Rambo Can Fix Anything.

I was told I needed to see the last Rambo movie. It was kind of a slow day, so I had it on in the background this morning.

For those who don't know, when we last left John Rambo over twenty years ago, he had been pardoned for destroying a small town as a reward for saving lost POWs and re-fighting and winning in Vietnam. He had kicked the Soviets out of Afghanistan.

The new movie finds him living the quiet life in Thailand when suddenly he needs to rescue a damsel in distress in Burma.

Rambo killed every bad guy in Burma. Every one of them. With a bow and arrow, a machete he made from a truck's leaf spring (actually, a common way of making the tool in poorer countries), and .50 Cal machine gun that he commandeered at just the right time.

Not a family movie. But Burma is on my list of countries where there are some truly evil people that just need to be shot but we, for a variety of reasons, will never go in and shoot them.

At least Rambo did it.

Being that it was a relatively slow day for me, I could re-engage on the planning project that got me in trouble early in this rotation. I'm smarter now. I know who to go through. I know what most (or at least some) of the guiding documents are. So I'm trying again, since I think the end result I was pursuing was still the right answer.

If nothing else, I'll learn more about why the people above me think my answer is wrong (even if it's not...). I'll have a better understanding, I hope, of how things work. And I'll be better prepared when I am working the higher levels in the future.

My counterpart in Afghanistan agrees with me, but was saying that his attitude has become one of "shut up and color." There's a time for that, but for me, it's not that time yet. He can't ruffle too many feathers because there are only so many SOWT Officer positions and rocking the boat hurts your chances of staying in the community. I, however, am in the Guard. My position is safe. I need to maintain a good working relationship, and don't want to needlessly create trouble. But in this case I am a little more free to question some things.

We'll see.

That said, when I am working those higher levels of command... well God help us all.

I also had another opportunity to get educated on some of our systems. One of the aircrews was offering a tour of their bird to the ground guys. In addition to learning more about their capabilities and how they work, I was able to learn more about how I, as a weather guy, can better support their operations and better support our ground ops with planning knowledge on it's limitations.

I also used this information to compare notes with our air controller, who runs the program for the guys directing air strikes, so that my planning information is tailored to the abilities and equipment of not only the aircraft but to the guy directing the aircraft.

It was a very informative session and I got tinker with some very cool toys.

Definitely one of those moments where I was glad that this equipment was on our side.

It may be cliche, but bad guys can run from this thing, but they will only die tired.