Author Archive
With yesterday’s announcement of General Dempsey as the new Chairman this brief might be of relevance.
Posted by M. Ittleschmerz in Uncategorized | read comments (1)From “Connecting the Dots”
Promotion board result season is upon us, and yet again, the questions fill the air as members of our team attempt to do their own analysis of the results. Despite the numerous flaws in such analysis, individuals will use their “findings” as reason to either validate or alter their desired career path. I mention flaws in the analysis because none of us have the decision inputs that the promotion board did. Yes, I will acknowledge that many times the information we have may be more relevant, as generally speaking many reporting seniors do a poor job of truly documenting performance, holding juniors formally accountable (conduct), and accounting for the personality traits that, if incentivized, would truly build a prolific team (Multipliers vs Diminishers). Our approach to Fitness Reports doesn’t do us any favors (ranking based on relative seniority amongst peers, trying to be “The Good Guy” for everyone, deferring the reality check to the promotion board, etc), but that is not the point of this post. My confusion lies in what really amounts to an annual quest to identify the jobs we should ourselves take as we refine our path to obtaining the collar devices for which we so desperately yearn. Yes, there are plenty who continue to value perceived success (rank) over measurable significance (making a meaningful contribution) and that in itself remains our biggest challenge.
Read the rest at http://seanheritage.blogspot.com/2011/05/chasing-collar-devices.html
Last week the CNO announced that the Information Dominance Directorate would not be acquiring programs and officers from the Surface and Submarine Warfare Divisions (N86 and N87). This decision took two years of study and was the final piece that tells us that N6′s merge with N2 really was to just free up a flag billet…which is what N6 has been doing every other year since inception.
But that’s not the 19th Century thinking. The old-think stems from the inability to further erode the power of the platform in favor of the modern dominance of the information. At the same time we see one part of the Navy realizing that the Littoral Combat Ship needs it’s own Program Executive Office to merge combat systems and hulls another part of the Navy is furthering the divide between the information and the platforms that use it.
Today’s modern Chief of Naval Operations Staff (OPNAV) is an amalgamation and transformation that only centuries of bureaucracy can provide. It often reminds me of the house I grew up in – it had been added on to and remodeled so many times that while it looked good from the outside and functioned well on the inside it was neither efficient, logical or the way any architect would have put it together. Which is probably why after the last hurricane to hit my hometown, the owners chose to tear it down rather than repair.
Now, I am not advocating that a natural disaster needs to so thoroughly wreck OPNAV that it would have to be rebuilt from scratch (though I suspect that there are many who would cheer at the thought, at least the wrecking part). Instead I propose that someone, somewhere should take a look at the mission and functions – both statutory and adopted – of the OPNAV staff and redesign it so that it becomes both efficient and logical.
To begin with – the term “Operations” should be removed. The Navy Staff has nothing to do with the operational movement of forces, nor should they. That is what Fleets are for and too many in the staff of the “Chief of All Naval Operations” think that they are there to move the chess pieces. What the Staff is really there to do is two fold – set policy and develop budgets. If it’s not one of those two things, then it’s probably make work or self-imposed churn.
Of course, we can’t just go off into la-la land and ignore some other realities – the “N-code” construct is something that needs to be retained as it is simple and universal within the various armed forces. Bad enough that we have so many different combinations of camouflage, at the very least our admin (where already aligned) should remain so.
How would one version of a redesigned staff look?
N1 – Personnel Policy: support the CNO (yes, keep the title) in formulating policy for the “man” and “train” functions. Move the Community Managers back to N1 and make Commander, Naval Personnel Command the executer of the current year budget (akin to the manner in which CFFC relates to CNO).
N2 – Disestablish: Intelligence functions do not need to be on a administrative staff.
N3 – Operational Policy: Force deployment allocation, deployment length, if there is a policy that applies to the application of forces ashore or at sea, this is where it gets approved. It might be developed somewhere else, but this is where it’s vetted before going to N5 and CNO
N4 – Logistics Policy: All things supply. And ammunition. And medical. And commissary. And infrastructure.
N5 – Strategy Formulation and Policy Wholeness: What are we doing long term? And, do all of our policies make sense when put together?
