Almost immediately after US forces overran Baghdad in 2003, they started building large logistical bases, called Forward Operating Bases or FOBs. Not surprisingly, these evolved from austere supply dumps to comparatively lavish posts, with many of the comforts of home. Relatively secure and safe, they serve as the home to maintenance units, administrative units, and pretty much everyone who isn’t going outside the wire on patrols or raids. The denizens of these bases, no longer called REMFs, became known as Fobbits. Given the fairly urban nature of Iraq, even small outposts could quickly come to have some of the creature comforts we Americans like, such as internet access, fast food restaurants, and hot and cold running water.
Afghanistan is a little different. It is a largely agrarian nation, with few troops stationed in the cities. Most of the troops are scattered among small villages, many perched precariously on the sides of the rugged mountains that make up so much of the nation. That tends to lead to a very austere lifestyle.
This is hardly the lap of luxury. Still, almost as soon as Marines or Soldiers start to improve the defenses of a cantonment, they start working on making it just a little more like home. It’s what troops do. The Marines of Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines, stationed in Helmand province, figured a home cooked meal was a good place to start. So they built a kitchen.
“We want to live as comfortably as possible, and dinner is a big deal to all of us. Preparing a meal together, cooking together and eating together – it’s just like family.”
Now, my one wartime experience was something of a contrast to that, but in some ways similar. My unit was a part of the VII Corps, stationed in Germany, and it was never designed or equipped (or trained) to deploy away from Germany. So we weren’t very “expeditionary” in the current cant of the DoD. Just getting to the theater for Desert Storm was a major endeavor. But once we got there, we lived out in the field. We didn’t set up any cantonment areas, just basic tactical bivouacs. Each company of the battalion was separated from the next by about 3 kilometers or so, dispersed to present a less appealing target for SCUDs, artillery, or other weapons. Each company position was basically a circular perimeter of the vehicles, with a couple of tents set up for the troops to sleep in. Not bad, since we were used to just sleeping on the ground when we went to the field, but hardly luxurious. Picking up and moving was not a major challenge. We rarely stayed in one location more than a couple days. And we were always miles from any civilization, or even the nearest road.
Today, units are far more adept at deploying half-way across the globe, but far more likely to operate out of one location for an extended period of time, usually near a local population center. They have the time to not only dig in a significant defense, they have the time to improve the position from a comfort point of view.
Via John at Castle Arrggghhh, here’s a Youtube about air-dropping supplies to a Forward Operating Base in Afghanistan, and how GPS technology has made airdropping supplies easier and more feasible.
Yes, that’s the RAF, and they’re resupplying the British Army (ever wonder why it’s “the Royal Navy” and the “Royal Air Force” but not the “Royal Army?”) but the basics apply to US forces as well, with a couple of caveats.
First, the RAF has a serious shortage of Chinook helicopters. They’ve recently signed contracts to buy more, but they’ll be short of helos for a while. With fewer helicopters to move heavy loads, they have to either move supplies by road, or air-drop them. For many missions that the RAF might air-drop supplies, US forces would simply use Chinooks.
The second is that even this isn’t the cutting edge on using GPS to improve drop accuracy. The comment at The Castle points to MMIST, a supplier of air-drop accessories. And while the video seems to show their Low Cost Aerial Delivery system, they also sell GPS guided para-delivery systems. In fact, almost as soon as the Army realized that GPS could be used for more than just pinpointing your location, they started development of a system to guide air-drops using modern airfoil parachutes tied to a GPS system.
And age old military problem has been trying to figure out what the bad guys are up to. When you are a grunt on the ground (or even a brigade commander on the ground), very often, your ability to see what is going on in the battlefield only extends as far as the next ridgeline. In an urban environment, it is even worse- you can’t see around the next corner. As soon as airplanes became viable, the military started using them for observation. Indeed, the whole development of military aviation started as a result of this need for observation. In modern terms, this observation is called ISR or Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance.
Today, in the age of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, getting the high ground is pretty much accepted as the norm in our military. We’ve all seen gun camera video of Predators smacking insurgents with a Hellfire. But while it is nice to have the odd Hellfire land on Jihadi heads, what the ground commander really likes is having an eye in the sky for long periods off time. There’s a couple of different schools of thought about how to use UAVs like the Predator. The Air Force takes a more centralized approach, using the video as the first step in a long-term intelligence analysis, much of which is done stateside. The Army tends to like to use it in a more immediate sense, appreciating the ability to peek over the bad guys shoulder. Both approaches have merit. And there’s a good deal of overlap between them. The only real conflict is in how and where the UAVs are flown. That tension has been enough for the Air Force and the Army to both operate their own fleets of Predators.
