TEXT: Armored Cav
  Tom Clancy
  This book is dedicated to the troopers of the 11th Armored Cavalry
  Regiment.
  Once again it is time to say thanks to all the people who really made
  this book a work to be proud of.  At the start is my partner and
  researcher, John D.  Gresham.  Once again, he has literally traveled
  from coast to coast to assemble the wealth of material and experiences
  that are being presented for your enjoyment and enlightenment.  His is a
  huge job with some deeply difficult tasks associated with it, and my
  best thanks go to him for his continued dedication and friendship. Also,
  the entire team has again benefited from the wise counsel and advice of
  series editor Professor Martin H.  Greenberg.  Laura Alpher is to be
  complimented again for her marvelous drawings which have added so much
  to the quality of the final book.  This young lady is a major talent, so
  keep your eyes out for her work in the future.  Tony Koltz, Mike
  Markowitz, and Chris Carlson also need to be recognized for their
  research and editorial support that was both critical and timely.  A
  special note of appreciation goes to Greg Stewart for his fine
  photographic advice.Thanks also to Cindi Woodrum, Diana Patin, and
  Roselind Greenberg for their patience and support in backing the rest of
  us up as we went along digging out the bits and pieces of our little
  story.
  One thing that makes a book both fun and exciting to work on is support
  from on high, and this book was blessed with Army support that was, in a
  word, unbelievable.  It is difficult to say thanks enough to the U.S.
  Army Chief of Staff, General Gordon Sullivan, U.S.A.  This gentleman
  soldier, who looks like a kindly pet shop owner, is the driving force
  behind the technical revolutions that are currently being implemented in
  the Army.  The Army and the country are blessed to have his leadership
  at this critical time in the history of our army.  Also deserving
  special thanks is General Fred Franks, U.S.A., for his time and
  patience, as well as his friendship to all the members of our team.
  Thanks also to General Barry McCaffrey, U.S.A., and his wife, Jillfor
  sharing a special evening at their home with us.  Down at Fort Hood,
  Texas, our appreciation goes out to my old friend, Lieutenant General
  Pete Taylor, U.S.A., and his replacement, Lieutenant General "Butch"
  Funk, U.S.A.  Out at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin,
  California, there was Brigadier General Bob Coffey, U.S.A., who took
  time out of his busy schedule to show us the world's finest ground
  warfare trai'ni'ng center.  Thanks also to Brigadier General Harold
  Wilson, U.S.A., Ph.D., the chief historian for the U.S.  Army.
  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  
  Finally, there were three extraordinary young officers: Captains H.  R.
  McMaster and Joseph Sartiano, and Ist Lieutenant Dan Miller, who shared
  their own Gulf War experiences with us.  I think you will be as amazed
  as we were when you read them.
  Another group that was vital to our efforts, less well known but equally
  important, were the members of the various U.S.  Army public affairs
  offices (PAOS) and protocol organizations that handled our numerous
  requests for visits and information.  Tops on our list was Major Rick
  Thomas of the Pentagon PAO.  Rick and his team helped grant virtually
  every wish for information and access that we had, and made the whole
  security review process a pleasure.  Over in General Sullivan's office,
  Lieutenant Colonel Robert Coffey, U.S.A., helped lay out the Army's
  modernization plans.  Out at Fort Irwin, California, Captains Franklin
  Childress and Len Tokar made our visit both memorable and livable in the
  incredible heat of September, 1993.  Down at Fort Polk, Louisiana,
  Lieutenant Colonel Mike Trahan, U.S.A., as well as Dan Nance and Dave
  Bingham helped get the light cavalry story across to us.  Down at TRADOC
  Headquarters, Colonel George Stinnett and Ray Harper worked miracles to
  support our efforts.  Down at Fort Bliss, Texas, we had the honor of
  meeting as fine a group of warriors as you can imagine in the troopers
  of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment.  Our first thanks go to the
  regimental commander, Colonel Robert Young, U.S.A.  This lifelong
  cavalry trooper, who doubles as a peacekeeper and relief worker, is a
  man of amazing contrasts.  Our thanks for sharing time out of the
  regiment's training schedule to school us on the ways of the 3rd's
  troopers.   In addition, the regimental staff deserves some mention
  here. Command Sergeant Major Dennis E.  Webster and the regimental
  executive officer, Lieutenant Colonel Luke Barnett, U.S.A., did a fine
  job of coordinating our visits to the regiment.  And the regimental PAOs
  Captain Andy Vliet and 2nd Lieutenant Nichole Whitehead were fantastic
  in their tolerance and patience.  We also want to recognize the
  assistance of the regiment's various squadron commanders: Lieutenant
  Colonels Norman Greczyn, Karl J.   Gunzelman, Gratton Sealock, and
  Thomas M.  Hill.  And of course, there were the extraordinary efforts of
  Lieutenant Colonel Toby W.  Martinez, the commander of the regiment's
  1st (Tiger) Squadron.  Toby is one of the best cavalry officers in the
  Army today.  He tolerated having us there to watch his victories, his
  defeats, and his learning experiences.  God bless, Toby.
  Many thanks are due to our various industrial partners, without whom all
  the information on the various weapons and systems would never have
  happened.  At the armor manufacturers there was Carl Oskoian of General
  Dynamics, Ken Julian and Judy Mclivanie of BMY, as well as Bill
  Highlander and Madeleine Orr-Geiser of FMC. Among those at the
  helicopter builders were Russ Rumney at Bell, Jim Kagdis at
  Boeing-Sikorsky, Ken Jensen at McDonnell Douglas, and finally, Bill
  
  Tuttle and Foster Morgan of Sikorsky.  The folks at the truck
  contractors were a wealth of data, with Walt Garlow and Lynn Jones at
  Oshkosh Truck, as well as the incomparable Craig MacNab at AM General,
  as standouts.  We made many friends at the various missile, armament,
  and system manufacturers including: Natalie Riley at BEI, Russ Logan at
  Beretta USA, Cynthia Pulham at Boeing, Art Dalton and Brian Berger at
  Colt, Clementine Cacciacarro and Cheryl Wiencek at Hughes, Robert Clower
  at IDA, Tommy Wilson at Loral, Jody Wilson-Eudy at Motorola, Ed Alber at
  Olin, Jim Walker at Rockwell, Peter Jones of Tenebrex, and last, but
  certainly not least, Ed Rodemsky and Barbara Thomas of Trimble, who
  spent so much time and capital to educate us on the subtleties of the
  GPS system.  Thanks to you all.  Once again, our thanks for all of our
  help up in New York. To Robert Gottlieb at William Morris, thanks again
  for a great opportunity.  And at Berkley Books, our appreciation goes
  out to our editor, John Talbot, as well as to Jacky Sach, Patty Benford,
  and David Shanks.  To our friends like Ed Burba and Donn Starry, thanks
  again for your contributions and wisdom.  To all the guys who took us
  for rides, thanks for teaching the heathens how things really work.  For
  our families and friends, we once again thank you for having endured
  late dinners, broken promises, and missed holidays; please know that we
  love you always.  And lastly, to the diminutive tank sergeant known as
  "Big Daddy," we say "...Thanks for going armor!"
  F YOU AIN'T CAV, YOU AIN'T..."  Frequently displayed in conspicuous
  places, that trenchant soldier slogan reflects the cavalry trooper's
  perilception of himself and his outfit.  This splendid book is about
  those soldiers.  Specifically it is about armored cavalry and about one
  armored cavalry regiment, the 3rd (known as the "Brave Rifles"), soon to
  be the last such organization on the active rolls of the U.S.  Army-an
  army which in the not-too-distant past boasted five such active
  regiments, and among whose most effective unit performances in the
  Vietnam War were those of an armored cavalry regiment, the Ith (known as
  "The Blaclchorse").  An army whose deployed armored cavalry regiments,
  the 2nd ("Toujours Prdt") and the 3rd, were among the most effective in
  the Gulf War, and in which there is a rich tradition of outstanding
  cavalry units and famous senior leaders who served as younger officers
  in those units.  In this book Tom Clancy describes better than anyone
  yet why cavalry is what it is-why it is different-and why the nation is
  likely to need more, not fewer, cavalry regiments as we probe
  tentatively toward the 21st century.
  Like all military units, modern armored cavalry is a unique combination
  of soldiers and equipment-but most of all, it's the soldiers who are
  important.  A persistent lesson of battle is that, however good the
  equipment, what wins an engagement is the combination of the courage of
  the soldiers, the excellence of the leadership, and the effectiveness of
  the training-individual and small-unit training in employment of the
  equipment according to well-thought-out and frequently practiced tactics
  
  and operational schemes.  So it all goes together-tac- tics, equipment,
  training, and organization.  All that is what this book is about: a
  special organization, its equipment, its soldiers, its leaders, and how
  it fights.  It's not just in cavalry units that all that goes together,
  for it does so in many units.  But several characteristics of cavalry
  make that organization perhaps "di more fferent "than other
  organizations.  What are those characteristics?
  First are the traditional cavalry missions-reconnaissance and security.
  In other words you have to find an enemy force in order to inform a
  higher command; then you may have to take action to prevent that enemy
  force from interfering with friendly force battle plans.  These historic
  cavalry missions demand great operational mobility, tactical agility,
  superb command and control, and a special ability to operate effectively
  over vast distances.  Additionally, they require the ability to
  concentrate quickly to meet a threat or to take advantage of an
  opportunity.  In sum, they require an ever-present need to seize the
  initiative.  The history of battle teaches the importance of seizing the
  initiative.  For whoever takes the initiative usually wins-regardless of
  who may outnumber or be outnumbered, or who attacks or defends.  Cavalry
  missions require units organized and trained to take the initiative, all
  the time, from the very beginning, every time out.
  Second, cavalry organization is quite different.  The need for mobility
  and agility, and for economy of force over vast distances, has caused
  modern cavalry to be organized around combined-arms teams at the lowest
  levels of command.  Postwar armored cavalry units from the platoon level
  up consisted of a built-in mixture of scouts, infantry, tanks, and
  mortars for indirect fire support.  Thus, an armored cavalry second
  lieutenant commands a full spectrum of combined-arms capabilities in his
  own little piece of the Army.  With several such platoons, the cavalry
  troop commander can use the platoons as is, or he can group tanks,
  infantry, mortars, and scouts from all platoons in a combinedarms team
  at the troop level.  In squadrons of armored cavalry regiments, a tank
  company and a self-propelled artillery battery give squadron commanders
  yet a stronger combined-arms team.  With three cavalry squadrons, an air
  cavalry squadron of scout and attack helicopters, combat engineer and
  chemical companies, and a combat support squadron providing organic
  logistics support, the regimental commander has a truly imposing
  independent combinedarms force.  An armored division several times the
  size of such a regiment would be required to provide an equal
  capability.  As we shall see in Tom Clancy's account, with the advent of
  more complex weapons systems, levels at which combined arms are grouped
  have moved up from platoon to troop.  But the result is the same-from
  their first day of duty cavalry leaders think combined-arms warfare. And
  that is a major reason why they are different, for battle experience
  teaches that the most difficult task to learn is the art-and it is an
  art-of knowing instinctively how to employ combined arms. Cavalry
  
