Aviation Synchronization Conference: Inadvertently Inappropriate

I have no idea how it all started, but everything is a That’s What She Said joke these days. The ultimate was an inadvertent TWSS by a COL who was briefing Aviation Network Interoperability yesterday. Which, by all means, is the most boring topic in the world… unless you’re that particular COL, then I’m sure it was epic and awesomesauce in your own little world, sir.

Now I live in a state where everything is TWSS-joke. Case in point:

For the past 18 months I have been driving down Highway 79 to Panama City Beach, seeing that sign.

I know. That’s so juvenile, Wings.

Whatevs. You’re not in my rating chain so I really don’t give a sh*t.

So, my sophomoric sense of humor was made worse by COL Interoperability’s complete obliviousness to the fact that he’d even made a statement worthy of a TWSS.

What was he doing, you ask?

He was passionately pleading his case to a room full of fellow pilots and aviation professionals regarding the over abundance of network interaction in the cockpit… you know, wherein everyone wants to be in the cockpit with you while you’re busy trying to kill bad guys??!! When it becomes more difficult to operate the digital network systems than it does to actually just hit the push-to-talk switch (or the push-to-think switch, if you’re a flight schooler) and talk, you’ve kind of lost battle for network interoperability. The network becomes a hindrance, rather than the helper, and the pilots abandon the program for whatever works fastest, easiest, and seamlessly with the ground guys they’re supporting.

This is what the COL meant to say. What he actually said was, “if you make it hard in the cockpit, the aviators will not use it.”

When I say that I had to rally every fiber of my being and self-control not to blurt out THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID, I mean it. I was a pillar of professional discipline. I was the textbook definition of restraint.

The O-6 sitting behind me was not. He was muttering to his buddy sitting beside him.

“That’s what she said.”

I love inadvertently inappropriate senior officers.

The Five Unwritten Laws of Land Warfare

Here’s the thing about going to War: your personal higher deity made the Earth round so that you couldn't see too far down the primrose path known as your command. In other words, some whack things will happen that you will have to deal with that will have no ties to the actual business of closing with and destroying the enemy. You will have at least one incident as a commander where you will stand, slack-jawed in the presence of your unit’s senior NCO, while they either come into your little plywood office and close the door or pull you up alongside a Hesco barrier for that “little talk about SPC Who’sHisNuts.” I wish I could offer advice about it all or prepare you for this but just remember this little adage: 1LT is 2LT, with intent.

1. There is going to be a nasty fight. There may even be tears, snot and/or a trip to the aid station. I can’t tell you why Soldiers will be the best of friends while they are in garrison and immediately hate each other about eight or nine months into the rotation. What makes it more whack is that it will be some small infraction that causes this sudden cleave in friendship. You’ll come to the CP one day, discover that a cold war has erupted between a handful of your soldiers over a half-eaten styrofoam clamshell container of cold DFAC eggs with a side of Poo Fly. All the little machinations of the past few months will probably be saved for one glorious blow-up. Over runny, rubbery, fake eggs. Just remember: everyone else's side of the story is right and, before you even get involved trying to quell the violence, you’re wrong. Just go ahead and start chain smoking right now. It's easier.

2. You can potentially get a strap-hanger soldier or two. They don’t belong to you, but they’re always around, looking a little forlorn and pitiful. I don’t know who those soldiers belong to either, but just make a small effort to look after them. Eventually their unit will rotate home. 

She works at the Toy Box. She's just
paying her way through beauty
school... with your soldier's combat
pay. You're a lucky, lucky commander.

3. It is only acceptable to provide commander’s guidance to another commander’s soldier when there is imminent threat to life, limb, or eyes. This may also apply to the base being overrun by Taliban or if the unrelated soldier is about to be run over by a FLUOR contractor from Sri Lanka who’s never driven a Chevy Tahoe in his life… until that very day. Then, by all means, please speak up and say something. Otherwise, keep your trap shut and come talk to me or Top. We’ll fix it. 

4. One of your soldiers will probably marry a stripper right before you deploy. It will be one of two possibilities:

a. The soldier you most expect

b. The soldier you least expect

Either which way, you’ll probably guess wrong. Enjoy dealing with that, by the way.