N6 – Communications Spectrum Policy:
N7 – Disestablish
N8 – Budget Wholeness: Build the budget. This is the only one that I will speak to subcodes:
- N81: Personnel budgetting. Works in N8, N1 signs concurrent report.
- N82: Intelligence system budgetting. Works in N8, Defense Intelligence Agency signs concurrent report.
-N83: Operations budgetting. Works in N8, N3 and CUSFFC sign concurrent report.
-N84: Logistics budgetting. Works in N8, N4 signs concurrent report.
-N85: Platforms: The hull, airframe, seaframe, people tank what ever you want to call the macro platform.
-N86: Communications budgetting. Works in N8, N6 signs concurrent report.
-N87: Sensors: How the platforms see
-N88: Weapons: How the platforms kill
Policy. Budget. That’s all. All those other things that OPNAV does now? Figure out (1) what value do they provide and then either stop doing the things without real value or realign those things with value to the appropriate operational commander.
And I am certain someone will quibble (especially about that N2 part) but at least it’s a place to start a discussion that is both long overdue and likely to not to have any official sanction any time soon.
4 years ago NAVADMIN 147/07 began the process of transitioning the Individual Augmentee process away from “Welcome Aboard, you’ve been selected to go on an IA” to “OK, you have time in your career path, we can send you on a GWOT Support Assignment”. Given the pathetic manner in which many commands had handled the IA assignment process (as well as the pathetic manner in which Navy had apportioned IAs to manpower claimants) the GSA was heralded as a good thing that allowed officers and Sailors to plan and removed the burden from commands to provide short notice fills from already decreased ranks.
The program was set up in three phases…but not much has been publicized since NAVADMIN 171/10 changed the name from “Global War On Terror Support Assignment” to “Overseas Contingency Operations Support Assignments”. The promise to do away with short notice tasking for long established requirements remained – but has not been realized.
Since the IA (like “NOB” and the “PRT” a name change can only go so far in Navy culture) has become such a ubiquitous part of the Navy the level of acceptance has gone up, the level of open disgruntlement has gone down and the visible level of Flag involvement in the program has disappeared.
Which must be how requirements like this are allowed to pass through five separate 4-star commands to get approved.
LINE NUMBER: NE-4387-0001/ PLATOON LEADER / O2-O3 / UNRESTRICED LINE OFFICER, WARFARE QUALIFIED/ with a current Secret clearance and a PRD of at least 12/2012. Report date 10/3/2011 for 270 days in theater (estimated return date 9/30/2012). Duty location Afghanistan. Position Description: Postal Platoon Leader tasked to provide customer service and postal finance support for up to 6,000 personnel consistent with theater mail policies and priorities. Services include money orders, postage stamp sales, special services and package mailing.
Seriously? IAs support an Army that three years ago hadn’t deployed a third of it’s Soldiers and two years ago had learned to massage those numbers so that “being in a unit with deployment orders” counted the same as being deployed which still left 25,000 soldiers who had never deployed. And within that 25,000 (because that’s the smaller number) the Army is unable to find someone qualified to handle the mail? And needs a warfare qualified Navy officer to do it?
Seriously?
I understand that the Navy has a cultural bias against saying No to missions and tasking. But. A warfare qualified postal officer?
Seriously?
Navy maintains, through the Maritime Administration, an Inactive Fleet ostensibly for reactivation in time of need. There are collections of retired ships in the James River in Virginia; Beaumont, Texas; and Suisun Bay, California and a number of other locations.
Over the past decade the number of ships in the Mothball Fleet have been dwindling – the known costs of reactivating the ships are high and the slow pace of the fleets reduction is a product of environmental concerns. Recognizing that the fleet will soon be a memory, a group of photographers went aboard the ships in Suisun Bay to document their existence. A presentation and photography exhibition will be made on Saturday May 7, 2011, 7:00-9:00 pm at Workspace Limited, 2150 Folsom Street in San Francisco.
These photographers used connections with MARAD to get aboard the Suisun Bay ships. Perhaps it’s time to more formally document these remaining ships in their various nationwide locations – a book with pictures of the ships now contrasted with pictures of them in their glory while in commission. USNI is the perfect organization to lead a project like this and it’s membership has all the resources.
