"This is a multi-faceted problem and one which must be solved involving all aspects of American society"

NO - It must NOT be 'solved.'

Decade after decade after decade - the left has destroyed our Military. We don't need any more (failed) 'solutions.'

And once again - I am SO glad I got out when I did...

And once again - I am SO glad I got out when I did.

Same here. The USAF of the 1980s put the "E" in EOT (equal opportunity & treatment), and it started in basic training. No demerit allowances for blacks, no dumbing down of tests or race-norming of the results, no affirmative action or preferences of any kind. Any mention of race on a person's job performance review form was strictly prohibited. As a result, everyone got along and respected one another, because they had no reason not to. In fact, the person I came to respect and admire the most was a black female captain who helped run my advanced technical training school. So much so that when it came time to re-up just before graduation, I asked her to swear me in -- and she did.

Then there was the nice-looking black NCO at my next duty station who one day, and totally without warning, claimed to be hugely attracted to me. Even 30+ years later I occasionally wonder how our relationship would have turned out had I been single. For the record, I never met a truly unattractive black woman during my 8-year stint. Maybe back then there was a regulation against recruiting them.

Makes me want to join now. The solution to racial harmony would be to stop attacking whites, not discriminate against them more as the Marxist keep demanding. That sounds like a utopian fantasy- one where everyone is treated equally and non-whites and women aren't given special privileges.

When I tried to join the army it seemed to me that they really didn't value high test scores. I had an 84 and could have brought it higher. The recruiter acted like I was some sort of genius. I had to do a waiver at the time for GED and a DV but the DV was a non-conviction. Well they waived in all these people who had ASVAB scores of 45 or 50 and similar waivers to mine but didn't give me the waiver and would not give me a reason. Then they told me to try the Navy and I had similar experiences there. Maybe they have some secret file on me and denying me access because I made a post to a "racist" website, I don't know. It didn't make any sense. But when I went through MEPs all the people with high ASVAB scores were going into the Air Force.

It seems almost as if the Army and Marines prefer mid level scores. I'm not going to say they want low scores. Like a complete moron would score below the minimal and not be accepted, but at the same time people with top scores don't seem valuable to them. I found some data that the percentage of people in the army with my score or better (officers included) was actually less than expected. 84 would be the top 16% of scorers, but among those who actually went into the army it would be closer to 10% as those with really high scores seldom join. I would guess in the air force high scorers would be over represented so there would probably be closer to 20% or so with my score or better.

But the point is the lack of emphasis on merit might be a factor. Maybe they think if a person is too smart they won't obey orders and not willing to kill themselves so quickly. You almost have to be a perfect balance. Smart enough to do your job but dumb enough not to question it.

Black people and minorities are preferred candidates. So if I was black I probably would have gotten my waiver. Also they might give them more choices in MOS in order to get them to sign up. Or maybe they are just more scared of combat. Not sure which, but some of the army's odd recruiting tactics could play a role in the weird results.

MD69, how many blacks were there in NAM. I mean every movie would have us believe that 3 of 10 grunts was black, ie. disproportionatey represented

Well according to Oliver Stone they were the heart of the unit.

Have you noticed that whenever Oblabla is talking to a military audience, the producers make sure that those soldiers shown in the backdrop consist of many blacks and browns.

If one didn't know better, one would conclude that the majority in our military were blacks and browns.

According to vfw they were killed in about the same proportion as their population about 12%. My 3rd.plt. had blacks but our 2nd was mostly black, i don't know who to believe.

Thanks Archer

86% of the men who died in Vietnam were Caucasians, 12.5% were black, 1.2% were other races. (CACF and Westmoreland)

Sociologists Charles C. Moskos and John Sibley Butler, in their recently published book "All That We Can Be," said they analyzed the claim that blacks were used like cannon fodder during Vietnam "and can report definitely that this charge is untrue. Black fatalities amounted to 12 percent of all Americans killed in Southeast Asia - a figure proportional to the number of blacks in the U.S. population at the time and slightly lower than the proportion of blacks in the Army at the close of the war." [All That We Can Be]

Source: http://www[dot]vhfcn[dot]org/stat[dot]htm
Which is a left-wing site, no less. [Don't be fooled by the 'History' Channel. All those Channels owned by the 'Discovery' Channel, which are a lot of them, are biased to the left.]

