Welcome to Military Jargon 101.
Today’s acronym, OPSEC, stands for “Operation Security.” I’m guessing you all have a pretty good idea what that means without me going into detail. The closer we get to K reaching his deployment destination, the more important it is to not give out a whole lot of…well, any…specific information (on those extremely rare occasions I even have it). Around here, OPSEC means that I will not be breaking news via this blog. If something important happens either to K, Uncle Fungus, or any other member of their company, family and close friends will be alerted in person first before I post something here—if I post anything at all. It also means that even if I do know something specific about what K is doing, it will be told after the fact and only with permission. While I seriously doubt terrorists are lurking around my little corner of the blogosphere, I don’t want to get K in trouble with his commander and I would prefer not to take chances. So, you are more than welcome to ask questions, but I cannot guarantee that I will be able to answer them or answer them in a timely manner, but ask anyway because it might be something interesting.
My own mission, of course, is to share my experiences here at home and hopefully enlighten and help others either understand this lifestyle (if you can call it that) or get through their own deployment. That said, I’m practicing a lite version of OPSEC myself. You’ve noticed I don’t use full names around here. That is because there are way too many crazies out there and many of them would love to try to take advantage of a family not at full strength or potentially vulnerable. Soldier’s families are not exempt. Specific locations of where any of us are will generally not be given out. I want to protect my kids as best I can even though this is a public blog so whatever measures I can take, I will. Just to warn you, there may be times when I edit comments to keep specific info off the site. And there you have the Gainfully Deployed OPSEC rules and regulations.
I told everyone I would be writing up some info about the current (and general) situation in Afghanistan that K will be walking into and I still plan on doing that. In the meantime, if anyone else is interested in researching on their own, one of the sites K recommended is Small Wars Journal. He also suggests reading up at at the BBC’s site as well as the New York Times (FYI: there may be articles you have to register at the site to read). If you’d like to read blogs by soldiers in the field (or their family members), Milblogging lists many such blogs (including mine). I welcome any other suggestions from people who have found sources that are reliable and informative and not prone to sensationalism. Tall order, I know.
Finally, you’ll see a badge over in the right-hand column linking to the Gainfully Deployed fan page on Facebook. If you haven’t already, but would like to, please join. That is where I’ll be posting my links on Facebook to new posts moving forward and I will probably post links to other sites of interest there as well. The fan page is public, but my Facebook profile is not, so please keep my own OPSEC rules in mind when commenting on Gainfully Deployed’s fan page.
That’s all the adminning I have at this time. If you see me inadvertently breaking my own OPSEC rules, do not hesitate to point that out. I am inherently tired and sometimes let things slip even when I have the best of intentions. Thanks so much!
And now, time for a snow day. Maybe we’ll even get snow.