There’s three major UAVs supporting the Army in Iraq and Afghanistan. There’s a small UAV called the RQ-11 Raven, designed to support companies and battalions, and it’s basically just a video camera in the sky.
Raven’s are run from a laptop computer on the ground right there with the troops. The feed from the video camera is feed to the laptop, and gives the company commander a good overview of what is happening right now. It is unarmed, and pretty unsophisticated. It’s little more than an electric radio controlled model airplane with a digital video cam. Still, it is handy as heck. Cheap, reliable and an easy way to look over the next hill.
The next UAV system is one that is familiar to most of us from the news, the MQ-1Predator.
The Predator is currently operated by the Air Force. The Predator started out as a simple reconnaissance machine, again, a simple remote controlled airplane with a video camera. Pretty soon after development started, someone figured out that if you go to all the trouble of putting a day/night sensor in a stabilized mount under the nose, you might as well add a laser designator to allow it to “paint” targets for missiles and bombs. And it didn’t take long for someone to figure out that if you have all that, why not cut out the middleman and strap on a couple of Hellfire missiles as well. Now, the Predator could tap high-value or time-critical targets. Mind you, it’s primary mission is still to be a set of eyes in the sky. It’s not really an attack aircraft. The Predator can stay airborne over a target for anywhere from 14 to 18 hours, but can only carry two dinky little missiles. If it is being used to attack targets, it would still normally call on a regular jet to bring the ordnance.
Now, once the Air Force and the Army figured out how handy it was to use these UAVs in strike role, it was a logical step to produce one that was tailored more towards it. Mostly, that meant a bigger drone that had the horses under the hood to carry more weapons. That lead to the development of the MQ-9 Reaper.
You can see that the Reaper looks pretty much like a Predator on steroids. Which it is. No sense reinventing the wheel. Instead of the dinky little 115hp piston engine of a Predator, the Reaper has a 950hp turboprop engine. It’s got a bigger wing, and instead of carrying 250 pounds of weapons, it can carry up to 3000 pounds. It can still provide all the same ISR capabilites, but now, instead of having to call in a fast mover jet like an F-15E, the Reaper can provide serious close air support with 500lb bombs.
One huge advantage to the Reaper is that it is relatively cheap. Now, it’s not cheap compared to the RQ-11, but it sure is compared to an F-15E. One of the big concerns the Air Force has had (and the Navy as well) is that ever since 9/11 (indeed, ever since the end of the Gulf War) they’ve had to keep aloft patrols of expensive manned aircraft over places like Iraq and Afghanistan. That costs a lot of money to operate. Another, hidden, cost is that those hours accumulate on the airframes. Jets can only last for so many flight hours. The services don’t really like burning those flight hours droning around in circles waiting to see if someone needs some bombs. And all the time spend loitering over A-stan is time that could be spent training for other missions.
Now, since the services, especially the Air Force, would rather spend their time and money doing the things they are good at, they have sometimes dragged their feet on doing the tasks they need to do but don’t really like. SecDef Gates, last year, nudged the Air Force and said, basically, “You guys need to spend more time supporting ISR in Iraq and A-stan.” The Air Force leadership basically said “Sure thing” and went back to doing what they were doing. That made SecDef Gates unhappy. So he fired the Secretary of the Air Force and the Air Force Chief of Staff. Suddenly, the Air Force decided they were gonna jump on the ISR bandwagon, whole hog. And since they couldn’t suddenly field a whole bunch of new MQ-1s and MQ-9s, they took a retro step. They took the recon systems from the Predator family, and plugged them into a manned aircraft, the trusty Beech King Air, creating the MC-12W Liberty.
As a short term solution, it’s a pretty simple and cheap way to pump some additional ISR into the theater. All four branches of the services fly some version of the King Air. It’s a very popular and easy to operate airplane.
Now, about that video. Like I said, the Air Force model is to beam the video take form the sensors all the way back to the US (or other ground stations)via satellite and have it analyzed. That’s great, but it doesn’t do much for the grunt on the ground. So in addition, they also use a souped up version of wifi to beam the video directly to the ground, so troops using a laptop can see what the sensors see. That gives them great situational awareness and also lets them refine the tasking. That is, they can talk the sensors onto those things that they really want to take a look at. (There’s a similar program that lets them see what manned aircraft like F-15s and F-18s see through their targeting pods). They can also use this to make sure that the weapons are going to be dropped where they need them.
