We are pretty much just going through the motions over here. Our flying has developed a pattern with dust storms rolling in every three or four days. The last couple have only lasted for a day so we may be approaching the end. Yesterday was the ninth month mark in our deployment. I read with some amusement that later this summer the Pentagon is hoping to reduce deployments to 12 months followed by 12 months at home. The concern is that the current situation is unsustainable but I don’t see how a year deployed for a year at home is sustainable either. Who would want to make a career of the military when you are going to spend half of it deployed? You are not going to get the best and brightest that’s for sure. I find it just a tad ironic that this is all under the same administration that vowed to not become engaged in nation building like the previous one did in Kosovo. Looking back on my three deployments to that country I can safely say that they kept their promise – this is nothing like Kosovo. These days Kosovo would hardly even qualify as a training exercise. Ah – the innocence of youth – if we only knew what was in store.
Nothing much to report on the flying side. I have done a few long day missions but nothing out of the ordinary. Maintenance is going well and yesterday Brian gave me my MTP check ride, his first as a ME. We were worried about weather rolling in so we did the whole test flight backwards (flight checks, hover checks, and then ground checks). It made it interesting and we figured if I could do it backwards then I must know it well enough :) The test flight was on 081 which we are dropping into phase early because of sheet metal problems. For some reason it is developing a lot of cracks up by the aft rotor head. Rivets are popping out and a couple of stringers cracked in half. All that was repaired and I flew it a couple of days ago on a seven hour mission. After landing we inspected it and the stringers had new cracks, so there is a bigger problem. Rather than limp it along to phase we decided to just drop it now which will give us a few extra days to work on it.
Cloudy H 88 L 62
4 comments:
Cracks in the aft rotor head sounds like going down in pieces to me. (: Are you being professional? As in always calm? Or are cracks and splinters and falling pieces of ship just routine? Just asking. (:
Cracks in the rotor head would be a bad thing but these are cracks in the area of the rotor head - a very important distinction in my world :) The problem is we are still finding more cracks in different areas so this may be all the work we are going to get out of this one. It's up at the level of the engineers who build these things to tell us how to proceed.
Re: your comments about an army that is "sustainable". Wouldn't those who enlist expect to be in places of some hardship? I do not ask these questions unsympathetically, but out of ignorance. How does the army recruit people? Is the emphasis on training? Possible careers? Are people told that they can expect that some of their preferences in duty assignment would be given them? Does "deployed" have a meaning that I do not understand? I thought that meant "out of the U.S.?" Does it mean in combat? And isn't that what soldiers do? Maybe not always fighting...but certainly anticipating fighting. I am still getting my mind around the idea of a volunteer army and the changes that must demand. Your comments appreciated. Evidently the military does not object to your forthright remarks. That too is a new idea to me. (:
As far as the Army objecting to my remarks they haven't so far but who knows :) It is different with an all volunteer military. It is true that it is your choice to join but there are certain expectations that come with it even if the paperwork doesn't reflect that. If you are just trying to get people to come in for a couple of years then I don't think there is a problem but if you are looking for career soldiers then unless you want a bunch of mercenaries you have to provide some sort of stable environment in order for them to have a family. In our present configuration the military is a career choice so in the workplace it has to complete against other careers. The military may have the added incentive of duty, patriotism and the like but that will only get you so far. You need to offer incentives that will attract the skills you require. As the negatives increase (deployments, casualties, lack of medical care, poor housing ect) you have to offer more incentives or lower the standards. Either option can have unintended consequences. We will never get to the point that we don't have a military but the one we end up with might not be the one we need. Any person joining today would have an expectation to deploy (we use deployment to mean being stationed in a combat zone, as apposed to typical training that takes you away from home) but to expect to spend half your career doing it is a different story. I hear very few people complaining about the individual deployments but everyone factors it into their decision to stay in or not. To make a comparison (maybe a poor one) - firefighters constantly train to fight fires but they don't expect to always be fighting fires or even spend most of their time fighting fires. It is too exhausting physically and especially mentally. If they did you would have rather unique individuals that may not fit in with the rest of society - just imagine what it is like for soldiers (I guess you don't have to imagine - just look at the results of years of fighting in some African countries). I don't know if this answered any of your questions but it was an attempt :)
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