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60 Minutes Segment on NATO/Norway


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There was an interesting piece on "60 Minutes" last night on Norway and the defense of the "High North". Some footage of F-16s, and sub hunting in the Mighty P-3 Orion!

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-nato-and-the-u-s-are-preparing-for-any-russian-aggression-off-the-coast-of-norway-60-minutes-2019-04-28/

 

Inspired me to want to build a "Norge" F-16A MLU bird...OK, who makes decals ???

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Edited by 82Whitey51
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6 hours ago, Dutch said:

What about Norwegian P-3B/N Orions in 1/72 & 1/144, especially the latter.  I know of the old Microscale sheet 72-435, but I doubt its accuracy.  I would love to see both early & late RoNAF decals for the P-3 Orion.

Oh yeah, you know I'd like them too. I do have the old Microscale sheet but about the only thing useful on it would be the Norwegian national insignia...and they're propbably a bit oversized to what they currently have on them. I could probably draw the "dancing guy" tail art on my computer and make those decals.

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7 hours ago, TaiidanTomcat said:

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This Thread has potential 

Mmmm...yup. We did some NATO exercise out of Germany once with Norwegian P-3 crews...they had some talent!

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On 4/30/2019 at 4:57 AM, Dutch said:

What about Norwegian P-3B/N Orions in 1/72 & 1/144, especially the latter.  I know of the old Microscale sheet 72-435, but I doubt its accuracy.  I would love to see both early & late RoNAF decals for the P-3 Orion.

 

The problem with that is that the Norwegian P-3s have light grey/white stencils, unlike most other users.

Otherwise the markings are fairly simple, I have a walkaround of "Ulabrand" from 2010 and it's only 6 photos or so of the unique markings.

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14 hours ago, Hoops said:

 

The problem with that is that the Norwegian P-3s have light grey/white stencils, unlike most other users.

Otherwise the markings are fairly simple, I have a walkaround of "Ulabrand" from 2010 and it's only 6 photos or so of the unique markings.

Can you share the photos in another thread? The "Parking Lot" has a P-3 thread in it.

 

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On 4/29/2019 at 8:09 PM, 82Whitey51 said:

Mmmm...yup. We did some NATO exercise out of Germany once with Norwegian P-3 crews...they had some talent!

 

 

What did you think about that old p-3 hand in the story who had been chasing subs since the 80s?! 

 

appreciate you sharing it

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19 hours ago, TaiidanTomcat said:

 

 

What did you think about that old p-3 hand in the story who had been chasing subs since the 80s?! 

 

appreciate you sharing it

Yeah those guys pretty much stay in their same squadron their entire career if they want to. Met French Atlantique crews and they were the same way, 10,000+ hour flight engineers and acoustic operators. I'd venture to say that any USN sub hunter acoustic and non acoustic operators have never even heard a Russian sub before...maybe recently, I know they have been taking P-8 crews up that way some the last couple of years.

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45 minutes ago, 82Whitey51 said:

Yeah those guys pretty much stay in their same squadron their entire career if they want to. Met French Atlantique crews and they were the same way, 10,000+ hour flight engineers and acoustic operators. I'd venture to say that any USN sub hunter acoustic and non acoustic operators have never even heard a Russian sub before...maybe recently, I know they have been taking P-8 crews up that way some the last couple of years.

Never understood why the US felt the need to move experienced pilots and crew members out of flying slots (many times against their will), just in the name of upward mobility or professional development.   I'd bet there is no one in the USN who has the level of experience as that Norwegian P-3 crew member.

 

You would think they would give these folks an option similar to the US Army's Warrant Officer program where you don't take on command duties and instead remain in operational slots for the majority of your career.    

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20 hours ago, 11bee said:

Never understood why the US felt the need to move experienced pilots and crew members out of flying slots (many times against their will), just in the name of upward mobility or professional development.   I'd bet there is no one in the USN who has the level of experience as that Norwegian P-3 crew member.

 

You would think they would give these folks an option similar to the US Army's Warrant Officer program where you don't take on command duties and instead remain in operational slots for the majority of your career.    

Absolutely. Man power management is all jacked up in the Navy (I can only speak to it, not sure if the other branches operate the same). You'd always hear about how having a "diverse career" and taking on new and different jobs is how you move up the ladder...only to see the reality that guys who have been in one place and career field are the ones who pin on Chief and move on up the line...because they've built a reputation within the community. Some other guy shows up who's been all over the place and people ask "who the hell is this guy?"

On top of that, you have guys with the most experience transferring out the door and on to other things and now you have to train up new people. 

