Excargodog

Oh, horse$hit. This isn’t an ARGUMENT at all. I stated up front that once the order was given, the military had no choice BUT to enforce it, because they now can’t afford the precedent if they don’t. But that doesn’t stop it from being a STUPID order. And EITHER losing 60,000 troops OR establishing a precedent that you can’t afford to establish is an unequivocally bad outcome. while YOU may not consider the loss of 60,000 troops to be any big deal, others do:

And the poor bast@rds stuck in Army recruiting are going to be stuck there longer because with 9/12th of the FY gone, the Army has only recruited about 40% of those programmed:

The issue isn’t one about entitlement, the issue is one about simple leadership competence. If you read the recent report on the fire onboard the Bonhomme Richard, you start to wonder what happened to it at the senior leadership level. These guys lost a $3 Billion warship IN THE SHIPYARD by failing at some pretty basic stuff.

https://www.defensenews.com/naval/20...of-three-star/

If those of us who have served can’t critique the military when they foul up without being shouted down for “entitlement and victimhood” who can?

Excargodog

And the WORST possible outcome for the services is that this issue becomes politicized, either the states against the military chain of command, or - worse yet - a partisan issue, with one side spring-loaded to restore the status of those punished for disobeying an order once they themselves get back in power. That would even further undermine military discipline.

Some orders are just too stupid to ever be given, but with the vast majority of politicians now having never served, many will not realize that.

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/3...ne-exemptions/

e6bpilot

It's not that complicated.

You either take the vaccine or you don't. The individuals are given the choice. Me and a lot of others didn't want the Anthrax series, but you know what? We carefully weighed the risk/benefit matrix in our heads and decided to suck it up and take it. Spoiler alert: I lived and now I don't have to worry about mysterious powders arriving in my mail.

This is 100 percent no different. It is just on a larger scale because the Covid vaccine became a political hot potato and generated a boatload of misinformation and outright lies that were sold to mostly young and impressionable service members. How many service members have died of anthrax? How many have suffered complications due to the vaccine? Same with flu. Same with every single vaccine that a young and exceptionally healthy population takes. Should we make them optional too?

So, you can throw out all the red herrings about young people, recruiting, the BHR incident, etc that you want, but when you focus on this single issue, the military is 100 percent correct. The vast majority of people (not you) throwing darts and rabble rousing have never spent a day of their lives in uniform and are just throwing gas on the fire for outrage and ratings.

Like all manufactured crises, the military will persist through it and do just fine.

Duffman

Why is this a dumb order, because you believe the vaccines don't work?

If they do work, then they're stopping a highly contagious virus that has a massive impact on operational readiness. Who cares about the death rate, I wouldn't want to deal with a cruiser or AOC where half the crew is dragging ass and making mistakes left and right because they all have COVID. Also, I was at an exercise in early 2020 where half the participants came down with 'a really bad flu' and some ended up in the hospital with pneumonia. They didn't die, but it crippled our ability to conduct the exercise and fight a very real-world scenario. Fast-forward a few years later and with mitigation, there were zero negative effects from COVID at a very similar exercise. If some special snowflake believes the vaccine is really nanobots that share their thoughts with the govt (more than their Facebook page does already), then they can do a different job where other people don't have to rely on them. They're a liability not an asset. They catch the virus easier, they're sick longer, and spread it to more people, including vaccinated people, who are generally only sick for a day or two, but that still really screws up operations (as I saw at my most recent TDY). You can't do most of these jobs by just showing up, mistakes matter and people with COVID suck at their jobs for a few days. It's 100% in the military's best interest to hold a hard line on this, and that's all aside from the obvious problem that soldiers are refusing to follow a direct order with known consequences. The first thing you learn in the military is that you are expendable and replaceable, so if less than 0.5% of the military wants to self-eliminate, let 'em. The VAST MAJORITY of the military got vaccinated, so now we're going to start making exceptions to a small, vocal, whiny minority? Yeah, **** that.

Ohlsan

The cool thing about the military is there normally is no grey, it’s black and white. The vaccine order that was established through a Sec Def Memo dated 24 Aug 2012 was very specific. The soldier is required to take the “FDA approved” Shot. This is in part because every branch of the military has regulation(Army: AR 40-562) only allowing an EUA drug if it is to combat CBRN warfare. Since COVID was from a “bat” and not man made as a CBRN agent in a lab, the military cannot force an EUA on its soldiers. The US military is unable to get the FDA approved vaccine. And using a relabeled EUA vaccine is not authorized. So there is no possible way for a soldier to follow the order because there is no FDA approved vaccine to take. The water gets further muddied if you look into vaccine injuries in the military, which were up 1100% in 2021. I have soldiers in my unit that are now unable to drill due to vaccine refusal. We sent in a 48 page exemption request that was returned denied within 37 minutes. That means it went from my email to the state surgeon to NGB back to me in 37 minutes. There is no way in hell they even looked at the exemption packet it was just automatically denied.

