Re: Thinking out loud. . .

On Mon, 2 Sep 2002 21:05:53 -0700 (PDT), John Atkinson
<johnmatkinson@yahoo.com> wrote:

>To make
>a meaningful comparison with the Army or Marine
>tooth-tail ratios, you'd have to figure out who in/on
>those ships actually spends their time operating guns
>and missle launchers.

Out of curiousity, would that even give you a proper "tooth to tail"
ratio? I
was watching a whole bunch of military shows yesterday on TV (just got
cable!). One was showing some carrier operations. They were showing a
fire
drill in which only a very, very small fraction of the people on the
fire
drill were fire fighters. The rest were mostly admin types. When at
general
quarters, the admin types work in damage control. Would you consider
damage
control a "tooth" function? If you do, that puts a ship at pretty much
100%
tooth, doesn't it?

Allan Goodall		       agoodall@hyperbear.com
http://www.hyperbear.com

"We come into the world and take our chances
 Fate is just the weight of circumstances
 That's the way that Lady Luck dances
 Roll the bones." - N. Peart