What the HELL is the deal with Navy Football players?

The fact that the scandal is believed to be more widespread means very little re football players. If 100 Marines were involved, and still only 2 were football players, what does that say? We just don't know and so speculating in the absence of facts makes little sense.

To me this is the most important aspect to the article.

Who cares about their commissioning source? Or what sport they played at the Academy? Look at the bigger picture here people! You are worried about two football players out of the potential 40+ who are cheating at TBS.
 
Secondly, Luigi, you post a lot on these forums like you know the inner workings of the Academies for someone who hasnt been to one. Just because you have a kid that goes to one and you read the website and news articles doesnt mean you know anything.

I'm not positive but I thought Luigi was an alumni of the USCGA? :confused:

I am just a parent of a cadet but since coming here to learn [with DS] about admissions, I sorta liked the place....I hope that doesn't make me "living vicariously" through DS!?!?
On another note, I was an enlisted Marine and in private, I'll sure tell you what I think of these cheating morons wasting space at the academy.

The best slap in the taxpayer face was the comment made about going to the NFL. I'm sure some team will pay back the academy and we'll have another gridiron role model lol BTW, I really enjoy football, played in school and watch regularly for the record.
 
The best slap in the taxpayer face was the comment made about going to the NFL.

Absolutely. The comments he made were in extremely poor taste. While I didn't hear his voice when he made those comments, I can guarantee you he had an attitutde and bad tone. He should've said, "I made a mistake" and leave it at that. But to go on talking about how he's been looking at going into the NFL...just terrible taste. It's the group of .000001% that give the 99.999999% a bad image.
 
I'm not positive but I thought Luigi was an alumni of the USCGA? :confused:

What gave you that idea?

No, I'm just a dumb ol' parent, living vicariously through the forum wishing I was. :rolleyes:

Lot's of that going on here, I guess. :rolleyes:

If there are qualifications to comment regarding any subject on the forum, please let me know.

I'll let my answers speak for themselves, and let others attack me.

I have a thick skin, and I won't run away and re-register with another name.

Flame on.
 
To play devils advicate, where is the line between cheating and gouge in this case, because from how I understand it this is a field excircise and it just makes me think back to flight school and how almost every event came down in a some way to the quality of gouge you got. Obviously the Marine Corps made an example of the marines in this case but it wouldn't surpise me if this "cheating" wasn't common place, just hard to prove and therefore enforce.

Admitadely though I don't fully understand the whole answer sheet for an field excircise idea, having not gone through TBS and I think some of the instruction is failing if these marines don't realize GPS can be easilly denied through numerous means.
 
It seems to me that many these posts have taken on a "6 degreees of Kevin Bacon" quality in which anything negative that occurs can be linked by those with personal concerns about USNA policies on:(take your pick)
a. diversity admissions policies
b. D1 Athletics
c. general "decline in standards" as a result of changes in traditions undermined by the "terrible leadership" of VADM Fowler
d. not taking academics seriously enough


You mean Obama and heathen democrats skated on this one. I'm losing faith in this board.:eek:
 
To play devils advicate, where is the line between cheating and gouge in this case, because from how I understand it this is a field excircise and it just makes me think back to flight school and how almost every event came down in a some way to the quality of gouge you got. Obviously the Marine Corps made an example of the marines in this case but it wouldn't surpise me if this "cheating" wasn't common place, just hard to prove and therefore enforce.

My initial thoughts exactly. An example needed to be made and what better than a high profile football player.

Cracking down on passing the gouge at P'cola would decimate Naval Aviation, would it not? Probably Nuc Power and Sub School is the same.
 
No, I'm just a dumb ol' parent, living vicariously through the forum wishing I was. :rolleyes:

Lot's of that going on here, I guess. :rolleyes:

If there are qualifications to comment regarding any subject on the forum, please let me know.

I'll let my answers speak for themselves, and let others attack me.

I have a thick skin, and I won't run away and re-register with another name.

Flame on.

Sorry Luigi, I never meant to rile up the nest again; and I see the double standard here, you're not alone :wink: I take it with a grain of salt as I'm sure you do.

Have a great Holiday weekend :thumb:
 
Difference between "gouge" and "cheating" in my book is that gouge is officially sanctioned and cheating is not.

For example, if a prof holds a "gouge session" with full knowledge of the administration and the information he/she puts out helps pass the exam -- that's gouge. If a prof makes his/her prior exams publicly available ("releases" them) and the new exam is somewhat similar . . . that's gouge.

Hacking into your prof's computer, using cheat sheets or crib notes when they're not allowed, programming stuff onto the computer you're going to use in the test, getting hold of old exams, etc. when you've been told they're off-limits . . . that's cheating.

It's somewhat hard to explain but I would venture that, in 99.5+% of the cases, the perpetrators clearly know the difference. If you're unsure, ask. "Can we use x?" is always a good strategy.