P.S. On our Teams, the percentage of blacks was slightly less than 1%. As a caveat - all of them deserved to be there. There was NO A.A. whatsoever.
You made it, or you didn't - period.

Thanks very much MD for the thorough response. It is as I expected.

I do believe that there is also a shortage of negro infantrymen. They have a tendency to favor REMF billets, and to leave the shooting to YT. A shortage of African infantry officers should come as no surprise to Mr Ricks -- scribbler extraordinaire for the Council On Foreign Relations.

REMF = Rear Echelon uh, Minor Functionary

If they can't gang up on their enemy at the rate of 10 to 1, they're scared of combat.

You're being too hard on our nonwhite soldiers.

They've often shown daring- that is, when fragging their fellow soldiers while chanting Allahu Akbar.

Yes. Of course you are right. But they have no fear of attacking elderly White women and men on a one-on-one basis

Exactly! I am sick and tired of this stereotype of blacks being more "manly" and "macho" than Whites. Blacks complain of a lack of jobs. Well, in the past, those groups who had a lack of economic opportunities: White Southerners, Rural people, Catholic ethnics, tended to disproportionately sign up for the military. (Catholics, for example, made up 24% of the American population in the 1960's, but 30% of the soldiers killed in Vietnam were Catholic.) But blacks are actually underrepresented in our military and way underrepresented among combat soldiers. They only like areas where they can become drill sergeants and yell at young White recruits.

Drill Instructors tend to be people who care very, very much. A lot of them committed suicide because so many kids were trying "John Wayne" stunts in Vietnam. Your drill instructor isn't someone who hates you. He is someone who wants you to live long enough to be useful. I didn't have a DI because I never had any training - there wasn't time - but one of the older sergeants helped me out. I still write to him. I'd have been KIA without him. He probably knows it, and I damned sure do. That would have meant me break-dancing in the mud for about 15 minutes and then left behind for the feral pigs to find at dusk. It's not a romantic way to go.

They are cowards, aren't they?

I wouldn't worry at all about diversity, just focus on excellence and quality. But that's just me.

In particular, black men were significantly underrepresented in the infantry, armor and field artillery branches. Correspondingly, the ADA, signal and logistics branches were overrepresented. As for explanations, none could be found. In a previous life I was in a position to observe the intake of initial-entry soldiers into the Army. It became apparent rapidly that minorities of all types and black soldiers, in particular, were underrepresented in combat arms. We instituted an analysis of why and obtained no cogent results.

It's not that "no explanations could be found" and it's not that there are "no cogent results." It's that the reason is taboo and nobody of any real official capability wants to say it out loud. They want easy relatively risk free jobs, their IQs are too low for the special forces, and they are notorious cowards.

"I wouldn't worry at all about diversity, just focus on excellence and quality"

Oh, we did that too! All the Army's service schools are no longer "Schools" but "Centers of Excellence". Always makes me think Bill and Ted are running this Army.

You've been out of the loop or have missed a few decades if you did not know diversity = excellence.

While our young White guys are in these ME toilets dying for "what" I don't know, they're hear raping and murdering our women.

Jessica Arrendale is a perfect example.

I have to mention this now. In my experience I do think Mexicans are a little tougher than whites. A lot of them have little fear and tough fighters. I wonder how they are represented in regards to combat jobs.

Majority of minorities in the military receive ROTC scholarships (free education) and a stipend. Their goal is to finish 4 years of obligated service and leave the military. That's why they go for logistics, admin, finance, signal....nothing to do with direct combat.

How are they going to do analysis on increasing the numbers of white NCOs?

Combat arms is mostly whites so there's a higher number of white NCOs.

Fuelers and cooks are mostly black so the higher numbers of blacks are NCOs.

