JAM, I am honestly surprised in you. I basically quote an article from the West Point Public Affairs Office archives and express the same conclusions implied by the article that is being expressed by senior military officers and West Point grads. In your response, you attempt to deflect the question totally, but somehow manage to call me the following:
inaccurate.......flippant..........irresponsible.......... irrational
What is totally incredulous, is that these descriptors more than apply to your own comments with which you have attempted to divert the focus of the article:
No other Service Academy has lost as many servicemen and women to the was as West Point has lost .................................................... For every potential cadets that you attempt to lure away to the relative safety of a career at sea - you are potentially denying this country a soldier that is needed to fight the ground war...................................................i haven't heard about any sub casualties lately.
I cannot believe that you have stooped to the level of smiley and are pandering on the lives of our fallen heros, those whom we should daily be thanking God that they were there, to defend our country, prepared to give the utmost.
First off, I have never attempted to "lure away" a candidate from West Point. Perhaps you have the BGO mission confused with that of his WP counterpart?
I simply work with those interested and ensure their questions are answered.
"the relative safety of a career at sea". When one looks at WP, approximately two thirds of each graduating class selects combat arms. If you look at the typical USNA graduating class, the same percentages will select one of the following: USMC, SEALs, EOD, or aviation. The first three speak for themselves. Aviation is extremely unforgiving. As unforgiving in peacetime as it is in wartime. In my day, if one spent a career in Naval Aviation, they had a 50% odds of being involved in a Class A mishap, one that either destroyed the aircraf, claimed one or more lives, or, usually, both. Things are slightly better today. But still inheritently more dangerous than the Army on their peacetime camping trips.
And not to be accused of ignoring the surface sailors, being at sea is a dangerous business. Unreps, flight deck ops (nearly every ship in the Navy has a flight deck, and when a helo starts coming apart, the safest place to be is inside the aircraft), and the many other daily evolutions take more than their share of lives annually. Another aside, with each day the war in Iraq continues, there is a proportionalte increase in the number of volunteers who are turned away from the ever-increasing pool that is allowed to go Marine option.
" I haven't heard about any sub casualties lately". JAM, where do you get your news? Remember our fallen sailors who were washed overboard recently on the boat coming out of Holy Lock, I think? Remember the Soviet boats that have gone down with all hands a few years ago. There but by the grace of God, went American sailors. The families of the 3500 US sub sailors who have given their lives for our country would beg to differ with you. It takes a special breed of person to drive around below the surface of the sea, his life depending on a single weld, a single possibly flawed casting. Sure, our shipyards are more professional, our inspections more thorough, our sailors better trained. But someday there will be reduced federal funding, and we, as always, will try to do more with less, and we will lose another boat. It is a dangerous business, JAM.
Naval Academy grads will initially go to sea duty. They will then rotate basically three year periods of sea-shore-sea, etc duty for their JO careers. Because of the shortage of Army officers, overall, two thirds of our sailors, including Naval Academy grads, during their precious shore duty assignments, where they have seen very little of their families during the previous sea duty assignment, will spend a one year augmentation, augmenting either the Army or a joint staff, somewhere in the Middle East. They will go in harms way. JAM, I think you yourself posted the article about one of the many sailors, on Individual Augmentation, who has given his life fighting for our country.
If you go into Memorial Hall at the Naval Academy, you will see the names of the grads who have given their lives in Iraq and Afghanastan. Their proportions are that of West Point.
So bottom line JAM, just because WP is carrying their fair share of the load, no, I don't buy your uninformed, inaccurate, flippant, irresponsible, irrational observations. And I do indeed find it very distasteful to compare the lives and risks of all our heroic young men and women. I would have thought you would, also.
Let's get back to the article. Why are WP grads 7 times more likely to exit the service, given no retention incentives, than their ROTC counterparts?