Whether land nav is important is not our decision nor is it the decision of the USMC 2nd LTs at TBS. TPTB (The Powers That Be) have decided it's important and that's all that matters. When they think it's no longer necessary, they will discontinue it, as USNA did with celestial nav a number of years ago.
 
85, I think your definition only applies to academic setting, most gouge outside of USNA was not sactioned. Hence the saying, Live by the gouge, dye by the gouge.
 
goldfarb1: "To me this is the most important aspect to the article.

Who cares about their commissioning source? Or what sport they played at the Academy? Look at the bigger picture here people! You are worried about two football players out of the potential 40+ who are cheating at TBS."

well said. The issue here is about the lack of integrity of these particular people. Yes it is upsetting that this happened at TBS but it is a sad reality that people DO cheat on tests. Some "bad eggs" come from all different backgrounds and hopefully they do not make it through all of the trainings without working for the rewards.
 
The ‘gouge’ used to be that one should never be in the first couple of starting dates reporting to P’cola because those students would be forced to get the gouge from either stragglers in the previous USNA class or from ROTC/OCS, neither a pleasant alternative.

Karo, do they still do the weekly night Nav solo cross-country gaggle? They used to launch the entire flight school class at sunset at individual intervals on a triangular course. If the visibility was good, of course everyone could just follow the leader. But the launch intervals were such that one could never be sure if this could happen and there was also the distinct possibility that one could be the leader. Imagine trying to live down leading a flight of ten on a two hour cross country into Pensacola International. I know a guy who set the back half of the flight up on a downwind to land on the Mobile Bay causeway. He has never lived it down.

Anyway, the answer was that everyone would find a classmate who had completed the course the week prior, sit down over a beer at the O’Club, and go over the charts, pointing out all the landmarks visible at night, what they looked like from the air, and where they woud be in relation to the flight path.

Sounds kinda similar to what happened at Quantico, doesn’t it? I would never have dreamed that it was cheating.

And for every off-wing check ride, knowing enough about the idiosyncrasies of the instructor that one could probably complete the entire flight with a lost ICS?

Of course you candidates say that you would consider this cheating and would never do anything to compromise your integrity and that getting the gouge would definitely be cheating. However, a 4.0 on this hop will help you get jets and a 3.0 would probably set you on the road to P-3s in Keflavyck, Iceland.
 
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That sounds like a huge CF, and no we never did that. From your post it sounded like a primary event which is even harder to believe, I did primary in corpus and as for advanced I think we only did like 2 unaided night flights, either way just find I-10 or the coast and fly back I don't understand the problem.
 
That sounds like a huge CF

An understatement. But a huge 'rite of passage'. A dozen or so T-28s sitting in the run-up area awaiting individual clearances to launch. Watching the guys in front of you doing mag checks at full power with blue flames coming out the exhausts, bouncing off the deck. And always good for a few sea stories.
 
The point of my naming this thread as I did is that it seems lately that almost every time there is a "scandal" involving USNA, the football team is up to its armpits in it.

Over the past few years, it's happened over, and over, and over...

As for gouge vs. cheating... Yeah, the line is blurred. So is reality. These people weren't trying to get the gouge, though, they were CHEATING, and doing so in an important class directly related to their abilities to lead their troops in combat.

Just for saying that they don't need to learn it anymore because of GPS should disqualify them. Apparently they've never had the batteries on their iPod run out on them at the worst possible moment. No apply that to a company of Marines out in the middle of nowhere during a war...
 
"But! But! We use GPS these days! Who needs to learn land nav?" :rolleyes:

Glitch shows how much US military relies on GPS

DENVER (AP) - A problem that rendered as many as 10,000 U.S. military GPS receivers useless for days is a warning to safeguard a system that enemies would love to disrupt, a defense expert says.

The Air Force has not said how many weapons, planes or other systems were affected or whether any were in use in Iraq or Afghanistan. But the problem, blamed on incompatible software, highlights the military's reliance on the Global Positioning System and the need to protect technology that has become essential for protecting troops, tracking vehicles and targeting weapons.

"Everything that moves uses it," said John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, which tracks military and homeland security news. "It is so central to the American style of war that you just couldn't leave home without it."

The problem occurred when new software was installed in ground control systems for GPS satellites on Jan. 11, the Air Force said.

Officials said between 8,000 at 10,000 receivers could have been affected, out of more than 800,000 in use across the military.

In a series of e-mails to The Associated Press, the Air Force initially blamed a contractor for defective software in the affected receivers but later said it was a compatibility issue rather than a defect. The Air Force didn't immediately respond to a request for clarification.

The Air Force said it hadn't tested the affected receivers before installing the new software in the ground control system.

One program still in development was interrupted but no weapon systems already in use were grounded as a result of the problem, the Air Force said. The Air Force said some applications with the balky receivers suffered no problems from the temporary GPS loss.