  leaders are forced to do just that every day of their lives.
  In Tom Clancy's book we meet two Persian Gulf War cavalry leaders who
  are masters of that art-one an armored corps commander, the other a
  cavalry troop commander.  We learn that the corps commander, General
  Fred Franks, was once himself a cavalry platoon leader, later a squadron
  commander, and still later commander of a regiment, the 11th.  The
  cavalry troop commander, Captain H.  R.  McMaster, Jr., began his own
  career as a second lieutenant in a cavalry unit.  Fach, at his own
  level, is a master of the art of combined-arms warfare.
  The outstanding battle record of armored cavalry in the Gulf War is an
  important part of Tom Clancy's account, especially in the interviews
  with General Franks and Captain McMaster.  It is well to remember the
  equally outstanding battle performance of armored cavalry in the Vietnam
  War, for there it was originally perceived that the nature of the war,
  the enemy, terrain, and climate would make it impossible to employ an.1,
  armored units.  Consequently, infantry divisions initially deployed to
  Vietnam without organic tank battalions and armored cavalry squadrons.
  But after some experience, the infantry commanders already in-country
  sent home for those units.  With some misgivings, a regiment of cavalry,
  the 11th, was deployed to Southeast Asia.  The misgivings proved
  unfounded.  The 11th did very well.  Other units were sent, and they
  also performed well.  Later, a special task force sent to evaluate the
  performance of armored units in Vietnam concluded they were the most
  effective, certainly the most cost-effective, of the war.  And when the
  war ended, cavalry units were among the last to redeploy home@ they
  simply represented more combat power for the least investment in
  manpower that could be had.
  As a result of this experience, it was quite clear that cavalry was a
  force ready-made for the less-than-all-out wars that became the norm at
  the end of the Cold War and during the years that followed.  Changes to
  organization and equipment suggested by cavalry commanders were the
  basis for post-Vietnam cavalry reforms, and for the success of splendid
  regiments like the 3rd that were so effective in the 1991 Persian Gulf
  War.
  Now our once-familiar world has changed.  The traditional threat of more
  than five decades' standing has come asunder.  And no one can reasonably
  say what will eventuate.  A Russia there will be, but what kind?  And
  what may be its relationship(s) with the other former Soviet republics?
  Four of those republics are now proud owners of thermonuclear weapons
  and the means to deliver them inter- or intra-theater.  Meanwhile,
  militarization of conflict in the Third World continues apace.  Indeed
  it is at a new juncture, with the advent of ballistic missiles and the
  drive by rogue dictators in resource-critical regions to develop or
  acquire weapons of mass destruction.  Economic interdependence, an
  
  inescapable fact of our "modern" world, makes all nations, especially
  developed nations, vulnerable to mischief by Third World miscreants.  At
  the same time, domestic economic uncertainty and national priorities now
  aimed at medical, educational, urban, and environmental dilemmas make it
  difficult to garner support for military forces to counter these new and
  unfamiliar threats.  The United States historically follows successful
  military ventures by destroying the very strength that provided
  victory-only to find it necessary to rebuild on short order with the
  arrival of new and previously unforeseen threats.  The first battles of
  the next war thus find us paying the tragic price for our unpreparedness
  in the commodity we can least afford to expend-the lives of soldiers,
  marines, airmen, and sailors.  Now we are at it once more.  The
  situation of this last decade of the 20th century is reminiscent of the
  thirty years following the American Civil War, when shadowed remnants of
  a once-proud army were completely overcommitted in campaigns to tame the
  American West and its Indians.  Now, the "wild savages" of the American
  West have been replaced by religious fundamentalists and other types of
  "hostiles."  Though they are geographically far away, their weapons put
  them relatively closer than those now all-but-forgotten frontier
  "badmen."  Yet the drive to disarm continues.  The American Congress is
  frequently blamed for this state of affairs, and not without
  justification.  For the Congress, for better or for worse, has to
  determine the size of the armed forces in budget terms-numbers of
  people, of bases, and of kinds of equipment.  On the other hand,
  structure-the numbers of divisions, air wings, carrier task forces-is a
  responsibility of the services: Army, Navy, Air Force.  And that is
  where the services have an opportunity to exercise creativity and
  initiative.  The Army after the Civil War, driven to draconian measures
  by Congressional restrictions on manpower, all but abandoned larger
  formations-divisions, corps, armies.  Operations during those grim, lean
  years were in the hands of some very capable, if understrength,
  regiments of infantry, artillery, and cavalry.  It is a paradigm that we
  would do well to study; Tom Clancy's superb book is a good place to
  begin.
  Donn Starry, General, U.S.  Army, Retired, 41st Colonel of the
  Blackhorse, and Honorary Colonel of the Regiment
  When did mobile warfare start?  That's hard to say-but probably not long
  after somebody realized it was possible to use a horse to move things or
  people.  And it was definitely going strong on the steppes of Central
  Asia by the third millennium BC.  Recent excavations by Russian
  archaeologists of Bronze Age grave sites on the Kazalch steppes (dated
  around 2200 to 1800 BC) have unearthed the earliest known remains of
  chariots.  These were invented as high-tech platforms from which
  warriors could shoot arrows or hurl javelins.  And yet it's quite
  possible that mobile warfare goes farther back than that.  Bones from
  even earlier sites in the Ukraine suggest that the long love affair
  
  between humans and horses may have started more than six thousand years
  ago.  Archaeologists debate the issue, but horses may have been ridden
  bareback long before they were harnessed to wheeled vehicles.  What if
  the first use of the horse in battle was for reconnaissance?  Sitting
  astride a horse you can see farther than you can while standing on your
  own two feet.  And the horse has four legs, which has advantages, too.
  More fleet of foot than a man though only for short distances, and only
  if properly treated-the horse can give his rider the ability to locate
  the enemy, approach him, count his numbers, perhaps harass him a little,
  and then escape unhurt to report to the chieftain.  And so from time
  immemorial, these two missions have been the main missions of the
  cavalry: to locate the enemy, and to sting him.
  Cavalry has rarely been a decisive arm by itself.  For one thing, the
  size of the horse gave cavalry troopers lower combat density than the
  infantry.   The breadth of a horse's chest and the space needed to avoid
  crushing a rider's legs against his neighbor's mount meant that two or
  three infantrymen occupied the same frontage as a single horse and
  rider.  Two or three spears, swords, or bows in the hands of foot
  soldiers confronted each warrior on horseback.  Less appreciated is a
  horse's unwillingness to plunge headlong into a barrier it cannot see
  through.  Though a horse might not be the smartest living thing on
  earth, only men will knowingly hurl away their lives.  Third, a horse is
  not a machine.  To operate and perform properly, it needs food, water,
  and rest.  Denied those things, it dies; and all the spare parts in an
  Army inventory can't fix that.  And so it was a rule of the American
  West that on any long-distance trip of more than five days, an infantry
  company could outmarch a cavalry troop.  A horse afforded a trooper a
  relatively high dash-speed, but only over fairly short distances.  A man
  sitting on a horse also made an easy target, especially after the
  development of firearms. And yet, despite these drawbacks, the horse
  remained important in war for three millennia.  More precisely, the
  horseman performed several crucial missions: find the enemy; prevent the
  enemy from finding you; collect information on the enemy before your
  main force collides with his; harass his flanks and communications;
  pursue him in defeat; screen your own forces when you are forced to
  withdraw.
  Today the horse is used mainly for parades and ceremonies, but the
  missions it once performed remain as vital as ever.  Though today's
  cavalry "companies" are called "troops," and the "battalions" are called
  "squadrons," the troop ers (otherwise called "soldiers"-traditions do
  die hard, especially when John Ford made so many great movies about the
  glorious horse-soldiers) ride to battle not on Front Royal remounts, but
  mostly within sophisticated fighting vehicles.
  Always the Army's proud arm, the socially prominent arm, the "pretty"
  arm-and for all those reasons despised by the infantry-the United States
  
  Cavalry' is not-and never was-just fashionable.  It grows and changes.
  And so in the 1950s and '60s it mutated into a shock-arm. In those days,
  the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment (ACR)L was tasked with covering the
  Fulda Gap, an historic invasion route into western Germany.  The job of
  the 11th ACR was to slow down, break up, and generally obstruct the
  advance of an armored formation as large as the Soviet Third Shock Army
  (about twelve times its size).  That job demanded a new kind of unit,
  different from one designed for reconnaissance.  Consequently the
  armored cavalry regiment evolved into something like an unusually robust
  brigade, or even a mini-division-a superbly balanced combat formation,
  containing a little bit of everything the Army has, under the command of
  a full colonel.  In due course, the ACR became a plum assignment, where
  successful stewardship was the passage to greater things.  In fact, the
  top ranks of the U.S.  Army are packed with men who have served in, and
  commanded, the three ACRs that operated during the Cold War.
  This growth process, whose purpose was simply to give the unit
  designated to be the first target for the Red Army a modest chance at
  survival, ended up producing a military organization with unusual
  relevance for the world that is now emerging after the fall of
  Communism.  Relatively small in size, the ACR is heavy on "teeth" and
  short on "tail"-a weighted fist with deceptive agility on the
  battlefield.  It has global mobility, and the greatest concentration of
  firepower of any land combat force yet created.  As we will see, the
  marriage of weapons and mobility, added to the coming revolution in
  battlefield-information technology, will transform the ACR yet again
  into a form that will make it the most important land component in the
  U.S.  military's continuing mission of keeping the peace-and punishing
  those who violate it.
  And that will continue to be the legacy of those who stir to the sound
  of "Boots and Saddles."
  Ever since the first warrior padded himself with leather to ward off the
  blows of a rival's weapon, there has been an endless struggle between
  those who fashion armor to protect soldiers and those who build weapons
  to penetrate and destroy it.  Later, when man began to forge metal into
  plates, he beat it into improved armor for his breast and head, to
  better ward off enemy spears and arrows.  A well-armored warrior could
  close with his enemies, survive their attacks, and then destroy them
  with his own weapons.  When sharp iron is flying around a battlefield,
  armor protection can be the difference between life and death, victory
  and defeat.
  The knights of France fell to the archers of King Edward Ill of England
  at the Battle of Crdcy ( 1346) because the armor a horse and rider could
  bear did not stop the arrows fired by longbows.  The first British tanks
  were impervious to the machine-gun bullets fired by German soldiers
  
  during the Battle of Cambrai in 1917. The world of the armored warrior
  is an ever-shifting balance between armor and firepower.  The way these
  two elements interact, as well as the skill of the operators, determines
  how well any armored fighting vehicle will do in combat.  Let's take a
  quick look at the state of the art in the complex science of armored
  warfare.
  Armor-The Hard Shell
  Armor is the tank's reason for being, not mobility or a big tin,
  although both are desirable and will compete with armor in a tank's
  design.  Armor is designed to keep the crew, and the weapons capable of
  inflicting punishment upon an enemy, safe.
  Tanks were born in World War I out of the desperation of trench warfare.
  In September of 1914, after the Battle of the Marne, the defeated German
  Army fell back and dug into a system of trenches and defensive positions
  so strong that the Allies could not dislodge them.  In the years that
  followed, machine guns and artillery inflicted hideous losses on both
  sides; the war bogged down into a stalemate.  The addition of several
  hundreds of miles of barbed wire created a deadly zone between the
  opposing armies (called "no-man's-land") where infantry and the
  now-outdated horse cavalry (they just didn't know it yet) were mowed
  down by the tens of thousands.  Allied commanders demanded more and more
  artillery to beat down the German troops and destroy their barbed wire
  and entrenchments.  That didn't work.  The only result was to turn a
  good portion of northern France and Belgium into terrain resembling a
  barren moonscape.
  Something new was needed.  Something that could crawl right up to the
  machine-gun nests and destroy them, without being destroyed first.  The
  solution was a combination of steel plate (from naval ship armor), the
  internal combustion engine, caterpillar tracks (from early agricultural
  tractors), and machine guns or light cannon.  Enter the tank.  Because
  they were originally called "land ships," many terms in the tank
  vocabulary-turret, hull, hatch, deck, periscope-are naval metaphors, but
  not the name "tank" itself.  That comes from a British cover story: They
  concealed their construction from the Germans by calling them storage
  tanks or boilers.  During World War I the typical Allied tank had armor
  between 10mm (about .4 inches) and 25mm (about 1 inch) thick of hardened
  steel plate.   Only a 12mm (about .5 inch) thickness of armor was
  sufficient to stop German armor-piercing bullets at point-blank range.
  This was also sufficient to stop most artillery shell fragments,
  although a direct hit was usually fatal.
  By the beginning of World War II, tank armor was between 30mm (about 1.2
  inch) and 70mm (about 2.75 inches) thick; and the front section was
  sloped for improved penetration resistance.  Unfortunately, with armor
  
