Well, dating all the way back to the most ancient of times when some flinty Israelite sergeant said,

you can't bring down those walls with those new fangled horns at Jericho.

The chief petty officer or the sergeant, the non-commission officer, has been the backbone of the army and the Navy and all militaries,

as long as we've known it.

And now we've got a situation where the NCOs are the problem. Hi everybody,

I'm Bill Whittle here with Steve Green and Scott out. Guys, it's a trope and it's a trope that's

based on reality. How many times have we seen it where some West Point lieutenant what behind the

ears walks out into the middle of a combat situation for the first time, immediately

orders some absolutely insane command

and is restrained by the sergeant who's been a pillar of wisdom and common sense and so on and

so. We see it so many times because it's fundamentally true. Well, things continue to deteriorate in the United States military, and I'm not talking

about the quality of our ships either. I'm talking about the quality of our crews. A USS Manchester

is a LCS littoral combat ship, but Steve, that's otherwise known as a little crappy ship.

Little crappy ship, right. They were originally commissioned two designs Liberty and the Independence Class, if I recall correctly,

in the days immediately after 9-11, when we would think would be doing nothing but fighting

wars on terror.

Littoral ship means basically groundwater Navy rule of thumb is within sight of land.

So we're retiring these, so they're not large ships,

probably the smallest active duty military ships,

fighting ships in the Navy.

Here's what happened on board USS Manchester's gold group.

A group of chief petty officers,

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