Pentagon mulling ban on gender-reveal combat operations
By Zoltar the Malignant
SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Air Force 1st Lt. Jack Livingston eliminated a senior al-Qaida leader with his Reaper drone while simultaneously letting his parents know that their newest grandchild has a dong this week.
Seconds after the 500-lb. JDAM loosed by the Reaper slammed into the terrorist’s compact car half a world away in rebel-held northwest Syria, Livingston’s proud parents whooped with joy as a blue mushroom cloud roiled skyward on the display screen.
“It’s a boy, Ma!” said Livingston as his mother hugged him, while his fellow airmen at the 174th Attack Wing command center at Hancock Field Air National Guard Base, alternated between getting confirmation of the kill and congratulating Livingston for not pulling out of the former exotic dancer at the Cinnamon Bobcat just outside the main gate.
While the Pentagon has tolerated the fad of “gender reveal kinetic military actions” so long as mission objectives were being met, sources say that senior military leaders are contemplating a ban in the wake of several high-profile embarrassments.
The first known gender-reveal combat operation was Operation Neptune Spear in 2011, when SEAL Team 6 loaded up with pink tracer rounds to kill Osama bin Laden and placate an expectant wife who had gone full dependa about having a gender-reveal party just like her snotty older sister. From the moment the unnamed SEAL radioed in, “For God and country, Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo — it’s a girl, motherfuckers,” the craze took off.
However, the gender-reveal incident that resulted in the 2020 fire that destroyed the USS Bonhomme Richard has prompted calls to forbid the practice. The Wasp-class amphibious assault ship burned for four days in the harbor of Naval Base San Diego, but the fire went unnoticed for the first three because it blended in with all the other gender-reveal party fires ravaging California.
“We were in the foc’s’le when [the suspect] came running in with a copy of his girl’s ultrasound, hollering for everyone to ‘look at the kid’s cannoli,’” according to a witness statement from the investigation. “[Suspect] then produced a bag of blue Roman candles and said something about ‘announcing the good news in the ship’s magazine’ before galloping off.”
The Senate Armed Services Committee subsequently empaneled its Gender Operations Notes and Directed Solutions working group to discuss the future of gender reveal missions. But while GONADS is many months away from presenting a final report to Congress, some in the military support an immediate suspension of gender reveal kinetic actions.
“It’s peer pressure — if you stick with the classic explosions and black, oily smoke instead of blue or pink, people think you’re nonbinary or something,” Navy Lt. Jerome Potter groused as ordnance personnel aboard the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson taped bags of pink confetti to the warhead of the GBU-53 StormBreaker bomb being loaded into his F-35C fighter. “This is some white people bullshit right here.”
A ban on gender-reveal missions will not affect Raytheon’s $400 million contract to build JDAMs that explode purple in honor of Fibromyalgia Awareness Month, a company spokesman said.
Zoltar the Malignant, a former Army infantryman, giggles every time he hears someone say “Fort Dix.”