Category: U.S. Army

I really think a number of senior Army leaders did not initially push back on General Hamilton’s attempts to manipulate the command selection process because they did not want to be accused of being racist. Clearly General Hamilton was playing the race card in his effort to get this lieutenant colonel a command:

But the four-star general spent about a month lobbying for the lieutenant colonel, despite deficient performance on the new command selection boards. The lobbying began before her board, when Hamilton made references to panel judges — a trio of two-star generals — that he knew the lieutenant colonel they would be reviewing.

Hamilton also reached out to an adviser at the Army Talent Management Task Force and the head of the Army’s BCAP for documents related to the lieutenant colonel’s assessment.

That lobbying was intense enough that Col. Robert O’Brien, head of the Army’s Command Assessment Program, wrote a memo detailing Hamilton’s effort, Military.com reported.

Both Hamilton and the former subordinate are Black, which Hamilton said has been a factor in mentoring the officer. In an Aug. 16, 2024, letter that he wrote to Wormuth about the battalion commander selection process, he said the new command selection method “fails to account for the psychological effects that systemic bias, discrimination, and overt racism can have on prospective officers.”

Army Times

What is even worse is that the Chief of Staff of the Army and the Vice Chief of Staff of the Army even ended up giving in to General Hamilton’s lobbying for this lieutenant colonel to be on the command list even though she failed the selection process twice and being in the bottom 1%:

The lieutenant colonel scored in the bottom 1% out of about 800 candidates for command, failing the initial BCAP panel in a 0-5 vote after being found to be an “ineffective” leader.

Military.com

The BCAP panel interviews are done without the evaluators seeing the officer and all names are removed from reports so they can’t see the persons race. Yet General Hamilton was still claiming racism in the selection process. Also of interest was that this lieutenant colonel received a legion of merit as a major which I have never seen or even heard of before. A legion of mertit award usually goes to a Colonel after a successful brigade command or senior staff position. That should of been a red flag there.

The investigation into Hamilton did find he had an overly close relationship with the lieutenant colonel, but could not prove a sexual relationship. These false claims of racism has now done significant damage to the Army’s attempt to create as fair as possible system to select commanders in its attempt to stop any perceived racism in the command selection process. Fortunately an anonymous whistleblower came forward to the IG to call out this inappropriate conduct because if they hadn’t this unfit lieutenant colonel would have been commanding troops.

This may be one of the greatest screw over jobs I have seen a Soldier receive due to an administrative error, he went from early promotion of Lieutentant Colonel to retired as a Captain:

When the Army selected Ronald Schow for an early promotion to lieutenant colonel in 2011, service officials realized they made a mistake five years earlier. Schow’s previous promotion to major had never been submitted to the Senate for confirmation, as required by law. His name had been left off the list that the Army sent to Congress in October 2006. Yet, the Army still sent Schow a promotion order that he and his unit believed to be accurate, and he was pinned with a major’s golden oak leaf on the chest of his uniform. Eventually, the Army decided to revoke the rank and return Schow to a captain — the rank at which he retired in 2017 after years of trying to rectify the error.

After exhausting all administrative options to gain a major’s retirement pay, Schow filed a lawsuit last year in Federal Claims Court to get $180,000 in back pay and retirement pay that he would have received if he had retired as a major. However, he said he’s not able to sue for negligence that led to lost earnings from not being promoted to lieutenant colonel because of the limitations service members have in suing the military.

A Supreme Court decision known as the Feres Doctrine blocks troops from suing for anything that occurred to them in the military that is related to their service. “It was terrible. Everyone thought this was an administrative issue, but it turned out to be a legal issue. There’s no precedent for demoting an officer without kicking [him or her] out of the Army,” said Schow, who lives in Indiana and is representing himself in court. “Not only did we lose money during the years where I got demoted, we lost money during the years where I should have been promoted. And to be honest, it’s affected my post-retirement prospects.”

Stars & Stripes

You need to read the whole thing at the link to understand the context of what happened. Basically one guy at Human Resources Command being sick led to the paperwork error that led to for some reason no one in the Army being able to fix. You would think this would be something a Congress person would dig into to rectify.