An Air Force document said the Navy's X-47B, a jet-powered, carrier-based drone under development, was interrupted by the glitch. Air Force officials would not comment beyond that on what systems were affected.

Navy spokeswoman Jamie Cosgrove confirmed the X-47B's receivers were affected but said it caused no program delays.

At least 100 U.S. defense systems rely on GPS, including aircraft, ships, armored vehicles, bombs and artillery shells.

Because GPS makes weapons more accurate, the military needs fewer warheads and fewer personnel to take out targets. But a leaner, GPS-dependent military becomes dangerously vulnerable if the technology is knocked out.

James Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the glitch was a warning "in the context where people are every day trying to figure out how to disrupt GPS."

The Air Force said it took less than two weeks for the military to identify the cause and begin devising and installing a temporary fix. It did not say how long it took to install the temporary fix everywhere it was needed, but said a permanent fix is being distributed.

All the affected receivers were manufactured by a division of Trimble Navigation Limited of Sunnyvale, Calif., according to the Air Force. The military said it ran tests on some types of receivers before it upgraded ground control systems with the new software in January, but the tests didn't include the receivers that had problems.

The Air Force said it traced the problem to the Trimble receivers' software. Trimble said it had no problems when it tested the receivers, using Air Force specifications, before the ground-control system software was updated.

Civilian receivers use different signals and had no problems.

Defense industry consultant James Hasik said it's not shocking some receivers weren't tested. GPS started as a military system in the 1970s but has exploded into a huge commercial market, and that's where most innovation takes place.

"It's hard to track everything," said Hasik, co-author of "The Precision Revolution: GPS and the Future of Aerial Warfare."

The Air Force said it's acquiring more test receivers for a broader sample of military and civilian models and developing longer and more thorough tests for military receivers to avoid a repeat of the January problem.

The Air Force said the software upgrade was to accommodate a new generation of GPS satellites, called Block IIF. The first of the 12 new satellites was launched from a Delta 4 rocket Thursday after several delays.

In addition to various GPS guided weapons systems, the Army often issues GPS units to squads of soldiers on patrol in Iraq and Afghanistan. In some cases a team of two or three soldiers is issued a receiver so they can track their location using signals from a constellation of 24 satellites.

Space and Missile Systems Center spokesman Joe Davidson said in an e-mail to The Associated Press that the system is safe from hackers or enemy attack.

"We are extremely confident in the safety and security of the GPS system from enemy attack," he said, noting that control rooms are on secure military bases and communications are heavily encrypted.

"Since GPS' inception, there has never been a breach of GPS," Davidson said. He added that Air Force is developing a new generation of encrypted military receivers for stronger protection.

The military also has tried to limit the potential for human error by making the GPS control system highly automated, Davidson said.

GPS satellites orbit about 12,000 miles above Earth, making them hard to reach with space weapons, said Hasik, the defense industry consultant. And if the GPS master control station at Schriever Air Force Base, Colo., were knocked out, a backup station at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., could step in.

Iraq tried jamming GPS signals during the 2003 U.S. invasion, but the U.S. took out the jammer with a GPS-guided bomb, Hasik said.

The technology needed to jam GPS signals is beyond the reach of groups like the Taliban and most Third World nations, Hasik said. Jamming is difficult over anything but a small area.

"The harder you try to mess with it, the more energy you need. And the more energy you use, the easier it is for me to find your jammer," Hasik said.

More worrisome, Hasik said, is the potential for an accident within U.S. ranks that can produce anything from an errant bomb to sending troops or weaponry on the wrong course.

In 2001, a GPS-guided bomb dropped by a Navy F-18 missed its target by a mile and landed in a residential neighborhood of Kabul, possibly killing four people. The military said wrong coordinates had been entered into the targeting system.

Link
 
Attempted cheating on the Land Navigation course at TBS is nothing new. I experienced it while I was there and the punishment was the same then a now- administrative dismissal. While those Marines are officers, they are not leading Marines in combat yet and weeding out the bad apples that have made it that far (being commissioned) is part of the process. We used to refer to them as UTO’s or Untrained Officers. It is no different than a Recruit at either MCRD. There recruits are called UTR’s or Untrained recruits. The only difference is that UTR’s may get recycled for such things and given a second chance. That is not likely to happen at TBS.

From my perspective, it does not matter that they came from USNA, OCS or ROTC or from the enlisted side, that they were female, male or football players. In my eye they are the scum of the earth and got what they deserved.

Absolutelly agreed!

UTR's have nothing owed to the Government, they can easily be dismissed with a general or dishonorable.
 
I can give you several examples when knowing how to read a map and compass in combat is important.
1. What are you going to do if the batteries die?
2. What if the atmosphere (rare I know) does not allow for a Satellite fix of position?
3. What are you going to do if a bullet takes out your ONLY GPS?
These are real life experiences that tell me that being proficient at reading a map and compass is still very important.

You'd think these kids had never been in a car without a GPS in it.

Oh, wait..... :frown:
 
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