Hopeful for forgiveness...

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tornsoul

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Hi, my name is Ed;

Not quite sure how I got here, but somehow feel a profound sense of connection to this community. Let me start with I am sorry. This story is complicated. My uncle ran the F-16 program for Lockheed-Martin until his death. I grew up worshiping his son, my cousin, who was a Navy pilot during Desert Storm and went on to be a Navy Test Pilot and is now a pilot for Southwest Airlines. I would have followed him anywhere, but my eye sight would not permit. For the record I still will. Lacking that I "joined" the Navy in an attempt to go be a SEAL so I could at least be on the same boat as my hero (and for the record I loved the wet trainer at Groton sub base). I thought I would have a fighting chance being a collegiate varsity athlete in great shape, but of course the military always has other plans. In one of the most humiliating experiences of my life they asked me to get off the bus leaving Paris and "consider another option."

That option was enabled by X, my thesis advisor at Boston College. Turns out my favorite professor who I used to drink wine with in St. Mary's Hall on Friday nights was deeply emmersed in the early years of spread spectrum radio communications. So I became "DoD", The year was 1989, the place was Hanscom Airforce Base, Lexington, MA. It goes without saying that was right before Desert Storm. It goes without saying the nature of military combat and command and control was changing towards towards small tactical operations instead of broad divisional assaults. We were rushed, we did our best, it was not good enough, we tried, I am sorry. Milstar was not quite operational at the time although we had one bird live. Our only two ground stations were H, and K in the South Pacific at the time. We had multiple (Beta at best) ASCAMP terminals in the field with ODAs that were not ready for prime time. G carried on and won the war. Guys died and I have to live with that for the rest of my life.

That's a very long winded way of saying I hope this community can forgive me. To this day I still wake up in the middle of the night wondering if I could have done something different, something better, that would have changed things. To be transparent, the operational tempo was so intense its all a blur...I am so sorry to this community for my failures...

Mod Edit to remove names
 
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@tornsoul

No idea what you are talking about, nor how accurate your story is.

For that reason I’ve deleted the names and places you listed.

Welcome, now go forth and sin no more.

To add -
This thread is for welcomes only, so there will be no discussion of your post here.
 
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