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Is the U.S. Military Sinking Under Weight of ‘Woke’ Progressive Priorities?

Is the U.S. Military Sinking Under Weight of ‘Woke’ Progressive Priorities?

As a Seawolf-class nuclear submarine strikes seamount and U.S. Marines suffer massive training defeat, Pentagon appoints a Climate Czar.

News recently broke about a U.S. Navy’s nuclear-powered submarine that struck an underwater mountain in the South China Sea in early October.

An undersea collision that injured 11 crew members of a U.S. nuclear-powered submarine last month was caused by an uncharted seamount (an underwater mountain), the U.S. Navy says.

The USS Connecticut, a Seawolf-class fast attack submarine, hit the then-unidentified object in international waters in the South China Sea on Oct. 2, resulting in moderate to minor injuries. At the time, the Navy did not specify how much damage the vessel suffered. The sub was able to power its way to a port in Guam by traveling on the ocean’s surface.

An investigation found that the Connecticut “grounded on an uncharted seamount,” the 7th Fleet said in a statement.

The officers in charge of the submarine have just been relieved of duty.

The commanding officer of the fast-attack submarine Connecticut, Cmdr. Cameron Aljilani, his second-in-command, Lt. Cmdr. Patrick Cashin, and the chief of the boat, Master Chief Sonar Technician Cory Rodgers, were relieved due to a loss of confidence, according to a statement by the Japan-based U.S. 7th Fleet.

Seventh Fleet leadership “determined sound judgement, prudent decision-making and adherence to required procedures in navigation planning, watch team execution and risk management could have prevented the incident,” according to the statement.

The Navy did not release further details Thursday regarding exactly how the command failed to prevent the mishap, and 7th Fleet officials have not said whether the command investigation into the mishap—completed this week and awaiting final endorsement—will be made public.

It is hard to say which aspect of this story is most troubling: The fact that it occurred in the hot zone of the South China Sea, the indications that the actual cause of the incident will not be revealed, or the fact that the American public is just hearing about it now.

There is even more cause for concern. It is being reported that U.S. Marines were forced into a humiliating surrender to the British during a mass training exercise in the Mojave desert.

British forces took part in a five-day mock battle at the US Marine Corps’ Twentynine Palms base in southern California, one of the largest military training areas in the world, and achieved a decisive victory against their American counterparts.

The Royal Marines, along with allied forces from Canada, the Netherlands and the UAE, destroyed or rendered inoperable nearly every US asset and finished the exercise holding more than 65 per cent of the training area, after beginning with less than 20 per cent.

The U.S. Marine Corps challenged that report . . . saying it was a “training opportunity.”

“ ‘Winners’ are never determined,” Capt. Zachary Colvin, the communications and strategy director with the Marine Air Ground Combat Center, told Military Times in a statement. “This exercise does not provide an opportunity to ‘surrender,’ ‘keep score,’ or ‘reset.’ The objective of the exercise is to heighten unit performance and increase readiness.”

During the training, Marines from the 2nd battalion 5th and 7th Marines participated along with British, Canadian, Dutch and United Arab Emirates forces, according to Colvin.

“During this exercise, a U.S. Marine Regiment augmented with subordinate units formed an adversary force to actively challenge and test a peer regiment of U.S. Marines,” Colvin added. “This training opportunity increased warfighting readiness and interoperability of the U.S. Marine Corps with multinational forces. Exercise scenarios are adjusted as needed to assist commanders in meeting training objectives.”

Meanwhile, the Pentagon is adding a Climate Policy Czar.

The Pentagon will reorganize its policy shop to elevate the mission of combating and responding to climate change, the department’s policy chief said Friday.

While the Defense Department has done a lot to prioritize climate change throughout the organization, including at the service secretary level, Colin Kahl, the defense undersecretary for policy, said that the organization he oversees is “one place where we haven’t done enough frankly.”

“If we’re going to say that this is a national priority and it’s a priority for the department, then it needs to be a priority for my organization too. So we’re going to be making some organizational changes in the coming weeks and months to make sure we have an organization that champions these issues and that it is resourced to champion these issues, to make sure it gets integrated into all the various documents we oversee,” Kahl said at an event hosted by New America.

It is clear that as the Biden administration’s military appointees are focused on race-based indoctrination and green justice goals, our military is sinking under the weight of their progressive policies and priorities.

How much further will it sink?

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Comments

2smartforlibs | November 7, 2021 at 1:41 pm

Wasn’t sinking any military opposition the intention?

    “Those sailors did not have the basic seamanship skills. But by God, they got their sensitivity training, they got their race-relations training, they got their sexual harassment training and we have for a long time…” – Colonel Ralph Peters

      NavyMustang in reply to audax. | November 8, 2021 at 10:18 am

      Is Peters talking about the Sun incident? If so he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. The boat ran into an undocumented sea mount. The only way they would know it was there is if they used active sonar and that is not going to happen.

      Yes, there are issues with training in the fleet, but this isn’t one of those instances.

