Nowhere in that article does it say the captain was sacked for firing the rifle.
Here’s what it says:
“…has been relieved of duty about four months after he was seen in a photo firing a rifle with a scope mounted backward.”
If that’s all you read you could be forgiven for thinking the rifle had something to do with the sacking . But the article doesnt claim that. It insinuates it, but it goes on to say:
“The Navy said Yaste was relieved of duty “due to a loss of confidence in his ability to command the guided-missile destroyer” that’s currently deployed in the Gulf of Oman. The statement didn’t elaborate about why Yaste was replaced.”
So, Military.com insinuates—either purposely or carelessly—a connection to the rifle without any proof that that is the reason for the sacking.
The USN is categorical: the man wasn’t up to the stresses of war. So they sacked him.
Seems cut and dried to me. Military. Com erred in making an insinuation without proof. Piss poor journalism.
What the photo doesn’t show is the captain was aiming the weapon at the cook. Back story here is that it was ‘steak night’ and the captain had ordered medium rare and got well done.
Not saying it’s necessarily justified but I don’t think we should be jumping to conclusions here.
As I said, they always use that form of words … but, if he wasn’t up to it, how did he get there in the first place. In my naval experience the captain and all the crew are put through the hoops over a full-on period of work up and operational evaluation which always stresses everyone prior to the ship being declared operational and deployed to a war zone. I’ve known of captains removed somewhere in that period ie in the testing period, not the operational period.
How stupid is it to appoint an expensively trained captain like that? Find that sort of thing out earlier. It seems another sign of knee-jerk reaction rather that far longer term grooming and growing the most important war fighter in command of a lethal warship. If he pops out of that stream after years and ends up as CO material, they know everything about whether he will retain their confidence when he gets his ship.
I never served in the Navy or USCG but on the commercial side if a master is replaced mid contract it’s something bigger than management losing confidence out of the blue. If it’s something as vague as losing confidence, they’d wait until the contract is finished or hint really hard to him that he needs to get off early so Captain so&so can come in.
Also, I have no problem with the way Military.com & other media outlets worded their articles about the backwards scope & out of the ordinary “lose of confidence” dismissal. US Gov & Navy brass need not to be coddled or given the benefit of the doubt with all their other screwups. They screw everything else up, it wouldn’t surprise me if the fired this guy over a picture. They’ve done a lot worse.
So the line of reasoning here is that if the USN has a loss of confidence in a CO during a shooting war they should wait until lives are lost before sacking the CO? Shut the gate after the cow is loose?
I’ve sacked captains because I’ve lost confidence in them. It’s just business. If you think the guy is going to cause financial loss you sack them. Then they get a job somewhere else.
I would think we want to know why the navy had a loss of confidence. That’s the question. They can use the terms loss of confidence knowing nobody knows what that means and it absolves them from explaining or, also possible, it absolves the mistakes of someone higher up the tree,
Not me. My line of reasoning is, if the folks who run the USN are dumb enough to put a touch screen navigation system on the USS John McCain that no one knew how to use, which resulted in the deaths of 10 sailors, they’re probably still dumb enough to fire a CO from the USS John McCain over a tiktoc picture 7 years later. But that’s just me, we all have different interpretations of the words “government & naval intelligence”.
Let’s say we were talking about the same MIlitary.com article but it did not show a photo of the skipper holding a rifle. Let’s say the photo showed him smiling, standing on a jetway, in some airport–with a transvestite standing smiling next to him. The captain is not looking at the transvestite. Not touching him. There is no obvious link between the two, except they are in the same place at the same time. The photo just shows them standing there. Smiling.
Instead of mentioning the rifle, the article would mention the transvestite. All the article would say is the captain was photographed in an airport standing next to a he-she. It would say that four months ago someone in the Marines made a joke about it: “Look at the captain next to a he-she!”
And then the article would say everything it actually says now: sacked owing to lack of confidence from high-ups.
Would the people taking umbrage at the COs sacking now take umbrage for his sacking in that hypothetical situation? I don’t think so. I think a lot of them would say it was justified.
Below are 4 links of news articles from last April about this CO looking through a scope the wrong way. Yahoo News, The Telegraph, The American Mind, Business Insider, Stars & Stripes. There’s dozens of other media outlets (some more reputable than others) that carried this story back then as well. If you think the USN didn’t take notice or held a grudge about this then you worked for a different division of the USN than me.
As for the thought experiment, if a hypothetical CO had his face plastered across the internet holding a transvestite the wrong way 4 months ago & was fired this week, I would say it was because of him & the Navy being ridiculed for not knowing how to hold a transvestite properly.
If they showed a photo of him holding the rifle with the scope mounted correctly but the magazine out and the muzzle resting against a sailor’s head, should the USN not “hold it against him”? That, too, would have embarrassed the Navy. Look at all the negative press the actual photo generated. And still it would change nothing, because we don’t know why he was sacked.
You’ve gone on record saying the USN leadership is incompetent, and so anything they do is likely fucked up. I’m not going to try to change your opinion, because it is your opinion.
Hmmm. Zumwalt DD’s - Rail gun with no ammo. [being converted to DDG].
LCS - Broke-dick littoral ships with shit for an engineering plant & incapable of designed missions. It’s so bad, the NAVY is mothballing most of the fleet; some after only 5 years of service.
Ford Class CVN: Delayed, over-budget, & with catapults and other electronic systems that were not working when commissioned. The ordinance elevators are problematic.
So yeah, USN leadership is not very competent as proven by the evidence. But, so is the USCG.
FWI From USNI press:
A Navy official told USNI News the relief was not due to personal misconduct. Yaste did not immediately respond to a message from USNI News.