Sean Lawson’s second question about milblogging concerns how the practice has changed over time, both for me individually and in the wider world of milbloggers. For those of you that missed the previous post in this series, click on the “Blogging” category link above.

For my own part, what I’ve been able to do has ebbed and flowed with time. Most frequently this is because of who I am and what I’m doing in the Navy. If I were a second class petty officer on a ship out of Norfolk, the odds of someone fingering me would be small and I’d be more free to comment on some things. But, as a fairly senior officer serving in a unique position in the Navy worldwide, the veil of anonymity is thin and fragile.

And anonymity, for me at least, is not about being able to say things that are outside of the rules. It has to do with being able to do my job without worrying that my boss is reading my blog and agrees or disagrees with me. And it’s also about not having to worry about whether subordinates and peers do so, either. So long as I blog with anonymity, my blogging introduces no additional pressures on my work from above or below.

Finally, as fellow milbloggers have come and gone due to the institutional pressure of balancing freedom of expression with military law and regulations, I’ve tailored my content to ensure I’m on the right side of the rules. Some call it censorship, but I call it survival, because for me at least, while the validity of my opinions matter, I blog because I like it and because I think it serves a purpose, not because I have an axe to grind.

With respect to milblogging in general, the practice has, of course, been altered by the aforementioned institutional pressures. Most milbloggers are more cautious about the things they post now than was the case two or three years ago. Also, I think most of the “big names” in milblogging these days are mostly retired or reserve folks, because they have the freedom to be more ontroversial. In other words, they can really talk politics, and politics gets the real traffic in the Blogosphere.

You won’t find people like me, Lex, Chap or Phibian climbing way out on a political limb, because I suspect we all believe that what we can contribute on the deckplates while wearing the cloth of the country is far greater for the time being than what we can contribute with the finest piece of writing posted to the ether of the Internet.

Trackposted to Perri Nelson’s Website, Diary of the Mad Pigeon, , basil’s blog, Pirate’s Cove, Blue Star Chronicles, The Pink Flamingo, The Amboy Times, High Desert Wanderer, Conservative Cat, Right Voices, and Pursuing Holiness, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

The Port Arthur News has a nice, if short, story about WWII veterans of the U.S. Merchant Marine that is worth a read. Their sacrifice, as told in the story, is usually overlooked but worthy of note:

However, as rough as [former U.S. Merchant Mariner Carroll] LaCour’s experience was on the open seas, he points out that his branch of service had the highest casualty rate in the war. In fact, according to statistics from the Apostleship of the Sea of the United States of America, one in 26 mariners were killed in action, 1,500 ships sunk, 9,300 mariners were killed and 12,000 wounded. In addition, 243 were killed in action prior to Pearl Harbor and were among the first Prisoners of War. They were also among the last to return with 54 ships damaged by mines after V-E and V-J Day.

In addition, there is an effort in both houses of Congress to grant veterans of the USMM that other branches of the service already enjoy.

It is with this backdrop that LaCour said he doesn’t want the focus to be on him, but on their sacrifices. He’s also asking citizens to contact their congressmen and senators to urge them to support House Bill HR23 and Senate Bill 1272.

The House version would provide World War II merchant mariners who were awarded the Mariners Medal be provided eligibility for veterans’ health care on the same basis as veterans who were awarded the Purple Heart.

Trackbacked to Mudville and Argghhh!

I’ve got another full weekend off, so I’ll only be moderating comments and open posts over the weekend.

When I pulled up the admin page for my blog this morning, I got this message:

Akismet has caught 2,098 spam for you since you first installed it.

Gah! That’s in one week.

The full-length photo in officer service records, which died a quiet death a few years ago, has been resurrected:

All officers are now required to have a full-length color photograph in their official military file, according to NAVADMIN 103/07 distributed to the fleet April 24.

“We are professionals and demonstrate that every day around the world,” said Vice Adm. John C. Harvey Jr., Chief of Naval Personnel. “Having officer photos back in the records reinforces our commitment to ensuring our leaders display military bearing, and provide an example for those they lead.”

