The IG is an independent entity which exists to investigate misconduct and fraud/waste/abuse. There are Inspectors General at all levels from local bases up to the Secretary of Defense, and they have confidential reporting hotlines. The only thing worse for a commander than having shenanigans be substantiated at an IG investigation is to have been found to tolerate retaliation against the reporters.

Generally about every month or two, a Navy commanding officer gets canned for "loss of confidence in his/her ability to command." They aren't bulletproof, quite the opposite. And leaving out cases of alcohol misuse and/or sexual misconduct, other common causes are things within the IG's purview.

Much more realistically:

Individual A reports a unique or rare problem. Everyone knows it is reported by person A.

Nothing is done.

Person A reports the problem "anonymously" to some third party, which raises a stink about the problem.

Now everyone knows that person A reported the problem to the third party.

This is why I (almost) never blow the whistle. It's an automatic career-ending move, and any protections are make-believe at best.

Then Person A needs to haul their butt to the Defense Service Office, call their Member of Congress, and tell the "anonymous" hotline that they've been retaliated against.

I'm not pretending this is some magic ticket to puppy-rainbow-fairy land where retaliation never occurs, but ultimately, how much do you care about your shipmates? I had a CPO once as one of my direct reports committing major misconduct and threatening my shop with retaliation if they reported it. I could have helped crush the bastard if someone had come forward to me, but no one ever did until I'd turned over the division to someone else, after which it blew up. Sure, he eventually got found out, but still. He was a great con artist and he pulled the wool over my eyes, but all I'd have needed is one person cluing me in to that snake.

Speaking from the senior officer level, we're not all some cabal trying to sweep shit under the rug. And the IGs, as much as they're feared, aren't out to nail people to the wall who haven't legitimately done bad things. I'm sorry you've had the experience you've had, but that doesn't mean that everyone above you was some big blue wall willing to protect folks who've done wrong.

heck, you're in the ship too. I'll take all the retalitation if I get to keep breathing. If they wanna kick me out over saving my own skin, fine. Saves me from deserting.

The US Navy has over 300k active-duty personnel. I suppose it's easier to just go somewhere else where no-one knows who you are.

It sounds like a certain commercial aircraft manufacturer that starts with a B and ends with an oeing could really use an effective Inspector General system.

Probably. The biggest blind spot internal auditors have is things that didn't leave a paper trail.

It is too common that such investigations don't even start because there is just one connecting piece of evidence missing.

Leave a paper trail people!

I seriously believe what I've heard about upwards failure. Being competent seems to be an impediment, and the goons at the very top are ludicrously malformed people.

The incompetent group together, they have to in order to survive.

The competent don't group together, they don't need to. They can take care of themselves.

The former uses their power as a group against the individuals in the latter.

Basically the plot of Atlas Shrugged.

Atlas Shrugged? The book written by that demented woman who couldn't deal with her own feelings but told everyone how individualism was the answer to everything while living thanks to other people's support?

That book?

Yeah the one were people attack the author rather than the idea because they aren't competent enough to do so.

Objectivism, like many philosophies or political beliefs, only works in an absolute vacuum.

Maybe the one person who survives the first trip to Mars can practice it.

I'm not an objectivist. My comment is the extent of the Ayn Rand beliefs I hold for my most part.

When you work on ideas instead of personalities you get to do that.

Nobody here tried to disprove my comment. Just a few people starting complaining about a dead woman whose book I mentioned in passing.

They got together and argued, incompetently. Demonstrating the effect I was attempting to illustrate.

i guess the true fate is the competent arguing amongst one another in an attempt to establish who is most competent, while the incompetent group together and bask in the real rewards. The goals of the incompetent are simple and tangible. The goals of the competent are abstract, as they seek acceptance from their fellow competent peers

Objectivism: that fart-huffing philosophy that leads people to think everyone else is incompetent to judge it, when it's just a bunch of hateful trash that is to the right as Marxism is to the left.

That doesn't hold water.