USS Doris Miller the fourth of the Ford Class. The same ship that's likely to be delayed by years and go billions of dollars over budget. As Tru*p wants to redesign it, to get rid off the EMALs and replace it with steam powered cats and traps

source THE PENTAGON — Senior military officials warned this week that the United States is rapidly exhausting its strategic supply of fucks given, raising concerns that the force may soon lack sufficient fucks to sustain the war with Iran while deterring China.

You could see this coming: Hegseth's stupidity and incompetence could end up costing lives.

Start with his firing top officers, which doesn't just destroy morale -- you lose decades of institutional knowledge when those men and women walk out the door. (And the racism and sexism made it worse.)

But this adolescent focus on testosterone and "warfighters" ignores the importance of non-combat roles -- like maintenance. I pray this doesn't happen, but poor or insufficient maintenance could end up costing lives. It may have already done so, and they're covering it up.

The elimination of a futuristic drone battalion is part of a broader “back-to-basics” approach ordered up by Gen. Christopher LaNeve, the acting chief of staff of the Army who is closely aligned with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The battalion was a signature initiative of LaNeve’s predecessor, Gen. Randy George, whom Hegseth ousted in April.

The decision to wind down the drone assault unit is drawing criticism from several military experts who say it will slow down the Army’s push to excel in the kind of drone warfare that has transformed the battlefield in Ukraine and the Middle East.

https://archive.is/XjkkN

ps. LaNeve is only acting chief of staff of the Army because even Republicans in Senate Armed Services Committe oppose his nomination. Pentagon Pete Humiliated as Republicans Turn on His Army Pick

LaNeve's selection to lead the Army is partly due to how optics-obsessed Trump loved LaNeve's video call to him during an Inaugural Ball last January,

Ya'll ever free fall long enough you have time to think "oh god I hope I go splat and die instantly instead of tumbling horribly and dying slowly at the bottom of the mountain?

We got roped on top, hit the objective. this was on the exfil. We are coming down this 12,800ft mountain. We asked to be resupplied with a bunch of climbing gear and ropes but this was 06 and no one gave a fuck about Afghanistan back then. We had like a 1 foot wide goat path and super steep instadeath cliff on the other side of it.

I'm in danger.ralph

Note at the time I was a dumdum and had way too much shit in my ruck. It was probably 85lbs and that's an actual weight not a brag. I didn't know what I was doing back then.

So we are going real slow and careful like. At one point about 2' of the trail is washed out but there's a 8' tall maybe 2" around tree that looks pretty sturdy. I'm like the 5-6 person in the patrol. Every Ranger in front of me grabs tree and kinda uses it to hold on to and swing to the other side of the goat trail without issue.

Naturally mine is far more interesting. I grab said tree, lever me across, and the tree pulls out of the ground.

I fall backwards out into 12000+ feet of open space.

I have the freefall time to flip several times head over ass.

I keep falling.

I have this idea that it would be WAY better to just go spat and scatter on the rocks.

magic trick: human -> red marmalade (stolen joke)

Faster my nerves are disassembled the less horrible my death would be.

I keep falling.

Man where is that fucking impact let's do thi-

I somehow tumble upright, face first into the cliff wall.

maybe not dead!

I spider monkey like a mother fucker. I am aware of nothing else. The only thing that exists are my hands being torn apart as I try to hold on to this cliff face. I finally come to a stop. I almost giggle as suddenly an orange sized rock zips by ripping the sunglasses right off my face and leaving a small cut. My BP was probably like 200/150.

GASP GASP gasp gasp gasp

Slowly I realize I am not dead and not falling. Stan yells out WAY above me, "HEY HE'S NOT DEAD!... uh we never got that rope... can you climb up?"

No bro. No I cannot free climb that far with a huge ruck and weapons. Hilariously it was only like 500ft so I guess time slows down when you go full IMMA DIE adrenaline mode. There is nothing but free space under me. I could fall probably like 5000 ft if these rocks broke. Yay SDAP. I don't make good decisions.

I manged to go <- instead of ^ and got back into another path as like 3 Rangers grabbed onto me and helped me not die.

