85 It’s important in sniping to accurately assess ranges without using laser or other active rangefinding equipment. The techniques involve a lot of fieldcraft, and the result is normally accurate.
86 An “artificiality” is a situation inherent in a model or a wargame that generates a result, but would never happen in real life. (Examples are range safety or limits on time when a range can be used.) The result can be good or positive and teach important lessons. Still, the end state created is artificial, and this must be understood by the participants and creators so as not to bias the final assessment and lessons learned.
87 While it is technically part of the 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized), which is based at Fort Stewart, Georgia, the 3rd/3rd Infantry (Mech.) calls Fort Benning, Georgia, home. Such distinctions are common in today’s Army, where various parts of larger units can be located literally thousands of miles/kilometers from each other.
88 Before Operation Desert Storm, critics of American made weapons prophesied that the heat and dust of the Persian Gulf would cause our weapons to fail. In fact, every military specified system in service—tanks, helicopters and trucks; radios, rifles, and computers—had been tested at YPG and other test facilities. They all worked in the desert. Part of the high cost of military systems is due to the process of “ruggedizing” and testing to make them function anywhere, from the Arctic to the Sahara.
89 YPG has an exceptional record of protecting the acreage under its control. So effective has been its stewardship that the facility recently won the Department of the Army Environmental Award as the post with the finest environmental record in the service.
90 The 11th ACR is the famous “Blackhorse Cav,” which spent the Cold War watching over the critical Fulda Gap in Germany. After the end of that conflict, they were for a time disestablished; but were later reflagged as the NTC OpFor. They also retain a wartime mission as a normal ACR. For more Blackhorse lore, see Into the Storm, written with my good friend General (Ret.) Fred Franks (Berkley Books, 1997).
91 The idea is to create names that participants will never run into again, but are easily remembered.
92 For more on NTC, see Armored Cav (Berkley Books, 1994).
93 The assault landing is a specialty of the C-130 Hercules transport: A fully loaded C-130, with all its flaps down, comes in to land literally hanging on its props. Once the aircraft hits the ground, the turboprops are reversed, and the Hercules stops after a rollout as short as 1,000 ft./305 m. The aircraft is then rapidly offloaded (sometimes it does not even stop), and then takes off in much the same way as it landed. Though the C-17A Globemaster III can make similar landings, the wisdom of using a jet transport costing $250 million a copy in a high-threat area is questionable.
94 Each gallon of water weighs about 8 Ib. Even with a consumption of just a gallon per day, on a six-day mission, each SF soldier would have to carry almost 50 Ib. of water ... and containers. In fact, the Army standard for soldiers in a desert environment is a minimum consumption of two gallons per day.
95 “Maggie LaLouch” (her real name is Margaret) is a civilian JRTC employee on the Fort Polk Public Affairs staff, and the wife of a JRTC range operator. She is a bright, talented lady who takes seriously her role as the “Media OpFor,” and works hard to teach officers how not to give reporters openings they don’t deserve.
96 In late 1995, following Operation Deliberate Force (a short bombing campaign against the Bosnian Serbs), the various warring factions in the ongoing Bosnian civil war met at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton to craft an agreement to settle the war. The terms of the agreement included a withdrawal of military support by the Serbs and the Croats, a partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina into ethnic/religious zones, and a multinational peacekeeping force to enforce the whole arrangement. The three primary nations in the peacekeeping force are the U.S., Britain, and France, though dozens of others—including Russia—have contributed units.
97 General Montgomery Meigs is the latest in a string of Army general officers from one of the first families of the Army. His namesake, Abraham Lincoln’s quartermaster general during the Civil War, commandeered Robert E. Lee’s Virginia home to create the current-day Arlington National Cemetery. The present General Meigs, a veteran of the 1991 Gulf War, where he commanded an armored brigade against the Republican Guard, is a specialist in the arcane science of operations research and an excellent historian and writer.
98 Many nations maintain a National Guard—really, a National Police Force—which functions as a combination of the U.S. F.B.I., Treasury Department, State Police/Militia, and military reserve.
99 The Army facility is Camp Doha, north of Kuwait City. The Navy facility is in Bahrain. And the Air Force is now at Al Karj (Prince Sultan Airbase, home of the 4th Wing during the war) in Saudi Arabia (it was once at Dhahran).
100 The four KLF brigades are laid out as follows: The 35th Armored covers the western border with Iraq; the 26th Cavalry holds the north. The 15th Armored Brigade is assigned the central region of the country; and the 6th Infantry (Mech.) defends Kuwait City.
101 At one time, especially during World War II, sniping was a Russian specialty. In later years, the Dragonov SVD was among the finest sniper rifles in the world, and was especially feared in Vietnam, where its accuracy and hitting power in the jungle was impressive. Now, with its wooden stock and bed (as opposed to the fiberglass and composite units common in western designs) and poorly made sights and triggers, the SVD is somewhat dated. With the SVD, hitting targets at long ranges (greater than 547 yds/500 m) is almost impossible. Inside of 438 yds/400 m, however, it is still a useful and deadly weapon.
102 All the law enforcement, intelligence, and military functions are conducted inside rooms that are essentially metal vaults. These can be locked and secured in the event of an attack or seizure, and are the last shelter in such an event.
103 Relampago Rojo is Spanish for “red lightning,” a reference to the 7th SFG’s Latin American mission, and their unit colors, which are primarily red.
104 For more on JTFEX operations, see Marine (1996), Airborne (1997), and Carrier (1999). 107 These units would find themselves embroiled in Operation Allied Force against Yugoslavia within weeks of JTFEX 99-1. Later, the 26th MEU (SOC) would become the lead peacekeeping element of Operation Joint Guardian in Kosovo.
105 In December, I decided that the 1/7 SFG’s operations at Fort Polk would be a better event for me to observe than the 20th Group’s SCUD hunt at Eglin AFB, which would have been more difficult to cover and included classified elements that would have been denied to me.
106 The nomenclature “Commander, Task Force” (thus: CTF) is standard. I have no idea why it is used.
107 PowerPoint is a computer-based program for mastering and presenting briefing slides. Easy to use and quite powerful, PowerPoint has become a staple for American business and military personnel trying to get their message across. More recently, all NATO briefings during Operation Allied Force were presented in PowerPoint, including video clips and photographs.
108 Because R3 went ‘round the clock, breakfast was the only meal that overlapped a shift change for the Battlestar personnel. Colonel Phillips therefore designated this as the main meal of the day, and his food preparation personnel did their best to make it special. Most days, they had eggs to order or pancakes, as well as biscuits and gravy, breakfast meats, fruit, and excellent coffee. This also was the time when Battlestar personnel could pick up their midday meal, an MRE.
109 If you think this sounds like recent headlines, you are right. Operation Marauder came very close to running exactly like a real-world ethnic cleansing/repatriation event in, say, Rwanda or Kosovo. Plan on seeing a lot more of these in the years ahead.
110 Though R3 was held on the JRTC live-fire range, all engagements were conducted by personnel wearing MILES gear and firing blanks. The only live ordnance used were illumination rounds and some demolitions for clearing obstacles.
111 -115 Indonesian for stre
et.
112 The Air Force is not famous for paying a lot of parental attention to its Special Forces component.
113 The joke goes: “If it don’t leak, it ain’t a Sikorski ... or else you’re out of hydraulic fluids.”
114 The rough Indonesian for “bastard” or “asshole.”
115 “Goodbye.” In Indonesia, the person staying says. “Selamat jalan;” the person leaving, “Selamat tinggal.”
Tom Clancy, Special Forces: A Guided Tour of U.S. Army Special Forces
(Series: # )
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