We had access to a BK at one of the FOBs I frequented in Iraq and although I’ve never been a huge fast food fan, that stuff was so good. It’s a huge morale booster. I’m sure that sounds simplistic as fuck, but you really come to appreciate the little things when you’re deployed.
Reminds me of that story of the US navy in WW2 having a ship dedicated to producing icecream for morale purposes.
I hope it patrolled the seas blaring that classic icecream truck music…
It’s too bad they cut that scene from The Hunt for Red October.
Not sure “What Child is This” is the usual ice cream truck song, but it’s the Christmas season so I’ll let it slide.
Came looking for the ice cream story and was not disappointed.
Its highly memeable but this is the true answer.
The Psychological benefits of even a very short mental vacation from being deployed are hard to quantify but very real on top of the morale boost.
I knew a guy who served in Afghanistan and he said after a particularly long and brutal time in the field an ice cold can of coke made him cry.
During my conscription (finnish military), there was a kiosk sized civilian-staffed kitchen at the corner of the small recreational building of the base, where you could buy junk food during off-hours.
God, fried chicken tenders with some crappy fries have never tasted so good…
I’m not a big fan of BK, but I imagine going to the BK joint would be a semblance of normalcy.
Everyone is a fan of BK when all you’ve had for weeks on end is MREs and field rations. I ate like 15 burgers the first time we had BK in iraq.
I miss the Cheese and Bacon spread…and the Cheese & Jalapenos spread
I lived in Korea at a time when there were scant few western food options outside of Seoul.
So a Burger King came to town, and we were taking expensive taxis across town to get our hands on a damn hamburger that was roughly twice as expensive as it would be in the states. We went daily, sometimes twice for the first couple weeks.
I was not in the military and was living a good life, but sometimes eating soup and rice at every meal can wear on your soul to the point where you’d murder a hooker turned good on the street in broad daylight for so much as a frozen gas station burrito.
Don’t even get me started on how excited I was to once find a six pack of Dr. Pepper on the black market.
It doesn’t surprise me at all that they’d bring burgers to a war zone.
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Makes a lot of sense to me. Full disclosure I like Burger King.
For real though especially if you’re somewhere cold - a warm burger that tastes like home could be a huge help.
Same. I’ve never been a Burger King fan, but dear Lord, that first whopper after months of eating nothing but MRE’s tasted better to me in that moment than any steak I’ve ever eaten, and that feeling of a full belly after actually enjoying a meal did wonders for my morale.
My favourite was always the visits from the ether bunny.
Also a cinnabon. And a coffee shop called green bean. And a pizza shop. And much more. Sometimes DFACs 1 and 4 gets old.
This is serious. If the USAF sets up shop anywhere we plan on having a presence for a while, there will be some amenities. Even if the base is bombed on a regular basis.
Do they have airmen staffing them? Or do they hire locals? Or import civvies?
TCNs, or third country nationals. People from neither the US or locals.
From my understanding the reason why is the almighty dollar. They don’t get paid nearly as much as our troops and contractors, but still a lot more than they would make at home. There is quite a bit of info about it if you do a quick search.
Usually local civies.
It’s not locals. That’s too dangerous most of the time.
Can’t risk BK tech falling into enemy hands
That’s not totally accurate. Much of the work in Afghanistan was done by local nationals. We had them cooking in our DFAC. But often the fast food joints were staffed from other countries. Seemed like mostly Eastern European workers.
And we had the same in Iraq until there were suicide bombers. Then they switched to third country nationals.
It was locals in Korea and Germany, locals in the states too obviously. I’m not sure what they do in more dangerous areas.
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Apparently Guantanamo Bay even has its own combination KFC and Taco Bell, as well as a Starbucks.
It makes sense. A military is only as good as its logistics, and the US’ forward bases are the tips of very long spears, dependant on a lot of logistics. So you need to have the means to have a continuous pipeline of supplies to each outpost. In peacetime, you keep that open by supplying the troops with burgers, tacos, XBox games or whatever; if the shit does hit the fan, all that capacity can be diverted from tortillas and patties to ammunition, drones, amphibious landing craft or whatever, at short notice.