5. Embrace this saying: If I hear the words “I’m so bored” again, you’re leaving for the Brigade Staff. In Bagram.

The Bitter Argument and the Irrefutable Truth

The reasons I hate Close Air Support are varied. In all truth, I don’t hate it. I just don’t do it. As Army rotary wing attack aircraft, we do Close Combat Attack. We’ve always done it that way. The only rotary wing attack aircraft that actually do full-on, no-joke, to-the-flipping-mind-numbing-letter rotary wing CAS is the Marine Corps. While they look dashing in their uniforms, have yet to change their infantry squad tactics in 50 years (because they’ve stumbled on something that works), they refuse to budge in their belief that rotary wing CAS is the only method of controlling aerial fires. When you talk to them, it’s like talking to a wall. A well-dressed, sharply-pressed wall. With a high and tight. The Wall nods at you, a slightly vacant and uncaring look in their eyes, as if to say, “whatevs.” Then they go run eight miles with a ruck sack while carrying a telephone pole. Whack jobs.

  

The CAS vs. CCA debate comes at me from all angles, even the places where I least expect to hear argument. Last week, following a truly frustrating debate with the Fires Center of Excrement, I fielded eleven emails in one morning all regarding why the Fires Center thinks we (the pilots) should do CAS training. I think the Air Force was some how involved in all this, but I can't be certain. Sneaky zoomies. By the time I was done with the email run-around, the C-letter of my keyboard was embedded in my desktop. The warrant officers who work with me actually avoided laughing at me for once, and they crept away before my head popped off, spun 360 degrees, and began shooting pea soup. I can neither confirm, nor deny, that the walls of the Penthouse may have started to bleed.

So, by now I’m sure you’re all, “Doctrinatrix, this isn’t funny or gross and has nothing to do with deployment gnomes or your old troop commander’s squirrel-sized bladder.” I know.  Sometimes I’m not witty. Sometimes I’m just a cranky doctrine writer with the C-key lodged in her desk. *le sigh*

The ultimate issue becomes figuring out how to deal with this secret war on our flexibility as a maneuver platform on the battlefield. The average Infantryman thinks that any munitions that are launched from the sky to reign doom down on the doomed heads of the doomed terrorists is CAS. It’s not, but the name isn’t important to them. It’s the concept of what is happening that makes them happy. You could call it whatever you like, and so long as there is bullets and rockets and the occasional AGM-114K2A being launched, they’re happy as clams in mud. Stinky, dirty clams, but whatevs. It’s part of their charm. They’ll clean up nicely when they go home. The most important part is that they WILL go home because we, their aviation support, were there for them with accurate and timely fires. Who cares what it’s called, right?

Except words have meaning.

*facepalm*

So here beginth (and endth) the lesson: you reap what you sew.

I know, you’re all like, “but what does that all mean, Doctrinatrix?” It comes down to examining how you interact with the forces you support, whether staffer or pilot or commander. If the tenants of unified land operations include “synchronization,” and we pilots are part of the Movement and Maneuver Warfighting Function which demands that we pay homage to combined arms maneuver as part of full spectrum operations, is that not complete and total clearance to go waypoint-direct and talk with the guys we support?  This is like the Chief of Staff of the Army’s written way of saying GO FORTH AND DO AIR GROUND INTEGRATION… and make sure you do it well because the lives of the guys on the ground depend upon it! In the age of the Command Post of Right Now (CPORN?) and MiRC chatting and COIN blogging and Powerpoint, we have ceded ground to the enemy by giving up the vital skill of talking simply, plainly with ground guys about what we can do for them. We have forgotten that it's important to know how they fight, and we rarely care about their unit specific TTPs because “we’ll figure that sh*t out when we get on station.” That’s kinda-sorta the wrong answer.

The last time it all worked well? Divisional Cavalry Squadrons. 

It worked because we, the pilots, were obligated to play second fiddle to the ground guys. But is that so wrong? I don’t think it was. I think my squadron commander was on to something. I’d like to think he knew what he was doing with all of us unruly pilots all along, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t realize that he was doing anything special. He was more concerned with getting his tankers, scouts, and mortarmen through another day in Samarra. He excepted that we, his aerial maneuver force, would adapt to his cavalrymen. He was right to expect that from us.

The reason why CCA and CAS will continue to be debated on today’s battlefield is because we don’t take the time to understand our ground forces and really, really tell them what we do for them.

As a very smart man once queried in the Penthouse, “Who supports whom here?” We should constantly be asking ourselves that question every day.

Okay, tomorrow… Funny Army stuff. I promise.

Three words: Giant. Fuzzy. Rat.
Three more words: Well. Conditioned. Hair.
Nobody puts Baby in the... shower?

Flu Shot




"Is it possible that you could avoid stabbing me hard
enough to draw blood this time, doc?"
"Is it possible for you to shut your noise tube, Cav Scout?
You're the 4000th lucky winner we've vaccinated today in
the Regiment."