  this thick it was no longer possible to provide all-around protection
  and allow the tank to move at a reasonable speed.  Engineers therefore
  began designing tanks with a heavily armored front, while side and rear
  armor was only about half the thickness of the armor up front.  During
  the war, tank designs and technology improved at a rapid pace; and by
  1945, tank frontal armor ranged from 100mm (about 3.9 inches) to 150mm
  (about 5.9 inches) in thickness, although some German designs sported
  front armor between 200mm (about 7.9 inches) and 240mm (about 9.4
  inches) thick (thicker than the armor on naval heavy cruisers).
  Postwar tank designs followed these trends, with all then having frontal
  armor thicknesses in the 100mm (about 3.9 inches) to 120mm (about 4.75
  inches) range.  There were, however, significant improvements in the
  size and power of main guns.  Bore size (the diameter of the shell fired
  by the gun) had now grown to between 100mm (about 3.9 inches) and 115mm
  (about 4.5 inches), as compared to the 75mm (about 2.9 inches) to 90mm
  (about 3.5 inches) that was the average during the last years of World
  War II.  Meanwhile, short-range antitank launchers like the American
  "bazooka" and German Panzerfaust gave infantry a tank-killing weapon.
  By the early 1960s, frontal tank armor had started to increase in
  thickness again, mainly in response to the larger penetration
  capabilities of the new High-Explosive Anti-Tank (HEAT) projectiles that
  were appearing on tank-gun and recoilless-rifle rounds, as well as the
  first of the new Anti-Tank Guided Missiles (ATGMs).  It is also during
  this time that the composition of armor began to change, with new
  designs no longer consisting simply of steel in ever increasing
  thicknesses.  Instead, armor now combined steel with ceramic laminates
  to provide a tougher target for the new types of anti-tank weapons being
  deployed.  This combination armor was first deployed on-the Soviet T-64
  main battle tank (MBT), which entered production in 1967. Unfortunately,
  because of the Vietnam War, the United States fell behind in armor
  development.  So costly was the continuing conflict in Southeast Asia,
  that the U.S.  Army missed an entire equipment modernization cycle.
  Frontline Army units continued to use tanks based on 1950s technology
  (the M48 and M60 series) well into the 1980s.
  Modern Tank Armor
  So what makes up the armor of a modern tank or fighting vehicle?  Three
  ingredients determine just how effective a tank's armor-protection
  system, or package, will be.  They are:
  a The thickness of the armor package.
  - The material composition of the armor package, - The slope angle of
  the armor package outer face relative to an incoming weapon.
  We'll examine how each of the three ingredients contributes to overall
  
  armor effectiveness and how they work together against various forms of
  attack.  After that, we'll look at the exotic new generation of
  explosive reactive armor (ERA) and how that changes the picture.
  Armor Thickness-Where armor is concerned, there is an old design axiom
  that thicker is better.  Though the reason for this is intuitively
  obvious, I need to explain how that axiom is valid today, and how it has
  changed.  All modern anti-tank weapons, with the exception of a few
  mines, use some sort of a penetrator to pierce the tank's armored hide
  and cause havoc inside the vehicle.  The more material a penetrator has
  to work its way through, the lower the chance of a lethal penetration.
  But there is a practical limit to how much armor a tank can have and
  still move across terrain and carry a useful weapon.  A large solid
  block of steel is fairly safe from penetration, but it just sits there
  and doesn't do anything.
  The classic material for tank armor is a family of high-quality steel
  alloys, rolled to provide a uniform thickness as well as the best
  combination of strength and hardness.  Because the material is of
  uniform hardness throughout, this type of armor is called Rolled
  Homogenous Armor or RHA, and it is the standard by which all armor types
  are judged.  Though many factors, other than just thickness, go into
  estimating the RHA equivalent (measured in millimeters of RHA armor
  plate) for a given type of armor, this simple numerical rating allows
  all types of armor to be evaluated comparatively.  For example, the
  1943-vintage M4 Sherman tank that my wife Wanda gave me for Christmas a
  few years back has an RHA equivalent thickness of 100mm (3.9").  By
  comparison, the first M I Abrams tanks delivered in the early 1980s had
  an RHA equivalent value of almost 450mm (about 17.7") against a
  kinetic-energy penetrator (solid-shot), And the current version of the
  Abrams, the
  MI A2, has an RH A equivalentvalue of almost800mm (about31.5") against a
  kinetic-energy penetrator, and an amazing 1,300mm (almost 51.2") against
  HEAT-type weapons!
  Materials-More goes into an armor-protection package than a simple
  thickness of steel or other material.  Indeed, the composition of the
  package has a great bearing on just how much protection it provides.
  Modern armor designs are complex combinations of materials (steel,
  ceramics, exotic metal alloys, and even plastics).  For example, the
  Chobham armor used in the early M I / M I A I tanks is far more
  effective against H EAT (chemical-energy/explosive) rounds than against
  long-rod (solid-shot) penetrators.  Thus the M IA I Heavy Armor (HA)
  variant, with a layer of depleted-uranium armor, was designed primarily
  to defeat long-rod penetrators.
  By now all this talk of HEAT rounds and long-rod penetrators may have
  
  you wondering what I am referring to.  So perhaps some explanation is
  necessary before we go on.  HEAT-or shaped-charge-rounds had their
  origin in the Second World War when weapon makers borrowed an old
  miners' trick to "shape" or focus the energy from an explosion into a
  small area so it could penetrate armored plate.  By the end of WWII,
  such munitions became a serious threat to the tank.  And in the early
  1960s, when a shaped-charge round was mated to a rocket motor and a
  guidance system, a really practical, lightweight tank killer had come
  into being-the anti-tank guided missile (ATGM).  Now small vehicles and
  infantry had the ability to attack and defeat a tank's frontal armor.
  Such an attack would have been suicidal in the past.  The ATGM proved
  itself in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, when several Israeli armored
  brigades, without infantry support, were badly chopped up when they
  attacked Egyptian infantry positions (infantry protects tanks by
  spotting enemy missile teams and suppressing them).  During the
  mid-1970s, military experts debated whether or not ATGMs had rendered
  the main battle tank obsolete.
  But some officers in the U.S.  Army chose to look upon the data of the
  '73 war as more than an epitaph for the tank.  A closer look at the
  operational data from the war showed Western tank designers that
  existing armor types, usually a thin "face-hardened" surface layer on a
  thick plate of RHA, did not provide sufficient protection against the
  current generation of HEAT warheads, let alone the next generation due
  to appear in the early 1980s.  As we mentioned earlier, the Soviet Union
  was fielding tanks in the 1960s with
  A diagrani of a HEAT round impacting a piece of sloped armor.  The round
  on the left is shown just prior toini
  pact;theoneontherightjustafterdetonation of theshaped charge.
  combination (metal and ceramic) armor, long before their'Western
  opponents.  But in the early 1970s, the British Army research facility
  at Chobham, England, developed a revolutionary type of armor with a
  honeycombed ceramic composite layer sandwiched between steel plates.
  This new material combination was code-named Burlington, but it is
  better known by its trade name-Chobham armor.
  Because of their mechanical properties, mixed layers of ceramic and
  metal composites offer excellent protection against HEAT rounds.
  Ceramics are amorphous, that is to say that they do not have a
  crystalline structure like metals, but are more "fluid-like," with a
  fairly random molecular structure.  So when a HEAT round strikes
  combination armor, the explosive jet quickly pushes through the outer
  steel layer and tries to burrow through the ceramic.  However, unlike
  metals, which break up along structural boundaries between individual
  crystals (which stay separated), ceramics tend to flow around the jet
  and break it up into many smaller "jetiets," which are quickly
  
  dissipated.  The disadvantage of combination armor is that it is very
  bulky, since the ceramic and composite layers have to be of sufficient
  depth to break up the jet.  Consequently, although ceramics are lighter
  than metals, the overall weight (or mass) of a combination-armor package
  tends to be about the same as RHA for a given level of protection.
  Examples of its use can be found in the turret designs on the American M
  I Abrams and the British Challenger tanks that were employed so
  successfully during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.  In fact, the newest
  Chobham-type armor designs tend to be about two to two-and-ahalf times
  more effective against HEAT-type weapons than an equivalent weight of
  solid RHA.
  By the early 1980s, as tanks with combination armor entered service,
  HEAT rounds became less of a threat to tank survival.  This made the
  kineticenergy penetrator, once again, the main tank killer.
  Kinetic-energy penetrators rely on impact to pierce armor.  While HEAT
  rounds derive most of their penetration capability from the explosive
  jet's velocity, kinetic-energy penetrators use both mass and velocity to
  do the job.  Modern armor-piercing fin-stabilized discarding-sabot
  (APFSDS) rounds are very dense, long, slender darts (hence the name
  long-rod penetrators) that burrow into a tank's armor on impact.  If it
  has sufficient kinetic energy, the dart goes right through the tank's
  armor and raises hell inside.  These long-rod penetrators, unlike
  shaped-charge jets, are solid and are not broken up by the amorphous
  structure of the ceramics in combination armor.  However, ceramics
  possess another property that has an effect on kinetic-energy rounds.
  This property is hardness: the ability of a material to resist
  scratching or penetration.  The higher the hardness value, the greater
  the kinetic energy required to penetrate the material.
  Now, as far as kinetic-energy protection is concerned, RHA is pretty
  soft stuff (relatively speaking), and can easily be pushed aside by a
  high-velocity long-rod penetrator.  Though steel can be hardened by
  special treatments (such as nitriding or carburizing), you can't make an
  entire hull out of very hard steel.  It is exceedingly difficult to
  fabricate and weld large thick pieces of high ARMOR 101: AN ARMORED An
  APFSDS round inipacting and defeating an armor plate.  Note the spall
  fragments which are thrown inward by the penetration of the "dart." At
  iifER hardness steel into armored structures.  Another problem is that
  metals with high hardness are brittle and tend to shatter like glass
  under high-energy impact.  So combining layers of hard and soft steel is
  advantageous.  If the hardened face steel is tough enough, the attacking
  projectile may be deflected outright, break up on impact, or have its
  nose squashed (i.e., no longer a nice sharp point).  Because of this
  "blunting" effect, the projectile has to expend more energy to penetrate
  the underlying softer steel.  And the softer steel can absorb energy
  because it readily deforms, or gives, under the load.  In this way it
  tends to dissipate the energy of the round.
  