Not that any American should sell out their country like this, but the agents recruiting these people do not even have to work very hard. Look how cheap this guy was willing to give up information:

An Army soldier accused of selling sensitive information related to U.S. military capabilities has decided to plead guilty, according to federal court documents. Sgt. Korbein Schultz, who was also an intelligence analyst, filed a motion late last week requesting a hearing to change his plea. “Mr. Schultz has decided to change his plea of not guilty to a plea of guilty pursuant to an agreement with the government,” wrote federal public defender Mary Kathryn Harcombe, Schultz’s attorney. (……)

The indictment said that Schultz was initially asked to provide documents detailing lessons that could be learned from Russia’s war with Ukraine and how those lessons could be applied to the U.S. helping Taiwan in the event of an attack. Schultz was paid $200 for that information, which then prompted Conspirator A to ask for a “long-term partnership.”

Conspirator A, who was described in the indictment as a foreign national purporting to reside in Hong Kong, later suggested that Schultz could earn more money if he handed over “internal only” material rather than unclassified documents. In total, Shultz received at least 14 payments totaling $42,000.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but he needs to be jailed for a long time to discourage others from giving up information like this for money.

This story has been all over social media and now being covered by the Stars and Stripes:

An Army master sergeant who says he lost a leadership role due partly to his beard and haircut has ignited online debate over both the impact of shaving waivers on careers and the extent to which service members can express themselves on social media. Master Sgt. Darhem Parker, who has more than 24,000 followers and 550,000 likes associated with his TikTok account, celebrated his elevation to first sergeant as part of the Hawaii-based Alpha Company, 29th Brigade Engineer Battalion in an April 30 video post.

“Somebody in real life is going to see that picture on their wall and be pissed (expletive) off,” Parker says as he shows off his command picture while pointing out his haircut and his beard. Parker wasn’t wrong about that. He was counseled by his battalion sergeant major on May 2 for inappropriate online conduct, he said during a video interview Tuesday. Parker said he mostly agreed with the counseling regarding his video.

“When I look back on it, I cringe when I say I agree, but I ain’t always right,” Parker said Tuesday. “I could have toned down the passion or the ‘I told you so’ attitude.” What Parker didn’t expect was the mention of his appearance in the counseling statement, along with the instructions to retake his command photo after correcting his haircut.

Stars & Stripes

You can read much more at the link, but what he ended up being relieved for was not the beard, but for taunting on social media. If he would not have posted anything on social media this whole thing would have never had been an issue. Just another example of how social media has caused another career to crash and burn.

Here is the latest example of the weaponization of the Army’s SHARP program:

Sherry Bunn, Meredith’s attorney, said the decision to dismiss was based on evidence obtained during the law enforcement investigation into Meredith’s wife, Col. Ann Meredith, who was fired in March from her command of the 89th Military Police Brigade at Fort Cavazos.

Ann Meredith was fired because she sent a text message that was considered interfering with the investigation into her husband, according to a post to her personal Facebook page. She was disciplined through administrative action, according to Fort Cavazos. 

The evidence shows Jon Meredith’s “accuser and her husband, a lieutenant colonel, colluded to create a false sexual-assault allegation against Meredith because the accuser’s husband was upset about the rater comments on his officer evaluation report,” Bunn said. The evidence was discovered in the couple’s cell phone messages from October 2022, she said. 

Bunn said she only recently gained access to the evidence from Ann Meredith’s file, but she said the Army has had it for the past year.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but Army investigators had this evidence for a year and did not disclose it to the judge. Over the past year COL Meredith has been a regular feature in the news shredding his reputation over what has turned out to be a false accusation. I wonder if any charges will brought against the people that conspired to make the false allegation?

The never ending battle over the ACFT continues to be waged:

The new sergeant major of the Army offered a full-throated endorsement of the Army Combat Fitness Test on Tuesday as lawmakers on Capitol Hill debate defense spending and the future of the controversial physical assessment.

“We’re going to continue doing the ACFT,” Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael Weimer said during a question-and-answer session at the opening of this week’s annual Maneuver Warfighter Conference on Fort Moore, Ga., the former Fort Benning. “The ACFT is really helping us change the culture of fitness in the United States Army.”

His backing of the six-event, CrossFit-style Army fitness test comes as competing bills in Congress propose different futures for the Army’s physical exam.

