Our American way of war

Our American way of war

 

My old memories are erupting so I’ll try tamp them down some.

 

American high tech works pretty well, but can we Americans afford it for our military?

 

Even with the now and almost extinct (I think) copperhead artillery round, we had to break out the directions on how to use it in Desert Storm since no one I knew in the Army or Marines had any experience with it, mostly because of budgets in training back then.  And I thought of myself as pretty good at this stuff, and I was, in my mind.

 

(I often wonder what happened to what we American people did purchase for our American military that did not get used)? Hopefully we’ll use it later, if we can. It’s better than nothing, in spite of age and shelf life problems.

 

The good news in this example is I suspect we blinded the poor bad guy with the laser designation right before we killed him. In other words, our made in America widget did work. In this true story we were shooting at a window in an observation tower on the Saudi/Kuwait border. We had to “sneak up” close enough for the laser designator to work, too, including the weather considerations. The distance was around 3 to 6 KM (like 2 to 3 miles).  That we might not have been sneaky enough was a thought that went through our minds, too.

 

Now in past days we would have just shot more rounds at the tower, and done the same thing at a lower cost, or so I think. Back then (in my time) a basic artillery round was about $100, and a copper head round was around $20 K.

 

Now if you are into laser stuff, often it has “codes”, and lower frequencies are different than higher frequencies. Well we had American Marines that died because of this “problem” and interservice problems, too. Now I cannot prove this, but it is still my opinion. Basically the Navy and Marine A6-B s HARM missiles killed Marines running counter-battery radars, or so is my "also" opinion. And after the war ended, we were camped out near a Bedouin camp area in Kuwait, and our dumb American whose possible incompetency got these Americans killed was lounging out in a bikini. Well, she was pretty ugly, but a few months out in the desert changed my sexual standards, anyway; but not enough to change my basic standards. I was bitter, and horny, too.

 

And so is my opinion. Even being on the attack was like being a freshman at Georgia Tech when I listened to similar lectures about 1 out of 3 won' make it in the end. Nothing is certain or reliably predictable, both in college, and in war.

 

Toshiba out of Japan helped the Russians on designing "quieter" propellers for their subs, and I got to pay the price later in doing survey work  (like shoot the right way during bad weather) in Saudi Arabia. Now it did sort out in the end, but was still a political pain I still had to go through. Basically we had to use IBM laptops vice Toshiba laptops. Since most laptops were made in Taiwan even back then, it seemed silly to me, but who cares what I think. Heck, we even had a team from Trimble in from Oregon to help us learn how to use what we had.  Now that would not have ever happened in peace time, including budgets to pay for it all.

 

So what looks “cool” in America may look different on the pointy end the spear where ever we are often deployed to fight, or so is my experience ages ago.

 

One more story about helping Americans.

 

Basically our RAP (Rocket Assisted Projectiles) got high enough to enter the stratosphere, like around 35,000 feet. So as luck would have it, the jet stream was blowing from south to north in that area of the world, so we got an extra 5 K on the round’s impact on the bad guys, with a 50 Meter expectation of accuracy. Said another way, we did OK. Now a RAP round might go 30 K (about 18 miles) , so another 5 K (3 miles) on top of that  helps, too, especially if you are the bad guy on the receiving end. We did fly weather balloons with radiosondes every four hours to help our accuracy, too. But even a thing one cannot account for is short term changes in the weather, like a long gust of wind at any altitude.

 

So, in the end, war is always uncertain and unpredictable, including for we Americans. And high tech does help Americans, some. But in the end, one does have to fight during uncertain times and conditions, and let things sort out. After all, we Americans have something to fight for, too. One can even say it is a way of life for ourselves and our Families. And our individual training and best technology and well trained leaders over us do help, some, too.

 

So, to conclude in this post, we Americans should be proud of our young people these days as they now go in harm's way during their time. Some won't make it, either;  yet still they (and their Families) still  join, and often stay,  these days. That's hard to believe for some, and also something I am thankful for in 2013.