Quoted:
Quoted:
As a lowly enlisted man who just fixed airplanes for a living, think about what you're saying. The support guys you're talking about aren't supposed to be a pool of Rambos from which you can draw keenly trained killing machines at will. They have their jobs, you have yours. It never ceased to amaze me how grunts liked to talk about how nasty we "air wingers" were, but they sure did love to radio in that CAS.
Don't get me wrong––the grunts definitely had their stuff wired tighter, but it was required for their job. Technical knowledge was required for ours. When grunts started shooting enemies, they were very good at killing them. When things got hairy, they called in air, and they were also very good at killing enemies. It all works together. You're the tip of the spear, and you should be proud of it. Just remember that the tip doesn't do nearly as much good without the rest of the weapon.
Very well said. It was not my intention to besmirch the good work of support types, Lord knows that good support is the difference between success and failure of anything.
However, and maybe it's just the luck of the draw, but the guys
in this class seem to have been picked out of a cadre of officers who have completely eschewed the principles of military leadership and adopted bloated institutional precepts. In other words, while they may be good at their individual jobs, they do not exhibit many traits that one would expect of military leaders. They just seem out of touch with the realities of the contemporary operational environment. I suppose that could be a result of spending a considerable amount of their careers in the National Capital Region, but it's still a bit disconcerting.
Point taken, and it's a good one. Hell, I remember brushes with that bloated institutional culture. While we in the wing didn't have to be as tightly wound as the infantry, we certainly had a "hands on" mission to complete. If planes didn't fly, bad things happened. Operational tempo was consistently strong and often in downright overdrive. Still, there were times when we had to bang our heads against supply types in order to get the parts we needed to make mission. They weren't at all concerned with whether or not we could fly the beans to the guys who lived in holes, but rather with whether or not the appropriate forms had been properly executed in triplicate. While they were just doing their job, and properly accounting for all the stuff that they managed was important, it was frustrating to deal with in the midst of trying to get engines turning to make mission.
Also, I'll definitely agree with the overall theme of your OP––the difference in cultures between combat arms and support MOSes. On the one hand, I remember a staff sergeant who once said as we were walking out to a plane on the line, "Discipline? How much discipline does it take to fix a plane?" While true, that wasn't a very leaderly thing to say in front of junior enlisted (which I was when he said it). On the other hand, you had the grunts talking about the air wingers and their lack of discipline. They were also correct (as evidenced by the aforementioned staff NCO), but weren't thinking about the big picture. Military culture is far different from civilian culture, and within the military there are further cultural differences between the various job fields. I'm sure some liberal arts propeller head could have a field day with it.
ETA: Oh yeah, while I say all that in the present tense, I've been out since the mid-90s, so my knowledge is pretty dated.