It turns out that the video signal is unsecured, much like a home wifi that isn’t encrypted. Whether this is because of an oversight, or for technical reasons is unknown. Not being entirely stupid, some of the insurgents have figured out a way to tap into the signal and see if they are being watched. Understand, the insurgents haven’t figured out how to hack the controls that operate the birds, just the video feed that goes to our troops on the ground. Still, it’s not a good thing. This means that some insurgents will be clued in to whether or not they are under surveillance, and maybe getting ready to take a Hellfire through the front door. It isn’t the end of the world, however. It’s surprising how hard it is to tell just what an overhead video is showing if you aren’t used to it. If you look at a Google Earth pic of your hometown, you might be surprised how long it takes you to figure out if its showing your neighborhood or not.
A lot of attention has been paid to the threat IEDs and EFPs pose to Humvees in Iraq and Afghanistan. Heavier armor, jamming of cell phone signals, the CROWS weapons mount and “Rhino” countermeasures have all worked to make Humvees more survivable in an IED environment. Also, moving from Humvees to MRAPs for some missions has increased troop survivability.
Still, IEDs aren’t the only threat Humvees and similar vehicles face. One of the most common weapons on the battlefield is the RPG, or Rocket Propelled Grenade. An RPG is a pretty simple weapon. It’s basically a HEAT warhead with a rocket motor to push it along, all fired from a simple tube. Our guys use a similar weapon, the AT-4, which is a disposable, one shot weapon. The RPG is reloadable.
RPG-7
The RPG is a real threat to light vehicles like Humvees, MRAPs, and even Strykers and Bradleys. Its HEAT warhead can penetrate the armor of just about any armored vehicle short of a main battle tank like the M-1. An RPG hit on a Humvee will often result in death or injury to the entire crew and a catastrophic loss of the vehicle.
So how do you defend a vehicle like the Humvee from RPGs? They are too small to carry explosive reactive armor or an anti-RPG cage. You can’t keep adding additional armor. The chassis just won’t take that much weight.
Well, for a couple decades, the armies of the world have been exploring “active defense” against RPGs (and similar HEAT warheads). Using a radar sensor to detect an incoming round, the active defense would instantly and automatically react to fire a projectile to impact with the warhead. Two big problems have always existed with this. One, the sensors and controls just haven’t been practical until the recent improvements in electronics. Secondly, having a vehicle that routinely has troops (and innocent bystanders) nearby suddenly start shooting off explosives is kinda unsafe. Recently, Artis LLC, in conjunction with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) came up with a system called Iron Curtain that uses a combination of advanced sensors, downward firing countermeasures, and special explosives and projectiles to field a system that can defeat RPG rounds without posing a great risk to dismounted personnel.
The system probably won’t be ready for service for another year or so, but can potentially be a great aid in saving the lives of troops.
One of the things that makes me a lousy blogger is that I don’t like to post my thoughts immediately on issues of the day. I didn’t post my opinions within 5 minutes of the President’s address last night because I wanted to digest them a bit. I also wanted to see what others thought, as that almost always gives me a deeper insight into what I truly think, rather than my first emotional reaction.
Oddly, two of my favorite blogosphere sources are from retired Naval officers, CDR Salamander, and Neptunus Lex. And of course, Drew M. at Ace’s has some thoughts that illuminate. Why take the Navy guys take on what is primarily an Army operation? Well, CDR Salamander is dialed in on the operational and strategic implications of policy changes in Afghanistan (traditionally, I think the Navy has trained its officers to think at that level better than any other service). And Nep Lex has a wonderful clarity of thinking and such a terrific ability to write that you can hardly afford to not read him. As for Drew? Look, I read Ace’s all day every day.
My own thoughts…
1. Good on Obama for adding an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. There is clearly a need for more troops if we are to shift to a counterinsurgency approach there. I think that is the proper approach, vice a counterterrorism approach. And COIN warfare is inherently a manpower intensive approach.
2. Bad on Obama for only adding 30,000 additional troops. GEN McChrystal requested 40,000 troops. You can be sure he didn’t just pull that number out of a hat. He had a reason for requesting the number he did, tempered by what he believes can be logistically supported in theater, and by what the Army staff tells him can be generated for deployment. I’m certain he didn’t just request a number of troops, but rather a particular force structure that happened to add up to 40,000. The President has authorized only 30,000. Which troops and what units did he think that McChrystal didn’t need? Why did he think that? What justification has he given for not including those forces? Does he think the additional 10,000 troops will be forthcoming from our NATO allies (fat chance!)?
