re: Why would the Gov instruct pilots to destroy staging areas for the hurricane?

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Now the 82nd and 101st airborne have arrived. Get the frick out of the way.

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No one else was there before that? No National Guard? No Urban Search and Rescue teams from FEMA? No Coast Guard? None of those rolled in as soon as as the worst of the storm cleared? Did the 101st not take longer to mobilize than the NC NG and the NG from other states? Hmmm.....I wonder?

I have no idea what’s happening in these videos.

But I do know the federal government is full of people who believe men can get pregnant. So absolutely nothing is out of the question when it comes to the feds.

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Do you believe that our military is so inept that they are endangering Americans on American soil inadvertently and repeatedly?

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I mean is Walz their fricking Sgt Major? Then yes, of course.

Yeah to be honest with you when I saw this it just looked to me like some inexperience/ineptitude on behalf of the National Guard

Either the federal government is purposely trying to damage North Carolina or the guard personnel is inept

it almost like people don't know what they're doing but they've been able to stay in the National Guard and rise through the ranks maybe use that politically to get elected governor of Minnesota

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Yeah to be honest with you when I saw this it just looked to me like some inexperience/ineptitude on behalf of the National Guard

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It’s been a minute since I wore the uniform, but unless things have got far worse than I could have imagined, there’s no way those pilots didn’t know what would happen by hovering that low. Military chopper pilots, including the National Guard, are very well trained. In fact, most national guard pilots come to the national guard after their active duty time is over, so odds are good your average national guard pilots has more experience than many active duty pilots. And they tend to stay in the guard longer, meaning even more stick time.

ETA…



Most have probably seen this picture of a Chinook pilot sitting the arse end of his chopper onto a rooftop to pick up American soldiers. The skill required to do this incredible and only comes from extensive training and years of experience.

This pilot was a member of the Pennsylvania Army National Guard.

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When I deployed to Iraq in 2009 with an Army helicopter brigade, nearly all the soldiers in our unit and every other unit were younger than me—a generation younger than me. But not the pilots. Some were young, but many more were in their 40s and 50s. Larry Murphy, a Chinook helicopter pilot, was one of the very few soldiers older than I was. I was 56. He was 58.

On Wednesday, 5 September 2019, Larry was honored with the unveiling of a painting commemorating an amazing bit of flying he and his crew did in Afghanistan in 2003. Larry was deployed with a company of Chinooks and supporting equipment to Afghanistan. The tour was supposed to be a year and was extended to 16 months. The Chinook company was made up of soldiers from the Pennsylvania and Connecticut Army National Guard did not leave Afghanistan till 2004. They were in support of several companies of soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division, Fort Drum, New York.

On 10 November 2003, Larry and the crew of Chinook helicopter Yankee 2-6 received an additional mission to pickup prisoners while they were on a resupply mission. These missions are a routine part of combat operations in Afghanistan. But this mission was different. The prisoners had to be picked up from the side of a steep mountain at an elevation of 8,500 feet above sea level. There was no place to land an aircraft with a 52-foot-long fuselage that is almost 100 feet long from tip to tip of its massive twin rotors.

The pickup point was a shack on the side of a cliff. Larry and the crew landed rear-wheels-only on the roof of the shack with the tail ramp lowered. With the back of the helicopter on the shack roof, Larry and the other pilot, Paul Barnes, could not see the shack or any other close-in visual markers. From the cockpit, the pilots could see down the cliff to the valley 2,500-feet below. The flight engineer James Duggan, crew chief Brian Kilburn and door gunner Margaret Haydock guided the pilots from the side and rear of the aircraft.

Although technically a landing in the sense that the rear wheels were on the ground, the pilots were carefully keeping the full weight of the 25,000-pound (empty) helicopter from resting on shack, and keeping the front of the helicopter stable and level while the prisoners were brought aboard

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LINK

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This all reminds me of the time George Bush didn't want to help New Orleans after Katrina because so many black folks live there.

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Yes really… really fricking dumb

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Just to be clear. Is there some sort of implication here that these helicopter pilots are being ordered to do this?

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The destruction in NC is unprecedented that far inland. The authorities and government agencies are struggling to deal with it. Leaving a whole bunch of local yokels with a lot of authority.

Most are working 18-20 hours a day trying to help out, but the incompetent and power hungry are capable of anything, especially when given power.

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Why do all of the accounts reporting stuff like this have weird, conspiracy-sounding names?

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Probably all from the same bot farm.

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500 here, 1,000 there. But the choppers there now are national guard under control of the governors. Meanwhile, the largest collection of choppers in the world is within 300 miles, waiting for federal direction.

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82nd CAB has been there a week.

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The 82nd ready brigade (elements of it at least) can be anywhere in the world in 18 hours, but to head to the other side of the state, a week at least, smh.

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Honestly to a former company commander in the 504BCT that makes little sense. Pull out the current IRF brigade and you screw up the whole BCT rotation to send some of the worst possible assets to a disaster of this sort. Now if you needed to make forcible entry into an airfield in bum frick Egypt you have the right call. Even though each of those BCTs have a Engineer battalion in them they are the incorrect type of combat engineers. The 37th/127th/307th are good at destroying stuff not so good at building and fixing. They could cut the frick outta some trees with det cord though. Instead they sent the 20th Engineers, also at Liberty but part of the XVIII Airborne Corp not the 82nd. This is the best tool for the mission.


One unit that I can think of that is close, would be useful, but I am not sure of the status is the 391st Engineers in the Reserves. Headquarters is in Greenvilles and the 4 line companies are in Spartanburg, Asheville, York, and Warner Robbins. These are companies that would have HMEEs and maybe some legacy SEEs as well as front-end loaders, D7 dozers and 5 ton dumps.