5 ms·

I don't understand. With pounding sand, don't contractors get tried with military tribunal if they interfere with field activities of the army? Like, SWAT team

by avmich 5y ago

I don't understand. With pounding sand, don't contractors get tried with military tribunal if they interfere with field activities of the army? Like, SWAT team in the house, with "give us source code or we're going to the court with charges of treason now"? I'd assume Capt. is correct in attempting to fix immediately, and somebody who'd oppose him should be investigated, right? By CID or FBI? Because contractors can't likely make fixes more ASAP than operators in the field? Or is it the purchasers who're procuring the equipment which "needs to be shipped and fixed properly"? Are we fighting wars in a manner "wait a minute, dear enemy, I'll just fix this small issue in a gusto, and we'll continue"? Just curious.

mierz00 5y ago
Contractors don't fall in the military hierarchy and the example given isn't interfering with field activities. Basically, a Capt can say what ever they like but if it's just not possible to be fixed in the field then it's not going to happen. Also, you don't get thrown into jail everytime you disobey an order. Especially when it comes to technical equipment.
- avmich 5y ago
  I'm not a lawyer, but I'd assume when a field unit conducts operations, in the field, and some equipment fails, it's the job of the supply chain to do everything possible to help mitigate the issue reasonably fast. Definition of "reasonably fast" would be an expectation, carried from previous history of similar cases, and definition of "similar" is carried from previous history of purchasing equipment for the army. In other words, one can't just say "oh, this is more complex, and suddenly you can't rely on your practices anymore" without first - when the equipment was talked about - making that clear. And "everything possible" would include tools, electronic or software, and software codes - and yes, possibly engineers who created them on the line, something like what was done when Apollo project had landings on the Moon. Only in this case I'd assume different kind of responsibility than just contractual. I don't fall in the military hierarchy at the moment, but that doesn't mean I can give aid and comfort to enemy. Again, I'm not a lawyer - that's why it's a tribunal - but for a court to give go-ahead to this (absent more prompt collaboration beforehand) would be something to expect. What would you expect if you'd be in the field in this case?
  - azernik 5y ago
    And that's the point - for such a contractor, the only punishment available is through courts, with more or less a presumption of innocence, and where the officer is in a lot of career jeopardy if the tribunal digs up that they were being unreasonable. By contrast, a soldier in the chain of command can be punished administratively, and disobeying orders is a crime that in most militaries is only excusable if the order is criminal, not if it's stupid. Rarely brought, but the spectre of it is there
    - loonster 5y ago
      You can always refuse the NJP and demand a court martial. In most cases, it's an extremely bad idea. As you go up the chain, more severe punishment can be applied. I have seen it work with one pissed off LCpl. The officer decided to back off.
  - michaelmrose 5y ago
    The requirements and financial penalties for failing to perform the duties specified in the contract are spelled out... in the contract. The biggest one is the government could neither give you a pile of money nor give you the opportunity to earn more piles of money in the future. There is no way you could do your job badly enough for it to be treason nor as far as I know subject one to a military tribunal.
saulrh 5y ago
I have wondered what the procedure is when someone gives impossible orders. Like, I know there's a spectrum here, but just to illustrate, what do you do if your superior says "I'm ordering you to jump that gap" but it's thirty feet wide and fifty feet deep with big metal spikes at the bottom? If you ordered me to, I don't know, fix a computer, and I've diagnosed that the computer is busted because the CPU has let the magic smoke out and I don't have any spares or any other less-critical equipment to cannibalize for a replacement CPU, is it just my job to tell my superior that it can't be fixed and if they keep insisting I'm just going to have to wait for my lawyer save me at the court-martial?
- CamperBob2 5y ago
  Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory is a good illustration of how this question plays out.
- stonogo 5y ago
  There's no duty to obey an unlawful order; UCMJ case history indicates that in order to be lawful an order can't infringe on the statutory rights of the person receiving the order. In other words, you don't have to kill yourself attempting a patently impossible feat, and as there can be no possible military objective being pursued by giving the order, the officer should know better than to issue it. As for your second scenario, yes, that's about it. Although to be honest it's unlikely to ever go to court martial; an officer demanding impossible things happens all the time and is dealt with at the company level.
  - metaphor 5y ago
    The parent appears to conflate general orders with technical orders; your interpretation of the second scenario appears to do the same as well.
    - stonogo 5y ago
      The word "technical" does not appear anywhere in the UCMJ. Technical orders are Air Force specific. There is no distinction between general orders and other kinds of orders in the military at large.
Meph504 5y ago
I'm not sure how you are refusing to improperly service something, The contractor is there because a high ranking individual at the DOD put them there, in most cases they are helpful, and willing to help out when they can, but they are there with the orders to make sure the equipment they are tasked is maintained properly. With that said, if a commander orders someone under his command to smash the piece of equipment with a hammer, the contract won't interfere, but he will report the situation. The issue is, most of the equipment at this point is well beyond the knowledge a company commander would have, they aren't qualified to know if this is something that can be fixed in the field, and a soldier under his command that is qualified isn't in a position to refuse the capt. order. So they fry the equipment. The army is pretty big on redundancy, and having contingencies, it would be very rare that an operation couldn't continue without a single piece of equipment. It might be harder, and may be a greater risk, but in a place where lots of things get shot, you make a plan, then you make due. I'm not saying the scenarios I'm describing fit all situations, but I can say that far less equipment was destroyed after they came on board.
- avmich 5y ago
  I didn't mean a contractor in the army quarters. Being in the field close to soldiers should help - in case of farmers, it's as if John Deere's certified mechanic (of course with all training, tools and spare parts, including and especially all software-related) was on the farm during harvest period. However, there shouldn't be a situation when the equipment can be fixed - i.e. it's not destroyed enough - and it's not because of software. Software is something which is relatively easy to change - I'm a software guy - and it has this property and advantage over hardware. So if it's software which misbehaves, it should be double duty of such a contractor - this time the whole company, not only the person in the army position - to help with everything, in a timely manner. In farm it's to allow harvesting to go with less problems, in fight it's to avoid losses among soldiers. I'm mostly talking about the whole company approach to such time-sensitive customers.
  - Godel_unicode 5y ago
    You can't field-update software which has to pass a hardware-enforced integrity check. This is by design, and is very much a feature (for further reading, look into anti-tamper). In general, military (electronic) gear is designed to be difficult to repair because repair and reverse-engineer are pretty similar. One radio being out is a small problem. The radio system's crypto being compromised because it was captured and reversed is a big Problem.
michaelmrose 5y ago
I would suggest you start by reading the part of the constitution where the crime of treason is defined and then continue on until you get through the bill of rights. Any dysfunction there is is liable to be systematic. You wouldn't need to point a gun at someone to force them to share their source code and if you did YOU would be the one going to prison. If it was required by the fat government contract it would be done.
stephen_g 5y ago
Sometimes there's nothing you can do to fix something and a piece of equipment has to be shipped off and repaired (in my line of work this has usually required cranes to take communication terminals off ships!). Usually the military will want to have spares though, so there are options if field repair isn't viable. The manufacturer/contracting company will always have a contract with the customer limiting liability so no, you're not going to be tried for anything but the company might get sued for breech of contract if things go really wrong. But my experience has been they they are pretty chill as long as you're respectful, make it obvious that you're competent and you know what you're talking about (which requires actually being competent, not something you can fake for long in that kind of situation!), and offer alternatives and solutions to get things going again.

