Blue vs. Green

John, amen brotha. I spent 6 years working on the B1 Lancer as a mechanic and I could not believe how collectively stupid the air force is. I laughed out loud at the command incest example, this is so incredibly true and the air force will never do anything to fix it. It will only get worse because it is a self-perpetuating problem. I was glad that I got out when I did. If I could do it all over again, I would have joined the navy.

non-combat branches of the navy and army also have that problem. I am not sure about the marines, but they all seem like warfighters first, bureaucrats second to me.

I do want to clarify one point here, since someone is bound to only read half this post and take me out of context.

I am NOT saying that the blue-suiters are not mission essential. They do important work and the mission certainly could not be effectively executed without them.

The problem here is the warrior vs. accountant culture. We need warriors and we're becoming accountants. Don't get too caught up on the blue vs. green thing...

Well, it's certainly not a very inspiring memorial. Okay, they can do without a human representation, maybe, but not even one plane?

Bravo Zulu, John.
There was a little of what you speak in the USMC while I was in. (81-93)
In my experience it wasn't the culture clash that is described in your post.
Prolly due to the less than 200k size and the warrior ethos drilled early and often in bootcamp...
Despite that, a fine Commandant from the late 80's saw fit to do a collective "tightening of the belt" to address a drift in the direction of nonwarrior type mentality.
I will never forget Gen Alfred M. Gray.
Straight shooting, hard charging motherfucker.
Too bad he couldn't have done a second tour as the HMFIC of Marines.
I learned early on to position myself as far away from the flagpole as possible to avoid any possible spit shine culture.
Great illustration of your point, btw, using the pics.
Semper Fidelis

Thanks for citing my post on the sanitized-for-your-protection Air Force Memorial. I wonder if every organization that persists for any prolonged length of time acquires plaque that hardens its arteries and reduces its vigor. Maybe, every organization needs a reformation every generation to shed its barnacles and get back to basics.

As a current airman, four years into a six year tour, all I can say is "Amen."

I know it says it's the Air Force Memorial, but I swear those are just the stylistic legs to Arlington's new water tower.

As a bubblehead fast attack dude I swear the Navy also has this same infection.

Hopefully the GWOT has rung a lot of that out of the system, but when I was in I was doing 3 tours on the same submarine by choice because we always were know to concentrate on the mission thing rather than the mother may I portion of the Navy.

I also had the misfortune of having to spend some time in the surface Navy.

Night and day difference between the focus on mission and the When did they extend boot camp bull.

Peacetime ops between conflicts are prone to going much more to the pc side of the whole politics issues which results in a lot of collateral damage.

When I got drafted on a needs of the Navy transfer into the "skimmer" side of the fleet they of course put the new guy into all those pc required seminars that had to be staffed by someone in each division.

However it didn't take them long to realize that they had dumped a pit bull into the "steady as she goes" crowd.

I remember the look on the Admirals face when he asked me my opinion of the differences between the surface Navy and my sub duty.

My answer was

Sir like I always knew there are two types of ships in the Navy, Submarines and Targets.

As a retired Air Force NCO, Let me put in my 2 cents, Yes the memorial is ugly. With that said there are two air forces, as we use to say, you have the Flightline side and the accontant/desk jockey side. As a Load Toad/ mechanic we did not do the long lunch breaks, the 8 to 5 routine. Humping iron in -10 degree or 120 degree temps for 12 plus hours eating a cold sandwich and coffee that taste like turbine oil, and covered in hydralic fluid and oil we really did not care how rough the bean counters had it on the other side of the base.
No we do not as a routine face the same threats as the ground pounders in the Army, Marines and we realize that. That is also why we put so much emphasis on getting the job done right, because when that MK20 or GBU23 comes of that MAU-12 rack we want that weapon to go exactly where that Marine or Soldier wanted it to hit.
As a friend of mine who is a Army infantryman told me after he ribbed me about how easy we have it, he added it sure was sweet to see an A-10 come in with that 30mm blazing to get the bad guys of our asses!

As a retired Air Force NCO, yes the memorial is ugly> With that said let me expand a litle on the green Vs. Blue, I was a Weapons loader/ mechanic, we said there were two Air Forces, the Flightline side and the Blue suiter side of the base. We did not do the 9-5 routine or the 2 hour lunch break, during surge operations or even a normal flying day it was 12plus hour shifts and a cold sandwich and coffee that tasted like turbine oil. During the Gulf war #1 we tossed out the standard BS regs and got the planes armed and gassed ready to fly. And today I am sure that still holds true.
No ,we do not face the combat that the Marines and Army face day to day, (except the pilots),but when we load a GBU or even a dumb bomb we know that those ground pounders are expecting that weapon to be on target and work as advertised.As a friend of mine who is a infantryman said after he was kidding me about how easy we have it, he said it sure was a good feeling to see that A-10 come in with that 30mm firing to get the bad guys of our asses!

sorry about the double post ,my computer crashed and said it could not post the first one. go figure.

Early on in my time as a Submariner, I found that I had no stomach for the administration side of things. Especially all the nuclear power requirements. Sure, you have to have supply folks, training commands, and maintenance commands. How else is the boat supposed to get to sea? We can't do all that stuff ourselves.
But my biggest gripe was with the point to which people would and could hide behind the bureaucracy. Which seems to be the point of your post.
You knew when you sounded that one prolonged blast (if you had a good CO), it was time to put all the BS aside. Get the mission done. "Git 'er done." Then you found out who was who.
Your great contrast between the different memorials says it all...

I think Bullnav pretty much hit the nail on the head. The tip on the spear has to have the spear itself. What the blue AF needs, as do the rest of the military is the green air force (Army infantry, whatever fits) attitude towards its own function.