3. Other than an arbitrarily imposed timeline that will enable the President to show a troop drawdown, why impose a 2011 timeline? Is this in there solely so Obama can show this drawdown during a presidential election cycle? One of the concerns I had about the surge in Iraq was that it was a “one-shot” deal. It simply had to work, because there was no way the Army could double down, and the ability to maintain that level of effort was time limited. They could surge additional troops, but only for about one deployment cycle, before real issues developed in maintaining readiness. That is potentially a problem here in Afghanistan, but it isn’t nearly the problem that the Army faced in 2007 in Iraq. But when President Bush announced the surge in Iraq, he did not announce that the surge was a limited time offer. In fact, the open ended nature of the commitment was a key component of its success. Those Iraqi factions that were beginning to consider aligning with us were convinced that we would still “respect them in the morning” and weren’t going to leave them hanging. In contrast, President Obama’s speech last night pretty explicitly told the Afghani people, “I’m love you, but I’m not in love with you.” If you were a tribal leader, and had to choose to align yourself and your tribe with either the US or the Taliban, who would you choose? That kind of undoes the whole point of a counterinsurgency strategy. The anti-coalition forces are pretty good at information operations. You can bet that this will be a major bullet point on their presentation.
4. The money thing. Look, no commander gets everything he wants. There are never unlimited resources. The Army understands that. But this sudden pennypinching impulse in an era of massive government expenditures for bailing out banks, and the Porkulus Stimulus spending that magically seems to fund every Democrat pet project of the last 20 years costs a heck of a lot more than funding the fight in Afghanistan. And you may rest assured that spending a ton of money to win a war is a lot cheaper than losing a war by trying to save money.
5. Dithering and deployments… What did the President say last night that justified the three months that it took for him to reach a decision? Nothing. So why did it take so long? And this three month delay is on top of the fact that back in March, the President announced his own new approach to the war and appointed his own commander for Afghanistan. Are we going to see quarterly revisions to strategy all the way through this administration? I understand that circumstances change, and that you have to adapt. But there has been no clear communication of our goals and how we intend to fulfill those goals by this administration (and this isn’t a problem exclusive to this administration. The Bush administration did a poor job in this respect as well).
The President has attempted to make up for his three month delay in reaching his decision by expediting the deployment schedule for those brigades that will be going. I was asked about this at The Hostages last night, and here was my response:
Brad, I’m thinking moving 2+ Divisions into inland and mountainous regions without ports and decent roads is going to take just a bit longer than the first few months of 2010.
Your thoughts?
Dave, the Army has a plan to move them (and more, don’t forget that McChrystal offered options of 80k, 40k, and 20k to Obama). It won’t be easy but it will be doable. The problem is that Obama is gonna “push” the deployment and get them in theatre faster than the original plan.
That will pose logistical problems, I’m sure, but the real assfuck will come in training. Brigades that see their deployment date moved up will have less time to integrate new troops, develop their training plans, implement individual, squad, platoon and company training, less time for cultural and language training, less time for Bn and Bde leadership to do leaders recons on the ground in A-stan and develop their campaign plan.
It’s impossible to quantify, but some troops will die because of these training deficiencies.
6. GEN McChrystal seems to be onboard with the President’s decision. He really has only two choices. Either say “Yes, Sir!” and try to do the best he can, or hand in his resignation. Given that the President has voiced support for his strategy and resourced most of it, GEN McChrystal really had no choice to but accept the challenge. If the President had instead provided only token increases, or none at all, he would have been sorely tempted to call it a day, I’m sure. Still, we as a nation have civilian control of our military, and at the end of the day, expect our officers to do what they are ordered to do by the President. For a theater commander to resign, he better have a damn good reason. And every commander that faces that choice also has to struggle with the issue that he could be abandoning his troops on the battlefield. That goes against the grain of every moral fiber in a soldier.
7. Delivery. For a guy that has a wonderful reputation for oratory, it sure seemed like he was just phoning it in. Of course, I’ve yet to be impressed by his public speaking. I’m biased, of course. I didn’t vote for him, and tend to have an immediate distaste for whatever he’s pitching the moment he opens his mouth. But it seems to me that his best speaking comes when he is making campaign speeches, and his worst comes when he discusses policy. And, to me, he seemed to lack any enthusiasm for what he was selling last night. His handlers like to stage manage this sort of thing, putting him in front of the Corps of Cadets at the US Military Academy. That struck me as being a bit too smart for themselves. While the Commander-in-Chief is guaranteed to have a polite audience there, Barack Obama was unlikely to have an enthusiastic audience there. I still clearly remember when President George H.W. Bush announced the doubling of troop deployments for Operation Desert Shied/Desert Storm in November of 1990. He gave that speech from the Oval Office. It seemed presidential and had the proper gravitas. I didn’t get that impression last night.
Overall, I’m somewhat disappointed and less than fully optimistic for the campaign in Afghanistan. But I’ve not given up hope. I have a near boundless faith in the ability of the American Soldier (and Marine, Sailor and Airman) to persevere in the face of daunting challenge and to overcome. Time will tell the result of the President’s approach to his leadership in what he himself called a war of necessity.