(Hat Tip to The Scuttlefish)
If you are interested in where someone in the business thinks that publishing will go, then listen to Seth Godin’s interview at radioLitopia.
His comments about apps, the costs of publishing in the current era, the role of publishers, and what publishers should be doing as the industry changes are relevant to our interests.
I anyone wonders what publishing has to do with the Naval Institute…well…
Over the past two months, the Naval Institute mission change discussion has brought one thing to the fore very clearly – the Institute has no articulable vision that accompanies its mission. Unchanged for 137 years, the mission – “to provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write in order to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to national defense” no longer seems to be the guiding principle at the Institute – overtaken by both critical and mundane things including profitability, process, and structure. All of which are burdened by the weight and intractability of tradition and then further afflicted with repetitive thinking disorder. Each of those issues, real as they are and they cannot be ignored, have obscured, hidden and submerged any capacity that the current leadership of the Institute had of building, articulating and executing a vision that supports the mission statement. Or frankly, any mission statement. Today’s Annual Meeting further confirmed this complete and total lack of vision.
Since nature abhors a vacuum, and seeking nothing other than discussion, thought, and daring to question the more learned and experienced members of the Board of Directors and leadership of the Institute I offer an alternative vision that I believe supports and expands on the current mission of the Institute – and in doing so will revitalize the community from which membership in the Institute derives and in turn rebuild the model of the Institute away from a business, or non-profit, or think tank. Because USNI must be a hybrid of all of them – but at her core the Institute must remain what she has for over a century – THE professional organization of the Naval services.
1. I believe that USNI should move beyond the AFCEA and Joint Warfighting style conferences and create smaller more focused ones – both by topic and by region. USNI should stop catering to Navy leadership and Industry (neither of which need another platform) and should expend its energy on working with and for junior officers and Sailors. USNI needs to become the place that officers and Sailors go with a problem, concept, idea or question that they would normally self-dismiss as “above my paygrade”.
2. In support of reconnecting with the spirit of the founders, a global Navy needs global outreach. To do that I believe that USNI should sponsor annual seminars where the Fleet is – not just San Diego and Norfolk. Monterey. Newport. Bremerton. Hawaii. Japan. Pensacola. Jacksonville. Bahrain. Groton/New London. Talk about leadership, writing, internal Navy strategies and grand global strategies. If every year is too much for some of those places, then do it every other year. Regardless, USNI needs to become a fixture of the firmament at Monterey and Newport. So much of a fixture, that the Deans of Students at the Naval Postgraduate School and Naval War College should be voting members, or at the very least advisors, to the Board of Directors.
3. Sponsor one or more prizes for Naval Postgraduate School theses that advance the mission of the Institute. Engender interest. And nothing generates interest like prizes. Cash prizes. Swords. Insignia. And recognition. And cash.
4. Sponsor one or more prizes for Naval History classes at the United States Naval Academy. Do the same for Naval ROTC units, or groups of units.
5. Establish an online writing class, webinar, forum. Just for writing. Nothing else – no politics, no sex, no weather. Partner with the Naval War College and USNA.
6. Generate and organize “Ask the Author” style meetings at the concentrations (Annapolis, DC, Newport, Monterey, Pentagon, online) – if an author publishes a book with the Naval Institute Press, then at a minimum they agree to be online at a certain time for a certain length of time to take questions. Either a Midrats Blog Radio model, or a blog model. But the authors need to be in contact with the demographic that makes up the membership of the Institute.
7. Aggressive “marketing” to JOs and First Class POs. And not just mailing flyers. There needs to be a concrete, and selfish, reason to join USNI. USNI needs to be able to explain to the 25 to 30 year old why joining TODAY is important for TOMORROW. Proceedings alone won’t do it. The “why” has to be developed out and then presented, modified, presented, modified and so on. And, it’s not just one easy pat answer – and too much to put forward and try and develop in a blog post or a single article. If the mid-career Sailor message works, then the message for the younger and more junior Sailor can be crafted.
