I do think the Army uniforms are attractive. Less attractive than Navy's but it doesn't look bad.
Just that the level of effort difference is laughable. Over on the Navy board, it was simple - Olive drab or black? Which division? And the consensus guessed OD and the first division guessed was First Armored.
Then they get sooooo pretentious with their history lessons. And I was a history major and remain a history buff. I generally like the details in concept but they fall short in how it ends up looking, e.g. the 101st numbers font. This one hits the mark for the details and being visually appealing. At least they've toned the schmaltz down a little. One of their videos - I think is was when they did the Big Red One - seemed to be equating Cadets playing football to doughboys going over the top in WWI and I thought it crossed the line to distasteful.
I could mock a lot of things: each uniform has Regiment/Company identifiers to connect the team to the Corps of Cadets -- yeah they need it to remind them since the football team spent COVID in the Thayer Hotel while the rest of the Corps suffered (that's what led to a lot of Cadets cheering for the opposition one game, and the three-star Superintendent and HC Monken going up into the stands to scold them). I could roast them line by line, but this board wouldn't care that much.
(11-30-2022 04:43 PM)Bull Wrote: (11-30-2022 01:24 PM)Coog Engineer Wrote: I think those unis are slick looking, but c'mon Navy, I think you're encroaching on US Space Force territory a bit, dontcha think?
United States Space Force
I found it a bit confusing as well... NASA is a government civilian agency. My first reaction was... cool (definitely!), but why? And of course a lot of military 'space stuff' is going to be routed to Space Force.
So we've talked about the 54 USNA astronauts, and to me, getting the NASA buy-in for this puts us at the front of the Space U race. As does our taking what we want from UCF for the last two years running.
But it seems it's time to put on my Naval War College adjunct professor hat and give a little lesson on the Space Force.
The Space Force is not about astronauts, or people in space. They buy, launch, and sometimes control satellites. So USNA as THE leading producer of astronauts will be little impacted by Space Force's standup. We are already commissioning a Guardian (insert eyeroll) or two from USNA each year going back to 2021.
Navy personnel, and a couple commands, plus the Navy's small number of satellites have already been shanghai'd into the Space Force, but the Navy as a service is still doing space stuff -- we just established a new Officer Designator (MOS for those who speak Army or Marines) for Maritime Space Ops/Plans. We had our own satellites and our own space operators because we never trusted the Air Force to deliver the unique capabilities the Navy needs...and I don't know that I have any greater trust in the Space Force.
I am of the mind that it would have been nice to have a viable debate about whether it needed to be a separate armed service, rather than just a dictat from less-than-knowledgable politicals. See, we used to have a U.S. Space Command, a Joint Unified Command with these responsibilities, and then service components under that - Navy / Air Force / Army Space Commands. An earlier (2002) pennywise and pound-foolish cost-cutting measure demoted that to a subordinate of U.S. Strategic Command. There is a legitimate argument that you could have accomplished the desired goals by reinstating USSPACECOM and saving America from the goofy-ass uniforms the USSF came up with. And if you did that with some of the acquisition authorities that US Special Operations Command has -- you might have really been able to do something.
Because the REAL knife fights will come with programs and budgets in the Pentagon. Pay attention to the third leg of this thing --Defense Space Acquisitions Agency. If they successfully move the budget authority...they'll have a great big bullseye on them for Navy and Air Force to take their shots. At least when Navy was buying our own satellites we were accountable to ourselves.
And Space Force creates a slippery slope. To me, there's just as good or better an argument for a Cyber Force, but US Cyber Command is currently healthier than the demoted-for-two-decades USSPACECOM - although not as healthy as USSOCOM, and has challenges decoupling from NSA.
tl;dr
- Navy = Space U with 54 astronauts
- Space Force = 0 impact on USNA continuing to lead in that
- Space Force just might be a bad idea overall, and the uniforms ARE goofy
- Beat Army