Well. It looks like the first squadron deployment of MV-22B Ospreys to Afghanistan has begun.
I’m ambivalent about the whole Osprey program. I’m willing to stipulate that it is a very impressive aircraft. But is it the right aircraft for the Marines? What say you?
Here’s a pretty interesting article about using smartphones on the battlefield. We’re working on an epic post about communications, but wanted to tease you with this.
I can think of a number of handy uses that a smartphone might have, but I’m pretty analog in my thinking. I’d like to have all my checklists and reports on hand as a reminder, rather than having plastic reference cards for everything.
What would you like to use a smartphone for on a battlefield? Have you taken your phone to war?
An aside, we’re away from regular internet access, so apologize for lack of posts and pictures of hawt chicks.
Down in the comments of this post, commenter Kevin mentioned ACOGs. That naturally raises the question, “What’s an ACOG?”
ACOG is the acronym for Advanced Combat Optical Gunsight. Trijicon, Inc. has made a line of specialty gunsights for the M-16/M-4 family of weapons for years now. And last year, after using a variety of different products from different manufacturers, the Army settled on the ACOG as the primary sight for the M-4.
Back in the Stone Age, when I was a grunt, all small arms, with the exception of sniper weapons, only had “iron sights.” They were fairly accurate, but took quite a bit of training to master. Further, they were very difficult to use in low light, such as early in the morning and late in the evening. They were of course, next to useless at night.
Iron sights on the M16A2
Traditionally, the Army (and to a lesser extent, the Marines) have been leery of adopting optical gunsights, mostly because of their perceived fragility. The other big factor was that they cost money. Now, in an era when a jet can cost more than the GDP of many small countries, you’d think a few hundred bucks for a scope would not matter. But that’s not how the defense budget works. When the Army only has a limited amount of money to buy stuff, they tend to focus on the big ticket items. Small stuff, like small arms and their accessories, tends to get pushed aside.
One of the consequences of the Army going into Afghanistan and Iraq was that there was a sudden push to make sure our troops had what they really needed in terms of all their gear. That freed up a lot of money for things that otherwise just weren’t going to be bought. Grunts have been watching police and recreational shooters use combat optics on their rifles for nearly 30 years. Not surprisingly, there was a big push to update the Army with combat optics.
Now, a rifle scope is actually not what you really want in most firefights. A scope actually narrows your vision and can even make it harder to see the target. But combat optics use what are called “reflex sights” that are meant to be used with both eyes open. This greatly aids in target acquisition and generally keeping up ones situational awareness.
The first big batch of combat optics was the M68 Close Combat Optic, or CCO. Unlike the crosshairs of a traditional scope, the reticle of a CCO is illuminated, making it easier to see, and far more instinctive to use. There was just a simple red dot. Put the dot on the bad guy, pull the trigger, make the bad guy go away. The CCO didn’t even magnify. It just made it easier and faster to aim. About the only drawback to the CCO is that it takes batteries to illuminate the “death dot”, and grunts already have enough to carry, without having to worry about carrying extra batteries.
M68 CCO
Next up, and recently standardized is the M150 RCO (Rifle Combat Optic). This is the Army name for Trijicon’s Advanced Combat Optic Gunsight. The ACOG works along pretty much the same lines as the CCO, but provides some magnification (either 3.5X or 4X) and doesn’t need batteries. It uses radioactive tritium to provide the illumination for the reticle.
ACOG, or M150 RCO
Variations of the CCO and the ACOG are also mounted on the M249 SAW and the M240 medium machine gun.
via a blog I’d not seen before, Present Arms, a very interesting snapshot of a small unit action. An infantry platoon in the mountains of Afghanistan gets into a small scrape.
There’s certainly still a place for traditional marksmanship training in the infantry. A lot of fighting in Afghanistan takes place at fairly long range, since the Taliban usually don’t want to come to close grips with our troops. But since there’s an awful lot of close combat in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Army has finally started to update some training to make it more realistic. If I had tried to shoot like this in my day, I would have been tossed off the range and subject to rather severe discipline.
There’s a lot of controversy today about Afghanistan, Obama, and GEN McChrystal’s request for more troops. Basically, the issue is that GEN McChrystal wants to shift to a counter-insurgency strategy of having our troops live among the population full time. One reason we never tried this strategy before is that there was concern about being seen as an occupying army. The other part is, it takes a lot of troops to do counter-insurgency this way. In the 24 minute video below, you’ll see a young Marine asking where the people are that would normally be at a market. The local tells them they’ve gone to a different market. In a perfect counterinsurgency world, the Marines would have enough men to cover the other markets. But they don’t. That’s part of what the argument going on right now.
