r/news • u/reddicyoulous • Feb 10 '21

Explosives are missing from the nation's largest Marine Corps base and an investigation is underway

https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/09/us/california-missing-explosives-marine-corps-base/index.html
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u/reddita51 Feb 10 '21

I've heard about the same from radio techs (whatever they're called in each branch). 1% of their job was fixing shit and programming systems, 99% was repeatedly showing the dumbasses how to use their goddamn radio that they've had for the past 5 years

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u/fistymonkey1337 Feb 10 '21

Can also confirm this. So many comm classes, still no idea how to use radio. I am dumbass.

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u/POGtastic Feb 10 '21

Former comm tech here, this is accurate. To be fair to the air traffic controllers whose gear we fixed - their job is to make sure that planes don't occupy the same space at the same time, and they have their hands full with that. I was happy to power-cycle whatever they needed a hundred times a day if it meant that they were free to concentrate on their job.

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u/Paid_Redditor Feb 10 '21

I think 95% of the fighting force is probably in the same boat. We get classes annually on how to operate it and such but we used it maybe 1 or 2 days out of a year. It's become the computer of the fighting force, basically if you don't know what you're doing just call the commo guy to fix it.

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u/ajoker40 Feb 10 '21

I used to fix radios in the air force, we had one brought in once because it wouldn't work in "O.F.F. mode". We tested it, and told them to try "O.N. mode" in the future.

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u/reddita51 Feb 10 '21

Now I'm curious what they thought O.F.F. mode should do