        Bingo. Attack subs are not using sonar as they operate in quiet mode. They rely on charts and position. Their position is aided by inertial guidance systems. The USA has the best seabed charts in the world, but they are full of holes and missed items. The sub is flying blind relying on the accuracy of the chart. Collisions do occur and you never hear about them because they are not severe and the cloak of national security (properly) covers them.

        None of that means mistakes were not made or procedures nit followed. I’d just as likely assume the current Navy brass is scapegoating the three relieved of duty as those three guilty of any malfeasance.

About 71% of young adults are ineligible to serve in the Armed Forces, A similar percentage are nearly unemployable in the private sector, as 55% of Millennials are not engaged in their work, while 16% are actively working to harm their employer. Essentially, we have a nation of worthless and unemployable young people who want the government to care for them. We have schools indoctrinating young people that they have a right to be supported by a socialist society. This will not end well..

Well, it’s not like this kind of thing has never happened before. I mean, for the most part, the people the US Navy places in charge of nuclear submarines exercise sound judgement and do their jobs properly. Sometimes they don’t . . .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehime_Maru_and_USS_Greeneville_collision

Has the white flag been replaced by the rainbow flag? Do you get extra credit for “fabulousness”?

MARINES FAILED IN TRAINING EXERCISE WITH RITS

>> Well, at least they got a participation medial.

>> And they surely won the diversity & inclusion medal.

After the scores are adjusted to account for white privilege, the US Marines actually won.

Seventh Fleet leadership “determined sound judgement, prudent decision-making and adherence to required procedures in navigation planning, watch team execution and risk management could have prevented the incident,” according to the statement.

Um, they hit an *UNCHARTED* underwater mountain. Generally, the only way to avoid that is to turn on your sonar (bad idea), avoid the area (which in all probability had been given to them as a patrol area by Admiral Whatshisname), or actually have a Navy vessel chart the area with their own sonar.

    Olinser in reply to georgfelis. | November 7, 2021 at 3:26 pm

    Which means one of two things – that their course wasn’t properly planned and checked, or they were OFF COURSE. Ships don’t just randomly wander around the ocean. Courses are planned weeks in advance (PARTICULARLY for subs), maps are carefully checked, and subs do not intentionally go through uncharted waters in peacetime.

    So either they were significantly off course, or their course wasn’t properly planned. Either reason is cause for immediate relief of the entire command (which is what happened). You don’t get to crash billions of dollars of equipment and risk hundreds of lives and say ‘whoopsie’.

      gospace in reply to Olinser. | November 7, 2021 at 4:51 pm

      Wrong on many accounts. Sub orders are generally “Go from Point A to Point B. Be in this box from time AAAA to time BBBB, then proceed to next box…” Depending on the exercise, the box could be 10 x 10 miles, or 20 X 100 miles. Sometimes, there are no boxes. There is enormous latitude in the actual course- so anyone stealing the op plans knows only “Somewhere near here”, which, for finding a sub, is near useless. As far as planned weeks in advance, our course was changed days before a transit so we could cross the equator and date line simultaneously. Added a day to our transit. And- if you’re assigned to chase a noise in the ocean- which could come up at any time- you go where the noise goes until relieved. Left our San Diego apartment one Monday shortly after getting married, told my wife “See you on Friday.” Two Fridays later I called her from Pearl Harbor to let her know where I was.

        brainy435 in reply to gospace. | November 7, 2021 at 5:20 pm

        I served on a sub in the late 90’s, and we hit an uncharted sea mount in the Caribbean (IIRC). Only injury I remember is to my buddy who was asleep in the torpedo room and his bunk wasn’t bolted down properly (there is nothing that isn’t hard steel and sharp corners in there). There was in investigation, but they found we weren’t responsible for hitting an uncharted seamount in a steel tube with no windows. So I wonder what the CO/XO actually did to get canned in this case. Maybe that “uncharted seamount” had a propulsion system and foreign markings?

          gospace in reply to brainy435. | November 7, 2021 at 7:02 pm

          The Chinese have been awful upset saying we’re hiding something. They haven’t announced one of their subs is missing…. Map of world shipping lanes:
          https://farm1.staticflickr.com/674/31980275290_e20a804b13_b.jpg
          Where there’s a lot of traffic- there’s a lot of data. South China Sea- lots of data. When you go 10 days without a sonar contact- you’re travelling in terra incognita. There’s a lot of places in the ocean where people simply don’t go because they’re not on any route from here to there.

      Barry in reply to Olinser. | November 8, 2021 at 11:54 am

      No, just no. That’s not how it works. This was a fast attack submarine. It’s position is kept secret by a very simple fact – only the crew knows where it is or what track it will take or any deviation from the track.

      Submarines rely on charts which are imperfect. It is a risk taken.

Colonel Travis | November 7, 2021 at 2:45 pm

I was with a Marine yesterday, talked to him about all kinds of things including recruitment, which is what he’s working in now. He said east of the Mississippi it’s really difficult to find recruits, it’s not as bad in the West but not easy. Biden doesn’t help whatsoever, and covid keeping everyone at home has ruined test scores, I don’t know if it was ASVAB or something else. but he said it was hard finding good people now.

