I am a complete psycho when it comes to certain things and I accept this.
One thing I am very crazy about is my husband's safety, along with the other soldiers in my life. I love these boys, they mean the world to me, I don't want anything to happen to any of them.
Rules are put into place to keep people safe, they may not make much sense to you, but there may be a bigger picture that you cannot see or understand.
The rule that I am speaking about is OPSEC.
OPSEC, also known as Operational Security, is the principle that we, as military wives and military family members, should all abide by when talking about our soldiers. If you’ve been on any military related message board on the internet, you have more than likely seen a warning to be sure to practice OPSEC. This means protecting the information you know about your soldier and his unit. Generally this means that you don't give out the following information, exact location overseas, any info on troop movement and always practice caution when uploading photos from a war zone. Certain aspects of a photo can give away our soldier's locations.
A very simple violation of OPSEC that I have seen countless times is giving out dates for returns and departures. Never give dates or times for troop movements. Keep in mind that “next Thursday” is a date. This includes R&R dates as well as deployment and redeployment dates. Planes have been delayed for days or weeks because an excited family member made this information public. Training dates are included in OPSEC.
People sometimes feel that since their soldier isn't on their way to a war zone that they shouldn't feel threatened. There are people here in the United States that wish to do harm to our soldiers/military, their safety here is just as important as it is overseas. Let's do everything to keep them safe wherever they may be.