The House-passed version of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act would force the Army to adopt gender-neutral standards for the ACFT. But the Senate version of the bill would mandate the Army dump the ACFT, at least temporarily, in favor of its old test, the three-event Army Physical Fitness Test, or APFT. Both chambers in July passed their version of the legislation, which sets annual Pentagon policy and spending priorities, but must rectify differences within the versions before one compromised bill approved by Congress can be sent to the White House to be signed into law by the president.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

The Messenger got access to the Serious Incident Report (SIR) that was filed for the defection of PV2 Travis King. It shows that how the United Nations Command vets people taking the DMZ tours is clearly broken:

When King arrived for his tour of the demilitarized zone the following day, he checked in with a U.S. government identification card. The tour company submitted the list of participants in the tour to the United Nations Command Military Armistice Commission, the international body which supervises the armistice between the two Koreas. King had been placed on an international hold by U.S. and South Korean authorities owing to his disciplinary exhibits, and it’s not clear why he was not flagged prior to taking the tour. 

United Nations Command approved the manifest submitted to them by Hana Tours ITC.

The Messenger

What is most interesting from this report is apparently the North Koreans had a van waiting for King that he ran into after he crossed the border:

The tour began around 2:30 p.m. at Camp Boniface, a military post of the United Nations Command, just south of the southern boundary of the Korean Demilitarized Zone, the report details. Roughly an hour later at 3:30 p.m., King walked away from his group and sprinted through a space between U.S. and South Korean troops. 

Security Forces chased King as he ran to the far end of what’s known as conference row, the bright blue buildings in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. The Army private then ran north to Panmungak. 

The report says King ran to the back of a Korean People’s Army building where he entered a van and was driven out of the area by North Korean troops. (……..)

A U.S. military official familiar with the investigation told The Messenger the U.S. military is looking into the possibility that the North Koreans had prior knowledge of his intention to cross the border. The U.S. military official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss ongoing investigations. 

You can read more at the link, but King likely had this defection planned out. However, I don’t think he was smart enough to find a way to contact the North Koreans to actually coordinate his defection. It will be interesting to see what the investigation determines.

It looks like either PV2 King is a bad drunk or has some serious anger management issues. Considering he deliberately planned his defection to North Korea I think he has some mental and anger management issues:

Seoul police arrested King just before 4 a.m. on Oct. 8 in Mapo and placed him in the backseat of a squad car, according to records from Seoul Western District Court. He refused to answer questions, kicked the car’s doors and ranted: “F— Korean, f— Korean Army, f— Korean police.”

The court records redact the names of victims and the defendant; however, a court official on Tuesday confirmed by phone that King was the defendant in the case.

He was also fined about $3,950 and paid roughly $790 for damage to the police car, the records state. 

King joined the Army in January 2021 and was a cavalry scout administratively assigned to the 4th Infantry Division in South Korea, according to Pentagon spokesman Bryce Dubee.

King was also accused of assault on Sept. 25, according to court records. Seoul police say he pushed and punched a fellow customer at a Mapo bar who refused to buy King a drink, records state.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

It will soon be official that troops that score over a 540 on the ACFT will not need to weighed or taped:

Soldiers who earn a high enough score on the Army’s fitness test will be exempt from body fat standards under a new policy that will go into effect immediately, Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael Grinston announced Thursday. 

Service officials said they believe those exemptions will help reduce the error rate of the Army’s body fat measurement method to almost zero. 

Body fat is only measured on soldiers who fail to meet the service’s weight standards for their age and gender. The Army did not provide how many of its nearly 1 million active, National Guard and Reserve soldiers are failing the standard each year. 

The policy change came from a body composition study that also recommended the service simplify its tape measure method for calculating body fat for those soldiers who exceed weight requirements. A second recommendation would allow for a biometric screening on approved devices to calculate body fat if the soldier fails after a tape test. Those two recommendations are still pending approval from the Army, Grinston said.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but the number of highly fit Soldiers who have trouble passing a tape test in my prior experience is very low. They are usually very large muscular people who just have weirdly shaped bodies that don’t pass the tape test well. This new regulation is going to really help out this small number of people. Most people that tape overweight in my prior experience are just that, overweight.