It's time.

It's time? After twelve straight losses, it's finally time?

I wonder if another army qb will cry after the game.

#LuckyNumber13

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It's time? After twelve straight losses, it's finally time?

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Yessir. It's time.

I think this sums it up:
http://www.duffelblog.com/2014/12/army-navy-prepares-west-pointers-for-battlefield-results/

Doh.

Navy just accelerated Army's losing streak

So much hoopla over a fight for a consolation prize.

Air Force already beat both :-)

AIM HIGH!

http://blogs.hudsonvalley.com/hudson-valley-photo-blog/files/2009/01/beantavyweb.jpg

Surely there is a West Point cadet that can throw the darn ball! Three points generated by the offense...good gosh.

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Surely there is a West Point cadet that can throw the darn ball! Three points generated by the offense...good gosh.

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Funny you say that,
I caught the end of the game at a pub and the bar tender said, right after the field goal as the camera panned the bench, " that was the kicker? The guy beside him looks like a kicker".
To which I replied: "heck, they all look like kickers".

Kind of difficult to recruit talented players when things other than football come first.

Question for those currently in or served in the Army or Navy.

Being an Aggie do you really care about this? Do you really get into the "Service Academy Rivalry" thing?

When I was in Iraq and Afghanistan, most of the soldiers that I delt with had more allegiance towards their favorite college team at home than to West Point. One NG unit from Iowa wore either ISU or UI colors on game day. Even painted Hawkeyes on their MRAPs. Of course the Ring Knockers had their favorite.

Rabid Cougar...my priority is always supporting the Aggies first. I rooted against Army when they came to play the Ags here a few years back. However, having spent many years alongside a plethora of West Point officers I was always intrigued by their rabid support of Army football. It kind of rubbed off on me, so yes, I do get caught up in Army football when the Navy game rolls around each year. Besides, any chance to beat Navy at anything is a good thing. GO ARMY! Beat Navy....next year.

Rabid,

I care only when navy beats army. I didn't go to Annapolis and don't give a rats ass about them. But if I can dog on someone else, I'm in.

What I hated was when our Army leadership tried to make us care about that game. I actually asked a West Pointer if the enthusiam was real or not and he said "well, we were enthusiastic about being at a football game vs some of the other things that we could have been doing instead of it".

The naval academy should have zero business producing Marine Officers, and it's nice when their $250,000 tax-payer funded military masterminds break down over a midget-fight.

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The naval academy should have zero business producing Marine Officers, and it's nice when their $250,000 tax-payer funded military masterminds break down over a midget-fight.

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lol wut?

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The naval academy should have zero business producing Marine Officers, and it's nice when their $250,000 tax-payer funded military masterminds break down over a midget-fight.

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so the Marine Corps can have it's own academy? Or are we getting rid of the Marine Corps?

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Question for those currently in or served in the Army or Navy.

Being an Aggie do you really care about this? Do you really get into the "Service Academy Rivalry"

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I only started caring when I started teaching at USMA, and then only really because I had several players in class that I liked

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The naval academy should have zero business producing Marine Officers, and it's nice when their $250,000 tax-payer funded military masterminds break down over a midget-fight.

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so the Marine Corps can have it's own academy? Or are we getting rid of the Marine Corps?

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The only proposal I would actually support would be to make the Marine Corps similar to the French Foreign Legion in that all commissioned officers are prior enlisted Marines who go through an Officer Candidate School.

That's a good idea.

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The naval academy should have zero business producing Marine Officers, and it's nice when their $250,000 tax-payer funded military masterminds break down over a midget-fight.

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Please elaborate.

I would love to hear more about the comment about only commissioning prior enlisted Marines.

The Marine Corps takes officers from NROTC, PLC, and OCC programs where officers come from normal universities and go through Officer Candidate School. The naval academy also provides officers to the Corps, but at well over double the cost, and without the same screening/formative process. These kids try to disassociate themselves with the academy due to their terrible reputations, which in itself should demonstrate that the product isn't worth the cost. Increasing MECEP (prior enlisted) isn't a bad idea, but there are many Mustangs who never turn the corner and do poorly on the shiny side.