  Hardened steel, however, is still relatively soft compared to ceramics.
  For example, silicon carbide (a ceramic used to make drill bits) is
  about three to four times as hard as RHA.  Thus, combination armor with
  hard ceramic/composite blocks supported by RHA protects against
  kinetic-energy attacks about as well as a combination of hard and soft
  steels (one needs to remember that these armors were specifically
  designed to defeat the large HEAT warheads in ATGMs).  Another advantage
  (sort of a backhanded advantage actually) that combination armor has
  over RHA is that it is usually thicker, so there is more material that a
  long-rod penetrator has to go through before it gets to the inside of
  the tank.  And the addition of a layer of depleted uranium (DU) in the
  HA variant of the MI Abrams tank makes it even more resistant to
  kinetic-energy rounds.  While precisely how this is done remains one of
  the reallj, black secrets within the U.  S.  Army, it doubles the
  effectiveness of the M I's armor against long-rods.  The exact
  composition of the M I's armor is so secret that the armor package
  stuffing room is the only place that you are not allowed to see in the M
  I factory at Lima, Ohio.  In fact, one worker on the factory floor
  described it as the "kryptonite" room.
  Armor Slope-A final factor in the effectiveness of an armor package is
  the slope of the armored face.   The degree of slope of an armored
  surface has two major effects.  First, if the slope angle is 60' or
  greater, there is a good chance that a projectile will ricochet off the
  armor face, causing little or no damage.  Second, the slope angle
  determines the amount of armor that a longrod penetrator or HEAT jet
  will actually have to push through before it reaches the tank's
  interior.  The basic rule of thumb is that the greater the stope, the
  greater the protection; for that increases the effective thickness of
  the armor.  Thus, the average frontal armor slope has increased steadily
  throughout the history of the tank.  In World War I the slope was O' on
  many vehicles. By the end of World War II, frontal armor slopes were
  between 45' and 60' Modern main battle tanks generally have front armor
  slopes around 7 O., although the M I series of tanks have a front armor
  slope of about 80'.  Thus, if a tank has a frontal armor plate 200mm
  thick, with a slope of 70', then the actual thickness a weapon would
  have to defeat would be 584mm.  This is a lot of armor!
  So how do all of these things add up when it comes to a real-world tank
  design?  Consider the following.  The Russian T-72 tank (according to
  reports published in defense journals) has frontal armor made up of a
  layered combination of steel, ceramics, and composites.  Its thickness
  is about 200mm, and the slope is 68'.  A rough calculation of the RHA
  equivalents for chemical and kinetic-energy attacks would give an RHA
  equivalent of 720mm (about 28.3") against a HEAT round, and 454mm (about
  17.9") against a kinetic-energy penetrator.  The danger with this type
  of calculation is that each armor type can't be easily boiled down to a
  
  simple number.  And there is little published in the open literature
  about how different types of armor arrays react to each type of weapon.
  What this crude estimate of the T-72 does illustrate, though, is that it
  probably has sufficient protection to withstand an attack from almost
  all infantry anti-tank weapons with HEAT rounds (400-600mm penetration
  capability) such as the Russian PPG-7.  In addition, penetration isn't
  an end in itself.  There must be sufficient residual energy in the HEAT
  jet to disable or kill a tank and its occupants.  If an ATGM has just
  enough energy to penetrate the armor, the tank will still be able to
  fight.  Thus, there has to be some residual energy left to blow
  fragments and spalls (chunks literally peeled off the armor) into the
  interior in order to kill the tank or the crew.
  Reactive Armor-The newest fashion in armor technology is explosive
  reactive armor (ERA).  ERA was developed by Israel (under the trade name
  of Blazer) and deployed on Israeli Merkava, as well as the U.S.-made M60
  and M48 Patton tanks, during the 1982 Lebanon invasion.  During that
  operation, the Israeli Army lost several tanks fitted with ERA; and it
  is rumored that the Arabs gave samples to the Soviets.  In any event, by
  about 1985, Soviet T-64, T72, and T-80 tanks started showing up with
  heavy applications of ERA on the front, sides, and turret.  By adding
  the ERA to their tanks (already fitted with HEAT-resistant combination
  armor), the Soviets had sufficient protection against virtually all
  current ATGMS.
  ERA looks like a set of child's toy blocks, and is usually fitted to the
  exposed forward surfaces of an armored vehicle.  It works like this:
  When a shaped-charge jet hits an ERA block, the impact detonates an
  explosive charge sandwiched between two steel plates.  This explosion
  pushes the outer plate into the HEAT jet, which now has to cut through
  the plate to get to the main armor.  The inner plate is driven against
  the hull and rebounds back into the path of the now-disrupted jet.  The
  energy of the shaped-charge jet is absorbed by the two moving plates, as
  the jet must continually cut through fresh material.  The remaining
  highly disrupted jet lacks sufficient punch to penetrate the main armor.
  Reactive armor in action.  In the lower W, view, a HEAT round is
  approaching a A reactive-armor box (a sandwich of explosive between
  metal plates).  When the round strikes the box (see the upper view), the
  explosive in the box detonates at the same time as the HEAT warhead,
  disrupting the flow of the plasma jet.
  ERA does have some severe limitations, however.  The effectiveness of
  ERA against shaped-charge jets is very dependent on slope angle.  When
  you took at a Soviet/Russian T-72 fitted with ERA blocks, you see these
  at roughly the same angle as the main hull.  At an angle of 68', the ERA
  disrupts approximately 75% of the shaped-charge jet, but ERA at an angle
  of O' only disrupts about 10- 15 % of a HEAT jet.  It didn't take long
  to figure out that top attack (a warhead firing down into the tank) was
  
  one way to defeat this new armor variation.  Even if you completely
  cover the top of your turret with ERA, a top-attack warhead will strike
  it at an angle close to O', so you gain little extra protection for the
  cost and weight.  The Swedish Bill and the U.S.  TOW-2B are examples of
  this technique in use.  Another variation is the "dual" warhead, which
  uses a small explosive charge to detonate the reactive-armor block. This
  is followed by a main warhead to defeat the primary armor of the tank.
  Such a dual warhead is used in the U.S.  Army's latest model of Hellfire
  anti-armor missiles.  The Russians have even designed a triple-warhead,
  125mm HEAT round, designated 3BK27, which is reportedly able to defeat
  modern Western armor packages.
  Earlier I mentioned that a long-rod penetrator would also detonate the
  ERA block.  However, unlike the HEAT round explosive jet, which has very
  littie mass, the long-rod is just too massive for the thin steel plates
  of the ERA block.  As a result, penetration is only marginally degraded
  by going through a layer of ERA.  There is on the drawing boards an ERA
  block with thicker plates, designed to snap the long-rod penetrator in
  two through a shearing action.  While this "thick-wall" ERA gives
  improved protection against long-rods, the protection it gives against a
  HEAT round is reduced.  There is no such thing as a free lunch!
  Using ERA poses two more problems.  First, it is one-shot protection.
  Once a spot on an ERA-protected vehicle is hit, the area that has been
  struck is no longer shielded (until you install a new ERA block).
  Second, dismounted infantry cannot escort tanks fitted with ERA, because
  the exploding ERA blocks throw out lots of fragments, shredding any
  nearby troops!
  In other words, modern main battle tanks have not become science-fiction
  ogres-irresistible killing machines.  For one thing, it must be
  remembered that today's tanks and armored fighting vehicles only have
  massive protection on the front of the vehicle.  The sides, rear, top,
  and bottom are not only relatively thin-skinned, but there is no way to
  angle the armor in these locations effectively.  So, while a T-72 with
  reactive armor has an RHA equivalent of over 1,000mm (about 39.4")
  against a HEAT round on its front, it has at best between 100mm (about
  3.9") to 135mm (about 5.3") of RHA equivalent armor on the sides, and
  even less in the rear. Thus a tank is anything but invulnerable.  And
  only good tactical employment will keep its strong side aimed toward the
  weapons that are trying to destroy it.  Consider the following: The
  Hellfire antitank missile, originally fielded in 1986, had about 1,050mm
  of RHA penetration capability.  It probably would not penetrate a Soviet
  T-72 tank's front plate augmented with reactive armor.  But if fired
  into the T-72's side, a German World War II Panzerfaust 100 (fielded in
  1944, with about 200mm RHA penetration capability) would cut right
  through and probably knock the tank out.  Hellfires fired at T-72s from
  the side during Desert Storm usually blew the tank's turret into the
  
  air, and blew out the sides of the armored box hull.  Thus, the ogre has
  Achilles' heels.
  And this brings up a point about Soviet tank design.  Compared to tank
  designs in the West, Russian tanks have small front profiles.  Russian
  tanks are designed to present the smallest possible target, reducing the
  probability of being hit.  When they are trying to sell their tanks to
  other countries, the Russians promote this as a significant advantage.
  In comparison to the German Leopard 11, for instance, the T-72 is
  roughly half a meter (about 20") shorter in height and three-quarters of
  a meter (about 30") shorter in length.  Additionally, compared with the
  massive box-like turrets of the German Leopard 11 and the American M I
  Abrams, Russian turrets are also very small.  Unfortunately, users of
  Soviet tanks like the T-72 have found that the relatively small
  reduction in target area means a severely reduced internal volume.  In
  comparison to Western tanks, Russian tanks have about half the usable
  internal space.  Should a long-rod penetrator or a shaped-charge
  explosive jet penetrate the hull or turret, there is a higher
  probability that fragments and spall will hit something critical.  There
  is simply less space to rattle around in.  And with such small turrets,
  the Russians have no room to store ammunition in blast-resistant bustles
  with blowout panels (such as the American Abrams tanks employ).  Instead
  they have to store ammunition down in the hull, risking catastrophic
  explosion if the armor is penetrated.  So if a Russian used-tank
  salesman offers you a deal on some low-mileage T-64s or T-72s, just say
  N@,et!  Anti-Tank Weapons-The Dragon Killers
  Over the last three-quarters of a century, a variety of different
  weapons has evolved to destroy the armored monsters that roam the
  battlefield.  The first anti-tank weapons were large-caliber rifles
  (similar to those used for hunting elephants and rhinos) firing heavy
  slugs.  These crude weapons were soon replaced by more effective methods
  of penetrating armor.  Historically, the most dangerous enemy of a tank
  is another tank.  The projectiles thrown by tank main guns have become
  the most lethal anti-tank weapon.  To understand why, let's look at a
  few of these dragon killers. \Depleted-Uranium Assembly
  Penetrato, Main Charge Liner C.mbu@tible Aluminum Sabot C.@ridge Case
  Combustible IA2 P@.pellant Catidge Case
  @Tail Boom
  @DIGL-RP P,opellant
  \Alu.i..m Fin '-Fin M129 Primer"
  "Steel Case Base
  
  Steel Case Base
  LEFT.- A cutaway of 120mm M829 kinetic-energy penetrating round of the
  type used on the M I Abrams main battle tank.  A special version of this
  round, the MY29A2, became known as the "Silver Bullet" during the 1991
  Persian Gulf War. The 120mm M830 HEAT round used by the M I Abrams main
  battle tank.
  Long-Rod Penetrators-Long-rod penetrators are officially known as
  High-Velocity, Armor-Piercing, Fin-Stabilized, Discarding-Sabot
  (HVAPFSDS) projectiles.  These are sub-caliber (smaller than the
  diameter of the firing gun) projectiles designed to penetrate a tank's
  armor through brute force.  To put it another way, this weapon is the
  modern equivalent of King Edward's longbow archers at the Battle of
  Cr6cy.  Modern long-rod penetrators are made of solid tungsten or
  depleted-uranium alloys.  Both are extremely dense and very hard.   Some
  earlier long-rods were made of stainless steel with tungsten cores, but
  these tended to shatter on impact with the modern armor packages used on
  today's tanks.  Depleted-uranium (DU) alloys have slightly better
  penetration performance than tungsten alloys, but DU is somewhat
  radioactive and the dust (UO2) is very toxic.  Since tank ammunition is
  stowed in a separate armored compartment, the tank's crew is effectively
  shielded from radiation and chemical hazards before the DU round is
  fired, but this protection is lost when the round impacts on a target.
  Consequently, battlefield contamination has raised some environmental
  concerns.  In addition, DU is difficult to manufacture and work with
  safely.  So why bother with DU at all?
  Well, first of all, DU penetrators perform a bit better than tungsten,
  and you never know when that little bit of extra performance will save
  your tank (and maybe your behind).  Second, as a DU long-rod penetrates
  armor, the nose flakes into small particles.  These particles become
  incandescent from the friction generated.  When these particles are
  finally blasted into the tank's interior, they ignite and burn
  violently, generating heat and pressure that is deadly to the crew and
  the tank (with its stored fuel and ammunition).  This "pyrophoric"
  effect gives DU an advantage over tungsten in lethality.  Present U.S.
  APFSDS rounds, like the M829Al, are made of DU alloy and have a
  length-to-diameter ratio of around fifteen or twenty to one.  That is,
  the round length is fifteen or twenty times the round's diameter.  But
  experimental APFSDS rounds, such as the M829A2 Desert Storm "Silver
  Bullet," are about thirty to one.  Decreasing the long-rod's diameter
  improves its pene- tration capability.  In short, the smaller-diameter
  penetrator forces a smaller area of armor to absorb the rod's kinetic
  energy.  Reduced diameter also means lower drag, so that the thinner
  round impacts the target at a higher velocity, with a reduced time of
  flight.  Clearly this is bad news for a tank!  On the downside, the
  smaller-diameter penetrator is more likely to break up as impact
  
