I was 8. Lost a tooth at my grandparents house and my grandpa chose to wait until after sunrise to take the tooth and return some tooth fairy treasures. I first asked for confirmation that the tooth fairy was not real. He nodded. I considered that for a second and then followed up with “and Santa?” He nodded again, I shrugged and went back to sleep.

I kept the secret until they asked directly and just didn’t lie. They seemed to have turned out fine.

They as good as ended his career with that. You don’t think every sailor hasn’t already heard or will hear at his next command that he is so ignorant he can’t even fire a rifle right? If he’s that incompetent they shouldn’t have let it get so far that he got a command in the first place. He’s either so incompetent that he can’t do basic sailors tasks OR they made up a reason to fire a sailor who made a non critical mistake. Do we publicize IN PRINT when an army infantry NCO has a negligent discharge at clearing barrel? Maybe locally, but it doesn’t mean he is completely unfit to lead men to war.

Haha I think that could also be it.

This is a staged photo and that mag looks full so he probably just pulled it up quickly on command and started firing. Which would also explain his bad stock placement. He rushed for this photo op because everyone likes to look like a bad ass especially when there are cameras around.

Yep, and I agree an 11b or equivalent who doesn’t know his ass from the front of the sight isn’t fit for duty, but this guy is a naval officer and was probably just stoked to look cooler than normal, and someone could have just as easily been playing a joke on him to see if he would notice. We play pranks on people all the time asking for PRC-E7, or grid squares, or blinker fluid.

I doubt it’s true it’s the reason he was relieved of command, but to even think it was a last straw is crazy because if he was really that bad of a leader they wouldn’t need to use something as trivial like just a funny picture to some among the gun owner’s who know what they are even looking at.

US Army Aviation and two deployments with the AF. I was never even issued an optic as we only had a handful per company. Can’t touch what Uncle Sugar doesn’t allocate. The only time I touched a weapon that wasn’t a helicopter was during annual qualifications.

Nothing happened, and nothing could have happened other than him missing a practice target by a mile. It doesn’t even show him aiming at something in particular, just looking down the barrel. Ammo can kill you, not having a working optic is not a safety issue no matter what direction it’s installed. Did he check the chamber to see if there was a round? Did he flag any other sailors? Did he keep his weapon pointed down range? Every single person around him let him shoot the weapon like that, they obviously didn’t feel too unsafe to be around him. None of them even seemed to noticed it was on backwards either. How can you tell it’s backwards from this picture of him?

Is anyone replying in this thread a US military armorer? I’d love to know who gave him the weapon with the sight installed backwards. I was never allowed to touch an installed optic other than to sight it in. I was never in the US Navy, but in all my training I never got a class on anything but an iron sight for the M16, M4, and M9. How would someone who isn’t a master at arms and probably qualifies on a weapon once, maybe twice a year going to know that someone else installed the sight on his weapon backwards? You don’t even know that it was his issued weapon and not someone else’s who also shot with it backwards.

Personally, I love this for ALL of them.

You are quite welcome! I hope you have a lovely one as well.

As far as I know all manned aircraft pilots in the US military are commissioned or warrant officers. I think it makes complete sense that you would want a pilot that was specifically trained for whatever missions you were going on. Someone whose sole focus is on flying but can adapt in a pinch and has management skills to offload some of the work from the commander and XO.

In a normal aviation company there are two platoons of pilots and almost all of those are warrant officers and a platoon leader who really just manages the other pilots.

Warrant officers are notoriously blunt and voices of reason in a command group. They are the realists that usually tell the commander how it is, as opposed to what they think people want to hear since they usually know the most in the room about whatever it is they specialize in. In everything but army aviation there is usually only one or two warrant officers in a battalion of hundreds, maybe thousands of soldiers. They usually only answer to the highest ranking person at the table. Aviation warrant officers are more prevalent in terms of numbers but usually no less opinionated and while overruled very often will gladly tell their commanders how something probably won’t work out like it’s planned and then sit back and watch everything burn like they said it would.

In my own personal experience, XOs don’t usually grow a spine unless they were outstanding platoon leaders OR after they have been in command of a whole unit.

In the American military a warrant officer is a subject matter expert in their career field. They are supposed to be advisors to commanders on the best tactics, techniques, and procedures at most levels, all the way down to the company level in army aviation. They are in most fields of the military like maintenance, personnel, property, aviation, special forces, etc.

Warrant officers in the American military are commissioned officers, so in some instances they can be used as an XO or detachment commander. They usually have limited Uniformed Code of Military Justice(UCMJ) authority, but are just as capable of running a unit as a captain or a major.

In the case of Ridley, rank and position aren’t the same thing. Ridley is a warrant officer in the aviation branch, but the third ranking officer after the commander and XO or first officer.

Warrant officers are supposed to be those people with knowledge that is an inch wide but a mile deep about a certain subject, but they are almost always very capable people and sometimes take on more roles. US Army aviation is the worst about this. They use flight warrants as catch all officers and will use them as supply officers, NBC officers, unit movement officers, or really any other job there isn’t an enlisted person qualified to do the job.

Most of my experience is US Army aviation, so feel free to take it all with that in mind.

I’ve thought this for a while, but maybe our service to country isn’t done with a DD214. The current situation in the US and world at large makes me think I can still do some good. Maybe politics needs more people who think like you and me.

Same ship, different service. The safety net affords me the ability to find what I really want to do without tying my life to a single job or place.

I also think that it can be brought to other citizens through other community activities. Why don’t we offer similar incentives to teachers? 10yr of teaching in exchange for UBI. Or doctors. Or rebuilding the crumbling infrastructure.

I’m guessing that your VA/service income doesn’t just go straight to savings either. A lot of it goes right back into the economy through purchasing and associated taxes paid on those things. At least mine does.

The US military is the largest socialist organization in the world and I wish they would extend that to the rest of its citizens without the downside of PTSD, death, and a lifetime of physical and mental ailments.

As someone who has been forced to have a chaplain around, they are usually great people that are very uplifting. Absolutely no need for the religious part though. Until there is a true non denominational “chaplain” which is really just a counselor with extra privilege, you will alienate people who feel you can be, and do good things without any need for a sky daddy. All I wanted was someone to listen and maybe offer some advice, please don’t bring your millennia+ worth of baggage to the conversation.

It’s not. I actually commented on this before in a different thread. I saw him in a Texas airport last year and he already had a state trooper with him and not a single person was trying to talk to him as he walked. That man is in no danger because his persona is repellent enough to keep people away from him.

This is only tangibly related to your comment, but even before you get the unemphatic part, the regressive taxes alone set rich people apart from poor people. If you make enough money have to pay taxes at the lowest bracket in the US it’s 10% taxes with minimum $22k a year income. That is $2200 a year, which is a crazy amount for them to be able afford when someone in the highest tax bracket is paying 37% and it doesn’t start until $578k for a single filing. That’s about $214k in taxes with about $364k left over to be as empathetic as they want to be with it. It would take the person who is paying 10% in taxes 16.5 years just to make what the person who is making half a million a year makes AFTER TAXES!

It’s very hard for either group to be empathetic to the other, but for vastly different reasons.

I am very bad at public math if anyone sees a glaring issue.

rAmen

Same, especially on such a serious topic.