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On 5/6/2019 at 6:49 AM, 82Whitey51 said:

Absolutely. Man power management is all jacked up in the Navy (I can only speak to it, not sure if the other branches operate the same). You'd always hear about how having a "diverse career" and taking on new and different jobs is how you move up the ladder...only to see the reality that guys who have been in one place and career field are the ones who pin on Chief and move on up the line...because they've built a reputation within the community. Some other guy shows up who's been all over the place and people ask "who the hell is this guy?"

On top of that, you have guys with the most experience transferring out the door and on to other things and now you have to train up new people. 

'

 

The biggest issue is simply retention. every year 25 percent of Marines leave the service. Nearly every business out there has figured out retention is cheaper better smarter than starting back at day 1, but the military still struggles with this concept. Even wal-mart is treating its people better after someone explained that retention is better across the board. It may not be the worst thing to plug the retention hole, and then let people homestead a bit or hang around a little longer here or there before moving them completely away from their specialty. (wouldn't it be nice if instead of moving 5 or 6 times through your 20 year career it was closer to 3 or 4? 

 

theres a lot of different things that could be done. paygrades would be an interesting experiment if they favored years in more than rank. You could be a perfectly content sub hunter for 20 cozzy years as an E-4. making what an E-8 does. Seeing as rank and time are important metrics, what happens if you tinker with them? Yes there would be good and bad things about all this, but theres good and bad things about it right now. "up or out" means you pretty much have to continue to level up, even if leveling up means you keep being a total fish out of water. 

 

 

scott-pilgrim-vs-world-levelup.jpg

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2 hours ago, TaiidanTomcat said:

'

 

The biggest issue is simply retention. every year 25 percent of Marines leave the service. Nearly every business out there has figured out retention is cheaper better smarter than starting back at day 1, but the military still struggles with this concept. Even wal-mart is treating its people better after someone explained that retention is better across the board. It may not be the worst thing to plug the retention hole, and then let people homestead a bit or hang around a little longer here or there before moving them completely away from their specialty. (wouldn't it be nice if instead of moving 5 or 6 times through your 20 year career it was closer to 3 or 4? 

 

theres a lot of different things that could be done. paygrades would be an interesting experiment if they favored years in more than rank. You could be a perfectly content sub hunter for 20 cozzy years as an E-4. making what an E-8 does. Seeing as rank and time are important metrics, what happens if you tinker with them? Yes there would be good and bad things about all this, but theres good and bad things about it right now. "up or out" means you pretty much have to continue to level up, even if leveling up means you keep being a total fish out of water. 

 

 

scott-pilgrim-vs-world-levelup.jpg

 Yes, absolutely. I would have stayed flying as a PO1 until I was old as balls and not give two squats about pinning on "Chief" (I didn't give two squats about that anyway...). Match my pay with my experience is all. Which they did in a sense, as a flight engineer you got "Pro Pay"...but even that they'd screw with on occasion, and you got flight pay too. VP and VQ communities you could pretty much spend an entire career in and it not harm you. I know guys who have been stationed at NAS Jacksonville and Tinker AFB for 20+ year careers. My career was too "diverse"; VAW, VQ (TACAMO), Navy Reserves, Air Ops, VP, Naval Research Lab..."who the eff is this guy...?" LOL 

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2 hours ago, TaiidanTomcat said:

....paygrades would be an interesting experiment if they favored years in more than rank. You could be a perfectly content sub hunter for 20 cozzy years as an E-4. making what an E-8 does.

 

I don't have any evidence to support this but I would expect labor costs (paygrades and paychecks) are waaay down the list on money spent by the military.  Equipment and maintenance costs surely far exceed what the people operating and maintaining equipment are paid.  If this is true then why would you not pay to keep/retain qualified workers in their jobs to ensure your investment in equipment and readiness is maximized?

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1 hour ago, habu2 said:

 

I don't have any evidence to support this but I would expect labor costs (paygrades and paychecks) are waaay down the list on money spent by the military.  Equipment and maintenance costs surely far exceed what the people operating and maintaining equipment are paid.  If this is true then why would you not pay to keep/retain qualified workers in their jobs to ensure your investment in equipment and readiness is maximized?

 

 

Thats the million dollar question. 

 

 

Personnel costs in the military are utterly massive. 

 

dod-mil-pers-budget-chart1-large.jpg

 

 

More than procurement and R+D combined. 

 

it costs a million dollars to train a Marine 0321. IT cost 1 million per man per year for the SEALs. Pilots are 5 million for basically trained. some jobs take years to master. I don't mean like "yay I graduated ____  school! I'm a basically trained _________" I mean like years to actually master the work in the fleet. 

