... routinely operate weapons of mass destruction?
... have their own independent legal system that includes courts martials (and use that term)?
You're not telling me anything. I was fined $86 dollars under Article 15 (Non-judicial punishment) in 1990 for tearing up the commander's golf course with a dirt bike. Doesn't sound like much I know, but it adds up.
haha this is great. I get hit with article 92 ALL the time (so does everyone else) that damn catch all is so frustrating. I once ot a counsling chit (article 92) for leaving my house to pick up to-go food while SIQ. Their reasoning was "you should have gone to the galley for food not out in town" I live off base and its a 15 min drive to base and a 5 min drive to get chicken soup to-go at the diner.oh military how sily you are sometimes.
Oh, now you have my wheels turning! Even though I served for 23 years, I didn't agree with the crazy, stupid things that I saw. I guess stuff has to make sense to me and some of the things that happened were just 'SMFH' moments. I often couldn't stomach it. I'm still as surprised as my mother was to know that I served 23 years (and a large part of that in Special Ops.) I
hate authority.
For example, while stationed in Korea as an E-4, I was working nights or 'mids' and lived in a barracks that was about two miles from the chow hall. If you lived on base, you had to eat at the chow-hall because they won't give you BAS, but the chow hall was open 4 times a day (morning, noon evening, and night). Now, working mids meant you could eat 'breakfast' in the afternoon after you woke up, then eat lunch at night, but then the chow hall would close at midnight and you weren't able to catch another meal until it re-opened at 6 a.m. The chow hall had a rule that you had to be in uniform to eat there during the night feeding.
So, the end result of this setup was that you ate all of your meals in reverse order (You may have lasagna for 'breakfast' and scrambled eggs and bacon for 'dinner'). That was OK to me, but the requirement for uniforms meant that on your days off, you had to get in uniform to go eat, and you had to hike there and back, rain, snow or shine. For lunch, you had to get on a bus to the chow hall, which was a good distance from my work. That meant you could hike it (not feasible), or ride the base bus, which came along about every ten minutes or so. You had 45 minutes for lunch (door to door) so that meant that you had about 20 minutes left to stand in line at the chow hall, shovel it in quickly and get out the bus stop for the ride back to work. And if you were a minute late, your good ol' clock-watching supervisor would nail you.
So, as you can imagine, it became a hassle to even eat at the chow hall so most of us just paid out-of-pocket and ate out, or bought food at the base exchange and rucked with it in our backpacks. No BAS for us because, as our supervisor and commander explained, we were 'too stupid' to control our money, and would blow it all and not have enough left to eat for the month. So that's why we got a meal card to eat at the chowhall....that we never ate at.
So, we paid out-of-pocket to eat...because we were too stupid to know how to pay out-of-pocket to eat...
Prior to that, I was in Special Operations role (Pararescue) and served as part of a crew that sat 'hot' on a helipad. That meant that you were on-duty for 24 hours in a row inside an alert facility and had to 'mobilize' to the chopper (UH-60 Blackhawk) and be ready to go with all of your gear by the time the blades had finished run-up. You NEVER wanted to be beaten to the bird by the Pilots or you got your butt chewed. Anyway, I had a mandatory dentist appointment and asked to switch shifts in order to meet it and was told 'no.' I had to reschedule the appointment, they said, because re-doing the alert schedule was a hassle (even though it would probably take all of five minutes).
So, I called to reschedule the dentist appointment and was told that it was put back by another week. However, few days later, the Base Hospital sent a 'no-sho' to my boss and he called me in to ask me why I missed my dentist appointment. I explained to him that I had re-scheduled, but for some reason, they still kicked out a no-sho letter. He then told me that I was getting an LOC for not showing up for the appointment. The funny thing was, I had already went to the make-up appointment by that time, so I had already completed the obligation for which I was getting an LOC for not completing). He asked me why I re-scheduled in the first place and I said "Because you told me to."
His next statement was the most ridiculous thing I ever heard:
"Well, I'm only an E-5 and the doctors at the base hospital out-rank me, so their word is always superior to mine."
Me: "So let me get this straight...You're giving me an LOC for following your order to re-schedule the appointment?"
Him: "No, Airman. I'm giving you an LOC for not making your appointment"
Me: "I went to the appointment 6 days later, and the hospital has a record of the appointment being re-scheduled the same day I called them to re-schedule!"
Him: "Airman, I don't get to make the rules. Besides, you do enough dumb sh*t around here anyway. It's about time you get an LOC for
something. "
So I got an LOC for: 1. Following his order and not those of the hospital. 2. Not making an appointment that I made, and 3. Because I hadn't received an LOC yet. -Cant deny that logic.
I actually framed that stupid LOC and kept it over my desk for many years as an example of what
not to do as a supervisor. As a result, I still have former troops calling me today asking for career/life advice. I like to think that I was the antithesis of all of those idiots that pulled those kinds of stunts.
When you take into account that space is 'the new frontier', it'd make some sense that the Navy might tackle that with a return to a more 'romantic' mission statement. 