Not a good situation for this country.

    I haven’t been active duty for a while, but I’m in regular contact with a lot of my former buddies and they UNIVERSALLY say that there is absolutely zero respect for Biden and Milley, that a good portion of them don’t even bother to PRETEND that Biden is in command anymore, that every single recruitment metric is massively down, forcing them to accept substandard jackasses that further compromise unit readiness, and that the bulk of their good senior enlisted are all planning retirement as soon as they are eligible.

    Unit readiness at every level is an absolute disaster, but that’s the kind of thing that non-military people can’t comprehend without an actual fight.

How much further will it sink?
How deep is the South China Sea?

Oh well, on the bright side, they have a he/she as a four star admiral.

The obligatory. Yes. Next Question.

There was an article about 2-3 weeks ago about China’s military practicing disabling harbors. Someone wrote in response not to worry, our military prevents anything like that happening to us or our allies! I scoffed. Has this person actually seen the current state of our military? Just read the report of the fire on the USS Bonhomme Richard to see how completely incompetent they’ve become.

The march toward woke was already happening before I retired from the Army 18 years ago. When I was a young staff officer, I once responded “I’m on it like white on rice” when the commander asked about some project. The Equal Opportunity NCO said, “Sir, you shouldn’t say ‘white on rice'”. I asked her if it was likely that brown rice would be offended. She didn’t think that was funny.

    JMark,

    I retired in 2010, but in 2006 I was deployed to Kuwait, and one day I gave the annual information/personnel security class to the unit. I came up to asking “Who here says they don’t have a price, they won’t every sell out their country…” A few raised their hands, and I said “Whatever you’re on, pass it down, my back is hilling me Everyone has a price. Now the price may not be money, it may be ‘I got your daughter..'”

    And everyone nodded their head, understanding the point I’d made.

    And I added to it, “Or the price may be, ‘I got your wife and if you don’t start talking, I’m sending her ass back to you!'”

    Place erupted with laughter. Hey, it’s a dry subject.

    By the time I got back to the office, my boss got an email, “Sir, some of the women did not appreciate Major Thiac’s comments….”

    I see what’s become of the army (the armed forces in general), I’m ready to cry. And I’m glad I’m out.

Don’t worry. The Navy has a brand new 4-star admiral (equal in rank to George Patton) who likes to wear dresses. Even though s/he has no military experience, Biden wouldn’t put him/her in such a high-ranking position unless s/he is superbly qualified.

Even if our soldiers can’t identify enemy soldiers, they are well-trained to identify every possible microaggression, and they know all the right pronouns. I’m sure Ivan is shaking in his boots. Just compare the Russian recruitment video with the US recruitment video. I’m shaking in my boots after watching it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5wyeApOOiU

    gospace in reply to OldProf2. | November 7, 2021 at 6:19 pm

    The United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps uses Navy ranks and uniforms. Why? I don’t know. The pic on their homepage is, well, disturbing…

    https://www.usphs.gov/

    The Public Health Service uses the uniforms and ranks of the Navy but is not part of it; Levine is in charge there.

    Also, Michelle Howard was the first 4-star Admiral in the Navy.

IMO Leftists have been trying to destroy the US Military for the last 50 years, spent the Carter years in it myself.
I think they finally put the rot in the highest Brass really since Barack and now have been at it long enough the highest echelon is fully woke and under Marxist leadership.

Steven Brizel | November 7, 2021 at 6:32 pm

Obama fired scores of senior officers who did share his views of foreign and defense policy We now have armed forces that are as ill prepared to fight as they were before Pearl Harbor

You realize that the recent embarrassing fiascos and failures do not concern the woke Pentagon brass in the least. I have said it before, and I will say it again: the US military is being repurposed from defending the country from foreign enemies to a force designed to terrorize and butcher “white nationalists” (read: American citizens of any race and gender who refuse to bow the knee to Communist ideology).

“Conn, Sonar — reporting no contacts. Just a big-assed mountain straight ahead.”

Soon the woke military will enlist the million man illegal alien recruits to fill the ranks of the million purged patriots? I do not think this is too far fetched to consider. After all look at the damage the socialist democrats have done in less than a year. They can gain citizenship by serving in our armed forces.

Fat_Freddys_Cat | November 8, 2021 at 9:00 am

The time and money the military has available for training are scarce and valuable resources. So naturally the “leadership” of this country is going to spend those resources on “climate change” and “diversity”. Yep, sounds like a solid plan. It will get people killed, but not people who matter to the “leadership”.

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=french+naval+frigate+eterenal+father+stront+to+save&view=detail&mid=779B2140B59F52AFE4C5779B2140B59F52AFE4C5&FORM=VIRE

Yes.

I hesitate to put this on a site so kindly given to us by Mr. Jacobson.

I’m not, ok, maybe I am, being a drama queen. Right now, there is somebody. I wish I could be that somebody. I wish I could still walk. Unfortunately no. I can’t walk.

You remember when the younger son said it wasn’t the first time Ford went to war?