Shut off their Air Conditioning for the Military

[CVMA544]

Ha Ha not to side track but when I was a Cpl in the USMC I got a letter from the government addressed to my military address saying I was in trouble for not registering for the draft (I joined when I was 17). Gave the letter to my platoon Sgt when he stopped laughing he tore it up and said not to worry, if they came for me the platoon would protect me.

I also have a framed copy of one of my LES that states as a buck Sgt I had accumulated 72 years sea duty.

The government would never screw up....

When I re-enlisted in 05 I had to present all my previous DD214's and sign a statement that I was registered with the selective service.

I had a friend that had returned from Vietnam that answered the door to be met by an Army Officer to notify him of his own death, he said he had to show his ID Card to prove he wasn't deceased.

 

[FutureButterBar]

don't you just love when non military people chime in on military stuff?

 

[Pocketman]

Marines are like Bananas...

What a coincidence, just this past weekend I had the banana conversation with a young jarhead.

I served 12 months in the tropics (still have remnants of the jungle rot) and 20 months in the desert. Sometimes we had A/C and sometimes we didn't. While not the end of the world, with the A/C we were better rested and therefore safer on the flight line. I do not begrudge one bit paying for our kids to have some relief from the heat in that sandbox over there, or anywhere for that matter. Like someone else posted, I do have a problem with paying for Congress' bottled water.

 

[gunman41mag]

What a coincidence, just this past weekend I had the banana conversation with a young jarhead.

I served 12 months in the tropics (still have remnants of the jungle rot) and 20 months in the desert. Sometimes we had A/C and sometimes we didn't. While not the end of the world, with the A/C we were better rested and therefore safer on the flight line. I do not begrudge one bit paying for our kids to have some relief from the heat in that sandbox over there, or anywhere for that matter. Like someone else posted, I do have a problem with paying for Congress' bottled water.

What about all the money we spend on ILLEGAL ALIENS We need to help our troops first !!!!

 

[Pocketman]

What about all the money we spend on ILLEGAL ALIENS We need to help our troops first !!!!

Yep! There's a very long list of things that we spend too much on.

 

[irishfan]

don't you just love when non military people chime in on military stuff?

Oh wow, only military people are allowed to have an opinion where their tax dollars go? Is it that everyone agrees with you or could it possibly be that most people just get tired of hearing how "great" some of you think you are? Just a thought

 

[irishfan]

People would protest because there was a draft, not because they were going to war. Around 2/3 of the people who went to Vietnam were volunteers not draftees.

During the 50s & 60s there was a massive amount of social strife that feed into the anti-war movement, and that is one of the main reasons why we don't have a major anti-war movement right now. The 80s & 90s didn't experience any major political movements that the anti-war crowd could tap into to build a new anti-war movement.

Most of America weren't protesting and burning flags during Vietnam. In reality it was a small amount compared to the overall population and it spread like a wild fire.

There's a myth out there about WWII that needs to be set straight. More people were drafted than volunteered for WWII, whereas more people volunteered for Vietnam than were drafted.

Also, I'd like to know what difference personal motivation makes in someone's actions. If I provide a service to you, it might be because I want to help you, it might be because I want to get rich, it might be because I want to impress some girl and get laid. At the end of the day, does it make one difference to you WHY I provided you that service? We worry too much about motivation and not enough about the fruits that motivation produces.

Lots of evil has been done for the best of reasons and lots of good has been done for the worst of reasons. I'm not a priest, I don't care what a person's internal motivation is about, it doesn't change the value of their service one way or another.

In my post I don't recall saying anything about the number of people drafted in WWII but rather people cared because we were attacked and were declared war upon. As far as service goes my comment was to say that unlike what a lot of people in here preach and beat their chest about, not everybody signs up because of patriotism. There are a LOT of patriots in this country who will never enlist due to a vast amount of reasons. Joining the military does not make you a better person or a better patriot in America. Likewise, it does not make you a bad person either. You should not be treated by anyone any different because you were in the military or not as we are all Americans and should treat each other as such without prejudice.

 

[duffman0286]

I was a A/C mech for the Marines for 9th comm bn Engineers and i will agree that a/c's are biggest use of power out there comm gear like satellites, Whipple shots, and radio dont use that much power but they all need to be cooled because they can overheat so there is a big need for a/c's over there. plus we put every diffrent comm site on diffrent generators just in case one goes down not all comm is lost and power drawl needs to be at least 80% for a generator to run properly and we never exceed that but if you take them from troops as a comfort issue it going to lower morel and add to heat exhaustion and the mission is going to suffer plus the staff nco's and officers are not going to give up there so why should the troops?

 

[iChokePeople]

snip

... plus the staff nco's and officers are not going to give up there so why should the troops?

You're on the right track, just keep going to the people who can actually make the decisions. And any officer or NCO worth a damn would not allow his soldiers/marines AC to be shut off and keep his own on (mission-critical stuff excluded -- you still have to cool components that will die if they get hot, obviously.) Any officer worth a damn would make sure that every time there was a VIP visitor (senator, secretary/undersecretary, anyone with the power to make real decisions) in the TOC, the TOC would be an OVEN. Sorry, sir, I know it's brutally hot in here, but you guys cut off our air conditioning, as you recall...