There’s concern, legitimate concern, about how effective this would be. There’s also concern that logistically supporting a force would be difficult. And of course, there’s a very good chance that by spending more time with the local population, and less time patrolling the Taliban’s infiltration routes, we might face more attacks similar to the one that killed 8 American’s this weekend. It’s a real risk.
But manning an outpost in the middle of nowhere that might, or might not, interdict Taliban infiltration doesn’t win the population over. Winning the population over generates intelligence, denies the Taliban the use of the population for shelter, money, and other support. It removes the sanctuary every insurgent force needs.
The nearest analogy I can think of is convoys in WWII. The U-Boats of Germany were sinking merchant ships at a frightful rate. The British Admiralty was loathe to have merchant shipping travel in convoys, as they saw them as a defensive measure, when the warships that would escort them should be used offensively.
But that turned reality on its head. In fact, the convoy was an offensive measure. Instead of having warships hunt willy nilly for U-Boats, by using a convoy, you created a group of merchant ships that U-Boats had to attack, and therefore brought them into range of the escorting warships.
Similarly, if you can provide full time security for a village in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, the Taliban will be forced to either come to you, on ground you are prepared to fight on, with all proper support, or they cede the battle.
Watch the video, make your own judgment, and let me know what you think.
Whenever we are pressed for time to write, or just uninspired, we steal from Theo Spark. He and his co-bloggers always find some good stuff.
Again, we watch a patrol of light infantry in the hills and hamlets of Afghanistan. The placard calls it a movement to contact, which is a term of art for an attack when you don’t know where the enemy is. The idea is to move forward in a sector until you find him. In addition to the laudable goal of finding and killing enemy insurgents, a movement to contact is used to generate tactical intelligence. You’ll notice the patrol is speaking with villagers, presumably asking if there is any insurgent activity in the area, and if so, what type. Of course, there’s also a “show the flag” aspect of this as well, letting the locals see you and know that you are watching.
Some NSFW language, but as I’ve said, that’s what you get from grunts.
Well, they’ve managed to edit out most of the long days of humping rucksacks up steep hills, freezing your butt off, and time spent doing boring but necessary work, either simple day to day logistics, like filling sandbags and moving supplies, or the drudgery of pre-combat checks.
There’s plenty of NSFW language, but then there almost always is around soldiers in the field.
There’s nothing like waking up on a beautiful morning.
U.S. Army Soldiers awake, in their hasty fighting position, after a night patrol in the mountains, near Sar Howza, in Paktika province, Afghanistan, Sept. 4, 2009. The Soldiers are deployed with Bulldog Troop, 1st Squadron, 40th Cavalry Regiment. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Andrew Smith/Released) Date Posted: 9/16/2009
It would be a lot nicer if room service would hurry up with the coffee.
Light infantrymen are obsessed with weight. Everything they take into battle has to be carried on their backs. Some things they don’t have any options about. They have to take their weapons. They have to take ammo. And they have to take water.
But anything they don’t have to take, they won’t. Given the choice of carrying enough warm clothing to keep from freezing, or lightening their load, they’ll fall back on the old adage: “Fight light, freeze at night.”
One item that grunts have to take, but traditionally weighs a lot, is food. Since the early 1980s, the standard Army combat ration has been the MRE. Now, the MRE isn’t bad. Right now, there are 24 different menus, and most of them, if not tasty, are at least edible. But MREs weigh quite a bit. About 2 pounds per meal. They are fairly bulky as well. So if you need to carry two or three days worth of food, you’re talking quite a load.
Grunts being grunts, most folks would take their MREs and “field strip” them. They would remove the meals from their outer packaging, discarding the heavy pouch they come in, as well as any extraneous packaging. A lot of parts of the meal might get tossed out as well.
The Army wasn’t thrilled with this because rations are carefully designed to provide enough calories and nutrients. When you start tossing stuff out, the meals are out of balance. So, the Army started working on a lightweight ration that would get light infantry through the first 72 hours of an operation. After that time, most operations would either be over, or regular ration resupply could take over. For instance, if the 82nd Airborne jumped into combat, after the first 3 days, they could probably count on regular supply channels. And if they couldn’t, they’d have bigger problems than finding something to eat.
The answer to the lightweight ration problem was the First Strike Ration, or FSR. The FSR is a tailor made to provide lots of calories, and to be small and light. It comes in a shrinkwrap pack of three meals, and yet is only a little larger than a single MRE. Unlike MRE meals, which need a spoon to be eaten, FSRs can be eaten by hand, since they are like “Hot Pockets” or sandwiches.
