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Iran Detains 10 U.S. Navy Personnel
- Thread starter HH-60H
- Start date
We all know your opinion on Osborn's decisions that day. I have no desire to debate it, in part out of my own ignorance. But should your quote above be a military leader's universal guiding principle? Is that to be the get out of jail free card? Everyone survived, so good on ya. You just can't claim that if it isn't a shooting war nothing is worth the risk of life. It isn't true and many cold warriors gave their lives over that principle.
Of course you can claim that. I assume if you were the VQ skipper your conscience would have felt square telling dozens of family members that their loved ones died so that an old ELINT plane's secrets were secure from a country we weren't even at war with? I know mine wouldn't have been. Maybe the Pueblo crew should have scuttled the ship and cut their wrists?
I'm not disputing that the guy's kind of a prick who started believing the BS about his greatness. I've run into him a few times and I think the reputation isn't wrong. But yes - when we're not at war, preservation of the lives of the crew does not come second to OPSEC. If you want to be cold-blooded about it, the skills and training of a full EP-3 crew aren't cheap or disposable, and I would argue, worth more than the plane.
What's painful is to hear people (especially Naval Aviators, who I thought should know better) criticize the pilot for executing command guidance. It may not have been codified, but it was clearly established. Criticize the guidance all you want--in 20/20 hindsight, it's an easy thing to do. But why attack the pilot? If that had been you (not you specifically, wink, just in general) in the seat, having sat at numerous qual boards where this issue was posed and discussed with the CO/XO in the room and with their input and a wardroom consensus, knowing that a) we weren't at war with the PRC, and b) a ditch with that monster water scoop on the underside of the plane is going kill some, most, or all of the crew, and c) whatever crew is left is going to have a lovely time swimming around in the SCS trying to stay alive before succumbing to wounds, drowning, and/or getting picked up by the PRC, what would you have done? If the 3710 itself had a page dedicated to the issue saying it's pilot discretion, what then? If he had managed to get the plane on the deck and torch it upon deplaning, would that have exonerated him? (That's one of my personal issues with what happened (or didn't) that day, alongside the other big mistake)... but again, hindsight and all that). Just curious.
As for the book.... I can't say anything positive about that, so I'm gonna keep my trap shut.
Unless Operational Necessity was declared then it wasn't worth risking the aircraft and crew.
P3 and Fester, thanks once again for your extended comments. But they were nonresponsive and I had heard it all before. I didnr question Osborns decisions rhat day. My broader question was addressed by Pages, but I find it unsatisfying. Who among you, most who have been in a shooting war, has otherwise received "operational necessry" orders? And it still begs the question regarding bringing everyone home alive as a blanket statement.
Wink, you're bringing some things to the table that I don't get. Not trying to argue with you... but I don't really get the nature of what you're trying to say.
Op necessity - not a factor in the Hainan instance. Your idea of notionally adhering to a guiding principle of "bringing everyone home alive" being a trump card is not applicable in the EP-3 incident wrt the pilot (you can certainly argue the guidance at the command and wing level).
Regarding the LT of the CRS boats, I don't think op necessity was any sort of factor in any of this, unless it was self-generated at the command level. There was no pre-existing discussion or guidance as to this particular scenario in any CRS or theater training (AFAIK), so the LT was operating on a blank slate and would, IMO, have a less-defensible argument (than would Osbourn) in the "bring everyone home alive" bit.
The incidents have similar elements, but the Hainan thing wasn't a PR black eye (it certainly was an internal black eye) because of how it got to those dire straits. It wasn't our fault. The idiots in the boats (extending to the command and the CTF) were idiots, which is what caused the problem. I don't think anyone is condoning the LT's argument (although, I think the incident report acknowledges the refusal to obey by the helmsman, while derelict, avoided a likely really bad outcome). I don't think anyone is saying such a principle is "universal." Part of what I loved about the Navy was the trust in the JOs to judge what principles were important, and deviate away from regs and guidance when deemed necessary.
Op necessity - not a factor in the Hainan instance. Your idea of notionally adhering to a guiding principle of "bringing everyone home alive" being a trump card is not applicable in the EP-3 incident wrt the pilot (you can certainly argue the guidance at the command and wing level).
