Kearsarge’s Bad Day

"When you work with the military, you expect to “hurry up and wait.” Sometimes complex operations just can’t be rushed. But when you’ve got hundreds of impoverished Nicaraguans depending on you for medical care, you can’t afford to wait forever.
After a great start on Tuesday, the Navy assault ship Kearsarge — on a four-month “soft power” mission to deliver humanitarian aid to South America — suffered reversals on Wednesday. What began as a mere delayed chopper flight cascaded into widespread screw-ups that threatened to undermine the Navy’s “hearts and minds” strategy here.

But in one sense, screw-ups are meant to happen. This mission is, after all, a “learning experience,” according to Commodore Frank Ponds. “As we do this from year to year, we’ll learn. We’ll find efficiencies,” Ponds told me."
War is Boring