FSR Components
One of the most popular components of the FSR is a packet of applesausce, fortified with maltodextrose for extra energy. For whatever reason, the Army decided that no one wants to eat “applesauce fortified with maltodextrose”, but Zapplesauce, well,who wouldn’t want Zapplesauce? So the name was changed. In addition, there’s a couple of Army specific energy bars (Called the HooAh bar) and a powder to make an energy drink called ERGO (Energy Rich, Glucose Optimized).
The FSR is a handy ration for folks that just can’t carry a lot of extra weight. But it isn’t designed to feed folks for more than a couple days. For one thing, there’s only a few menus, so people get tired of them pretty quickly. For another, it’s hard to provide long-term nutritional balance from Hot Pockets. Ask the mother of any college student. She knows.
Addendum: While looking for pics of the FSR, I came across the following picture:
Ration Breakdown- Louisiana Manuevers 1940
Back in 1940, they didn’t even have C-rations. Every meal was made from scratch. Each company had it’s own mess cooks and kitchen. The battalion would break down each days ration for the companies to pick up for the next days meals. I can’t be sure, but this is either a battalion or regimental breakdown.
One of the handier tools in the infantryman’s kit is the M18A1 Claymore mine. The Claymore is primarily a defensive weapon, used to provide close in defense of a position such as a Forward Operating Base.
The M18A1 is a command detonated, directional mine. Unlike most land mines that are buried, then set off by either being stepped on or by tripwires, the Claymore is usually set off by an electrical blasting cap controlled by our troops. The Claymore isn’t buried, but is emplaced on the surface of the ground. It is called a directional mine, because when it is detonated, it sprays a pattern of 700 ball bearings in a fan shaped pattern.
Clacker, mine, and detonating wire.
Like most things in the Army, it’s fairly simple to operate. Some directions are more important than others. For instance, see where it says “Front Towards Enemy?” Yeah, might be a good idea to follow that one. The Claymore can actually be aimed with a fair degree of precision. The fan of fragments is fairly tightly defined, so when emplacing a Claymore, great care is taken to make sure that the mine is aimed at the most likely location of enemy troops.
Watch this video closely. When the mine explodes, you’ll see the smoke from the explosion, but you’ll also see dust kicked up by the fragments hitting the hillside in the background.
Most of the world has a ban in place on landmines. But because the Claymore is used as a command detonated weapon, it is exempt from the ban. It is issued as ammunition. Normally, if a unit doesn’t fire its Claymores, it will collect them for reuse when they leave a position.
There are fairly few places in Iraq where troops can use Claymores without the risk of decimating innocent civilians. Afghanistan is a different matter. The Forward Operating Bases in many remote locations can easily profit from the defensive firepower of Claymores, without the risk of killing non-combatants. The Claymore is effective out to about 100m, and dangerous out to about 250m.
Another use for the Claymore is offensive. When an infantry unit is setting up an ambush, they will try to cover the killzone with Claymores. Since you want to initiate your ambush with the most devastating weapon, many units use the Claymores to initiate the ambush.
One more video, to give you a better idea just how awesome a Claymore can be.
Now, I’m not a touchy-feely kind of guy. I’m certainly not a New Age guy. I’m pretty much of the old school “suck it up/walk it off” school. Back in my day, any hint that you had mental or emotional problems was cause for shunning.
You’ve no doubt seen various news stories in the last year or two that show that mindset is changing, slowly, in the Army. A great deal of emphasis is being placed on the mental well being of soldiers.
Let’s face it. There aren’t a hell of a lot of jobs that are more stressful than being a combat grunt. Just one day is enough to emotionally drain you. The stress can fatigue you even if you aren’t physically exerting yourself. Add in the stress of repeatedly going on patrols in hostile territory, and it is no surprise that some soldiers have difficulty maintaining the edge, or have trouble fully adjusting when they get home.
The Army has been placing more and more emphasis on mental health for its troops. And one way of reducing the stigma of what has traditionally seen as a sign of weakness is to rebrand mental health as a tool of the warrior, almost a weapon of sorts.
Enter the samuri:
The benefits of Warrior Mind Training, students have told instructors, are impressive: better aim on the shooting range, higher test scores, enhanced ability to handle combat stress and slip back into life at home. No comprehensive studies have been done, though a poll of 25 participants showed 70% said they felt better able to handle stressful situations and 65% had improved self-control.
Read the whole thing. I don’t think they’re all the way there yet, but maybe they are on the right path.
We’ve pretty much boycotted 60 Minutes since the disgraceful “National Guard Memos” fraud 60 Minutes II perpetrated in the run-up to the 2004 election.
But Lara Logan was embedded with US troops in Afghanistan, and does some worthwhile reporting.
This video aired Sunday night on 60 Minutes, but I seem to recall seeing it a few months ago. Still, an interesting look at life on the ground for an infantry company in Afghanistan.