Regarding the LT of the CRS boats, I don't think op necessity was any sort of factor in any of this, unless it was self-generated at the command level. There was no pre-existing discussion or guidance as to this particular scenario in any CRS or theater training (AFAIK), so the LT was operating on a blank slate and would, IMO, have a less-defensible argument (than would Osbourn) in the "bring everyone home alive" bit.
The incidents have similar elements, but the Hainan thing wasn't a PR black eye (it certainly was an internal black eye) because of how it got to those dire straits. It wasn't our fault. The idiots in the boats (extending to the command and the CTF) were idiots, which is what caused the problem. I don't think anyone is condoning the LT's argument (although, I think the incident report acknowledges the refusal to obey by the helmsman, while derelict, avoided a likely really bad outcome). I don't think anyone is saying such a principle is "universal." Part of what I loved about the Navy was the trust in the JOs to judge what principles were important, and deviate away from regs and guidance when deemed necessary.
Pasta is on the boil. A fine northern Italian ragu, anyone?
1. They replaced the nav systems on those boats with one I'm not personally familiar with. However, in general, any ECDIS system worth a shit (including the cheap non-Navy open purchased commerical shit I loaded up on a COTS laptop) includes land (including islands), and you don't need a special brief to know you don't just punch through anybody's TTW, friendly or not, just because you're in a hurry.
2. So many things wrong with that excuse. Starting with, why is your M4 even a factor in that scenario? You're the OIC, if you're making shoot/no-shoot decisions with your personal weapon, you have already let things go to shit.
#1 is already implemented in most nav systems, if the operator chooses to use it. They made a deliberate decision to deviate from course, so it would not have helped. At one point, we had auxiliary tracking devices our "boss" used to monitor our progress while bored at his desk. To include bugging me at the TOC to find out why the boats had pushed half a mile off course before regaining track. I've never wanted to yell at a nice person before. More technical gadgets aren't the solution.
#2 - There are plenty of non-lethal measures. The problem with active NLW measures is that if you don't take everybody down, the guys still standing can still screw things up by shooting you. Also, NLW measures tend to take up a lot of space that a small craft doesn't have to spare. We had NLW/EOF options, but they were the "warn" type, not the "incapacitate" variety.
The sad reality is the guy negligently put/allowed his unit to be placed in a very bad situation from which no reasonable technical measure could have saved them.
Earlier training had a lot of escalation of force scenarios. The problem with training for this scenario is that there's no "normal" way to get there. I don't know of any community that trains for recovering from a very long chain of poor decisions.
This is key, there wasn't any question within the squadron what the guidance was to do in a situation like this. Scenarios like this very one were done on scores of qualification boards in my time in the squadron and the guidance was crystal clear as to what was supposed to be done. Not everything was done correctly when it actually happened but overall the crew did what they were trained to do in this situation.
For the non-VQ types and even VP'ers, the scenarios in our qualification boards to get to be an Aircraft Commander or Senior Evaluator (NFO) were the culmination of your training to be fully qualified. We had to be thoroughly knowledgable not just about mission stuff but service, theater and national rules, regs and guidance, some of it even verbatim. Much more so than even our VP brethren. Both the NFO and Pilot boards were very similar with the pilots knowing just as much about all the rules and regs as us in the back were.
One other key thing to remember that some TACAIR folks seem to not realize, we were really alone and unafraid out there with only periodic voice reports as our link to the outside world. We weren't watched or tracked at almost every moment with C/SAR on standby, if we went down in most areas we were really SOL for many hours, maybe even days. That was the case most flights, very rare in TACAIR.
Every day we were reminded of the cost of 'keeping the watch' by a plaque hung in the main entrance to the squadron for the crew of PR-21, an EC-121 that was shot down on 15 April 1969 by the North Koreans. It was the last major shootdown of a recce plane in the Cold War and the costliest as well. so don't think for a second that we took our responsibility lightly or did it in a vacuum without knowing the history.
The entire leadership of the squadron, DH's on up, flew during the Cold War as well and they were the ones that helped set the guidance and policy. And it was not a one size fits all policy for every country, almost everyone knew they were going swimming no matter what happened off a few coastlines.
I have heard quite a few folks complain about how much of a real a#$ Chuck Yeager is nowadays. That certainly doesn't diminish his extraordinary accomplishment or career but it doesn't mean he is a saint either. Same with Shane, almost every single pilot in the squadron would have done the same thing he did, his personality notwithstanding.
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