The process of getting a flu shot every year in the Army is always a debacle. In the past, I have avoided the flu shot because I hate needles, and I’m waiting for the inevitable results to come out in the Washington Times that all of our Army vaccinations will turn us into zombies someday. This year, under threat of being denied my 4-day pass to Washington for the Army Ten Miler by my boss, I willingly went to receive my zombie vaccine. The threat went something like this actually…

“Wings, if you don’t go get your flu shot, I will lock you in a closet with a poisonous snake. The guy who does the CATS management job can take over arguing with the Maneuver and Fires Centers about CAS and CCA.”

Then I was all like, “well, he doesn’t have the legs for it.” And my boss beat his head against a wall for an hour at the futility of arguing with my superior intellect.**

It’s not that getting the flu shot is bad, but it’s not fun either. You fill out some papers about medical history, are selected for  zombie testing  vaccination by people with rubber gloves, and then tortured actively by these fellow service members who are supposed to care for your medical health and well-being. This feeling of betrayal is made even worse when the person holding the needle is a friend. You search their eyes for pity, but they’re so far beyond pity because you’re the 4000th lucky winner in the Division that they’ve  tortured  vaccinated today. As you cower into the shoulder of the person standing next to you awaiting their vaccination, pleading with your medic friend for a reprieve from the abuse, he points surreptitiously to the group standing across from you: the ones getting the flu mist. He then asks if you’d “like to take your chances with them instead?” You watch as the other line of subjects gets a tube shoved in their nose with a command to “inhale deeply” from the SSG Ratched, who's giving them the nasal spray vaccination. They walk away from their ordeal rubbing at their nose like cocaine addicts after a line in the dirty bathroom of a seedy New Orleans strip club.

*whimper* “No, thank you, Sergeant.”

This year I managed to maintain a stiff upper lip and got my flu shot in a timely manner. Frankly, my medical condition that prohibits me from getting the flu mist, is actually kind of handy.

Conversely, the whole Gunnery Branch made it look like the 80’s were back, baaybee.

** this argument may not have actually happened like that per se… because we have a new division chief in the Penthouse. Nevertheless, I am taller than he is and have about 15 or 20 pounds on him. I’m pretty sure I can take him.

Day-Out-Night-Return Post: Death... by PowerPoint

Let me makes this very clear. I am not a fan of PowerPoint. I hate it. When slides come in front of my face, I want to do very bad things to people. I would normally say that it’s an irrational hatred of a Microsoft product that was designed to make everything run smoother and make pretty pictures from bad information. I look at a PowerPoint slide, and it’s like a pig staring at a wristwatch. I just sit there, mindlessly thinking about pleasanter things. I'm playing another level of Angry Birds in my mind. 

Because there is pictures.

Shiny, colorful pictures.

Ooooh, something just moved for a slide transition. Yippeee.

And yet, I am an officer. I have no choice but to learn to adapt to the necessity of PowerPoint because I’m going to need it in every staff job to do my thinking for me. I’m unnerved and scared at this idea.

The truth is that we have become dependent on systems to make things pretty and bad news into something palatable, rather than learning how to build ideas in our minds and explain them simply and efficiently. This unfortunately is a skill that is lost on the younger crowd of up and coming assistant S-3s, admin officers, and logisticians who really, REALLY run the Army. We’re wholly and completely addicted to making shiny slides that don’t really capture information well… and certainly don’t translate well into what our commander’s intent really, REALLY is. But, hot damn, don’t that sh*t look puuurrrty!

 The quadchart, a method of condensing information into a snapshot, is probably the closest we can get to simplifying data into fast, digestible tidbits on PowerPoint. Of course, that’s only if you use it right. If you feed a bunch of stuff, you’re stuck tap-dancing on cracker, trying to explain your fluff to the Old Man during Command and Staff. The Old Man don’t like fluff. He likes beer. Your poorly executed PowerPoint slide is driving him to be separated from his precious beer even longer. Which is why he’s sitting there, at the head of the briefing table, looking frustrated   constipated   at his watch   slightly concerned about your mental health. Like Dr. Jones choosing the right cup for the Holy Grail, he’s pretty sure picking you for command or a key staff position might lead him to age prematurely. Death… by PowerPoint.

Consider this when teaching a young soldier or planner to use PowerPoint: what would happen if they didn’t have it? Would they be able to execute a mission without it? Would they be able to translate and apply the commander’s intent without copy/paste from another source? Would they really, REALLY be able to explain themselves, their mission, their higher headquarters, and the commander’s desired end state as it applies to them?

Or would they be sitting there, imagining success at another level of Angry Birds?

How Does She Do It?

So my darlingly lovely friend, That Damn Yankee, wrote me a delightful bloggity blog post today, because she is awesomesauce. She’s getting back into the swing of bloggity blogging, and I was all, “will you come write with me because I love you and you're awesomesauce?” And she said yes. It could also be ‘cause I nagged the sh*t out of her.