We’ve talked a few times about the role of artillery in the Cold War-era AirLand Battle Doctrine. But what about now, during the fighting in Afghanistan?
Instead of artillery being used to delay, atrit, channelize, and fix enemy armored forces prior to them coming into contact with US armored forces, artillery in Afghanistan is used almost exclusively to support infantry forces, either while they are patrolling or attacking enemy forces, or when our forces are attacked in their operating bases.
Here’s a quick video of a US Army 155mm howitzer firing in support of friendly forces.
Just about anyone who has seen a war movie has watched a scene where the grunts are on the radio calling for artillery. And while that happens, and I don’t want to go into all the processes of calling for fire, I do want to talk a little about planning fires.
Let’s take the example of a forward operating base for a platoon of infantry in the mountains of Afghanistan. In addition to all the infantry specific stuff our platoon would do to prepare its defenses (digging fighting positions, filling sandbags{gazillions of them}, assigning troops to fighting positions, clearing brush for clear fields of fire, rehearsing plans, stockpiling ammo), our platoon will also develop a fire plan for the outpost’s defense. Our platoon will likely have an artillery forward observer assigned. The platoon leader and the forward observer will put their heads together and decide the most likely approaches any enemy might take in an attack. Once they have identified those, they can determine on a map the best place to fire artillery at these approaches. Typically, these preplotted targets would be near easily identifiable terrain features, or even special markers set our by our platoon, so everyone knows where they are. These targets are called “Target Reference Points” or TRPs.
A typical platoon may have 3 or 4 TRPs preplotted. Having the targets preplotted speeds up the artillery’s ability to provide on-call fire. The supporting artillery has already plotted the target and has rehearsed firing on it. Indeed, they have probably “registered” the target by actually firing on it to make sure the rounds go where all parties want them to. By simply calling on the radio and telling the arty battery that you need half a dozen rounds of HE on TRP AB0003, the arty can start shooting immediately.
And even if the enemy isn’t cooperating by sitting on top of one of our platoon’s TRPs, we can still use them to speed up the process. Instead of having to plot on a map where the enemy is, convert that to coordinates (with a very good chance of making an error under pressure) and the artillery having to plot the whole misison, our forward observer can just shift from one of the TRPs. For instance, we can just tell the arty “from TRP NB001, add 200, left 300″ and the arty guys know where we are talking about, and can quickly shoot it.
The Army plans everything it does. And there’s a standard planning format that everyone uses. It speeds up communications and lessens the chances for confusion and misinterpretation. Now, we all know that “no battle plan survives the first round”, but that doesn’t mean every part of the plan needs to be tossed. Indeed, one of the strengths of the Army’s planning is that at the tactical level, plans are very flexible, and can be adjusted, rather than scrapped, very quickly.
Found via Ace’s headlines (left sidebar), Strategy Page has an interesting look at Task Force Odin, and its counterpart in Afghanistan. Task Force Odin was an intelligence team dedicated to spotting (and even predicting) IED emplacement before they could be used to attack our forces. Under a program called Constant Hawk, intelligence specialists used mathematical analysis of collected imagery to determine where IEDs had been set. Given the rise in IED attacks in Afghanistan in the last couple years, that same technique is now being applied in the A-stan.
Many of you have an account with Flickr, the image hosting site owned by Yahoo!
Did you know the US Army had a Flickr page? One of my consistent complaints about the Army’s public affairs efforts is that they have a ton of people taking great photos, but rarely do people find any good pictures. Yes, there are a ton of pictures of things less interesting, such as the Secretary of the Army watching the first day for cadets at West Point. But there are also some great photos of soldiers in their natural environment. You just have to dig a little to find them. Here’s a taste. Click on each to enlarge:
We’re going to be in the desert for probably another two weeks. That means very limited access to the internet, which of course means limited posting.
US forces have completed their withdrawal from the cities of Iraq. In an attempt to sow instability, terrorists are trying to ramp up a bombing campaign in the cities to undermine faith in the Iraqi government and its forces. So far, while they are succeeding in producing some spectacular bombings, they aren’t having too much success destabalizing the government. We’ll have to wait to see how the campaign plays out.
An American soldier has been captured by the Taliban in Afghanistan. He apparently went outside the secured area of his post without taking along a buddy. He may well pay for a moments folly with his life. Pray for him.
We’ll try to pop in every couple days or so, but no promises.
This site is in no way affiliated with the Department of Defense, Department of the Army, the Department of the Air Force, or the National Guard Bureau and nothing said herein should be considered to have any official sanction by those (or any other) agencies.
Posted by xbradtc 
Posted by xbradtc 
Posted by xbradtc 