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The naval academy should have zero business producing Marine Officers, and it's nice when their $250,000 tax-payer funded military masterminds break down over a midget-fight.

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Please elaborate.

I would love to hear more about the comment about only commissioning prior enlisted Marines.

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Not much more to day, although it looks like my comment about the Foreign Legion wasn't absolutely correct.
Regardless, I've long thought that the Marine Corps would be well served by having an all prior-enlisted officer corps. The Naval Academy is an awesome institution, but Naval officers and Marine officers are fundamentally different. If anything West Point would be slightly better at training Marine officers.

I think eliminating the Academy, ROTC, and OCS options would benefit the marine corps though. They bill themselves as being an "elite" force within the Navy.

They are also unique in their "every marine is a rifleman" doctrine. Being proficient at a common and fundamental level is a core competency for the Marines. I think a natural extension of this would also be that every Marine is a private, or at least started as one. Even the most senior generals would know what it's like to be a recruit, the lowest of the low. The biggest impact though would be with the field grade officers. Now EVERY lieutenant would already have 4 or more years experience as a grunt. They would be magnitudes better prepared to lead Marines.

Top to bottom you would have better leadership and more motivation. Esprit de corps would be unreal.

Tangentially, the Marine Corps would also become the new greatest tool for social and economic mobility in the country. The poorest kid from the worst neighborhood could enlist and aspire to being a General.


I can't claim complete credit for this idea though. It's heavily inspired by Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers, which should be mandatory reading for everybody in the military, especially aspiring officers.

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The Marine Corps takes officers from NROTC, PLC, and OCC programs where officers come from normal universities and go through Officer Candidate School. The naval academy also provides officers to the Corps, but at well over double the cost, and without the same screening/formative process. These kids try to disassociate themselves with the academy due to their terrible reputations, which in itself should demonstrate that the product isn't worth the cost. Increasing MECEP (prior enlisted) isn't a bad idea, but there are many Mustangs who never turn the corner and do poorly on the shiny side.

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I agree in part, certainly about the costs. OSOs could easily fill the numbers produced by USNA. All the money comes from the Navy anyway; eliminating them would just mean more spots to the Navy at the same price to the taxpayer. Sure it was fun to rib the boat school guys about not going to OCS, but TBS levels the playing field. That's where the first actual training for officers occurs. OCS, plebe summer, and Leatherneck are just screening tools IMO.
I disagree where you insinuate that they are inferior officers. I had way too many great officers in my units from the academy. I think the CNA did a study that showed USNA officers have higher rankings in fitreps as well. The point is, if you had 1-2 bad experiences, don't lump them all together as bad...that's just not true.
Finally, MECEPs make up about 5-10% of the officer corps to the USNA at around 15-20%. The numbers would be hard to achieve and I agree it's a mixed bag on them making the switch-about 50/50 in my experience.

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The naval academy should have zero business producing Marine Officers, and it's nice when their $250,000 tax-payer funded military masterminds break down over a midget-fight.

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Please elaborate.

I would love to hear more about the comment about only commissioning prior enlisted Marines.

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Not much more to day, although it looks like my comment about the Foreign Legion wasn't absolutely correct.
Regardless, I've long thought that the Marine Corps would be well served by having an all prior-enlisted officer corps. The Naval Academy is an awesome institution, but Naval officers and Marine officers are fundamentally different. If anything West Point would be slightly better at training Marine officers.

I think eliminating the Academy, ROTC, and OCS options would benefit the marine corps though. They bill themselves as being an "elite" force within the Navy.

They are also unique in their "every marine is a rifleman" doctrine. Being proficient at a common and fundamental level is a core competency for the Marines. I think a natural extension of this would also be that every Marine is a private, or at least started as one. Even the most senior generals would know what it's like to be a recruit, the lowest of the low. The biggest impact though would be with the field grade officers. Now EVERY lieutenant would already have 4 or more years experience as a grunt. They would be magnitudes better prepared to lead Marines.

Top to bottom you would have better leadership and more motivation. Esprit de corps would be unreal.

Tangentially, the Marine Corps would also become the new greatest tool for social and economic mobility in the country. The poorest kid from the worst neighborhood could enlist and aspire to being a General.