The official statement is about military bearing, but with the Navy’s new diversity strategy, one wonders how much diversity objectives played in the decision to reinstate the photo.

U.S. missile test intercepts 2 targets
The U.S. military destroyed a cruise missile and a short-range ballistic missile during a test Thursday over the Pacific, the first time two test targets were intercepted simultaneously, the Missile Defense Agency said.

The military fired the short-range missile from the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai. A Navy plane fired the cruise missile target used in the test. Sailors aboard the USS Lake Erie fired back.

“The test demonstrated the USS Lake Erie’s ability to engage a ballistic missile threat and defend itself from attack at the same time,” the agency said in a statement.

Congress Probes Costly Ship Programs
Defense industry executives blame unexpected contract revisions ordered by the Navy and unanticipated labor and material charges for soaring cost overruns on new military ships.

At a House Appropriations defense subcommittee hearing on Wednesday, lawmakers wanted to know who is responsible for skyrocketing costs in some Navy ship programs. Their scrutiny follows the recent cancellation of a Lockheed Martin Corp. deal to build a multimillion-dollar combat ship and the military taking back management of a contract from Lockheed and Northrop Grumman Corp. that is part of a troubled $24 billion modernization program.

Executives from Northrop and General Dynamics Corp., the nation’s two largest shipbuilders, testified at the hearing, detailing cost overages on their ship programs.

Additional requests made by the Navy during ship construction, a reduced rate in the number of ships built per year and expensive weapons systems make it impossible to meet contract cost estimates, said Philip Teel, president of Northrop Grumman Ship Systems Inc.

NZ Navy ships strike engine problems at sea
The navy’s two warships, the Anzac frigates Te Kaha and Te Mana, both broke down at sea earlier this year, the navy has revealed.

Both ships had engine problems.

The navy’s supply ship, the tanker, HMNZS Endeavour, was also believed to have had engine problems which left it drifting briefly in the Hauraki Gulf last month.

HMNZS Te Mana had problems with its diesel engines during exercises as it crossed the Tasman to Sydney with its sister ship HMNZS Te Kaha.

The navy said Te Mana could not use its diesel engines, designed to allow the ship to cruise at a lower economical speed, and had to run its gas turbine.

The gas turbine was a marine version of the engines fitted to a Boeing 747 jumbo jet and allows short, high-speed sprints at more than 27 knots.

The following month Te Kaha had an engine failure as it was about to undertake a replenishment at sea with Endeavour in the Hauraki Gulf.

Sub dives into future with digital navigation
The USS Oklahoma City is the first submarine, and the second vessel in the U.S. Navy, to go completely digital for navigation. It has an electronic system that combines digital charts, global-positioning fixes and environmental sensors — all of which rid the cramped vessel of mounds of paper charts.
…
The digital world offered by the new Voyage Management System will be a new one for submarine navigators, Navy Capt. Mike Brown, force navigator for Submarine Force, said in a statement.

“In the past, the quartermaster would do all of this work that could take anywhere from 10 minutes or more just to plot our position. By the time you completed that task you would already be 10 minutes beyond that plot. With VMS, it’s plotting for you as you are moving along, which allows the quartermaster to look ahead more.”

Nigeria: Navy Urges FG to Invest in Ship Building
NIGERIAN Navy (NN) has called on federal government to invest in ship building to increase Nigeria’s industrial capacity.

Statement signed by Lt. Commander Catherine Frankov for Admiral superintendent, Naval Dockyard, said that the factors responsible for poor infrastructure in ship building include paucity of funds and decreased number of experienced technical officers.

She further said that the Nigerian Navy has been carrying out most of its ship refits and docking for essential defects in the Nigerian Naval Dockyard, Victoria Island and also at the Naval Shipyard, Port Harcourt. She, however, said the two dockyards are in urgent need of certain infrastructure.

It’s that time again….

LCS1 Catches Fire During Construction In Marinette

A Wednesday morning fire damaged a first-in-its-class Navy warship under construction at Marinette Marine Corp.

Marinette Fire Lt. Bill Becker said the fire started about 5:30 a.m. in a berthing area where workers were using welding and grinding equipment. It took about an hour to extinguish.

