The “White Rocket” was a term used by soldiers in the arctic to describe the skis that were issued to them. It is important to state at the onset, that prior to being stationed in Alaska, I had never been on any pair of skis, and my first attempt ever at skiing was on these devices.
The problem with a white rocket was in their design. Skis come in two different styles, cross country skies and downhill skis. Cross Country skis are long and thin, have a flexible binding so that one can pivot his foot forward when propulsion is desirable, and arched in the center to provide both clearance and grip. Downhill skis use a rigid binding, the foot is immobilized and canted forward, they are short and wide, and since propulsion is not an issue going downhill, they are designed to turn, steer, or “cut”, and ideal to properly brake and come to a halt.
Some genius decided that a ski could be designed for both downhill and cross country and made these God-awful things with a wide flat ski, no arch for traction, and a flat and flexible binding. I appreciated this the many times I was on these things, either wearing out my arms to move in the cross-country attempt or hurtling downhill out of control at 80 mph towards certain death screaming “Get out of the way!”
As the name implies, they were fast skis. Not only where they fast, but they were about impossible to steer, or do any other thing with them except falling. Crashing, flopping about in a heap, while ingesting copious amounts of snow became the favored method- and really the only method- to stop, when one was on White Rockets, and was done often either cross country or downhill. They were also known locally as “Suicide Slats.”
Alaska is a tough place to live, and a tougher place to soldier. Everything tries to kill you there, and those cursed things tried to do me in every time. I hated them.
They left quite an impression on me, as you may expect. So much so, that after I departed the great white north, and was confronted with a piece of equipment, program, plan, device, design, or anything else which was intended to do two things well, but completely failed to do either satisfactorily, I have called it a “White Rocket.” The Army, and most bureaucracies, are loaded with White Rockets, and I’ll explain to you why.
Decisions are made based upon staff analysis and presentation. Within this decision-making process, rest two separate criteria, screening and evaluation. Screening criteria is something that must be, so anything that is not within that criterion is dismissed from the onset and not evaluated. If the tank must be capable of traveling at a speed of 60 mph, those that top out at 50, 55, or 59 are not evaluated. Screening criteria is a must, and it is pass/ fail.
Evaluation criteria begins with all of those that pass the screen. Tanks will be graded afterwards on survivability, mobility, lethality. transportability, fuel consumption, cost to manufacture, ease of maintenance, etc., with grades- often weighted- assigned to the tank that performs that best in that area. The General may weight survivability as the highest, so its evaluated value is multiplied by four, giving that consideration more weight. Fuel consumption, weighted as a one – so in this process survivability is four times more important than fuel consumption.
All of this sounds perfectly reasonable, the Army thinks so, and continues to use this method to make decisions, as do many other bureaucratic institutions. As you can imagine, it is very important that each evaluation criteria are discoverable, measurable, and weighted properly to arrive at the best possible outcome. The problem with this model either resides in this analysis- as in something sounds better than it really is- or that careful decision makers generate too many evaluation criteria which eventually always selects that piece of equipment that is the most acceptable, and not the most outstanding. One that they can defend as being the most “ok”. With the universe of criteria being too numerous, it is race to the average, delivering a product that is generally satisfactory, instead of a product that is ideal for the circumstance.
An immediate example is the difference in the heating systems of my truck and my wife’s SUV. Her auto is designed to tailor optimum temp for everyone, but actually gaining a proper temp takes a degree from Harvard, or active employment with NASA. I am told to get the right temp, we must “fool” the technology. My truck, I move the knob a space to the right, and it gets warmer. In attempting the everything, the SUV does not do one thing well, unless it is “fooled”.
Have you called anyplace lately that has those automated phone answering/ call routing systems? Designed to be more efficient and convenient for everyone involved, but I find it decidedly inconvenient, annoying, irritating, as it is designed to do two things properly, does none. We end up speaking to a representative anyway, likely more agitated than we would have been had we been patched directly through.
White Rockets. The point is, that the white rocket is the ultimate generalist, while it does nothing exceptionally well. A few other examples come to mind:
Cops as Social Workers.
It is a fine notion that community-based policing involves the police at a granular level within the community and are representatives of the people they are sworn to protect. It takes a certain temperament to be this guy, and that temperament does not, or likely may not for the majority of Cops; translate well when the doing the uglier tasks of police work are necessary.
I think of Uvalde here and assume that the police in the school were aces at community policing. A very bad actor needed shooting, and for some reason we had trouble doing this. Sometimes the police function is to shoot the guy, and those that are experts in the softer side of engagement will realistically have trouble crossing that Rubicon. https://www.tag-ky.com/2022/06/02/uvalde-durational-resistance-and-the-operational-pieces/
The Military as the engine for Social Progress.
There is real value in inclusion and respect of all military members by its chain of command, and it falls into the category of the Army value of “respect.” There is a danger, a real danger in couching this mission as the most important.
We have not seen this realized in the new type of wars that we have been involved in, in this generation. I do have reservations, and real concern if we get in one of those- knife in the teeth, claymores in the trees, down in the mud and blood fights, that our socially conscious military may not be prepared for that type of warfare.
I remember a quote of the late Norman Schwarzkopf, who opinioned that the US Military was designed to “shoot people and break things.” Later, Gary Burbank, as “Earl Pitts, American” stated on air that the job of the US Army was to “shoot people that we don’t like.” Both were referring to the disastrous military policy of “nation building” during the occupation phase.
We won the War in Iraq and lost it when we tried nation building. Afghanistan, the same. Somalia, the same. Viet Nam, the same. Every time that we have tried to flex the military into an engine that it was not, we lost. Will we lose the military because it is now more focused on social progress than breaking things? Maybe not yet, but it is certainly possible.
Once again, I do not really have that much of an issue with the Military as a social progress engine, and figure that it is likely the best place for such experimentation. This is fine with me, as long as it does not impact the reality summarized in the term lethality. It is reflective of the Army value of respect, and within the team function that is military service, it is likely the right place to do it. The risk is to make this the objective, and then this is making such an attempt a white rocket. So, a young soldier “assigned at birth” into a different gender that they would prefer can wear a dress/pants if they like, as long as they can run a M240 like the Tasmanian devil. That, I respect, regardless of what outer garments you would like to wear.
Institutions that no longer pay attention anymore to their prime directive.
The media is incapable of reporting on anything that does not support their political viewpoint, truly deserves mention. CNN could not find any room in the news for goodness in Mr. Trump, Fox cannot find any goodness in Mr. Biden. They have departed from reporting the news to supporting a political narrative. How can these institutions call it both ways, if they have long forgone any pretense of impartiality? The Umpire – The Arlington Group (tag-ky.com)
Teachers Unions, the same. Political narrative and doing what is best for the teachers have outpaced the prime directive, which ought to be the best interest of the children. You think? School is preparation, equipping the youngest generation to be able to produce at some point. I doubt very seriously that a semi-literate, under educated, ill-equipped future member of the workforce will say after their numerous failures, “at least my school had a great teacher’s union.”
Border security….yes, the same. Somehow if one designs one that attempts to accomplish security and a hypersensitivity to migrant rights, we have a white rocket. “We are serious, don’t break our law, but if you do- we’ll reward you afterwards, and make sure that you are set up.” One would think that a policy that speaks to border security would actually have a security element- I mean, it is in the name and everything. Security Vacuum/ Iraq/ Afghanistan/Border/ Defund the police – The Arlington Group (tag-ky.com)
Just a few, if I have forgotten any feel free to leave them in the comments. Basically, we have cashiered actual functionality, for things that we can defend publicly, even if they are producing no results. These, dear readers- are White Rockets.