D R?

[sealice aka lone ranger]

http://www.military.com/news/article...topstories.RSS

[cramikid]

Give it a couple days before he responds. Dudes on a boat.

[ThatGuy]

I see the helicopters flying over the bay dragging mine sleds pretty often, doing training exercises.

[sealice aka lone ranger]

Give it a couple days before he responds. Dudes on a boat.

yea...and?

[cramikid]

I'm just saying...it takes him forever to respond to amything, including phone calls.

[sealice aka lone ranger]

my bad. you made it seem as though my post came off impatient or something.

[WSMassiv]

actually it did so stuff it

[drewC.]

** North Korea is reportedly developing nuclear sea mines with an eye toward neutralizing the naval supremacy of the U.S. and other countries in the event of a conflict.

nuclear? is that really necessary? Oh well we should send dingys to blow up the nuke-mines and hopefully radiation will go their way

[D R]

That was a pretty good article. I'm on one of those four MCMs that are forward deployed here in lovely Sasebo, USS Patriot. LT. Commander Germain was my old XO band was transferred when Avenger's XO got caught up with some woman who wasn't his wife and got fired, he would have been my CO by now, and he is the best officer I've ever met. Chief Furhman comes over to our ship all the time for advice from our senior chief and to bum parts and paint. We would have been with Avenger in Chinhae but we're broke dick at the moment, a victim of that 1% of the budget mother Navy gives us as well as victims of being the navy's default junior officer training platform.
The MCM navy is completely different than the big navy you see on CNN. We're not launching tomahawks, inserting SEALs, or even doing Helo ops of any kind, so we kind of get forgotten. Which can be a good thing, generally the military mindset is not as strict, there are only eighty of us on a ship so we're forced to treat each other like human beings, also it's the only sea duty my rate, Mineman, get. Anyone who's familiar with navy rates would be kinda shocked to learn that we don't have any Boatswain Mates, Operations Specialists, Gunner's Mates, or STGs onboard, Minemen do all of their jobs.
This article says exactly what i say in drunken arguments with other sailors from big Navy. The thing about the LCS program though, is its way over budget, and way behind schedule. The MCM service life was just extended another decade because of the LCS debacle. Ten more years really isn't that big of a deal for a steel ship, but for a crumbling class of underfunded wooden ships it's kind of a bad joke. And at the end of the day, when the LCS's are all up and running, they still won't have the same capabilities as a dedicated minesweeper, there's even talk of eliminating the mine countermeasures module all together. Anyway I'm rambling, and at the end of the day nothing myself or anyone else in the mine countermeasures community says will make a difference. We just aren't sexy enough to get the attention we need to be an effective force.

p.s. Chris, who in the hell are you calling? I don't have a phone, I call you on skype from my computer.