The Army has told at least 48 captains who are serving in Afghanistan that they will be part of the drawdown to reduce troop numbers. This decision will increase the captains’ already high stress level and can only disrupt morale and reduce efficiency within their commands. Also, it’s a chicken shit way to treat people. The article implied that they would be booted out after completing deployments.
No way! I can’t believer the Obama administration is continuing with their Soviet-style purging of officers. First the high level “deviants” and now the mid-level officers! Crazy tin-foil stuff I tell you.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/10/23/military-sources-obama-administration-purging-commanders/
“I think they’re using the opportunity of the shrinkage of the military to get rid of people that don’t agree with them or not tow the party line. Remember, as (former White House chief of staff) Rahm Emanuel said, never waste a crisis,” a senior retired general told TheBlaze on the condition of anonymity because he still provide services to the government and fears possible retribution.
That ****ing sucks. I’d be pissed.
Hard as it is to comprehend, Obama has more disdain for the military than even Bill Clinton. The appointment of Kerry made this more than obvious.
The most hilarious part of this whole charade is his constant awarding of Medals of Honor to suggest he cares about the military. Of course many of those presentations are posthumous and often have an “affirmative action” feel to them and are a backhanded way of trying to shame the military for not having recognized these “deserving individuals” for decades.
There are of course several candidates who were long overdue thrown in for sake of legitimacy.
On the bright side they have time to get their resume in order.
The numbnut poque at HRC who did this needs to go take their freakin place…that’s a sure way to distract these CPTs from their important jobs, which gets people killed…
They’ve done it to officers right after a PCS move, and many of the CPTs in Afghanistan are in company command.
Ok, I suppose that I can be the lone voice of dissent. We need to downsize the military. Defense spending is way too high and it’s not just because of the $50,000 toilet seats. There is no way to get from where we are now to where we need to be without discharging a lot more company and field grade officers.
Now, if you want to argue that nobody should get a pink slip while in a combat zone…well, I’d agree with that. Start trimming the bottom 10% at home first…
I say start with the top 10% at home. How about canning 50% of the flag officer billets DoD wide?
No, Im right there with you. It needs to be cut. Are there ways of cutting costs without cutting people? I would bet. First off, how much do people stationed in the U.S. get paid to live off base per month? 1200? 1500? Knock it down to 400 (or nothing at all)…if you don’t like it, live on base. Sensible stuff like that should be first. But yes, spending needs to be cut.
I’m just glad we’re kicking Captains out instead of pulling them back in!
Seriously, a reduction in force is needed. If properly applied, we can cut out the shitbags (there are plenty) and have a better Army in the end.
It sucks that they aren’t cutting from DC or the schoolhouse, but who knows what criteria they applied and how these guys got selected in theater… but there was a methodology used, I can assure you.
This.
I highly doubt the President of the United States said, “Send the pink slips to theater!”
Likely this was a function of GCCS-A and someone racked, stacked, sorted, and created a form letter to be sent to their AKO:
Greetings, CPT [LAST_NAME],
How is life on [DUTY_LOC]?
You’re fired 90 days after [ORDERS_END]
Love,
HRC
I think you’re assuming that the Army would save money by going into the housing business.
On Post Housing costs more money and results in lower quality of life.
Also, you may not be familiar with the Military Housing Privatization Initiative (MHPI), but those little neighborhoods on most installations are owned by companies.
I tend to agree that we need a military draw down. Couple that with a draw down on the number of police actions and UN related deployments we would still have a size able force ready to kick ass when needed.
The method to these notifications reek of ineptitude. But then what can you expect for this administration. If there is no leadership ability at the tip top of the pyramid it’s not surprising that some dope in an office who probably has never set foot outside could do this kind of thing.
Wrt other methods of saving $$ first. I also agree, but housing isn’t it. Quite honestly there isn’t enough on base housing available and the wait times are long. This is especially true for those with families. It’s one thing to ask a single PFC to live in the barracks, but very different to do so of an officer with a family.
Maybe not spending piles of money on another camo pattern or another billion dollar fighter jet or sending troops to Botswana for UN masturbatory antics would be a better start to the whole save $$ routine.
Maybe they’ll have time to find the 200,000 weapons that have gone missing, granted it’s only 40% of the ones we’ve supplied… http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jul/27/pentagon-running-out-of-time-to-find-mass-of-missi/?page=all#pagebreak
They should RIF with volunteers first. I am sure there are plenty of officers not included in the pink slip pool that are willing to resign their commission if asked or are planning to get out at soonest possibility. You want to keep the the quality people that want to stay.
I remember the drawdown after Gulf War 1, in about '93 the Army offered like $80K for active duty officers to come off. One of my friends took it and went to the USAR. About 10 years later, he was back on Active Duty (retired as an LTC) and kept the money 
A lot of people are saying that switching camo is a waste of money. I don’t see how. It was a waste of money buying UCP but switching from that garbage to something that actually works is one of the best decisions the Army could make.
I used to work for one of those companies. Despite the crummy condition of the housing and the capital spent oh rehab, companies are pulling the dollars faster than they can count them.
Sent from my PG41200 using Tapatalk 2
This time US Army HRC is not accepting volunteers for the drawdown the point being to keep the good ones and get rid of the low hanging fruit, guys with bad paper. So how did this low hanging fruit get company commands???
I recall a Navy pilot getting the pink slip while deployed, aboard a carrier (his EAS was mid-deployment). He tried in vain to get the Navy to let him at least get to the end of the deployment and the Navy said ‘nope.’ He refused to fly any more missions, said the risk was not worth it. I can imagine some O3’s downrage who may have the same mindset.
They wasted $$ on developing an idiotic pattern that doesn’t work for shit. Have now spent more $$ developing and testing other patterns. All they had to do was buy MultiCam and they would have been done. So yes they wasted lots of $$, had to do it again and in all likelyhood will do it a few more times to give some politicians some pork to take home.
Same goes for a lot of other stupid shit the DoD does.