 

 

So if you can retain those guys instead of having to train up a new one (and those are the ones who make it, wash outs cost money too) you invest in a known commodity, moreover you cut training costs at actual training commands, and then training costs at unit level since theyre salty and don't have to be schooled up to fleet level. (IE not a boot anymore) 

 

And this is before we get into families. (which is a disaster BTW) but if you have a a young guy or gal,  and they have kids theyre going to be infants and toddlers the most expensive and intensive phase. they do their 4 then leave, then the process begins anew. instead of taking care of a 3 year old, we are back at day 1. 

 

You can also lower your recruiting qoutas and thus work to get the better ones, instead of "bodies" and further increase improvement in your force. You get smarter, more fit, and generally less of a PITA people and then when that happens everything gets better. Theres one thing i've learned about smart people, its that theres always a shortage of them. No matter where you are, no matter what you do, you always need more of them. They will theoretically make smarter decisions, that will then help everyone be slightly less miserable, which could lead to re-upping. 

 

thats what has always cracked me up about Special forces/elite units. "we took all the smart and motivated people and gave them extra training with some purpose to it-- you wont believe the results!!"  no way?!

 

 

 

pure anecdote (could be a seastory but i love this colonel and hes honest) but a Marine colonel told me about one of his guys who was former army, Vietnam guy. Joined the Marines and was just a fanatic mortarman. He had a sixth sense for it and utterly loved it (dropedp thousands of them in nam). So one day theyre on the range and some VIPs come by (Flag officers) And they ask him if he can hit an old dumpster out on the range, and he says "Left half or right?" (it had one door on top of one half) boom drops a mortar round right into the side he wanted. accuracy in feet with an F-ing Mortar. General picks up jaw and promotes him to corporal on the spot. That weekend the new corporal goes out and gets into trouble to get busted down because he doesn't want to be an NCO and not have his mortar. 

Thats all he ever wanted. 

 

 

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46 minutes ago, TaiidanTomcat said:

Personnel costs in the military are utterly massive. 

More than procurement and R+D combined. 

 

Thanks for the graph and I understand and agree with what you're saying, but many of those costs are more or less "fixed" whether you're new or re-upped.  By that I mean, paying your men in uniform more for the purposes of retention really only (mostly) applies to that "basic pay" slice of the pie, right?  The "basic pay" slice looks to be less than 10% of the overall budget.   Or do I not understand the graph? (entirely possible)

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2 hours ago, TaiidanTomcat said:

 

thats what has always cracked me up about Special forces/elite units. "we took all the smart and motivated people and gave them extra training with some purpose to it-- you wont believe the results!!"  no way?!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bingo...

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2 hours ago, habu2 said:

 

Thanks for the graph and I understand and agree with what you're saying, but many of those costs are more or less "fixed" whether you're new or re-upped.  By that I mean, paying your men in uniform more for the purposes of retention really only (mostly) applies to that "basic pay" slice of the pie, right?  The "basic pay" slice looks to be less than 10% of the overall budget.   Or do I not understand the graph? (entirely possible)

 

I understand that in some cases youre simply shifting costs. but the idea is your shifting costs to keep old people rather than train new people, and youre also getting fewer mistakes that way hopefully. I think you would save money in other areas. like for example training. imagine if the marines could keep 5 percent more people in annually, which means you now have 1/5 the recruits and recruit training you needed previously per year.  etc etc. 1/5 the amount of infantry school billeting etc. Hopefully it would be a ripple effect, but again this is just off the top of my head I havn't delved into it. If you convince 10,000 More marines annually to stick around (or don't throw them out because they have 4 combat deployments and  a stack of ribbons-- but got icky tattoos we decided we won't tolerate this year) it would have a walloping effect down the line. And would hopefully pay off in other areas.

 

senior_lance_corporal_ipad_mini_case.jpg

 

 

But theres people who have been around longer that probably have a better idea. The military spends big bucks investing in people, human capital, then tells them they don't care if they leave and lets them go. All to start the process anew. 

 

I think there is just a litte more to it not necessarily indicated by the graph. I'll be the first to admit these are not matured ideas. But there might be a slightly better way of doing things. especially with specialization or oddball MOSs

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3 hours ago, TaiidanTomcat said:

 That weekend the new corporal goes out and gets into trouble to get busted down because he doesn't want to be an NCO and not have his mortar. 

Thats all he ever wanted. 

 

Ages ago, I ended up talking to a British infantry Corporal.  The guy was around 35 years old (ancient in terms of an E-4 in the US Army).  He'd been a corporal for close to 10 years.  He said he remained a corporal because he had no interest in moving up any further in the ranks and he loved his job as a squad leader and planned on retiring at his current rank.   Said in the British Army, this was pretty common.    Always thought that was a pretty logical approach.  In the US military, the longest you'd ever be an E-4 is probably 1-2 years. 

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