Knowing the US military Logistics, that won’t be a diversion; it’ll be an addition. A friendly reminder that we deployed Fucking ice cream barges, barges with the singular purpose of making ice cream, to the South Pacific during WW2.
Supposedly a Japanese POW saw the barges, and knew at that moment that the war was lost, as the US could afford to supply servicemembers with ice cream, while Japan was facing widespread rationing and food shortages at home. (But I can’t find any confirmation of this story)
Believe Napoleon was the one quoted for An army marches on its stomach.
It isn’t all about calories but also morale as they knew then.
An army marches on its feet and fights on its stomach. Good boots and good rations win wars.
(Since modern armies maneuver in vehicles more than by foot you can replace boots with vehicles but the core concept still holds)
There is the same story about a German officer realizing that after discovering US soldiers had chocolate bars on them.
Can’t wait for the Tankies to start flooding in with their mental gymnastics. Either that or they’ll just call you “evil liberal” lol.
I feel like the tankies have become the boogeymen of lemmy. I haven’t seen a real one in ages, just people talking about how they’re coming… Any day now…
lemmy.world defederated from them, so that might be part of it
I think it’s due to lemmy.world defederating from some of the louder instances that I’ve seen way less content of that nature. Not 0 of it, but at least it’s not shouting over the top of every single post I see while browsing the All Communities list.
Oh that’s because hexbear and lemmygrad got fucking defederated. Used to be worse before
Ah, yes, us army is cool and awesome, not a weapon of global imperialism at all.
I agree with you but one has to acknowledge the proficiency of the US Army. The sheer amount of equipment they have coupled to the good training and 1st class logistics makes it a force the Russian army would not be able to recon with.
Shit the Afghanistan war cost them $300 million per DAY for 20 years. No one else can do imperialism as good as the US Army.
The US army is very good at logistics, which doesn’t make them cool. It does make them awesome in the literal sense, and unfortunately makes them a very effective tool of global imperialism.
Ah, yes, us army is cool and awesome, not a weapon of global imperialism at all.
This but unironically.
It can only be unironic if you don’t understand history or geopolitics.
Why would a Canadian say that?
There are lots of tankies in the West. I interpreted the use of the Canadian flag in the comic to just indicate that it was one of those over-enthusiastic tankaboos rather than an actual Russian defending their own military strength. It could have just as easily been a US or Euro flag to get the point across. I don’t think it’s a commentary on Canadians specifically.
Yeah America fucking knows logistics. I worked at a non profit and our warehouse where we would store donations would become quite the mess during garage sale season. We had a squad of US Army Reserve logistical something or another who basically work in warehouses volunteer for the day so I went ahead and gave them the task of organizing and cleaning up the warehouse, a task I thought would take them a few hours. I go on my 30min lunch break and I come back to 5 dudes standing around and a warehouse so clean and organized that you could eat off the floor.
As they say, organization is half the battle.
The other half is violence.
In summary, the battle is won by the most organized violence.
Unironically so.
Logistics has always been the US military’s best weapon.
Pretty sure it’s punching down
When you’ve got nukes, all wars are punching down.
The knowing that even if you fight really well against them, they could just say “fuck it” and flatten you anyway.
Didn’t stop the Vietnamese. Or the Afghans.
Yeah eventually the goal of anyone that punches down is “get the biggest punch,” and they definitely have it.
Missed opportunity for “Weapons of ass destruction”
I’m 15 years old again, apparently…
Weapons of gas production
Weapons of ass destruction…
I’m torn between making a Taco Bell joke or a joke about my dick.
I’m ready to hear both
It should be Taco Bell instead.
Weapon of Ass Destruction
In and Out, better food, better promise
I know right?? What the fuck is in their oil that makes their fries kill my guts??
Nothing but plain fries, and a small soda = chanclas spanking my ass.
I’m sure they have those as well.
“The line between disorder and order lies in
logisticsBurger King.”Unleash the Murder King and the Taco Hell!
Libs would have you believe that America isn’t a monarchy.
Ohh shit, is this the modern day ice cream barge?
That’s a weapon of mass addition
No, it’s destruction. Just ask my toilet.
This should legitimately scare every other military force, considering conflict with the US. Logistics, possibly better than fueling a convoy to Kiev.
