# The bare Minimum



## Ooh-Rah (Jul 17, 2020)

At first I just thought this was a funny video of a bunch of Marines getting yelled at for just doing the bare minimum.  But is he telling them to stop "looking" for reasons to keep an aircraft from flying and instead just do that minimum requirements of their jobs?

I'm genuinely trying to understand this.


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## Locksteady (Jul 18, 2020)

It sounds like he is trying to force them to sign off on things that don't fit the schoolhouse/manual definition of GTG in order to avoid flight delays, for better or worse.  From his tone it sounds like that may be unofficial SOP in his neck of the community.


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## Marine0311 (Jul 18, 2020)

Sounds highly illegal and unprofessional.


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## J. (Jul 18, 2020)

...and yet we wonder why the USMC has so many aircraft fatalities and mishaps. This is just another example of leadership trying to make sure their FITREP looks good at the cost of endangering their Marines. I fucking despise these type of people, they are a tumor to the organization.


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## Devildoc (Jul 18, 2020)

One of our newest orthopedic residents came into medical community later in life, he was a mechanical engineer, and worked as a civilian contractor to the Navy and Marine repair facility at Cherry Point.  He said that He would look at or repair needing to be made which would take "x" dollars over "n" time, and the Marines wouldn't want to do that in order to get the aircraft on the line faster. He said they would engage in "percussive maintenance", beating pieces and parts together in a bastardized form to make them ready rather than wait three weeks on a part to arrive.


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## AWP (Jul 18, 2020)

I made it to the 2 minute mark because...what more do you need to watch? Holy shit. Someone needs to pull his qualifications.


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## DasBoot (Jul 18, 2020)

I wonder how many of the crashes and accidents over the last 20 years have this piece of shits finger prints on them?


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## Marine0311 (Jul 18, 2020)

This is one of the reasons I got out. I love the Corps but this type of crap happens and either Marines get injured or hurt or killed or the bad leadership turns around and further screws over good Marines to cover their ass when they put pressure on you to pencil whip it in the first place.

I love my DD214 blanket.


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## R.Caerbannog (Jul 18, 2020)

As an outside observer I'd like to point out the date that video was posted. June 17, 2014.



Not sure if anyone else remembers, but this was a time when military spending was being cut across the board. Spare parts and personnel don't grow on trees and the political establishment was more interested in running social experiments on the Armed Forces.

If anyone listens to the rest of the talk there is a mention of a "MOE?", "squadron", and of "missing flights". Based on my limited knowledge I'm guessing there is more to this than meets the eye. More often than not, US forces were running on shoestring personnel and supply resources. Hence, people being forced to cut corners to meet mission op tempo's.

US military plans steep cutbacks, roils ranks
Sequestration’s Impact on Military Spending, 2013 – 2014
Military Families Will Be Hit Hard By Spending Cuts in 2014


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## Steve1839 (Jul 18, 2020)

The Wall Street Journal had a rather good op/ed piece today entitled "The Navy's Cultural Ship is Listing" that basically supported several of the points being made here...my take is there are more missions than money and none of the brass wants to raise their hand and say "Nope, can't do it..."  I'd post a link to the article, but it is behind a paywall...


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## ThunderHorse (Jul 18, 2020)

Ooh-Rah said:


> At first I just thought this was a funny video of a bunch of Marines getting yelled at for just doing the bare minimum.  But is he telling them to stop "looking" for reasons to keep an aircraft from flying and instead just do that minimum requirements of their jobs?
> 
> I'm genuinely trying to understand this.



I listened to all of it.  Now, I've never dealt with aircraft on the maintenance side of the house...but trying to get a bird in the air for the DCG-O at Bliss could be a pain in the ass.  They had shit down all the fucking time. 