  stresses are applied to the smaller cross-sectional area.
  The velocity of an APFSDS round as it leaves the muzzle is tremendous.
  For the M256 120mm smoothbore gun on the M IA I and M IA2 variants, the
  muzzle velocity is approximately 1,650 meters per second (about 5,413
  feet per second), or about Mach 4.  Because of this high speed and the
  projectile's length, long-rod penetrators are fin-stabilized to prevent
  wobbling in flight.  In essence, the long-rod penetrator is a
  1.5-to-2-foot-long (.46-to-.61-meter-long), 10-Ib.  (4.54-kg.) metal
  dart.  The need to accelerate the round to these speeds requires the use
  of a sabot, which holds the round in the middle of the gun barrel as it
  travels towards the breach.  As the round exits the gun tube,
  aerodynamic drag tears the sabot from the penetrator, and the round
  flies on towards its target.  This use of sabots-and the higher
  operating pressure and velocity of their rounds-is one of the reasons
  for the popularity of smoothbore tank cannons.  Older rifled guns have
  spiral grooves in the barrel that impart a stabilizing spin to the
  round.  But rifled guns cannot sustain the very high pressures and
  muzzle velocities of sabot rounds because the grooves would rapidly
  erode, making the tube useless after a few rounds.
  Because of the slope and composition of modern armor, the APFSDS round
  must fly perfectly straight to penetrate even moderate armor.  Any
  deviation from a stable trajectory and the APFSDS round could lose
  upwards of 80% of its penetrating power, or even snap in two under the
  enormous stress of impact.  But if the long-rod penetrator hits a tank's
  armor squarely, the highly localized pressure will deform and push the
  armor material out of the projectile's path.  In essence, the armor
  flows out of the way of the projectile as it travels and forms a
  penetration cavity.  Once through the armor, the remnants of the APFSDS
  round and some armor fragments (spall) are injected into the tank's
  interior, with serious consequences for the occupants: They are
  literally sitting ducks in a big steel barrel.  Many APFSDS rounds were
  fired during Desert Storm, with stunning results.  In one action, a
  British Army colonel hit and destroyed an Iraqi tank with an APFSDS
  round at over 5,400 meters (about 3.35 miles).  That is really
  long-range shooting!
  HEAT/Shaped-Charge Rounds-To kill an armored target, you must defeat the
  armor by blowing a hole in it.  Current weapons technology provides two
  ways to do this.  You can use the kinetic energy of a long-rod traveling
  at very high speed, typically a mile/ 1.6 kilometers per second.  Or you
  can use the chemical energy released by an explosive "shaped charge,"
  which can be traveling quite slowly indeed.
  HEAT rounds use a high-explosive shaped charge packed around a
  cone-shaped metallic liner.  When detonated, the explosive causes the
  metal liner to collapse rapidly inward.  The metal liner (usually
  
  composed of copper or aluminum) is heated and compressed by the energy
  of the explosion to form a jet with velocities as high as 8,000 to 9,000
  meters per second (about 29,500 feet per second), or about Mach 25!  The
  metal liner, however, is not a molten stream.  It is still very solid,
  yet behaves like a fluid because of the tremendous pressures involved.
  Modern HEAT rounds have a long probe or a hollow nose cone containing
  the fusing mechanism.  This provides a standoff distance between the
  warhead and the target's surface.  This standoff allows the jet to reach
  its optimum form, which maximizes its penetration capability.
  When a shaped-charge jet hits a tank's armor, the highly localized
  pressure deforms and pushes the armor material out of the jet's path,
  thus forming a penetration cavity.  If you think this sounds similar to
  what a long-rod penetrator does, you are correct.  In both cases the
  weapons use high local pressure to exceed the armor's mechanical
  strength.  As the armor material is moved out of the way, the jet or the
  projectile occupies the space created and continues to burrow inward. In
  both cases the armor behaves like a fluid and flows around the intruding
  object.  Shaped-charge munitions can penetrate approximately four to
  seven times the diameter of the warhead in millimeters of RHA, depending
  on the liner material and the type of target armor.  When combination
  armor is involved, this rough rule doesn't apply, because this type of
  armor was specifically designed to defeat HEAT rounds. Explosively
  Formed Projectiles/Top Attack-Explosively formed projectiles (EFPs)-or
  flying plates, as they are often called-are kissing cousins to the
  shaped-charge warhead.  Like the shaped charge, a high explosive is used
  to deform a metallic liner into a projectile.  But this is where the
  similarity ends.  Shaped-charge warheads use a conical-shaped liner,
  whereas the EFP uses a shallow hemispherical dish.  When the explosive
  detonates, it deforms the dish into a solid slug or penetrator, rather
  than an elongated jet.  The slug is aerodynamically stable (like a
  long-rod) and can reach speeds up to about 2,000 meters per second
  (about 6,560 feet per second), or about Mach 5 (fairly slow compared to
  the 8,000 or 9,000 meters per second reached by most HEAT-round jets).
  Consequently, EFPs penetrate less armor than shaped charges: A rough
  rule of thumb for EFP penetration is millimeters of RHA equal to the
  warhead's diameter.  (Recall that shaped-charge warheads can penetrate
  about four to seven times the warhead diameter of armor.) EFPs are used
  mainly in top-attack weapons or mines, where massive armorpenetration
  capability isn't required.  Examples of such weapons are the Swedish
  Bill and the American TOW-2B.
  12 - ARMORED (.'AV
  Because they circumvent the tank's thickest armor, top-attack munitions
  have gained in popularity in recent times.  In the case of an EFP slug
  against a T-72, the slug only has to penetrate about 200mm of top armor,
  not 454mm of frontal armor.  Even tank main-gun rounds are being
  
  designed to take advantage of this indirect technique.  Watch this
  technology, for it is the future.
  Over twenty years ago, at the close of the Vietnam War, it was hard to
  find an organization held in less respect than the U.S.  Army.  An
  American force of over 500,000, most of them U.S.  Army personnel,
  equipped with U.S.  Army equipment, and trained to U.S.  Army doctrine,
  had just done something unknown in the history of American arms. They
  had won every battle and engagement, but left Southeast Asia with their
  Air Force and Navy comrades without victory.  The political reasons for
  the defeat in Vietnam were complex and controversial, but people still
  found it easy to blame the leadership, personnel, and equipment of "the
  big green machine" (rather than the politicians and bureaucrats who
  truly deserve the blame) for America's first lost war.
  Yet, beneath this defeat and waste lay the first roots of the reborn
  Army that would crush Iraq in four days and set new standards for the
  art of warfare.  With twenty years of hindsight, it is easy to see just
  how deeply those roots extend.  Certainly to General Creighton Abrams,
  the Army Chief of Staff after Vietnam, who as a young officer in World
  War II led the relief column that first reached the besieged town of
  Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge.  In his mind was a dream of a
  new professional army.
  There also was the professional corps of young officers that had served
  in Vietnam during the war.  Those who chose to stay in the Army and
  "stick it out" surely made a promise to themselves: "If we ever reach
  the rank of general, things are going to be different!"  Men like Colin
  Powell, who had overcome the racism of an Army struggling to master the
  hard lessons of integration.  Armor officers like Butch Funk and
  Infantry officers like Pete Taylor, who came home with reputations as
  tough as their weapons.  And guys like Barry McCaffrey and Fred Franks,
  who left bones and limbs on the killing fields of Southeast Asia.
  Profoundly affected by the sacrifice, the loss, and the waste they had
  experienced, a generation of officers set out to rebuild the Army so
  that such a tragedy would never happen again.  They did this as an act
  of honoring and keeping faith with those who were lost and maimed, to
  show that those soldiers had not suffered in vain.  Thanks to their
  integrity, intelligence, and skill, America has an army which other
  nations not only envy and respect, but fear.  Military analysts for
  decades pointed to the Israeli Defense Force as the model of how an army
  should work.  Now, even the vaunted Israeli force which held the Golan
  (as I described in The Sam qfall Fears) and invaded Egypt in 1973 seems
  at times to be considered a second-class force compared to the units
  that America can field.
  TIIERE AND BACK AGAIN: AN INTERVIEW WITII GENERAL FRED FRANKS - 15
  
  General Fred Franks.  Commander of the U.S.  Army, Training and Doctrine
  Command (TRADOC), Ft.
  Monroe, Virginia.
  To get a better idea just what the U.S.  Army has gone through to reach
  this point, let's have a chat with General Frederick Franks.  General
  Franks is currently the commanding officer of the U.S.  Army's Training
  and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), headquartered at Fort Monroe, Virginia,
  beside the old fortress that overlooked the first battle between the
  ironclad vessels USS Monitor and CSS Virginia (better known as the
  Merrimac).  Commanded by a four-star general, the Army's highest rank,
  TRADOC is responsible for the organization, tactics, and training of the
  U.S.  Army.  It is here that the Army's way of fighting is defined,
  documented, and disseminated to roughly one million U.S.  Army, U.S.
  Army Reserve, and National Guard troops that together make up what is
  known as the "Total Force."
  Frederick Melvin Franks, Jr., was born on November I st, 1936, in West
  Lawn, Pennsylvania.  After growing up in Pennsylvania and attending one
  year at Lehigh University, he entered the U.S.  Military Academy at West
  Point, New York, on July 5th, 1955.  He graduated on the 3rd of June,
  1959, and was commissioned a second lieutenant of Armor.  Let's let
  General Franks tell the story from there.  Tom Clancy:
  General Franks:
  Tom Clancy:
  General Franks:
  What was the first unit that you were assigned to?
  I had wanted to select the Armor branch and go into an armored cavalry
  unit-one that was fully engaged in the Cold War.  I ended up going to
  Europe and serving in the Ilth Armored Cavalry Regiment at Regensburg,
  Germany, beginning in March of 1960.  I was assigned to the 3 rd
  Squadron of the 11th. What was it like when you arrived?
  It was ...  great duty.  The regiment had an important mission up on the
  Czechoslovakian border with considerable
  Tom Clancy:
  General Franks:
  Tom Clancy:
  General Franks:
  