A good sergeant is your lifesaver because he's the boss, your father and mother in the platoon. The largest element I ever led was an infantry squad. It was terrifying, but we pounded the Chetniks with RPGs at their machineguns. I later made fragmentation and Willie Pete (white phosphororus) rounds for the RPG-7. The RPG would be great if it had not been a limited anti-tank weapon, but it was accidentally wonderful.

I heard rumors while in Irag a few years ago about a "new" Russian-made RPG that was deadly against all of our armor except the Abrams. Can you shed any light on that rumor?

No very good idea. I fought in 1991 with older Cold-War and WW-2 weapons. My rifle was a Czech rework of a WW-2 G-43. We had a lot of Hungarian 1950s vintage stick-grenades.

I suspect the Russian system you mention involves tandem shaped charges, one behind the other. I'd do that. A shaped charge forms a sort of self-forging fragment. You want this to be dense, as the problem behaves hydrodynamically. Copper works great. This is ductile but also dense. Gold would be better, of course, but that is a tad expensive.

Against rolled homogeneous armor, things are relatively easy. One just keeps adding more armor until the projectile one wants to defeat doesn't go through. I think the turret front armor on a M-60 is about 10 inches thick. It is 200mm on the front of a T-55 or T-62 and a modern projectile wastes that a real treat.

Things get creepy when the armor wonks start putting weird things into the mixture, like depleted uranium armor. Since the problem is basically hydrodynamics, this dense armor is great. One can also put layers of other things in, like Kevlar (tm.) I very much doubt anything is getting through the front of a modern Western MBT like the Abrahms, Challenger II, Leopard II, Ariete, Type-90 or Le Clerk.

I can work out equivalents for modern rolled homogeneous armor for the armor on old battleships, but these people keep putting weird stuff in it and everything is classified, so I can not keep track anymore.

Enough RPGs will wreck an Abhrams from behind. Maybe from the side if they are a good model. Not from the front.

This could be said of any field where objective standards need to be met.

Blacks simply have a hard time making the cut. Only about 10-15% of them demonstrate average or above average intelligence. These few can command high $$$ in the economy without risking getting killed. Given the choice would you rather be an overpaid government functionary or be sent to Afghanistan?

How can you blame them? They're taking as much as the can, with the least amount of risk as possible.

They're acting exactly like the creatures that God made them.

When you close your eyes to blatant and obvious facts even when they violate secular egalitarian sacred cows problems become insolvable and inexplicable.

I don't blame your Army. I realize Blacks are notoriously lacking in their mental faculties and thus are not qualified to lead real soldiers. They can't all be like Powell.

Who says Powell can lead?

.

Powell is not black. He is mulatto.

I'm not really sure Powell is anything exceptional.

The Army seemed to do just fine without black leadership going all the way back to 1776.
I was in the combat arms in the late '80s, and was in one of the prestigious units. While black officers beyond captain were rare back then, at least you knew they were on their game. Now, you get more minority officers, but look at the quality.

The US military has done fine without black commanders, but others countries militaries have not done very good when the US didn't have black commanders.

See my comment on West Point's policy on helping black cadets get through to graduation.

Good thing the special forces are White, we will need them soon.

I've said this before and I'll say it again. The infantry is HARD work. That's why negroes won't touch it with a ten foot pole. That and they are also cowards too. You don't have to have a PhD in sociology or some other worthless liberal art to know that.

TH, this may be off-topic, but remember when all those gays screamed about joining the armed forces, starting with Clinton's regime? Well, where are they now, especially when they may be sent into combat? What did they think military service, was about, picking up a partner at a gay USO club?

And, if that's not bad enough (being openly gay in the military), now Nerobama is looking at allowing transgenders in too!

Showing whites as successful are against the rules.

Being in a combat infantry unit requires education, team work, bravery, discipline, hard work and sacrifice. Leading such men requires leadership, tenacity, patience, critical thinking and self dependency.

Look at these skill set requirements and tell me once again why there is a lack of minorities in these positions. And do it with a straight face.

I thought all military generals in the U.S.A were black, are you guys saying that Hollywood lied to me?

Yeah, especially that one in "Air Force One" that came up with that brilliant idea....

If the black actor isn't a general he's the President. And if he's not the President either he's God.