I think its simply an issue of work ethic. I've tended to find that those who work in supply, finance, etc. have a "9-5/Mon-Fri" attitude and even sometimes think the military revolves around them.

They should know better. The military revolves around the Infantry.

I'm in the Air Force (Reserve). I volunteered to go to the desert for a rotation. During that period, my unit will be hit with a major, peacetime-style, inspection. My commander told me the inspection is more important than my deploying to support A WAR!

As a current active-duty AF NCO doing a "blue" job, I couldn't agree more. I came up in the 2-Echo world (communications maintenance) loving my work, and I practically look forward to AEF rotations for a chance to get away from inventorying paperclips and do some "honest" work. The tangle of regulations and instructions which the Air Force manages to swaddle itself with is mind-boggling, but hardly unique of any large organization. Unfortunately, the sort of major theatre war which might spur a bureaucratic reform is unlikely to ever occur again. Even "downrange" is slowly accumulating the cruft of policy letters and local regulations which are the bane of green suiters.
Anonny Muss, those inspections are happening everywhere. The 9/11 lull only lasted a year or so.

yup Anthony, that's the type of leaders that we're breeding. Inspection compliance is more important than deployment readiness....because what do 0-6 and 0-7 selection boards look at?

Are we even at war?

The ironic thing is that it is the "ex-green-suiters now blue-suiters" who run the Air Force (how many general officers - and certainly Four Stars - aren't pilots?) not the guys who start out as blue suiters in the first place (admin, personnel, contracting, supply, etc).

So look to yourselves, green-suiters, look to yourselves.

NSC - Yes, we should look to ourselves. Keep in mind, though, the "blue" and "green" are mindsets, not necessarily uniform color. Our leaders are where they are because they played the game, put their careers ahead of their people and the mission. They made the choices that look good on paper (i.e. their OPRs and PRFs) and produce nothing for the rest.
I can say this, I'm high enough up to hear what's going on and to catch grief for not protecting my own career.
And, yes, my name isn't on this. I still want to go to the desert and don't need the added "blue crap" preventing it.

All I can speak to is my own personal experiences. Numerous "blue suiters" put in extra hours, coming in by 0600 on the weekends. I put in way more than get point credit for- I work throughout the week supporting my unit even though I am an IMA- and most everyone I know does the same. Sure, there are some active duty REMFs, but the vast majority of those who volunteered to serve actually SERVE.

dude, you're missing the point. I'm not shitting on the blue suiters, I'm shitting on the culture.

And no one said you guys were lazy, either.

I’m surprised they don’t have a bronze statue of a clerk at his desk typing a form in triplicate. That’s what it’s all about for the Blues.

I accept your statement that you weren't dissing the working blue suiters . . . but . . . this little line about the bronze statue to the clerk typing doesn't give the impression that the post was about the blue suit attitude of the Air Force leadership. A better example would have been a General officer leaving for the golf course for a 1pm tee time.

Amen to many of your comments. I did both duties; blue and green--because I had to exist in one world because I wanted to survive and help my troops survive in the other. I had to do the special projects and be at the O-Club on Fridays getting to know the head Zippersuit so that when my troops were getting screwed on Tuesday I could call in a favor from aforementioned Zippersuit. I had to jeopardize my troops' real-world deployment training to go pretend it was 1950 and I was just south of the 38th parallel.

I knew what it was like to be in MOPP4 alternating between shivering because it was Oh-Dark Thirty and cold and sweating from the rubber pressed against my face. I also knew what it was like to have to do some emergency pre-deployment training for a friend of mine because she was going to Afghanistan and after 2 years on active duty didn't know how to load/unload her issue weapon and had no clue what suppressing fire meant. There is an absolute gap in basic warfighter training that the Air Force is only now paying mere lip service to fixing.

I also watched certain offices on base get plasma screen TVs to use as bulletin boards when I had to beg for money and justify for hours to replace 5yr old second-chance vests for my cops (5yrs is the max life expectancy for the material).

My final thrust before I call for a spotter and safety net to assist me in getting off of my soap-box (safety is everything in the AF), is that I was told that I was being removed from a 1-year volunteer ILO deployment to Iraq because my specialty was 'overstaffed' and I was vulnerable to being RIF'd. I subsequently was laid-off, in a time of War, by an armed service, along with 2000 of my fellow Airmen. My replacement just returned from Iraq, and this week will find out if he too is being RIF'd. What a wonderful branch of the military. As soon as the paperwork goes though, I'll be transferring my commission to the Army.

As a retired Air Force officer I am amused and bemused by some of the remarks.

What "blue-suiters"? I visit Whiteman AFB often and see very few blue-suiters. Everyone is either wearing flight coveralls or BDU's, even the pregnant ones.

As a former blue-suiter (an AFO), I did the job the Air Force assigned me. I knew the job of the Air Force was to fly and fight, and I did my part to make sure that was what was done. And I was considered a lesser being because I did not fly, and never had, but I always considered by job, Finance Officer, important because I knew that those flyers liked to be paid regularly.

Operations and Support had better get along, because without one there is no other. If I was a flyer, I would not crap on the person who was servicing the aircraft I was going to fly in. Or screw with the man who was paying me.

You forgot to mention the Black Air Force!!!

The Black Air Force would be all of us guys from AFSOC, who deal with SOCOM. We are kind of like the "Green Air Force" only deadlier!!!

There are now 4 sides in the Air Force. The Flightline side, the I deploy to an Air Force base side, the I never deploy side, and the I deploy with the Army and Marine side. Yep running convoy ops is not a fun thing but it has to be done.