by avmich 5y ago

mierz00 5y ago

Contractors don't fall in the military hierarchy and the example given isn't interfering with field activities. Basically, a Capt can say what ever they like but if it's just not possible to be fixed in the field then it's not going to happen. Also, you don't get thrown into jail everytime you disobey an order. Especially when it comes to technical equipment.

avmich 5y ago
I'm not a lawyer, but I'd assume when a field unit conducts operations, in the field, and some equipment fails, it's the job of the supply chain to do everything possible to help mitigate the issue reasonably fast. Definition of "reasonably fast" would be an expectation, carried from previous history of similar cases, and definition of "similar" is carried from previous history of purchasing equipment for the army. In other words, one can't just say "oh, this is more complex, and suddenly you can't rely on your practices anymore" without first - when the equipment was talked about - making that clear. And "everything possible" would include tools, electronic or software, and software codes - and yes, possibly engineers who created them on the line, something like what was done when Apollo project had landings on the Moon. Only in this case I'd assume different kind of responsibility than just contractual. I don't fall in the military hierarchy at the moment, but that doesn't mean I can give aid and comfort to enemy. Again, I'm not a lawyer - that's why it's a tribunal - but for a court to give go-ahead to this (absent more prompt collaboration beforehand) would be something to expect. What would you expect if you'd be in the field in this case?
- azernik 5y ago
  And that's the point - for such a contractor, the only punishment available is through courts, with more or less a presumption of innocence, and where the officer is in a lot of career jeopardy if the tribunal digs up that they were being unreasonable. By contrast, a soldier in the chain of command can be punished administratively, and disobeying orders is a crime that in most militaries is only excusable if the order is criminal, not if it's stupid. Rarely brought, but the spectre of it is there
  - loonster 5y ago
    You can always refuse the NJP and demand a court martial. In most cases, it's an extremely bad idea. As you go up the chain, more severe punishment can be applied. I have seen it work with one pissed off LCpl. The officer decided to back off.
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  The requirements and financial penalties for failing to perform the duties specified in the contract are spelled out... in the contract. The biggest one is the government could neither give you a pile of money nor give you the opportunity to earn more piles of money in the future. There is no way you could do your job badly enough for it to be treason nor as far as I know subject one to a military tribunal.