I can't claim complete credit for this idea though. It's heavily inspired by Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers, which should be mandatory reading for everybody in the military, especially aspiring officers.

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I don't even know where to start, so I'll assume you're joking. I LOL'd at the esprit de corps part and the Starship Troopers part.
BTW, Privates can become Generals now.

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I agree in part, certainly about the costs. OSOs could easily fill the numbers produced by USNA. All the money comes from the Navy anyway; eliminating them would just mean more spots to the Navy at the same price to the taxpayer. Sure it was fun to rib the boat school guys about not going to OCS, but TBS levels the playing field. That's where the first actual training for officers occurs. OCS, plebe summer, and Leatherneck are just screening tools IMO.
I disagree where you insinuate that they are inferior officers. I had way too many great officers in my units from the academy. I think the CNA did a study that showed USNA officers have higher rankings in fitreps as well. The point is, if you had 1-2 bad experiences, don't lump them all together as bad...that's just not true.
Finally, MECEPs make up about 5-10% of the officer corps to the USNA at around 15-20%. The numbers would be hard to achieve and I agree it's a mixed bag on them making the switch-about 50/50 in my experience.

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I've worked with some spectacular naval academy grads; Rhodes scholar, 300 pft/cft, actual social skills, class high, etc. My beef with the academy is that I'm convinced they'd be just as good (probably better) had they not attended the institution. 6, 10, or 12 weeks of OCS won't have a significant impact 15 years down the road, or even much of an impact after TBS- however, 4 formative years at the NA will.

Where A&M teaches cooperation with your peer group, the NA teaches individual success/advancement. Where average college students work themselves into capable adults, NA kids learn a system where they specialize at a few things, but bypass on much of the maturing & responsibility (many never did laundry, cooked, or payed bills prior to pinning 2dLt). If the navy wants to keep their academy, fine. But don't force the Corps to take a percentage of the navy's product.

(For the record, I'd estimate a 2 year life expectancy for a Marine Corps Academy before it got shut down due to hazing.)

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(For the record, I'd estimate a 2 year life expectancy for a Marine Corps Academy before it got shut down due to hazing.)

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Probably

Lots of broad brushstroke statements in this post. I echo the same sentiments that some other posters have mentioned wrt USNA Marine officers in that I've served with some fantastic folks that truly "got it" and they would've been great regardless of whether or not they were Mustang, OCC, PLC, ROTC, whatever. You also lost any and all credibility with the Starship Troopers reference. Listen to this 3rdGen guy, he knows stuff...

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Lots of broad brushstroke statements in this post. I echo the same sentiments that some other posters have mentioned wrt USNA Marine officers in that I've served with some fantastic folks that truly "got it" and they would've been great regardless of whether or not they were Mustang, OCC, PLC, ROTC, whatever. You also lost any and all credibility with the Starship Troopers reference. Listen to this 3rdGen guy, he knows stuff...

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I can understand having an issue with some of my points, but why does referencing Starship Troopers cost me credibility?

Robert Heinlein was a Naval Academy graduate himself, and served as an officer aboard the USS Lexington. Starship Troopers is an excellent novel, as much science fiction as military doctrine and political science thesis. If your only exposure to Starship Troopers is the film, you don't know anything about it at all.


and yes, I recognize that there are a lot of broad brushstrokes, and it's a pretty half-cocked idea. But I'm writing a post on a message board, not authoring a War College thesis.

in further defense of my reference to Starship Troopers

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While powered armor is Starship Troopers ' most famous legacy, its influence extends deep into contemporary militaries. Over half a century after its publication, Starship Troopers was on the reading lists of the United States Marine Corps and the United States Navy. It is the first science fiction novel to have appeared on the reading lists at three of the five United States military branches. When Heinlein wrote Starship Troopers the United States military was a largely conscripted force, with conscripts serving two-year hitches. Today the U.S. military has incorporated many ideas similar to Heinlein's concept of an all-volunteer, high-tech strike force. In addition, references to the book keep appearing in military culture. In 2002 a marine general described the future of Marine Corps clothing and equipment as needing to emulate the Mobile Infantry. In 2012, an article on the US military buying ballistic face masks specifically referenced the "big steel gorillas" of Starship Troopers.

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