  Tom Clancy:
  General Franks:
  early responsibility.  There was also a lot of opportunity for a young
  lieutenant to grow professionally.  We had several WWII and Korean War
  veterans who provided valuable experience and insights for young
  officers, NCOs, and so many other young men like myself.
  What was the Army like in those days?  Lifestyle and so on?
  The unit I joined had just recently replaced the 6th Armored Cavalry
  Regiment in what we then called a "Gyroscope" rotation.  Though I did
  not think so at the time, as I look back on it, we [the Army] were in a
  transition, and we were on the way up.  My senior officers and NCOs had
  mostly fought in World War II and/or the Korean War, and the draft was
  also running in those days.  Though there was a lot of confidence in the
  abilities of the unit, nevertheless, because of the mix of older, more
  experienced soldiers, younger officers and NCOS, and the pool of troops
  brought in by the draft, we had a different chemistry and dynamic from
  anything you might find in the Army today.  All the same, the 11th
  Cavalry was a spirited outfit, and we were focused on a 11 real-world"
  mission, tense with all the various crises [Berlin and Cuba in
  particular] at the time.  We were in the field, away from home, and on
  the border a lot, looking "eyeball-to-eyeball" with our probable
  opponents.  It was a time of very focused and intense effort.
  Somewhat on "the brink"?
  We had the Berlin Crisis in '61 and the Cuban Missile Crisis in '62.  I
  personally felt very fortunate to have a lot of responsibility very
  early in my career, and the intense operational environment made you
  grow professionally very quickly.  I learned from some great NCOs and
  some dedicated soldiers.
  What was your equipment like in those days?
  We had a lot of World War II equipment mixed with some newer systems.
  Most of our personal weapons were of World War II vintage.  I recall
  also that we had a big armored personnel carrier [APCI called the M59
  that had two 2-1/2-ton truck engines mounted on either side of the
  vehicle.  It was a maintenance nightmare, and the engines never ran
  correctly.  On a more positive note, we had the M48A2 Patton tank, which
  was the top-of-theline model, with improved fuel injection on the engine
  and a 90mm cannon-though we were more than a little concerned that the
  latest Russian tanks (the T-54/55) had a 100mm cannon as compared to the
  90mm cannon on our M48s.  Our tank retrievers were mounted on old World
  War II-vintage M4 Sherman tank chassis.  We also had a mixture of
  
  weapons like Browning Automatic Rifles (BARs), M2 .50-caliber machine
  guns, and reall ' 1, old M 1919A4 machine guns mounted on the scout
  jeeps.  Certainly in 1960, we did not have the high-tech,
  modernequipment force that defeated the Iraqi Army in 1991.
  The 1960s brought on significant changes for the U.S.  Army, as the
  focus of American foreign policy switched from Europe and Cuba to the
  Far East and Vietnam.  These started the armed forces of the United
  States in general, and the U.S.  Army specifically, on a long slide that
  would not stop until the doldrums of the 1970s.  The war itself brought
  on a time of great personal pain for Fred Franks, as he lost most of his
  left leg below the knee to enemy fire during the invasion of Cambodia in
  1970.  As it turned out, his climb back to becoming an effective soldier
  paralleled the rebirth of the Army as it struggled to come back from the
  nightmare of Vietnam.
  Tom Clancy: By the mid-1960s, what changes were you seeing in the
  Army as we shifted to operations in Southeast Asia?
  General Franks: In those days we had an Army that was very focused on
  basic fundamentals like gunnery skills, maneuver skills, and
  maintenance skills.  We worked hard at it.  And we had an Army that was
  confident in itself and that was looking to the future-the experimental
  placing of a division in the air-assault role [the I st Air Cavalry
  Division] being a prime example.' It was most of all a deployable field
  Army, which had its "head in the game."  Although I was not there then,
  as I look back, it seems to me that the Army we went into Vietnam with
  [in 1965 and 1966] was a highly proficient tactical war fighting force.
  And the early tactical battles tin
  Vietnam], where our soldiers fought and won some
  tough engagements, bear that out.  In many of the first battles in the
  wars our nation has fought, our Army hasn't always been ready.  But in
  Vietnam, our force was tactically ready for those early battles.  The
  units that we sent over early-units like the Ist Air Cavalry
  Division, the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, et cetera-were excellent in
  spirit and in the tactical profi ciency they brought to the battlefield.
  General Hal
  Moore's recent account of battle in the la Drang
  Valley, and the toughness and heroism of our soldiers there, shows this
  dramatically.
  
  Tom Clancy: What exactly went wrong for the Army in Vietnam?
  General Franks: That's hard to sum up....  I served there in '69 and '70
  as a major with the Ilth Cavalry, and later went on into
  Cambodia with them, so my view was very narrow at the time....  A
  variety of things went wrong actually.  We were
  putting together tactical victories in battles and engage ments, but
  were lacking in some sort of coherent plan and pattern to achieve a
  strategic objective in the overall war effort.  We lacked what we now
  call "operational art."
  I recall that there was a lot of communications back and forth between
  the military and civilian leadership as to what the strategic objectives
  should be and what the oper national scheme of maneuver should be, and
  in general, just how things should be done.  And unfortunately, this
  just
  went on and on through the '60s and on into the '70s.
  Tom Clancy: What was happening to the Army at an institutional level?
  General Franks: In my view, the loss of experience from officers and
  NCOs being killed, wounded, or rotated out resulted in
  the gradual loss of unit leadership and cohesion over
  a couple of years.  As far as replacements went, we as a country did
  not call up the Reserves, and this was a major mistake in my opinion.
  Therefore, the active Army had to find replacement leaders wherever
  possible, and did so
  the best it could with the leadership pool that it had.  But when the
  battlefield losses began to mount, the stress on the personnel system
  began to fracture the coherence of some of the units in Vietnam.  The
  civil disagreements in
  our own country over the aims of the war, combined with the combat
  losses and the one-year DEROS [Date of
  Expected Return from Overseas Service] rotation sched ule, really caused
  the Army significant difficulties in the early to mid-'70s. As a result
  of all these things, the Army
  as an institution suffered.  This became a major problem
  General Franks:
  
  Tom Clancy:
  General Franks:
  as we began the transition to an all-volunteer force in '73, and had to
  start recruiting new people to serve.
  What happened to you during your tour in Southeast Asia?
  First, I was privileged to serve in a great outfit with real heroes-2nd
  Squadron, 11th Cavalry.  The end of my tour, as you know, was very
  painful for me personally, as I lost a portion of my [left] leg as a
  result of being wounded in action at Snoul, Cambodia, on May 5, 1970.
  And like so many others, I also lost some great friends.  I then spent
  some time in an amputee ward in an Army hospital in Valley Forge,
  Pennsylvania.
  I remember what impressed me most about my fellow patients was that they
  were magnificent young Americans who went and did what their country
  asked them to do on the battlefield.  Now you can debate the merits of
  what they were asked to do: but one consequence of this debate was that
  for a long time afterwards, the public was not able to separate the war
  from the warriors.  Unfortunately, the soldiers got caught up in all
  that.  Back in the amputee ward at Valley Forge, my fellow soldiers got
  so tired of going back home and explaining what had happened to them,
  especially when they kept hearing what a waste all their experiences had
  been, that eventually they began to tell people they had been injured in
  things like factory explosions or auto accidents....  Yet while I was
  there, I do not recall a single elected official or an officer senior
  over the rank of colonel ever coming by to say "thanks" to these great
  young Americans.
  After your experiences in Southeast Asia, did you make yourself any
  promises about your future service in the Army?
  Absolutely!  I have not earned the right to speak for everyone, but I
  can speak for my own experiences.  There's a hot blue flame that burns
  in my stomach about that time and what happened.  I remember the
  soldiers I was privileged to serve with on the battlefield.  In silence,
  you can feel the names on the Wall [the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in
  Washington, D.C.].  I also remember my fellow soldiers on the amputee
  ward at Valley Forge, and the sacrifice and the broken trust.  As a
  result, I made a pledge to them, to myself, and a pledge to the Army,
  that if I had the opportunity to remain on active duty, I would do
  whatever I could in my circles of influence and responsibility, wherever
  they happened to be, to personalli, see to it that such things as broken
  trust would never happen again.  Never.
  Tom Clancy: What was your position in the Army when you got out of the
  
  hospital at Valley Forge, and where did you go?
  General Franks: I was a major then, and I asked the Army to allow me to
  stay on active duty in the Armor branch.  All I ever wanted to be was a
  soldier, and to be able to compete for positions in the Army.  If my
  physical state should hold me back, so be it.  But don't automatically
  assume that I can not do the job just because most of what was below my
  left knee is gone.  It's not what you don't have but what you do have
  that counts!  Some senior leaders around the
  Army then worked hard to see to it that those of us with otherwise
  disqualifying physical profiles could remain on
  active duty.  As a consequence of that, the Army allowed
  me to stay in the Armor branch, and I headed back out into the world.
  I remain grateful to the Army as an insti tution for that opportunity.
  For my next assignment, I went to the Armed
  Forces Staff College [AFSCI in Norfolk, Virginia.  But before that, my
  wife, daughter, and I went to Disney
  World in Florida.  I will always have a soft spot for that
  place; it was the first time I could really walk after several rather
  severe operations.  While at AFSC, I kept working out to stay in shape.
  I played softball and walked a lot.
  Rode a bike all around the AFSC.  I also rememberjoking
  with my contemporaries about "having a leg up."  After AFSC, I was
  assigned to the Department of the Army
  Staff in Washington, D.C.  I worked there a year, and then worked for
  two years as the military assistant to the
  Under Secretary of the Army.  I then got the opportunity
  to command the I st Squadron of the 3rd Armored
  Cavalry Regiment at Fort Bliss, Texas, in June of 1975.
  When I went to command the cavalry squadron, I'd been out of the Valley
  Forge amputee ward for a little
  over three years.  As you might imagine, when I took com mand, I was a
  little tense.  But I have to say that it was my fellow troopers and NCOs
  who really made me whole again as a soldier.  Never once that I knew of
  
  was there ever any concern expressed about my being an amputee.  They
  took me as I was, based upon what I could do, and that became a great
  source of strength for me personally.  I'll never forget that family I
  was a part of for a year and a half.  That experience completed my own
  personal climb back to being a whole soldier again.
  You know, you derive inspiration from a number of places during a time
  of recovery.  My family.  My wife, Denise, and daughter, Margie.  Both
  were inspirations and still are.  They know the difference between
  compassion and pity.  My mother and dad, the skillful doctors and
  medical staff of the Army Medical Service-including the tough discipline
  of the physical therapists who demanded we walk and walk in front of
  mirrors to the time of a metronome until we got our gait right.  We used
  to joke that when we could walk, chew gum, and talk at the same time, we
  were ready to graduate.
  One of my special heroes throughout this time was Sir Douglas Bader, the
  famous RAF fighter ace who had lost both legs in a training accident
  before World War II.  "Tin Legs" Bader they called him.  Colonel "Red"
  Reeder, who was assistant baseball coach at West Point, and who'd had
  his leg amputated as a result of wounds he suffered while serving in
  Normandy in 1944 with the 4th Infantry Division, was kind enough to send
  me a copy of Reach for the Sky, the excellent biography of Sir Douglas
  by Paul Brickhill, which I read and really enjoyed.  Later, in the
  1980s, while I was briefing the AirLand Battle concept to the British
  Army Staff in England, I had the opportunity to visit and chat with Sir
  Douglas before he died.  He was a real inspiration for me.
  The mid-1970s were the low-water mark for the modern American Army.
  Battered by its experience in Southeast Asia, and considered a
  third-rate force compared to the armies of countries like Israel, Great
  Britain, and even the former Soviet Union, it had to rebuild from
  scratch with a new, all-volunteer system of recruiting-offering incoming
  soldiers low pay and poor living conditions-while trying to bring a new
  family of weapons into production.  A focus on possible NATO conflict
  with the Warsaw Pact dominated Army planning and procurement for the
  next twenty years.  Out of this background there emerged a new theory of
  battle called "maneuver warfare."  For Fred Franks, then a mid-level
  officer, it was a time to be in the middle of all the institutional
  growth and development at places like the Department of the Army, as
  well as the new organization called TRADOC.
  In the mid-1970s, the Army was going though some huge changes.  Please
  talk about what you saw.
  General Franks: The Army and the nation had some extraordinary leaders
  in uniform in those days.  Men of vision with the toughness to see those
  visions through.  General Creighton
  