8. Find and hire a dedicated web evangelist who can start building a network of professional writers about seapower online, and more specifically encourage people in the sea services to write. USNI needs “article scouts” who troll (in the fishing analogy, not the Billy Goat Gruff kind) the milblogs and forums looking for good writers and good ideas. Then getting the good idea authors linked up with someone who can mentor that idea into a Proceedings (or other professional journal) piece.
9. Finally. The By-Laws must be changed so that the businessman takeover that has occurred over the last decade can never happen again. The board should always have a majority membership of active duty Sailors, Marines or Coast Guardsmen – ideally at the paygrades of O6 and below. When civilians are members of the board, a history of service to the country, especially within the Naval service, should be considered a prerequisite. And that service should be both recent and relevant. No matter how successful a businessman one is, 2 years onboard a destroyer three decades ago is insufficient to understand the Navy, the sea, or Sailors. The Chief Executive Officer of the Institute has actively discouraged, or even banned, active duty officers of any rank from being on the board – often citing law as the reason that they cannot so serve. Yet he has been unable, or unwilling, to actually provide a reference to that law other than his own statement. And a quick perusal of any number of other military centered organizations show members of the active duty and reserve forces. So, why not USNI?
Over the past three months Chairman of the Board Steve Waters has provided a single letter speaking to making a monumental change in the future of the Naval Institute – and not one of the Board members who supported him in his desires has spoken out publicly in favor of that change. None of them has articulated a vision for the future of the Institute. There are others out there, like me, who are interested in the future of the Institute and willing, nay dare, to read, think, speak, and write about a vision for the Institute and the Navy. For 137 years the Naval Institute has been of and for Naval officers – it is time it returned to its roots and this is one proposed vision to do so.
And does it without ever using the word…
From the Jackson MS Clarion-Ledger:
Poor education is a major threat to national security, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said Thursday.
“Three out of four young people between the ages of 18 and 24 in the United States cannot qualify to join the military,” Mabus told a meeting of The Clarion-Ledger editorial board. “You can’t join the military today without a high school diploma, yet one-third of the people in our country don’t finish high school. Others can’t join because of obesity or having a criminal record. We can’t remain a great country as long as that is the case. We’re on a very dangerous path if we keep going down that way.”
While CNO and CJCS sincerely talk diversity, and tend to mean “look like”, Secretary Mabus is hitting on the impediment to realizing a vision of a qualified military that “looks like” the country: most of those who enlistment and commissioning age are inelegible for one reason or another.
It’s easy, and dishonest, statistics to press for a Navy that looks the same as the Nation, while at the same time ignoring the realities of the whole population demographic.
Today’s racial demographics are
The looked at statistics for the 2030 demographic of ethnic and racial makeup in the United States are
The most challenging area of meeting the goal of looks is within the officer corps – which has a higher standard for entry. The most immutable one is a college degree. Which brings two other relevant statistics to look at…today’s officer corps, and the number of degrees conferred annualy.
Number of degrees conferred 2007-2008:
White 71.8%
Black 9.8%
Hispanic 7.9%
Asian/PI 7.0%
American Indian/Native Alaskan .7%
Nonresident alien 2.8%
White 85.2%
Black 8.3%
Hispanic 5.9%
Asian 4.7%
Which places the officer corps overall at a 1% “deficit” for Blacks and a 2% “deficit” for Hispanics.
And, in order to be able to make up that deficit, there are two options – access Blacks and Hispanics with lower grade point averages than their white peers, and immediately place them at a disadvantage, or get colleges to more provide eligible graduates who meet the criteria for a commission. For Blacks, that comes out to 3,436 more college graduates (in order to make the 864 likley to be eligible, much less have the propensity to join). For Hispanics it would mean 4,320 more graduates. Out of 152,000 and 123,000 respectively – or a 2% increase in the overall number of black college graduates, and a 3.5% increase in Hispanic graduates.
I’ve not done the numbers of students by race who start, but never complete college…but you get the picture. Education is just one facet. Obesity. Mental and psychological problems. Drug use. All of those issues lead to a smaller population that is even capable of joining the force. And until those issues are addressed, we cannot, and will not – no matter how hard our recruiters work – have a force that looks like America.
Now, back to Secretary Mabus – he has not lobbied for or received a single award for Diversity that I can find – he never speaks about it, comments on it. Yet, in a single speech that never mentions the word once, he hits the nail on the head for what Navy needs in order to have a not just a force that looks like America – but a force that is capable of meeting the Navy’s statutory mission.