Without further ado, I give you… That Damn Yankee’s thoughts of Army Wifedom:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I’ve been an army wife for eight-and-a-half years. I’ve been through deployments, and field exercises, and TDYs, and “Mandatory Fun,” and a whole bunch of random military stuff on top of marriage stuff and kid stuff.  I’m not bragging by any means, just lazily introducing myself to you.  During the midst of Army-related insanity I would post on my Facebook or various message boards I belong to. One of the boards is from when I was pregnant with my oldest back in 2003/2004. So these women have “known” me since I was a newly-pregnant, newly-wed, newly-Army Wife. I consider these women to be some of my closest friends.  And so many times I got the question from them, “How do you do it? I could never do what you do.”  Instead of a declaration about how I do it because I luuuuuuuuuve my husband I’ve decided to make a list. Because everyone likes lists. [Editorial Comment: Yes. Yes, we do. We really like them on Post-Its.]

So this, is “How I Do It.” Break it down, now.

·         I love my husband.

I do. And yes it’s cheesy and somewhat cliché but I’m with him because I love him.  In spite of all the crap that’s come our way, I love him and will stand by him (If you’re hearing The Pretender’s “I’ll Stand By You” in your head right now then I win.). Plus, I’m not the easiest hedgehog in the gaggle .  Blah blah give and take blah blah random 98 Degrees song lyric blah blah.

·         I make friends on the internet. [Editorial Comment: So do I. Don’t judge me.]

This simple task, by far, has been my saving grace even before I met and married the husband.  Picture it: Massachusetts 1999. That was the year I discovered message boards. In 2001 I discovered blogging (Live Journal RULZ!). I realized that I loved being able to say whatever I wanted and would get support from complete strangers. And ridicule. But let’s not focus on that. I liked the anonymity the web gave but in that anonymity came a type of familiarity.  These screen names became friends, and in some instances became family.  Take Wings for one. I met her on a message board when we were stationed in Germany.  [Editorial Comment: Told you. Friends. From the Interwebz. And also porn. Which is nice.] And Irish—met her too through the same board and we have been talking on the phone almost daily for the past four years. This past March we finally met.  Even if we hadn’t met, we’d still be family. My sanity, my comic relief, my child-abuse-prevention-hotline. My partner in inappropriate joking.

·         I laugh at seemingly inappropriate things.

You know that saying, “If I don’t laugh, I’ll cry”?  It’s totally true. I need to make jokes about everything—it’s my coping mechanism. And so when my eldest son was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome I made mention to Irish that “Well, if I have to have a kid on the spectrum, at least it’s on the good end.” I miscarried a week after my husband left for deployment number two and laughed at the insanity that, if he had come home at that time, it would’ve counted as R&R (he was two weeks into a 15-month tour). Irish mentioned that she was having medical issues and she has a family history of Lupus I started laughing and quoting House. (So as to not appear a total c*ck-dolphin she was laughing as well. It’s not like she was crying and despondent and I was mocking her. I’m an a**hole, but I’m not a jerk.) I have to find the humor in things or it would be very ugly. [Editorial Comment: Now do you see why I’m friends with her? Well, that… and the fact she has an enviable rack.]

·         I spend time away from my kids.

I have two boys, whom I love more than anything. They are five years apart which is a pretty good age gap (in my opinion). But they drive me nuts like no one else on this planet. And so to keep from completely losing it, I get away from them from time to time. Especially during deployments.  Even going to the commissary by myself is a fricking island retreat and so I try to get away from my boys as often as I can (which really isn’t that often).

·         I watch a LOT of TV.

·         I read a LOT of Chick Lit. 

·         I smoke.

·         I snark.

·         I cry.

·         I wait.

If there’s one thing we Army wives are good at, it’s waiting. Waiting for orders, waiting for training to be done, waiting for the deployment to start, waiting for it to end, waiting for emails or phone calls. We wait for the homecomings and we wait for the "Knock at the Door." We wait for R&R. We wait for finance to adjust our Soldier’s pay.  We wait for the kids to go to bed so we can curl up with a book/reality TV/a jug of wine.  If being an Army wife could be summed up in two words those two words would be, “We wait.”

So there. I don’t have any magical super powers that make me able to live this life. I don’t love my husband more than you do because you “couldn’t imagine living that life.” I’m not better than you because I do live this life—I’m better than you for so many other reasons.  I kid. I kid.  Seriously though, there’s no real secret to this. The rabbit is in the hat the entire time.

[Editorial Comment: See? I told you she was awesomesauce.]