“It was a good size fire,” Becker said. “I went through six teams of firefighters putting it out.”

Fire officials did not immediately release an estimate of the damage. No injuries were reported.

British pilot blamed for deaths

The United States Navy has blamed a British harbour pilot for the deaths of two American crewmen who drowned after being washed off the deck of a nuclear submarine.

Chief Thomas Higgins, 45, and Petty Officer Michael Holtz, 30, were hit by a wave as the USS Minneapolis St Paul left Plymouth Sound on December 29 last year. An investigation found that the pilot, who worked for the Ministry of Defence, should have warned the submarine captain that the sea was dangerous and told him that other vessels had been banned from leaving port.

The captain, Commander Edwin Ruff, is held partially responsible and has been reprimanded and assigned to shore duties.

Navy offers up to $150K for master EOD techs to re-up

Short on sailors who have mastered Explosive Ordnance Disposal skills, the Navy is offering up to $150,000 for some master EOD technicians as part of a new re-enlistment bonus program, Navy officials said.

The Navy was prompted to offer the bonus because the field is critically undermanned, said Master Chief John Siegel, EOD community manager and technical adviser.

About 147 sailors are eligible for the bonus through the end of fiscal 2009, Siegel said Wednesday.

Sailors must be between the ranks of E-7 and E-9 and have between 19 and 25 years’ experience, according to a recent NAVADMIN.

US to fund ‘man-made lightning’ raygun tech

The US Navy will put nearly $10m into development of “man-made lightning” blaster weapons.

In a release dated yesterday, Arizona-based company Ionatron announced that it had won a contract worth $9,839,094 to develop its Laser Induced Plasma Channel™ (LIPC) technology. The funds were supplied by the Naval Surface Warfare Centre, Crane division. NSW-Crane is well-known as a supplier of gadgets and weapons to the elite, secretive Navy SEALs among others.

Ionatron describes LIPC as “man-made lightning”. It notes that electrical air-gap spark discharges are nothing new, but until now it has been very hard to make them travel any distance or point them at a target. But the firm’s engineers reckon they’ve potentially got the problem cracked, using precursor laser pulses to burn a conductive tunnel through the air down which an electrical charge can easily jump.

The technology could be applied in a number of ways, perhaps most obviously as an improvement on existing Taser cattle-prod dartguns, used by police to electrocute malefactors into submission as opposed to simply shooting them. Ionatron reckon their lightning zappers could “replace guns as the weapon of choice in close-range defense.”

Army Reserve Major and milblogger Andrew Olmsted has gone silent after his chain of command decided he had crossed one too many lines in his discussion of politics.

This illustrates well the inconsistencies with which the vaious policies the military are interpreted. Andrew’s superiors thought he had gone too far, where a year ago a different chain of command thought another milblogger, who was very direct in his personal attacks on the President and Vice President, was allowed to continue with minor modifications to his site.

Once again, if you’re a milblogger, it’s best to read and heed the ROE.

Sean Lawson, with whom I have a tangential connection, is studying the inner-workings of the milblogging mind, and I have agreed to help out with a series of four posts about why I blog. This post is in response to Sean’s first question: “Why did you initially start blogging?”

I initially started blogging out of an interest in politics. Of course, that was in 1996, and it was not really recognized as “blogging” at the time. The name of the site bore a remarkable resemblance to this site, as did the look and feel. I guess it is hard for a tiger to change his stripes.

The focus, however, was on national and Massachusetts politics. At the time blogging was a tedious business. There was no Blogger, Movable Type or WordPress. Each page needed to be built, networked with links and archived individually, and there was substantial HTML editing involved.

That project continued for about three years, and at its peak the site was getting 7,500 visitors per day, which was huge in 1999. Then I returned to active duty and left Massachusetts with the intention of never returning, and the site fell by the wayside.

In early 2005 America was reeling from the impact blogs had on the 2004 elections. I looked into what was involved with the new blogging and was intrigued, but put off a bit by the limitations on my speech that being in the military entailed. When I learned of milblogs, I found the niche in which I could both blog and serve, and the rest, as they say, is history.