saulrh 5y ago

I have wondered what the procedure is when someone gives impossible orders. Like, I know there's a spectrum here, but just to illustrate, what do you do if your superior says "I'm ordering you to jump that gap" but it's thirty feet wide and fifty feet deep with big metal spikes at the bottom? If you ordered me to, I don't know, fix a computer, and I've diagnosed that the computer is busted because the CPU has let the magic smoke out and I don't have any spares or any other less-critical equipment to cannibalize for a replacement CPU, is it just my job to tell my superior that it can't be fixed and if they keep insisting I'm just going to have to wait for my lawyer save me at the court-martial?

CamperBob2 5y ago
Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory is a good illustration of how this question plays out.
stonogo 5y ago
There's no duty to obey an unlawful order; UCMJ case history indicates that in order to be lawful an order can't infringe on the statutory rights of the person receiving the order. In other words, you don't have to kill yourself attempting a patently impossible feat, and as there can be no possible military objective being pursued by giving the order, the officer should know better than to issue it. As for your second scenario, yes, that's about it. Although to be honest it's unlikely to ever go to court martial; an officer demanding impossible things happens all the time and is dealt with at the company level.
- metaphor 5y ago
  The parent appears to conflate general orders with technical orders; your interpretation of the second scenario appears to do the same as well.
  - stonogo 5y ago
    The word "technical" does not appear anywhere in the UCMJ. Technical orders are Air Force specific. There is no distinction between general orders and other kinds of orders in the military at large.

Meph504 5y ago

I'm not sure how you are refusing to improperly service something, The contractor is there because a high ranking individual at the DOD put them there, in most cases they are helpful, and willing to help out when they can, but they are there with the orders to make sure the equipment they are tasked is maintained properly. With that said, if a commander orders someone under his command to smash the piece of equipment with a hammer, the contract won't interfere, but he will report the situation. The issue is, most of the equipment at this point is well beyond the knowledge a company commander would have, they aren't qualified to know if this is something that can be fixed in the field, and a soldier under his command that is qualified isn't in a position to refuse the capt. order. So they fry the equipment. The army is pretty big on redundancy, and having contingencies, it would be very rare that an operation couldn't continue without a single piece of equipment. It might be harder, and may be a greater risk, but in a place where lots of things get shot, you make a plan, then you make due. I'm not saying the scenarios I'm describing fit all situations, but I can say that far less equipment was destroyed after they came on board.

avmich 5y ago
I didn't mean a contractor in the army quarters. Being in the field close to soldiers should help - in case of farmers, it's as if John Deere's certified mechanic (of course with all training, tools and spare parts, including and especially all software-related) was on the farm during harvest period. However, there shouldn't be a situation when the equipment can be fixed - i.e. it's not destroyed enough - and it's not because of software. Software is something which is relatively easy to change - I'm a software guy - and it has this property and advantage over hardware. So if it's software which misbehaves, it should be double duty of such a contractor - this time the whole company, not only the person in the army position - to help with everything, in a timely manner. In farm it's to allow harvesting to go with less problems, in fight it's to avoid losses among soldiers. I'm mostly talking about the whole company approach to such time-sensitive customers.
- Godel_unicode 5y ago
  You can't field-update software which has to pass a hardware-enforced integrity check. This is by design, and is very much a feature (for further reading, look into anti-tamper). In general, military (electronic) gear is designed to be difficult to repair because repair and reverse-engineer are pretty similar. One radio being out is a small problem. The radio system's crypto being compromised because it was captured and reversed is a big Problem.

michaelmrose 5y ago

I would suggest you start by reading the part of the constitution where the crime of treason is defined and then continue on until you get through the bill of rights. Any dysfunction there is is liable to be systematic. You wouldn't need to point a gun at someone to force them to share their source code and if you did YOU would be the one going to prison. If it was required by the fat government contract it would be done.

stephen_g 5y ago

Sometimes there's nothing you can do to fix something and a piece of equipment has to be shipped off and repaired (in my line of work this has usually required cranes to take communication terminals off ships!). Usually the military will want to have spares though, so there are options if field repair isn't viable. The manufacturer/contracting company will always have a contract with the customer limiting liability so no, you're not going to be tried for anything but the company might get sued for breech of contract if things go really wrong. But my experience has been they they are pretty chill as long as you're respectful, make it obvious that you're competent and you know what you're talking about (which requires actually being competent, not something you can fake for long in that kind of situation!), and offer alternatives and solutions to get things going again.