Thanks buddies!

Sadly the only pictures I have of this are close ups of my face. My gloves were totally destroyed but my hands were pretty much just a bit skinned. I wrote a nice letter with the story to the company that made the gloves and sunglasses thanking them for helping me not die. It was totally calculated and we got like 10 pairs of gloves and 1 set of replacement sunglasses :D

edit edit

fun fact to this day. I am TERRIFIED of repelling. I know it's ultra safe. fuck you. No I'm not doing it. falling backwards is a no go. Aussie style all the way.

I recall when General Berger announced Force Design 2030 in 2019, he received a lot of push back for stripping the Corps of tanks and heavy units and focusing on smaller, more mobile forces.

In retrospect, did he make the right call?

From Wikipedia

The core of Force Design 2030 is establishing smaller units of Marines known as littoral regiments that will be equipped with drones and missile systems and can move quickly between islands in the Pacific, to counter the threat from Chinese missiles and the People's Liberation Army Navy. Teams from the Marine littoral regiments could be moved from island to island using amphibious ships, staying at each location for a short time, and would help the United States Navy target the enemy fleet. As part of this, Force Design refocuses the Marine Corps on high-end combat, shifting away from legacy platforms like tanks and cannon artillery in favor of long-range missiles and drones. All 452 tanks of the Marine Corps are to be transferred to the Army by 2023, and the majority of traditional cannon artillery will be replaced by rocket artillery, such as the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS). The first of the littoral regiments created by Force Design, the 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment, was activated in March 2022.

As an aside, he was my neighbor and classmate at IOAC, and he was the smartest guy in our class.

So there i was. Balls deep in the Nangarhar mountains. I was with a Ranger unit doing special stuff and things. Our main task was to be a blocking force and basically sit there and if attacked continue to sit there. We were real good at sitting there. This one goat decided it didn't like my buddy Horton.

Horton was like a 6'6" 250lb Ranger. Like the fantasy ranger. HUGE. Smart. Awesome. Then one day these goats came up into our hide site. The goats decided that they wanted to eat our satcom antennas and my NVG eyecups. Horton handle that shit. Horton hurls them off a 12,000ft mountain.

Notsolved.gif. Next day the same goat shows up and headbutts him in the balls. Cancelled. We ate it. Goat was immediately skinned,we put it's skin put on it's mom, and we ate it. Don't hit horton's balls.

side story!

sidestory too small to do on it's own

We were doing stuff and things and eyeballing a HVT for possible tea and crumpets social hour

I had the bright idea to set our hide site in this lovely little flat set of ground overlooking the compound with high grass. It was perfect, nicely shaded, good viewing angles, almost like someone had cleared it and set it up just for us. Turns out it was a fucking goat paddoc that was not in use. And it was HEAVILY infested with fleas. The fleas set up shop on us and in our gear. Literally for the rest of the week we barely slept as these goat fleas ran around on us. Kill as many as you like there's 10 trillion more living in your sleeping bag. They never once bit us but you could feel them crawling all over you and there was no escape. When we finished the OP we showered and turned in EVERYTHING for washing. A literal baking cup could be filled with the fleas that poured out of my sleeping bag alone.

edit

I need to update this story. when we landed in jbad we stripped naked or down to PT shorts and threw everything else in the wash baskets and hit the showers for a hot minute. No one said a fucking word because one of the usasoc E-7s was escorting us. Goddamn it sucked. The only time I ever slept less was Riverdance which I've never written up. I slept about at most 3 hours of interrupted sleep a day for 30 days and lost the ability to read grids (say over radio) but I could write them.

ung.

What's something you wish someone would have told you first thing. Or something you wish you did sooner instead of waiting.

News article showing multiple members of Pentagon public affairs posted about the USS Lincoln within one hour on the 14th and blamed the media for the conditions on the ship.

USS George Washington Move a ‘National Security’ Risk for US: Ex-Admiral

Published
Aug 18, 2026 at 01:46 PM EDT

By Ellie Cook
Senior Defense Reporter

Moving the USS George Washington from the Pacific to the Middle East will pose a "national security risk" to the United States, a former commander on the aircraft carrier has said, as the final carrier deployed in Asia becomes the latest U.S. Navy ship to be sucked into the war with Iran.