 

[duffman0286]

You're on the right track, just keep going to the people who can actually make the decisions. And any officer or NCO worth a damn would not allow his soldiers/marines AC to be shut off and keep his own on (mission-critical stuff excluded -- you still have to cool components that will die if they get hot, obviously.) Any officer worth a damn would make sure that every time there was a VIP visitor (senator, secretary/undersecretary, anyone with the power to make real decisions) in the TOC, the TOC would be an OVEN. Sorry, sir, I know it's brutally hot in here, but you guys cut off our air conditioning, as you recall...

Engineers have alot of power out there if they want a/c and comfort power they make sure we are happy they will never give it up heat will destroy a persons ability to preform work out there. plus its hard to insure proper power draw on a generator if they dont pull enough they start what we call wet stacking (where the generator lopes and it will drop the load terrible for alot of there comm gear that takes hours to reboot) they try this all the time out there to save fuel well we need the load to keep the injectors clean, (some times we even needed to use load generators to create fake loads just so they will run right fuel usage will always be the same because most of the generator set out there are to large for the job anyways) we pick the most stable generators not the most fuel saving.

 

[92FS]

Well I've had this nag from the forum for several weeks now,

Hello 92FS it appears that you have not posted on our forums in several weeks, why not take a few moments to ask a question, help provide a solution or just engage in a conversation with another member in any one of our forums?

​

So I guess I've finally found a topic with some first hand knowledge I can post to. One of the reasons I haven't posted in so long is because I am currently serving in Kuwait as a DOD civlian volunteer. Writing to you from my air conditioned barracks in Camp Arifjan where the current temp at 22:00 hours (10 PM) is 97 degrees. Forcast overnight low is 90 and predicted high tomorrow is 119. And we haven't got to "hot" part of summer yet.

If you go back to the original article, and I mean the one from NPR, it says, "The amount the U.S. military spends annually on air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan". It doesn't specifically say air conditioning for living quarters. I don't know exactly how they "run the numbers" but I suspect it is impossible to determine accurately how much of those fuel transport costs are specifically for air conditioning. The amount given has to be a guesstimate. Take my office building for example. Our building along with 3 other building share one generator. That one generator provides electricity not just for lights but also air conditioners. There is no way they have taken time to accurately measure how much of the costs of that generator are for general electrical use and how much is for cooling.

For those of you who keep talking about the "good old days" and think we should expect the troops today to live and work like that, you forget one thing. The military back then did not have computers or rely on them like they do today. PC's, monitors, routers, encryption devices, UPSs, printers, faxes, scanners, copiers, video conference cameras/monitors, wireless access points, and phone chargers. All of them generating heat and demanding to be cooled. And that's just the equipment in my little building of less than 20 people. Most of the equipment that doesn't die an early death from the dessert sand/dust would not survive long without air conditioning. The demands of today's technolgoy demand air conditioning of the modern military office space.

There, now the nag to get me to post should go away.

 

[duffman0286]

Well I've had this nag from the forum for several weeks now,

Hello 92FS it appears that you have not posted on our forums in several weeks, why not take a few moments to ask a question, help provide a solution or just engage in a conversation with another member in any one of our forums?

​

So I guess I've finally found a topic with some first hand knowledge I can post to. One of the reasons I haven't posted in so long is because I am currently serving in Kuwait as a DOD civlian volunteer. Writing to you from my air conditioned barracks in Camp Arifjan where the current temp at 22:00 hours (10 PM) is 97 degrees. Forcast overnight low is 90 and predicted high tomorrow is 119. And we haven't got to "hot" part of summer yet.

If you go back to the original article, and I mean the one from NPR, it says, "The amount the U.S. military spends annually on air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan". It doesn't specifically say air conditioning for living quarters. I don't know exactly how they "run the numbers" but I suspect it is impossible to determine accurately how much of those fuel transport costs are specifically for air conditioning. The amount given has to be a guesstimate. Take my office building for example. Our building along with 3 other building share one generator. That one generator provides electricity not just for lights but also air conditioners. There is no way they have taken time to accurately measure how much of the costs of that generator are for general electrical use and how much is for cooling.

For those of you who keep talking about the "good old days" and think we should expect the troops today to live and work like that, you forget one thing. The military back then did not have computers or rely on them like they do today. PC's, monitors, routers, encryption devices, UPSs, printers, faxes, scanners, copiers, video conference cameras/monitors, wireless access points, and phone chargers. All of them generating heat and demanding to be cooled. And that's just the equipment in my little building of less than 20 people. Most of the equipment that doesn't die an early death from the dessert sand/dust would not survive long without air conditioning. The demands of today's technolgoy demand air conditioning of the modern military office space.

There, now the nag to get me to post should go away.

I do agree mostly with your statement but you can exactly measure the amount of power drawl to A/C. As a engineer we had what we called (gen watch) to watching over all the generators vitals and refuel as needed and it all get logged in some short of record. when we set up these power grids we have to know max power drawl for every peice of gear to include comm gear computer coffee pot, and a/c's / heaters ac's them self are not all that bad heaters for cold weather are another story. just as you know most comm gear is separated by different generators to avoid everything going down at once when the generator fails. we have alot of generator for diffrent jobs ranging for 5kw to 100kw tactical generators and civ ones up to 400kw but with any generator you have to run them at about 80% max power drawl to keep them running properly. and most generator now have turbo's with help alot on fuel economy, and in our unit had to report fuel usage and fuel usage percentage to each piece of gear weekly to the unit.
Not all units do this but it can be figure rather easily.