Fledermaus
DP Veteran
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2014
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- Political Leaning
- Libertarian - Right
Inquiring minds can be satisfied that while the Party Central Military Commission copies the U.S. armed forces in many things such as rank nomenclature and insignia the Boyz don't have Rotc. Xi Jinpingpong has initiated a modified two years of service program for college students in their third (junior) year but the volunteers don't necessarily become officers. Some participants get a 90-day-wonder kind of officer program but then get billeted as assistant deputy underling to a captain or major. Or follow a 1Lt around. NCO are not in their day either. It's not an appealing program in any way.
Xi's purpose is to improve the aptitude of the force that is largely conscripted from the remote and undeveloped provinces - the villages and small cities away from the developed coastal urban areas. The swarm of urban middle class kids nightclubbing on their parent's tab have zero interest in military discipline so the quality of the armed forces continues to be wanting. In fact and this is another topic but military style correction camps out in the vast and barren sticks are a booming business of big bucks popular with middle class parents to ship out their wild and defiant sons and daughters for shaping up -- the teens stay out there in a moonscape till they're broken in. Run ragged by a caveman cadre who thrive on it.
PLA is a huge Soviet bureaucracy of corruption and ineptitude. PLA incidentally means all of the armed forces. It's the PLA Navy too and the PLA Air Force besides. Army controls and runs everything. Promotions in the Navy -- the PLAN -- are cleared by army brass as are promotions in the Air Force which is the PLAAF. Xi is trying to integrate the three forces on the U.S. model but he's up against the proverbial Leviathan. The Chinese ancient rule of seven in and eight out doesn't work the way it used to because of the huge numbers and countless recesses. That is, when you put new people somewhere you always take out more than you put in. In the contemporary bureaucracy the eight people you nab first off are nobodys while the guyz with power and money have hid themselves away in it for life. You can't manage what you can't see or find and there are too many of 'em tucked away.
There are elite units such as the PLA Rocket Force, the old Second Artillery Corps. RF is scientifically and militarily respected because it has all the strategic nuclear missiles and the conventional ones too. Xi has elevated RF above the PLA top field commanders so Xi will have to keep his head down still and for a while yet. There is officer candidate school in the CCP armed forces yet they're missing a lot by not having Rotc or something equivalent. All of us in Rotc wherever we were agree that unlike West Point et al, being a civilian college military cadet is the most fun you can have with your clothes on. It's military education and training so it's serious stuff but you've got to mangle a rocket azimuth into the Administration Building to get yourself busted out. Cause at Pentagon and in Congress each one of us is a big investment. Always.
I did The Old Guard 3 IR each day for four years after my Rotc concentration in national security and strategy -- I wuz invited into TOG and I accepted cheerfully. We did our Rotc summers at Ft. Benning, Ft. Dix, Ft. Bragg, Ft. Drum among other army paradise resorts. We got our balls busted every minute high and low wet and cold and to all four points of the compass. 3 IR does field training exercises at Ft. A.P. Hill in central Virginia each winter during the off tourist season of the National Capital Region. I did jrotc in high school (cadet ltc senior year) and senior rotc at university (cadet ltc year four). Between 'em I did prize drill team member and then leader, color guard, military police, public speaking, parades and ceremonies, field training exercises, sat through classes and got tested in more ways than one. No one could beat those eight years with a stick.
What I didn't get in either rotc experience was to carry the national flag in color guard my second year cause the pms pulled me out to put me in charge of some cadets so I could qualify to be advanced. What I didn't get out of either rotc was to be a company commander of cadets -- to command directly faces, bodies, souls -- the grunts. I got that in TOG but it wuz too important in active duty to have much fun with; still, it was fine. Instead I wuz cadet ltc twice sitting at tables in offices with snotty cadet major staff officers ticking boxes and cussing 'em out for failing to order up a jeep. Yes I made rotc command decisions in the office and in the field and that was good. And what's good is good so there's nothing to complain about. Now I feel somewhat inspired to email Leader Xi to tell him to press on with it.
I guess you lied when you stated you had me on ignore.
Oh, and cool story, bro...