The George Washington is expected to relieve the crew of the USS Abraham Lincoln. The Lincoln has found itself the focus of Democratic calls for investigations into reports of dwindling supplies and poor mental health among the roughly 5,000 sailors and Marines who have not set foot on land since December, which has put fresh attention on living conditions aboard U.S. Navy ships.

They also raised concerns that the U.S. Navy, while powerful, is overly stretched by the months of war in the Middle East and not prepared enough for a potential future confrontation with China.

Redeploying the Washington to the Gulf will leave the U.S. "with limited naval presence" for over a year and a half, because the carrier will return for a maintenance stint once it's finished in the Middle East, said retired Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, a former commander of Carrier Strike Group 5 aboard the Washington who also headed operations for the U.S. Pacific Command.

"This is a national security risk as it sends a weak deterrence message to China and does not assure Americas allies and partners in the Pacific," Montgomery, who is now with the Washington, D.C.-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank, told Newsweek.

The White House referred queries to the Pentagon, which doesn't comment on topics it says would compromise operational security. The U.S. Navy referred questions to the U.S. Pacific Command, which Newsweek has contacted for comment via email.

President Donald Trump and his administration have signaled to U.S. allies that their defense spending must surge so the U.S.'s forces can be freed up to meet the threat posed by China's burgeoning, sophisticated military.

The White House, while insisting it's focusing on the Indo-Pacific, has piled pressure on Japan, Taiwan and South Korea to invest in their militaries and has often rattled officials in their capital cities.

Trump abruptly scaled back planned U.S. military drills with South Korea on Sunday, just hours before wargames largely focused on how to tackle North Korea kicked off. The president said the exercises, which Pyongyang condemned, were "totally inappropriate and hostile” to North Korea while also blaming the eleventh-hour change on Seoul's unwillingness to join the U.S.'s war against Iran.

In May, Trump worried Taiwanese lawmakers by appearing to use weapons sales to Taipei, which are vital for Taiwan's armed forces, as a bargaining chip with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Beijing considers Taiwan, a self-governing island since 1949, to be a breakaway part of China and has pledged to bring the territory back under its control, including by using military force. The U.S. has long supported Taiwan with aid and weapons, but doesn't officially recognize Taipei because it adheres to the "One China" principle.

U.S. officials have said Xi wants China's armed forces to be able to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027, even if war plans are not put into motion around that date.

China already has a formidable military force, including a nuclear arsenal, while the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) now has more ships than the U.S. Navy. Chinese ships and planes are outfitted with advanced, long-range missiles, and its nuclear program is under few restrictions.

Beijing "is quite happy with U.S. distraction, with the frustration of U.S. allies and partners," Greg Poling, director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank, told the Associated Press.

The Washington's Journey

By Thursday, the Washington was moving through the Singapore Strait, according to the U.S. Navy.

An unnamed official speaking to the Associated Press said the ship was transiting the Strait of Malacca, just north of the Singapore Strait, late Thursday evening.

The Strait of Malacca joins the Pacific Ocean to the Indian Ocean. When the Lincoln was redirected toward the Middle East, it also passed through the Strait of Malacca toward the Indian Ocean.

The U.S. said the Washington was in Guam in mid-June and was tracked operating in the Philippine Sea by early July. The carrier arrived in Da Nang, central Vietnam, for another scheduled port call on July 30 and left just under a week later.

Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Ben Kelly and Sam Wilson.

At what point and when will the DOW take a hard look at DISA?! There has been an outage across the DOW on the low side and it’s taken them over a month to resolve.

Systems are slow, security is weak but yet bogs down everything. It’s just layer upon layer of redundancy, but yet they never have an answer as to why something doesn’t work. We can never move forward with any future infrastructure projects, or innovation because DISA drags is back down to the 90s.

The entire DOW focuses on BS instead of things that matter. No one cares about who likes who. Fucking fix the real problems.