None of this is commentary on whether the optics of the force are a worthy goal or not…they are the goal that has been labled by CNO as our “number one priority”. However, in my rambling and disjointed way, I think we’d (the Navy, the government, parents, and our own selves) be far better served to work on the recommendations in this report than to seek awards and accolades.
A week ago I was sitting in a meeting where the name of one of the leading contenders to be CJCS came up. Tied to that name was the idea that the “military would get out of HA/DR”.
That night the earthquake struck Japan and we now have over 13 ships (including two aircraft carriers) and thousands of Marines and Sailors – some stationed in Japan and others redirected from their deployment – on station and assisting. The idea that we as a government and a military would ever “get out of the HA/DR business” is patently ludicrous…and our response to the earthquake is just one more data point proving so.
As if we somehow needed one. CNA did a study in 1990 of Navy humanitarian operations. Even a quick, non-statistical, review shows that at least once every year since the mid-1950s the Navy has been to one degree or another been involved in a humanitarian operation. Following the Navy response to the 2004 tsunami, USNS Mercy inaugurated a series of “Pacific Partnership” deployments that continue this year with USS Cleveland deploying to Tonga, Vanuatu, Timor-Leste, the Federated States of Micronesia and Papua-New Guinea. On the other side of the world ships have been involved in Southern Partnership Station and African Partnership Station, modeled after the Pacific Partnership missions. And, in every case the ship involved either had to take a military asset off station or out of rotation, or active duty and reserve personnel were called up to man Military Sealift Command ships.
But, last year the House Armed Services, combined with Navy obstinancy, gave me another idea.
The HASC FY2011 Defense Authorization Report (which may never again see the light of day) Section 1024 states that the Secretary of the Navy shall retain the amphibious assault ships that the Navy shall keep Nassau (LHA-4) and Peleliu (LHA-5) in a commissioned and operational status until the delivery to the Navy of the new amphibious assault ships America (LHA-6) and LHA-7, respectively. Which idea, of course, the Navy wasn’t too fond of.
At the same time, Navy officials are pressing forward with a proof of concept study to man amphibious ships with merchant marine seamen and officers. Touted as readiness initiative for troubled classes of ships, critics look at the program as another misguided attempt to maintain ship numbers while cutting cost.
But, if Navy is willing to place volunteer civilians on combat ships…then why not reimagine the combat ship AND meet the HASC language AND provide ships that can meet the various partnership missions without impacting the rest of the fleet’s obligations?
Over the next six years Navy will retire two amphibious assault ships (LHA) and four amphibious transport docks (LPD). While not economical to refit or fully retain these ships, there is life left in them and with some alterations, they could remain in use – both as commissioned vessels (which add to the overall fleet number) and conduct critical missions over the next decade.
By retaining a Navy crew, completely removing the weapons systems, installing commercial satellite internet access, modifying the Marine berthing compartments and reconfiguring the well deck (or leaving it as is) – oh, and with a LOT of white paint – the Navy would have a platform capable of embarking 1,000 aid workers, teachers, policemen, medical personnel, and so on to move from country to country and teach, train, and help. Think of these ships as the ultimate in Joint – InterAgency – NGO power projection platform.
By having ships like this capable of rapidly embarking DHS and FEMA personnel to serve as a mobile command post after a hurricane, or to mirror the role of USNS Mercy after the tsunami or any of the other iconic relief actions, to include the one going on today in Japan, the Navy would have a tool – that is not armed with anything other than self defense weapons and frees up a front line combat capable unit – and, as trite as it sounds, be part of the “Global Force for Good”. It’s tough to look at something we do all the time, and think of it as a “lesser included mission”…maybe it’s time to put some dedicated resources behind the ever-present reality.
Posted by M. Ittleschmerz in Homeland Security, Navy, Soft Power, Uncategorized | read comments (28)The name has been changed, but the story is true. Care to guess what the Navy is doing for Joe?