  Abrams.  General Bill DePuy.  They created the Training
  and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) and began the tran sition to an
  all-volunteer force.  Also begun was the transition to a Total Army
  concept that involves completely the
  National Guard, U.S.  Army Reserve, and active force components.  So if
  we ever went to war again, we would
  have a tri-component combat team.  A shared responsi bility.  That way
  the Administration, the Congress, and the American people would all have
  a stake in what happened to this new force.  This, in a sense, reunited
  the
  Army and the American people-showing that this is
  "America's Army."  To equip this force, Generals Abrams
  and DePuy authorized A,hat came to be known as "the big five," a series
  of five new weapons systems that would provide the cornerstones for the
  Army in the 1980s.
  Included were the M I Abrams tank, the Bradley fighting vehicle, the
  AH-64 Apache attack helicopter, the
  Blackhawk helicopter, and the SAM-D (Patriot) system.
  Tom Clancy: By the late 1970s, discussions of the new "maneuver warfare"
  doctrine were first published.  Would you please talk about that for our
  readers?
  General Franks: The United States Army missed a whole modernization
  cycle during the Vietnam War.  We were so focused on the execution of
  the war in Southeast Asia that we missed a materiel-upgrade cycle, as
  well as an intellectual and
  tactical development cycle.  Thus, the speed and lethality of modern
  combat just leapfrogged over us during that intervening period.  We were
  shocked into an awareness
  of this by the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.  During that war there were more
  tanks lost than in the entire U.S.  Army
  tank inventory in NATO.  The Army needed to wake up to this,
  particularly if our central focus [i.e., vital strategic interest] lay
  in fighting and winning as a part of NATO in
  Europe.  The question was, "What would this kind of
  
  combat be like for us?"
  As it turned out, the '73 war proved to be an excel lent model, a
  surrogate if you will.  To get some idea of what was involved, General
  Bill DePuy, the TRADOC commander, and then-Major General Donn Starry
  from the Armor Center at Fort Knox, Kentucky, went over to visit the
  Golan and Sinal battlefields to see for themselves what we might have to
  face.  The results of this visit were recorded in the doctrine that
  became the cornerstone of the 1976 release of the Army's basic field
  operations manual, FM 100-5.  This was the first real break with our
  past doctrine.  The new doctrine was initially nicknamed "the active
  defense," but really it was more than that.  Much more than that.   It
  was an acknowledgment of the speed and lethality of modern combat, as
  well as the Army's intellectual and doctrinal response to these changed
  conditions.
  The Army continued to work on this doctrinal approach over the next few
  years, as the push to develop, test, and field the "big five" weapons
  started to bear fruit.  Then we began to talk about the concepts of
  "maneuver warfare" and "operational level warfare," because the
  operational side of warfare was just not being practiced at the time.
  Our studies and wargames in the late 1970s were telling us that you
  could not win if you fought in a static or passive style of warfare.  So
  a mobile, fluid style of warfare with depth was essential.  Along with
  that, the idea of a "second echelon"-or what General Donn Starry (who
  was the principal author of the original concept) called "the extended
  battlefield"-started to be discussed.  By the time of the 1982 version
  of FM 100-5, the doctrine was given the more appropriate and correct
  name of "AirLand Battle."  In this way, the Army simultaneously used the
  creation of new doctrine and the fielding of new weapons systems, as
  well as the creation of a full-time recruiting command emphasizing
  quality soldiers and early investments into a training doctrine that
  included' the Army Training and Evaluation Program (ARTEP) and After
  Action Reviews (AARS) and what came to be known as the combat training
  centers [such as the National Training Center (NTC) at Fort Irwin,
  California], to bring it back to the forefront of the world's armies. By
  the time all this came to pass, we had experienced a virtual rebirth of
  the spirit and aggressiveness of the U.S.  Army.
  What was the bottom line on all of this high-level attention to the
  future vision and forces of the Army?
  General Franks: The Army's top leaders in the 1970s saw to it that the
  Army as an institution paid attention to the things that are vital to
  success in its basic mission.   That mission is to go out, fight, and
  win our nation's wars when we are called upon as part of the joint
  forces team.  And by the end of the 1970s, we had things starting to
  come around.  The materiel quality of the Army was starting to improve@
  
  TRADOC was starting to redesign the units of the Army under the
  "Division-86"I program; the "big five" weapons systems were on track:
  new leadership programs were beginning to be developed, such as the
  Noncommissioned Officer Education System, and later, in the early'80s,
  the School of Advanced Military Studies [SAMS, at Fort Leavenworth,
  Kansas, whose graduates are known as "Jedi Knights"]; and General Paul
  Gorman and others were doing the early studies that led to the NTC at
  Fort Irwin. All of these things began to yield a battlefield focus to
  our operations as we headed into the 1980s.
  Tom Clancy: Yet, while all of these great things were happening, you
  still are down at the 3rd ACR commanding the I st Squadron.  What kind
  of leadership challenges had the times - 1975 to 1976-forced upon you
  there?
  General Franks: You know, we had a lot of spirited and quality soldiers
  and NCOS, but we also had a lot of discipline problems
  as well.  The Army is a reflection of the young people who join the
  service, as well as of the society they come from.
  As such, when America looks at the Army it is looking at itself in the
  mirror, with all the good and bad qualities
  that we have.  There were a lot of racial tensions in
  America then, and those tensions manifested themselves in the Army.  We
  had all of the drug issues hanging over us.  I recall that every payday,
  we would assemble the entire Ist Squadron together at the base theater
  to talk
  about what we had done during the preceding mont 1, and had planned for
  the next few weeks; and we would present awards.  And if the entire
  squadron had gone thirty days without a soldier going absent without
  leave
  (AWOL), then I would award them all a training holiday.
  Now-a-days, that would be unheard of.  Now the number of personnel who
  go AWOL or don't voluntarily return to duty after a leave or pass is
  infinitesimal.  But back in those days, a no-AWOL period was a thing to
  be savored.
  As you might gather from what I have just said, there were a number of
  things we needed to pay attention to inside the
  Army.  In fact, as I look back on it, we started to get better
  when we stopped blaming anyone but ourselves for our problems.  So
  
  collectively, as a service, we began to roll up our sleeves and get to
  work, because we all knew how important the Army was as an institution
  to the nation.
  Tom Clancy: What did you do after you finished your tour in command
  of the I st Squadron of the 3 rd ACR?
  General Franks: I worked for six-months on a special Department of the
  Army Task Force, called Tank Force Management Group, then attended the
  National War College.  After that I was assigned to TRADOC, commanded
  first by
  General Donn Starry and later by General Glenn Otis.
  Our initial efforts at TRADOC during this period were to
  try and put some "teeth" into the training programs by
  establishing NTC and some of the other combat training centers.  TRADOC
  was busy trying to get the new
  AirLand Battle doctrine out to the units, as well as starting to field
  the first of the "big five" weapons systems.  As
  I look back upon it now, as we got ready to enter the
  1980s, we were finally about to step out of the problems that we had
  been plagued with in the early and mid- 1970s.
  I was a small part of the team there that included among others General
  Carl Vuono and General Jack Galvin.
  As terrible as the 1970s had been, the 1980s came upon the Army like a
  breath of fresh air.  For one thing, the "big five" weapons systems
  began to come on-line.  And the early years of Reagan's presidency
  guaranteed that plenty of money was available to procure these and other
  appening than just the building and fielding of weapons. Throughout the
  Army, an intellectual rebirth of war-fighting skills was in full bloom,
  especially among the young, aggressive leaders coming into the Army from
  all over the, country. This new energy and aggressiveness was accepted
  and channeled into new ideas and doctrine by the leaders that came out
  of the Vietnam era. Leaders like Fred Franks.  And so the 1980s were a
  time of great opportunity for General Franks.  Because of his
  outstanding performance in command of progressively larger and more
  important units in Europe, he rose from colonel to lieutenant general
  (three stars) in less than eight years.
  What did you do next?
  
  I left TRADOC in early 1982 to go to Fulda, Germany, to command the 11th
  ACR.  I remember how suddenly my focus changed from working at TRADOC to
  command of a cavalry regiment right in front of the Soviet 8th Guards
  Combined Arms Army.
  Can you tell us a little about what an armored cavalry regiment is all
  about?
  A cavalry regiment is a fascinating organization.  It's laid out and
  equipped to operate independently, decentralized, and to cover a broad
  front with great economy of force and with what I call low leadership
  overhead-small staffs and quick, agile decision practices.  So it can do
  a lot of things by itself.  But in my view, the real power of the
  armored cavalry is in its people, with the spirit and 61an, the
  toughness and the pride, and the almost "family" feeling that go with
  being in the cavalry.  If you take the time to look, you tend to find
  officers and enlisted personnel who have spent their entire careers in
  armored cavalry units.  They seek these units out, because to the
  soldiers they are family!  We had a great family of soldiers, NCOS,
  officers, civilians, and family members from 1982 to 1984.
  How tough did the Soviet forces across the Fulda Gap look to you in
  those days?
  Well ...  the 8th Guards Combined Arms Army looked pretty formidable in
  those days.' But we felt like we were pretty tough too.  The attitude
  was that we had to go about what we were doing very professionally, and
  practice our trade a lot, with alerts and war games and field exercises.
  If they had come over the border into the Fulda Gap, they would have run
  into a big fist called the 11th Cavalry!  Of course we would have had a
  lot of help.  We were the covering force.  Behind us was the rest of the
  U.S.  V Corps.  This included units like the 8th Infantry Division and
  the 3rd Armored Division, as well as all of the V Corps Artillery.
  When did you get your first M I Abran-,s tanks?
  We fielded our first M I s in the 11th ACR during 1983.  As I recall,
  the first European unit to receive M Is was the 3rd Infantry Division;
  and the first large-scale exercise where they got a workout was during
  REFORGER-821 This is where the MI s ripped into an opposing force's
  brigade and got the nickname "Whispering Death."  Everyone kept asking,
  "Where are the M Is?"  We got to use them initially during REFORGER-83
  the following year.  At first, the scenario had us placed on the
  defensive, though we quickly moved to the attack to take advantage of
  the M I's tremendous mobility and sensor advantage.
  Soon, we were taking advantage in our divisions of the
  
  new thermal sights on the M 1, as well as other systems
  like the Bradley and later the Apache helicopter, to fight more at
  night and in bad weather.
  Tom Clancy: Where were you and what were you doing by the late
  198os?
  General Franks: I left command of the 11th ACR in 1984 and went to
  command the Seventh Army Training Command at Grafenwoehr from 1984 to
  1985.  From there I went to be
  the Deputy Commandant of CGSC at Fort Leavenworth.
  Then in 1987, following passage of the Goldwater Nichols Act in 1986, I
  was the first J-7'on the Joint Staff.
  I returned to Europe to assume command of the I st
  Armored Division in 19881 And then in August of 1989, 1
  had the honor to take over VII Corps.' At that time it was
  a "Cold War" corps, sitting in place and waiting for attack
  that might have come over the border.  As far as the units I
  commanded over there, Vil Corps included the U.S.  Ist
  Armored Division, the 2nd ACR, the 3rd Infantry Division, the 12th
  Panzer Division from the German
  Army, the 11th Aviation Brigade, and other Corps com bat, combat
  support, and combat-service support units.
  And there were other U.S.-based units, like the I st Infantry Division,
  that might be assigned once they had
  forward-deployed in the event of a crisis.  All of these
  units were well trained, well led, and fully modernized.  l-, felt at
  the time that we should maneuver and fight as a
  whole corps, and we focused VII Corps training in this
  direction.  Over the next year or so, we began to maneuver
  as a corps, fight as a corps, even began to work our logis tics and
  transportation at corps level.  I also felt that we
  
