Your Job Matters

AWP

SOF Support
Joined
Sep 8, 2006
Messages
18,876
Location
Florida
I'm in my cups a bit, so I'll leave it to other members to support or refute my points.

Your job matters. You don't need to be SOF to contribute. In fact, the least SOF job on the planet has a greater effect than most understand. A PJ/ SF soldier/ SEAL/ Raider/etc. needs to be paid. Their travel vouchers matter. You supply types? Yeah, that high speed gear doesn't appear from thin air unless contracting listened to shooters and now you'll issue that oh-so-cool nylon. You base station commo guy/ gals with those high speed radios, servers, computers...intel needs them to establish patterns of life or behavior or whatever it is they do. You think those shooters can arrive on the X without pilots, crew chiefs, vehicle mechanics and the like? Yeah, nah. Who gives them the X? Some nerds with data gathered from other nerds via a network maintained by other nerds. Oh, your ISR support has a chain that mirrors the above in its own right. You have to be fed and your mail sent by others, and that precious OPORD or CONOP or whatever written by...

And the non-SOF types supporting the other non-SOF types? You have a role in the bigger picture. Our nation's enemies are as afraid of our missiles and planes and ships and whatever as they are of our SOF shooters. Your support of those of those conventional elements mean a great deal in the big picture. Our military may exist to place a scared 19 year old with an automatic weapon on a 10-digit grid coordinate, but how do they arrive there, how are they paid, how are they supported?

You should get the idea by now. I think. Other jobs aren't listed but they matter as well.

Shooters can't do their jobs without enablers and enablers do not have jobs without shooters. There's a symbiotic relationship required to kill our nation's enemies. Enablers, please don't fail the shooters and shooters, please don't fail to recognize the enabler's contributions.

Ima drink some water and go to bed. Agree with me or beat me up, I stand by the above and I'm sure I will in the morning.
 
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All that I read in that lengthy novel is "POG's are cool too bro" and we all know that ain't true!🤣😋

Couldn't agree with you more bubba. One of my favorite stories to tell all the young "I am the spirit of the bayonet" types. Is that I replaced my KIA gunner in 2004 with a mechanic out of the motor pool. Ended up being a top hand.

Amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics. As Russia is finding out...
 
I'm in my cups a bit, so I'll leave it to other members to support or refute my points.

Your job matters. You don't need to be SOF to contribute. In fact, the least SOF job on the planet has a greater effect than most understand. A PJ/ SF soldier/ SEAL/ Raider/etc. needs to be paid. Their travel vouchers matter. You supply types? Yeah, that high speed gear doesn't appear from thin air unless contracting listened to shooters and now you'll issue that oh-so-cool nylon. You base station commo guy/ gals with those high speed radios, servers, computers...intel needs them to establish patterns of life or behavior or whatever it is they do. You think those shooters can arrive on the X without pilots, crew chiefs, vehicle mechanics and the like? Yeah, nah. Who gives them the X? Some nerds with data gathered from other nerds via a network maintained by other nerds. Oh, your ISR support has a chain that mirrors the above in its own right. You have to be fed and your mail sent by others, and that precious OPORD or CONOP or whatever written by...

And the non-SOF types supporting the other non-SOF types? You have a role in the bigger picture. Our nation's enemies are as afraid of our missiles and planes and ships and whatever as they are of our SOF shooters. Your support of those of those conventional elements mean a great deal in the big picture. Our military may exist to place a scared 19 year old with an automatic weapon on a 10-digit grid coordinate, but how do they arrive there, how are they paid, how are they supported?

You should get the idea by now. I think. Other jobs aren't listed but they matter as well.

Shooters can't do their jobs without enablers and enablers do not have jobs without shooters. There's a symbiotic relationship required to kill our nation's enemies. Enablers, please don't fail the shooters and shooters, please don't fail to recognize the enabler's contributions.

Ima drink some water and go to bed. Agree with me or beat me up, I stand by the above and I'm sure I will in the morning.
Everyone wonders why I bring logs of dip to the garage every couple weeks… be a good dude and people will watch out for you.

“Real recognize real”- Aristotle
 
Shoutout to @BloodStripe for reminding me of my OP. Every now and then in vino veritas pays off...

Christmas Eve, 1970, around midnight, I'm sitting in an ambush site along a trail in Quang Nam Province. Dark, deathly quiet, a slight breeze making the bamboo gently clack together...I've got the PRC-25 in front of me, squelch off. I hear our company callsign whispered on the handset and put it to my ear.

A comm S/NCO--I don't remember his name--is on the graveyard shift in the comm bunker at our tiny company compound klicks away. He's obviously in his cups, his whispered voice reaching the radios of all five teams, all in their respective ambush sites, and he begins a speech not unlike @AWP 's OP (although a bit less eloquent), along the lines of "I love you guys."

Although it was unusual, unauthorized, unexpected--a support guy thanking us on a tactical net--it was strangely comforting.

This was a support guy we appreciated with our lives because all medevacs, reacts, fire missions, CAS called in by our teams went through him and the other comm guys. They had the net to Danang Dustoff, Marble Mountain Air Facility and the ROK Marine arty compound tasked with our fire missions. With an 9-man team alone in the boonies, they were literally the only lifeline we had.
 
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