“We were called on a mission under circumstances that we normally don’t like to go. We generally work at night and we generally work when there’s not a full moon and we generally get to choose the circumstances a little better, but this time we did not, and I can’t discuss the nature of the mission, but there was a reason that we had to go. And we somehow ended up landing next to a compound full of people.
We pushed through south, kind of moving to the north in the helicopters and when you land near structures, it’s extra terrifying because, like what happened on this one, you don’t know who’s there, and if they’re bad guys, those helicopters look like school buses and they feel like bullet magnets. So, the helicopters landed and I could hear over the rotors the guns–there was a mean gunfight going on. I was in Chop 1, Chop 2 landed a little bit farther to the east, probably 100 meters, that was the helicopter that was being engaged, and the men coming off that helicopter were immediately in a–in a serious gunfight. We maneuvered–I was a Team Leader and we maneuvered to get on line, to try to stay out of the beating zone where the bullets were going on, and while we were doing this, there were–as is common, there were people running, and it was very difficult to ascertain who was who, so you can’t just start shooting people, you have to close in on them.
As the team from Chop 2, the other helicopter suppressed the fire, there were some grenades, rockets, it was a heavy-duty engagement. I could see that there were multiple what we call ‘squirters” that were moving and–and running from structure to structure and hiding in fields, and we had to cover some ground. And it was important that we–the nature of the mission called for us to find people, specifically to find people. Because of the significance of the firefight at our insert, I was very concerned that we were messing with people that weren’t your average dirt farmer Taliban, that the level of fire, the volume and the amount and the types of fire we had received, belt-fed machine guns, heavy duty stuff, not just some farmer with an AK47, it was heavy duty, I was really concerned, and when I saw there were people running just crazy, the people in this little village were frightened, I knew we had to get close and identify people and the best way to do that was to divide up my team, there were three shooters, myself, another shooter, “Joe” and his dog , and I sent a team farther to the east as we moved southward in the initial contact.
Other teams were maneuvering and there were other gunfights going on at this time. It was very confusing and very dynamic. As we moved south, we crossed through some structures which we had to clear quickly because we’d seen people run from them, but we needed to make sure that they were secured because you can’t move past something and then hope that those people are going to come back around on you, you need to worry about what’s in front of you. So, I could see the other half of my team maneuvering, and I had picked “Joe” specifically, I wanted to go with him because I knew this was his fifth or sixth mission. This was the first time he’d been in a really heavy-duty gunfight, and I wanted to make sure that I had eyes on him with the dog because I had experience with that as well.
As we moved through the fields, we engaged people who were hiding with the women and children, which is common with the Taliban, and just about any other terrorist like that, they hide. When you get the drop on them, they hide with the women and they hide behind them and the children, so we had to engage on a couple of occasions during our movement to the south, we had to engage people, and then at one point we saw some people in the ditch and I said to “Joe”, “Send him, man, send the dog,” so he sent the dog and the dog kind of–he ran in the direction and he kind of stopped for a second, he paused, and then “Joe” gave him the command again, and I’ve only seen one other dog really do that, and I figured the reason why he did it, and we knew later, it was because there were children in the ditch.
So, once that happened, we moved in, we could see with the equipment we were using, we were using lasers and the night vision, we could see they were children, “Joe” took the dog off, held security, I grabbed the children out of the ditch, I talked to them, I put them in the center of the field, I threw chem lights around them and then, as I turned from that, “Joe” and the other shooter that was with me, I looked at them and they were looking–there was an aircraft overhead that was burning, some more individuals moving, and there were a group of them and they split up, and some of them moved to the east, I’m facing south now, some of them were moving to the west. So, I–being a dog guy, and “Joe” helped me, we wanted to set up where the wind was, there–we were in a field that was about as flat as this, with ditches occasionally where the kids were hiding, and there were weeds maybe knee high and it was very flat. They moved a little bit to the west, and we maneuvered to the south and farther west to open up the distance with them and get downwind so that the dog could smell them, and because of–to this point we had–we had run across several groups of children or women or combinations of children, women and terrorists, I wanted to try and take it as slow as possible, but I knew that we were going to have to get close, unless we could get them to maneuver to us.
