hater aid

man, it's been a crazy week of hatin'.

first off, keeping with the recent theme of acquigistics, it seems that starbuck has stumbled upon some bloat in the Army's Materiel Command.  Here's the salient point: "AMC also has more contractors and DoD civilians in its ranks than there are US service members in Afghanistan."

seems like there sure are a hell of a lot of suits running around this man's army.  but, hey, they're here to help us do all the fightin' and winnin', right?  so how's that fightin' and winnin' going?  let's ask babatim over at free range international.

looks like he was gonna read the afghan study group report, but there wasn't much left after joshua foust flat out demolished it.  somebody needs to institute the mercy rule here.  i'm sorry justin logan, normally we're on the same team, but you're making me wince.  

but enough about registan, the graveyard of afghanistan policy protagonists.  what's tim have to say about the "granular" stuff.  looks like he's picked up on an article i read with interest in the danger room.  you can read the story, or you could just compare and contrast these pictures:

Captain Christian Balan, who teaches digital forensics at Burlington’s Champlain College in civilian life, heading towards a school just outside the massive Bagram airbase to trade his tech skills fixing the computer lab in hopes of generating good will and cooperation. Photo by Spencer Ackerman of the Danger Room blog.

Caption totally cribbed from FRI, but I fixed your name, Attackerman.

 ...VERSUS...

My son Logan doing the heavy lifting during the initial instal of the Jalalabad Fab Fi network. 

*stolen caption alert*

uh.... Infantry squad + Commo CPT + Interpreter < Grad Students Gone Wild.

now it's been a while since i had discrete dynamical systems, but even if you start with initial condition of 'that dude's dad is legit,' you still have to take into account we're 9 years into this thing and we're venturing outside the wire into the town next door like the Marines from avatar.  (I had to google that, that's how out of the whole movie scene I am.)

ok, so maybe we need to strip out a lot of the bullshit and let your Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines do what they do best, like tim says.  incidentally, i doubt ANYONE has the stomach for what would happen next, but if we're honestly planning on getting a democracy up and running through security and development and keeping the place from becoming a safe haven from aq and the taliban, then that's the only solution i see.  otherrwise all we're doing is biding our time until it's politically feasible to pull out and hoping that the place doesn't go to hell in a handbasket.

but, back to acquigistics, we can't possibly outfit our troops with the finest in military hardware without this hot mess, can we?  well, lo and behold it's a shimmering gleam of light coming from the bowels of the beast.  It's rogue project leader, and he's gonna be FISTing the establishment like nobody's business.  hey, that's FIST as in "fast, inexpensive, simple and tiny" weapons systems.  you're nasty, which i like.

and guess what?  he's even got cartoons!

and i loves me some smarmy cartoons.  now if only i didn't have to go digging through the trash to find his toons.  seriously, do we have to destroy all that is fun?

hmmm...?  what's that?  did somebody just say something about crossfit?   Well, I'm gonna go ahead and take on the CHAMP.  the Consortium for Health and Military Performance, that is.

now, katie, this is a pretty weaksauce article, but i'll forgive you your sins.  you know not your physical training knowledge.  but neither does the damn army.  nothing about army PT is performance-based.  it's almost worse than nothing.  the best thing i can say about army PT is that it gives junior NCOs their first taste of leading Soldiers.  the worst thing i can say is that it CAUSES INJURIES.

case in point, a few days ago one of the guys who was in the gym while i was in there mentioned tight hamstrings.  i suggested a few stretches that have opened up my hips quite a bit, but don't load the spine like a standing hamstring stretch.  a few days later i see him limping pretty bad.  i ask him what happened.  he tells me that he should've warmed up a bit before taking off on a dead sprint.  now, i've done that plenty of times with nary a cramp or pull.  then he tells me it was even more odd because he had just done those stretches.  i say, 'well of course you pulled your hammies, static stretching right before sprinting was probably the worst thing you could've done.'  and that's exactly how the army does it.

we buy hammer strength and life fitness machines, at thousands of bucks a pop, and fill every gym with them 'til there isn't room enough to get around without hurdling the equipment.  then we put out a policy that states everyone on post must work out at the exact same time, despite the fact that the facilities can't handle a tenth of the Soldiers on post.  what's that?  you want to work out on your lunch break?  you'd better not be in your duty uniform.  you gotta change into your PTs, Soldier.  you on the overweight program?  we're gonna make you workout TWICE as much.  you fail a PT test, it's nothing but pushups, situps and running for you.

nevermind no one ever bothers to talk about HOW to run, or HOW to lift, or HOW the human body responds to physical stress.  all that matters is those APFT and WCP stats.

if people are getting hurt doing crossfit, there's a simple explanation:  you don't know what you're doing, add a lot of weight, stir and serve chilled.  it happens, because people can be more enthusiastic than intelligent.  but i will bet those CHUMPs that, per capita, the injury incidence rate is higher with your run-of-the-mill Army PT than crossfit.

until i learned how to run properly, i couldn't manage to include more than sporadic distance training into my workout regimen unless i completely stopped lifting and cut 10-15 pounds.  guess how i learned to run properly?  crossfit endurance.  everything you need to know about crossfit to do it full tilt boogie, and safely, is right there, online and free for the taking, on the main site and the numerous affiliate pages.  i'm healthier, stronger and faster than i've ever been.

whether in fitness, operations, or acquisitions, the military needs to take a step back and honestly assess whether the way it's doing things isn't adding so much cost to the process in an attempt to provide a measure of quality control that it wouldn't be worth it to just scrap the whole damn thing and let the junior Soldiers and leaders figure out a way to innovate, experiment, and maybe find a way to do things cheaper, faster and better.  i promise you, we're up for it.  you just gotta accept some failure along the way.  but i gotta tell you, a lot of what i see today sure looks like failure already.

- blutsbruder - ich hasse dich