references if you care to check my information:

sec def memo:

https://news.usni.org/2021/08/25/secdef-austin-memo-on-mandatory-service-member-covid-19-vaccinations

AR 40-562: 1-4c(4), 2-6, Chap 8

https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_p...eb/r40_562.pdf


Military Vaccine injury whistle blower
https://trmlx.com/in-2021-there-was-...rvice-members/

Excargodog

Perhaps you can laugh off the loss of 60,000 trained troops at a time when the military is having enough difficulty with recruiting to call into question the viability of the all volunteer military and the loss of a $3Billion warship in peacetime because nobody knew what the chain of command was and nobody was willing to do the basic things to either avoid the problem or deal with it once it occurred. I cannot.

While it is necessary for the country that orders be obeyed, EVEN STUPID ONES, that does not exempt from criticism those that gave those stupid orders. The Charge of the Light Brigade and ANZAC actions at Gallipoli were the actions of honorable military personnel following the orders given to them. But the actions scarcely reflect well on the British high command. Unlike those actions, however, this one was an unforced error. It will cost us 60,000 trained troops, perhaps the largest defeat in US military history (and self inflicted at that), to combat a pandemic that killed fewer active duty troops than some major peacetime exercises.

This was a stupid order. Doesn’t change the fact that it was given and we now have to live with it, but neither should we ignore how stupid it was to give it in the first place.

Ohlsan

- this is a dumb order because it can’t be followed, No FDA vaccine to take in the US. Remember the FDA approved vaccine is the only one that can be ordered to take. Everyone that took an EUA did so voluntarily, with little protection if something happened.

- small vocal minority: some whistle blower reports are close to 400,000 troops not fully vaccinated that is roughly 20% of the military. If they follow through with this order the US military will be combat ineffective at a time in history where we need a strong military.

- I believe the 20% is accurate because of how hard the military is working to segregate and hide the non-vaccers, my unit alone lost 25% of its pilots last week, due to the order. We have a deployment in a couple years and will struggle to meet the required personnel for it.

- “expendable and replaceable”: apparently not, have you seen the recruiting numbers lately, not even “Top Gun” will save us this time.
​​​
- this is not the normal black and white order, there is enough gray area, that those that are not getting the vaccine honestly believe they are fighting an illegal order. And from my research I think they might be right.

e6bpilot

So your opinion is that it was stupid. My opinion is that it wasn't. Got it.

They have the means to enforce the order and right now and the military is downsizing mid grade and senior personnel big time, especially guard and reserve, so I don't think this is as dire as you make it. This makes Force shaping easy and allows them to boot people without all the normal painful process that is involved with involuntary separation of an honorably serving member. In any case, this isn't our cross to bear.

Recruiting is all about getting bodies in the door to fulfill billet vacancies years down the road. Recruiting goals being met are 100 percent positively correlated to the unemployment rate. The military went through a recruiting crisis right before 9-11 and also right before the financial crisis. It survived. It always survives. Since you are ex mil, you know that they will always find a way to make up for a sudden loss of bodies in trained positions by doing more with less. It is the way.

Duffman

Moderna and Pfizer have full approval, which is why I thought they haven't started DD214ing guys until very recently
https://www.houstonmethodist.org/blo...means-for-you/

Also, I'm going to need to see sources before I believe 20% of the military is going to fall on their sword for this. Maybe some Guard squadrons are 'hiding' people, but I can assure you the federal military is not. I know lots of people who weren't happy, but everyone got the vaccine, and it's 'known' who isn't vaccinated because they aren't worldwide deployable and many of our partner countries won't let them in their borders.

Also, it's not the vaccines that are chasing pilots out of the Air Force, it's the airlines hiring anybody willing to put in an app and pay them more than an O6 to work 15 days a month, live wherever they want, and not have to put up with 90% admin for 10% flying.

Ohlsan

There are FDA approved vaccines, they just are not being manufactured currently, Pfizer and Moderna are trying to exhaust their supply of EUA vaccines prior to making the FDA approved version. The military is not allowed to relabel the EUA version even though some sources say they are the same vaccine.

Possibly 400,000 trips not fully vaccinated: (from MSN, sorry I can’t seem to find the whistle blower report) https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...ash/ar-AAPIkzu

We know for sure it’s at least 60k from the guard, the guard is only about 440,000 strong. So roughly 14%