up a spirit of cooperation between soldiers headed for different trades very well. By the end of basic (when they relaxed the standards a bit anyways) we had it down to a science and it could all be done in no time.
"Wired for War" (Score:4, Interesting)
Read Singer's Wired for War [pwsinger.com]. That's about military robots, and covers some of the issues that arise as the computers start taking over weapons.
Pilots of remotely piloted vehicles occupy a strange place in the Air Force. Most of them are based in the US, controlling vehicles in Iraq. They're stuck in a fighter-jock culture. The RPV pilots, though, are the ones doing damage to the enemy. They're flying combat missions. The fighter jocks are mostly zooming around, but don't have anything to shoot at.
There's a messy command authority problem with RPV pilots. Do they belong to the base commander where they're physically located? The unit that launches the aircraft, often far from the combat zone? Or the unit that's actually in the combat zone?
Then there's the problem of who flies the things. The USAF used to task fighter pilots to fly RPVs. They hated it. Worse, it turned out enlisted men trained to operate RPVs did at least as well as the fighter jocks. The USAF is facing the possibility that the fighter jocks may become irrelevant.
It's happened before, with aircraft carriers. The U.S. Navy, until early in WWII, was dominated by the "battleship admirals". There was heavy opposition to aircraft carriers. Congress finally stepped in and, over Navy objections, made it law that the captain of an aircraft carrier must be an aviator. Today, the battleships are history, and the Navy is dominated by aircraft carrier types.
Re:How Do Militaries Treat Their Nerds? (Score:4, Interesting)
Asking for a bucket of prop wash... asking for batteries for the sound powered phones.... there are a million of them.. but my favorite comes from my racing days... Dragsters use magnetos not distributors and they will spark when they rotate. It is a rather HOT spark too :) So you hand the n00b the magneto with the contacts facing him and tell him to take it and clean it. As soon as he start to walk away, it spins, sparks, and voila... one fried n00b!
And yes, the hazing does serve a purpose. It teaches you to be alert, aware, and cautious. In the case of having to scavenge for things, what do you think happens on a battlefield??? If you run low on ammo,what do you do? It's a very real survival skill.
2 cents,
QueenB.
Re:If the military sucks, don't joint 'em. (Score:2, Interesting)
Well said. I spent 14 years and finally got out after being offered a better job. I come from the mid-west where the only opportuntiy was farming and a factory. I 've visited several different countries and obtained a couple of different degrees, all thanks to Uncle Sam.
Re:How Do Militaries Treat Their Nerds? (Score:2, Interesting)
Royal Australian Air Force (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:If the military sucks, don't joint 'em. (Score:3, Interesting)
I thought every one knew recruiting sargents lie! (Score:3, Interesting)
As in real wars, command gets better with practice. While there is no chance of the US loosing, in any real sense, the game will go on, but not least a moment in any nation threatening conflict. Leaders, not ass-lickers, become generals. That is the entire difference. To understand look at WW2 and Chester Nimitz and George S Patton. The Admiral an General were military outsiders until Perl and the Bulge then Nimitz became an insider while Patton stayed outside the delicious military lifestyle. For those with a real interest in military history, and a sense of fun, look at General of the Army, George McArthur and the Washington generals and admirals (some of whom McArthur said should not be given command of a regiment, but was C JCS)
The bottom line is that a peace-time military does not like to fight wars, they winge,