In a sense I guess I understand what he's saying.  But he's saying it pretty bad.  The Gunnery Sergeant is facing pressure from his chain to get birds in the air.  So he's telling them to meet the minimum standards.  And to be honest that was the same thing that occurred on tanks and brads.  There's an X[Deadline Fault], and then there's a Circle X [Deadline but Mission Capable]. Not everything has to be an X.


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## AWP (Jul 18, 2020)

ThunderHorse said:


> In a sense I guess I understand what he's saying.  But he's saying it pretty bad.  The Gunnery Sergeant is facing pressure from his chain to get birds in the air.  So he's telling them to meet the minimum standards.  And to be honest that was the same thing that occurred on tanks and brads.  There's an X[Deadline Fault], and then there's a Circle X [Deadline but Mission Capable]. Not everything has to be an X.



Regardless, a deadline on a vehicle is vastly different than one an on aircraft. Some broken pieces can chain together so Part A that is broken could lead to other parts going down...and the aircraft. Electronics are like this as well and I see it all of the time with radar. Bare minimum, get it up and running, and then it shits the bed. Now your radar is down until parts can be ordered all because you cut corners on preventative maintenance or "duct tape and 550 cord" became your solution.


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## ThunderHorse (Jul 19, 2020)

AWP said:


> Regardless, a deadline on a vehicle is vastly different than one an on aircraft. Some broken pieces can chain together so Part A that is broken could lead to other parts going down...and the aircraft. Electronics are like this as well and I see it all of the time with radar. Bare minimum, get it up and running, and then it shits the bed. Now your radar is down until parts can be ordered all because you cut corners on preventative maintenance or "duct tape and 550 cord" became your solution.



The difference on a tank in a training environment is hopefully it just shits the bed in the motorpool.  With aircraft, I get it, it shits the bed and it falls out of the sky.


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## DA SWO (Jul 19, 2020)

A PMC airplane can fly certain missions, local pattern work for example.

I took the video as the Gunny(?) telling them to list panes as PMC, vice keeping them NMC.  It's also possible the jr enlisteds didn't like the NCOIC and constantly red-lining planes was their way of saying fuck you.


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## Cartoonjunkies (Jul 21, 2020)

The Marine lingo threw me off a bit, but this is what I took from it:
Basically, when you do a daily, which I think is like our preflight or postflight inspections, you have specific carded items on your inspection list. Things like checking a hydraulic valve or wiping down struts.
Now, there are things that can absolutely keep a plane from flying that are not listed on a preflight. In the Air Force, everything comes with a “zonal inspection”, which is a catch 22 telling you to check the entire area and everything in it. I don’t know if the Marines have or had that then.
So from my understanding, he’s telling them to stick to the cards, and don’t down a bird over something not on the inspection. Hence the “Don’t go hunting for downers.”
Listing part of an inspection as something that needs to be done later is also fair game. For instance, I’ve signed off a post flight before, but left it as “Unable to check formation lights due to circuit breaker maintenance, acft req formation light check prior to next flight.”
So that part is fine. But him telling them that they’re “not gonna not sign off on” something is absolutely wrong. If you don’t feel comfortable signing off on something because something is wrong with the aircraft, absolutely do not. Sure he can say he’ll take the heat if something goes wrong, but at the end of the day, it’s your name on the corrected by block.


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## AWP (Jul 21, 2020)

Not an aircraft maintainer, but I recall the story of the F-16 maintainer (Germany?) who killed himself because he was being blamed for a dead pilot. It came to light there was a maintenance issue that multiple people should have caught, but didn't. He was the scapegoat and did himself in during the trial or Art. 15 process. It has been a few years.

If you are a maintainer and an accident happens, Operations will burn you at the stake to protect its own. Those of you who know me will understand why I'm such a hard ass for maintenance standards and personnel...


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## GOTWA (Jul 21, 2020)

If anyone is interested, Diane Vaughan published many a works on the idea of normalization of risk/deviance. I've read her works regarding the practice and how it led to the loss of crew on NASA's Challenger  as well as a few others.


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