So, we sat down or we knelt down quietly in the field, they moved, and they moved around for a little bit and then they stopped, and when they stopped they just–they got very low and still, and I–I’m guessing at distances, but probably we were 150 meters roughly from them and perfectly lined up with them. So, we sat and I said, ‘Okay, we have to go get them. Are you guys ready?” and they said, “Yes.” So, we moved out, “Joe” and I moved together, lined the dog up and we started moving towards them. And, you know, again we’re going to have to line up to send the dog, and he was going to buy us a little time, so a full moon, fields like this, and weeds about knee high, and I knew when we sent him that we only had a few seconds. So, we started walking, kind of crouched, walking towards them, walking towards them, walking towards them, close to about maybe 30 meters or roughly that, and I said, ‘Okay, “Joe”, send him quietly,” and he sent him, and he gave him the command and he went out. And you could see him, you’ve heard talk of the way dogs indicate on things, he could smell men, he was–he was on them, and when they smell the fear of those–’cause they’re scared, they know, man, and it makes them hungry and ready to fight, and you could see him just bob his ears and his tail, and he started hauling ass, and so we–we have to stay with him, man, we’re right on top of him, he’s only going to buy you a second.
So, I remember running, I was watching him, he was about from me to you, sir, and when he looked at me as though he got to one of the black shapes, they were hiding behind the small berm ditch, and I heard boom, boom, two quick shots, and I knew they were loaded. I couldn’t tell if they hit him or not, and there wasn’t really time to worry about it, I had to start filling them in, and then they say you never hear the bullet that gets you, and you don’t. I fell forward and rolled towards them, it hit me and I flipped forward, my back was to them, and my first thought was, “I’m a dead man,” I’m right–I mean I’m this far away, I’m dead. l–l really thought I was done, man, ’cause we were that close to them, and I didn’t know what was going on with the dog. And at first when you’re shot, it doesn’t–you–l just felt my leg give way.
Then I thought I was going to die because I was so close, I was waiting for the next shot and didn’t come, and it didn’t come ’cause that dude went to work, that dude being “Joe”. I heard–we had suppressed weapons, silencers, I could hear pops, gunshots from guns that didn’t have suppressors, spraying automatic, which I knew wasn’t him. I could hear the two suppressors, his and the other shooter who had come around to make the I could hear thumps and then something else, and they ended up being grenades being thrown at us. I heard silence for a minute, and then I screamed, I was in such pain, I wasn’t nearly as tough as I thought I would be, I was screaming, it hurt bad, and then I heard more shooting, and the most distinct sound of all was I could hear him walking, whoosh, whoosh, and crunching the weeds, and he was walking at them, and this is something that–you can’t train somebody to do that.
You can try as hard to replicate what it’s like to get shot at, to have your dog get shot and killed, to have your buddy next to you go–go down, you don’t know if he’s dead. And most people’s natural instinct is to run. He didn’t do that; he kept walking, whoosh, whoosh, I could hear his suppressor, whoop, whoop, whoop, and I heard hissing because the Taliban he was shooting had RPG rockets on their backs, and the propellant for the rockets, when the bullet would go through it, it would shhhhh, it would make a hissing sound, it would ignite that booster, and he kept walking, and he kept walking. And then I heard some rapid shots from him, I presume it was him or the other shooter, and then he came over and he knelt next to me… , and then the other shooter came over while he held security. And then I faded in and out a little bit, I lost a lot of blood. Some other folks came over to help with tourniquets and bandages, and he went to work on the dog after he was certain that I was being taken care of and it was secured. I don’t know exactly what he did with the dog. He could have done a trach, ’cause most of his mouth was blown up, he could have put a trach in his throat to get air to him, he could have given him mouth-to-mouth or mouth-to-nose in this occasion, stop the bleeding. While, I was carried over to the helicopter, I was hopping on my left leg and screaming and being carried by a bunch of teammates and when I turned around and sat down, I was really concerned about the dog as well, and “Joe” was carrying him, and he- -he had to have help carrying him, and his gear.
When we got back to the MEDEVAC place, I remember asking about the dog, I remember seeing him there, and I don’t remember much after that. I’d lost, I think, units of blood, something like that, and I went under and, when I woke up, I was in–somewhere else, but the guy who helped me get on the helicopter went out, after they pronounced the dog dead, they went back to the fight.”
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