In the 1987 timeframe, I was sent off to a exercise to be held in Honduras. Note, I was not a volunteer, and the office was forced to send one guy. This was some kind of headquarters element, of which intelligence was just one component of seven groups.
So to get the orientation....I had to fly from my Panama base....to some Air Force installation in central Florida. On a Sunday afternoon, we flew in and faced some storm that kept us in the air for an additional forty minutes (flying circles).
Monday morning at the base, we all (probably 700 individuals total) walked over to the base theater for the initial briefing. It was rather simple....sign a log and hand a copy of our orders over.
General so-and-so got up and gave a six minute speech....mostly blah-blah-blah stuff.
Then the major got up to talk about living conditions....these were Vietnam War-era canvas tents.....no AC....snake issues existed, and chow was mostly a 2-star situation. Luckily, we'd only be there six days total.
Then the intel guy stood up and gave some presentation to explain why we were there. Out of a 20-minute presentation.....there was marginally two slides which had some identification of 'secret' stuff. My own opinion was that it was marginally secret, and it could have been worded differently to just avoid any secret stuff. (note, I'd been in the intel field for 7 years at that point).
Then came the pause, and a break. To which, we discovered.....other than an empty Coke-machine in the theater lobby.....there was no liquid refreshment.
As we assemble and sit for the next part....there's a problem. The security guy got all hyped up. Basically, he could not vouch for anyone's clearance, and the whole presentation done by the intel guy was a problem.
They then led all us out.....spent 30 minutes trying to get a print-out of our clearances, and then spend about 75 minutes trying to get all us cleared, and given some kind of badges. At this point, it was lunch, and they released us.
More or less.....two hours of the morning wasted.
We wasted Tuesday in the same fashion, and on Wednesday morning....did some kind of deployment line inspection before hoping on some cargo plane to fly into Honduras.
Among my group of forty-odd intel guys (shift A/B)....we had these two Army guys. I referred to them as 'Frank' and 'Marty'. Neither one were intel, and on a IQ test level...neither would have scored above a 90. Not to say they were stupid....but they just weren't that bright.
Their purpose in life? At the end of each shift.....they'd take classified waste out to some barrel and burn it.
Yes....a whole eleven hours around, and other than that last hour at the burn-barrel.....they just sat around.
The final day of the exercise....it ended in a abrupt fashion.....probably half-a-day early. Frank and Marty stayed behind to burn everything left.
Exercises for the most part of my career.....were just wasted time, but it gave some satisfaction to the generals that they were capable of conducting a war. In some ways, I view the Russian business in the Ukraine in the way that they were marginally having exercises for decades, and it was all built around some WW II experience.
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