  needed to be sensitive to the changing world around us.
  Tom Clancy: Was this more in line with the newer "maneuver doc trine"
  laid out in the 1986 edition of FM 100-5?
  General Franks: Yes, with an emphasis on the whole corps having the
  agility to realign organizations quickly, and the ability to rapidly
  change missions and hit an enemy force as a single mass.   I felt this
  was important to VII Corps' ability to achieve its Cold War mission.
  These were the ideas and concepts that we wound up using that winter
  during REFORGER-90.  REFORGER-90 was an innovative maneuver designed by
  [then U.S.  Army European commander] General Butch Saint.  It combined
  actual units with simulations (thus eliminating tanks and heavy
  equipment on the countryside), and was a battle of maneuver of large
  formations-as opposed to large formations in gridlock.  This exercise
  was designed primarily as a command post exercise for leaders and staff
  with various units linked together in a manner very similar to what we
  used during Desert Storm.  Because Butch Saint wanted maneuver in the
  fight, he deliberately caused unit separation.   So we tried long
  marches to contact with simulated enemy forces, followed by a deployment
  of forces.  We also were working hard on the idea of using helicopters,
  artillery, and guided missiles for deep-attack and precision-strike
  missions.  As an added bonus, we [Vil Corps] even managed to try out the
  new J-STARS reconnaissance aircraft [a converted Boeing 707 loaded with
  radar to view ground targets from ranges of hundreds of miles, and able
  to transmit the information to divisional and corps ground stations] in
  an exercise in September of 1990.  In March of 1990, we changed the Ist
  Infantry Division scenario for a division Battle Command Training
  Program [BCTPI exercise at Fort Riley to a long movement to contact and
  more offense.  We did a similar thing with a 3rd Infantry Division
  exercise in June in Germany.  It all translated into a different
  training focus for the entire corps prior to our move to Saudi Arabia.
  You have to stay focused on training and your basic mission, especially
  in the context of a rapidly changing world and political situation.
  By the late 1980s the first signs of a revolution in Eastern Europe were
  beginning to take shape.  Gorbachev came into power in the mid-1980s and
  began major social reforms in the Soviet Union.  But by late 1989, the
  reform movement had spread to the other members of the Warsaw Pact.  It
  would result in the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain, and
  the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact.  In one incredible winter, the
  threat in Europe vanished.  the Cold War ended in victory for NATO and
  the forces of democracy, and the Warsaw Pact withered away.
  Tom Clancy: Did you have a sense of the massive changes coming about in
  Eastern Europe at the end of 1989?
  General Franks: Already you could begin to sense the winds of change
  
  around Europe and NATO.  The human drama of watching those who wanted
  the freedom to choose and make their own way, and to see our own
  soldiers' sense of fulfillment
  of a mission accomplished, was an extraordinary event but difficult to
  capture in my mind.   When things opened up in 1989, I remember looking
  across at places where I
  had watched the forces of the Warsaw Pact for my entire career, from
  lieutenant to lieutenant general, and seeing
  streams of cars coming across the border.  Imagine a fixed strategic
  setting like Central Europe during the Cold War, and all of a sudden it
  was just gone!
  Tom Clancy: After all those years of watching your Soviet counterparts
  across the intra-German border, what was it like when the
  Berlin Wall fell in 1989?
  General Franks: It was a holiday, and I was at home watching American
  Forces Network [AFN] television when I saw the first
  reports that the wall was starting to come down and that people were
  beginning to come through the Iron
  Curtain.  The next morning, my staff and I took an air plane to Hof to
  meet with Colonel Don Holder of the
  2nd ACR.  It was one of those historic moments where you take every
  little detail in.  I remember that we took a
  ride in a van from the 2nd ACR; and as we drove along one of the roads,
  we passed a little gray Trabant [the basic East German car of the day]
  that had a man and a woman sitting in the front seats; and in between
  them was a small girl of perhaps nine or ten.  As we passed
  slowly by them, I could see the took of hope and antici pation for the
  future in the eyes of that young child.   And all of a sudden, all those
  years of training, sacrifice, and duty were brought into focus for me.
  In retrospect, I have
  to say that I never thought I'd see the wall come down in my lifetime.
  Never.
  August 1990 brought the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the first
  commitment of U.S.  military personnel to Southwest Asia.  While at
  first there was no requirement for the VII Corps commanded by General
  Franks to go to the Middle East, things were to change rapidly.  When
  
  summer turned to fall, and the forces of Saddam Hussein's invading army
  still occupied Kuwait, President George Bush decided that military
  action was necessary to evict them. General Franks tells what happened
  next.
  Tom Clancy:
  General Franks:
  Tom Clancy:
  General Franks:
  Early August 1990.  What happens to you and Vil Corps upon hearing the
  news of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait?
  There's an old saying: "You march to the sound of the guns." Even though
  Vil Corps was not initially deployed to Southwest Asia [XVIII Airborne
  Corps was the contingency force for this mission], I took the attitude
  that the folks deployed to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf were our soldiers,
  our friends, and our army, and that we [VII Corps] stood ready to offer
  any kind of assistance that we could.  We decided that whatever they
  needed-people, equipment, small units, or the whole of VII Corps-we had
  to start getting our head in the game and look at some of the
  contingencies.
  So down in the VII Corps emergency operations center, behind a lot of
  locked doors, we started putting up operational maps of the area and
  tracking the intelligence reports coming out of the theater.  We also
  started asking ourselves "What iP" So we looked at the fastest way to
  move the VII Corps onto ships for transport to the Persian Gulf.
  Initially, we looked at moving down to the Italian ports, but wound up
  deciding that moving the VII Corps through ports in northern Germany and
  the Netherlands would be faster and easier.  We didn't have any guidance
  from anyone above us on this, but we just wanted to get our heads into
  the game and read ourselves into this situation.
  When did you finally start getting the idea that the VII Corps might
  deploy?
  Well, I went down and talked to General Butch Saint about the idea that
  if the time came, and another corps was going to be required down in
  Saudi Arabia, VII Corps was already halfway there.  And since we already
  knew that the U.S.  Army effort in Europe was already going down to just
  a single corps [during the Cold War, two U.S.  Corps, V and VII, were
  based there], I made the logic of sending Vil Corps known to him.  I
  should say that the situation in Europe with the fall of the Warsaw Pact
  made such thinking possible-within a year of the fall of the Berlin
  Wall!
  
  Tom Clancy:
  General Franks:
  Soon afterwards, we [Vil Corps] got the word to do some early planning
  ...  though shortly after that, we were told to stop and stand down.
  "But don't throw an-lthing away!"  they said.  And then about five days
  later, I got a call telling me to crank up the planning cell, but to
  keep it light and ver ' i, tight. Shortly after that, I set up the final
  troop/unit deployment list with General Saint in Heidelberg.  Then, on
  the 8th of November, 1990, we got the word over AFN television that we
  would be going to the Gulf to provide an "offensive option" to the
  forces already deployed to Saudi Arabia.
  It was kind of ironic that on the next day we had a ceremony at Kelly
  Barracks in Stuttgart, Germany [VII Corps headquarters], to dedicate a
  monument [containing a piece of the Berlin Wall and the intraGerman
  border fencing] to the personnel of VII Corps and their families, who
  for all those years had performed their duties and eventually helped win
  freedom for all the people of Europe.  After we had finished-and I
  remember it was a very cold morning-I called all the unit commanders
  into the command conference room and let them in on what was going to
  happen.  We had a great team: Major General Ron Griffith, I st Armored
  Division; Major General Butch Funk, 3rd Armored Division; Brigadier
  General Bob McFarlin, of the 11 Corps Support Command; Colonel Don
  Holder, 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment; my G-3, Colonel Stan Cherrie (a
  fellow amputee); Colonel Johnnie Hitt, Ilth Aviation Brigade; Brigadier
  General Creighton Abrams, corps artillery commander; Major General Gene
  Daniel, deputy commanding general; and Brigadier General John Landry,
  chief of staff.  I emphasized that we needed a lot of teamwork, since we
  would have a different lineup from the Cold War VII Corps, as well as a
  special focus on training for things like chemical warfare and gunnery
  skills.  I also stressed the need for maneuver skills, since our station
  in Germany did not allow us to exercise movement as a corps.
  What was VII Corps, as you deployed it to Southwest Asia, composed or.
  Normally, VII Corps was what we called a "Cold War" corps, with 75,000
  personnel based in Europe.  Only 42,000 of the European-based troops
  would go to the Gulf.  The remaining personnel would come from U.S.
  based REFORGER units that would have to be transported from their bases
  there.  From Europe came the 1st and 3rd Armored Divisions, the 2nd ACR,
  and the VII Corps headquarters and support units.  From the U.S. would
  come the ]st Infantry Division, commanded by Major General Tom Rhame.
  When we got the corps to Saudi Arabia, we would eventually have the Ist
  Cavalry Division (Major General John Tilelli) and the British I st
  Armoured Division (Major General Rupert Smith) added, so that our total
  strength would be approximately 146,000 personnel.
  
  Tom Clancy: Once the deployment orders had been given to the unit
  commanders, what did you do?
  General Franks: One of the first things you want to do if you can is go
  down to the area you're going to operate in and do a leaders'
  reconnaissance, see the ground with your own eyes, and remove some of
  the unknowns.  I also wanted to talk to some of my fellow soldiers from
  XVIII Airborne
  Corps, who had been there from the beginning of Desert
  Shield.  So on the weekend following the receipt of the
  alert order, selected commanders and staff and I flew down to Saudi
  Arabia to do just such a recon.  I remember that Major General Tom
  Rhame, commander of the Ist
  Infantry Division (the Big Red One), flew for almost twenty-four hours
  to meet us there.  We all joined up in
  Saudi Arabia and talked to fellow soldiers in the 24th Mechanized
  Infantry Division and the I st Cavalry
  Division, as well as looking over our planned assembly areas and the
  disembarkation ports.
  Then on Tuesday, we met at Dhahran with General
  Norman Schwarzkopf to go over the basic operational plan that the
  CENTCOM staff had been putting together.
  They showed us a broad overview of the plan, including
  VII Corps as the main attack force.  General Schwarzkopf did the
  briefing himself, discussing the phases of the attack and stressing the
  need for aggressiveness.  He also outlined the Iraqi centers of gravity,
  as well as U.S.  and
  Iraqi strengths.  And he referred to the arrays of Iraqi def(,,nsive
  positions, chemical warfare possibilities, and the need for breaching
  barriers.  I found myself rapidly internalizing it all, and even forming
  some early intuitive
  courses of action.  And I recall that when he asked me
  what I thought, I said, "This will work.  We can do this."
  
  TIIERE AND BACK AGAIN: AN IN I-ERVIEW WITH (;ENEIZAL FRED FRANKI, - 33
  Tom Clancy: How did the deployment of VI I Corps to Saudi Arabia go?
  General Franks: There was great teamwork all around, military and civil
  ians, Germans and Americans.  As soon as I gave the order to move, some
  remarkable things began to happen.
  The whole of VII Corps just sprang into action.  We had to take a "Cold
  War" corps, sitting in place, and make it into a mobile contingency
  corps overnight.  This meant
  coming up with mobility plans and resources that we never had been
  forced to consider using before.  SeaLand containers [for loading onto
  container ships] for equipment and parts, tie-down equipment for
  securing vehicles and equipment onto rail cars, new communications gear,
  more robust logistics, and so on.   We used trains, barges, road
  convoys, and transport aircraft to get all of the gear to the ports.
  And we quietly coordinated all of this with the relatively new combined
  German government.  We
  also set up a family support operation in each unit and
  military community.  Major General Roger Bean was
  appointed Commander, VII Corps in Germany.  The whole family support
  operation, the way our families bonded together and took care of each
  other, the German people's response, was simply magnificent.
  It still seems amazing that less than a year after the
  fall of the Berlin Wall, we were able to move out of the positions that
  we had held for almost half a century and deal with this new threat.
  Meanwhile, we went from only eight people knowing about the deployment
  on a Thursday, to the entire VII
  Corps finding out that night on television.  Secretary
  Cheney, General Powell, and the president came on
  CNN and AFN; and that's how all my folks found out.
  Looking back, it was probably the most rapid and easiest way to get the
  news to all of them.  And by this time things were really moving fast,
  because by the following
  Monday, we loaded the first elements (2nd Squadron, 2nd ACR) of the VII
  Corps for transport.  We had origi nally planned to send the combat
  support elements in
  
  first, but decided instead to send in Colonel Don Holder and his 2nd
  ACR....  Just four days from hearing the news on AFN/CNN to the first
  elements deploying, from
  a cold start.
  Once the movement of VII Corps to Saudi Arabia had started, it was
  necessary for General Franks and his staff to get the corps into
  position and make them ready for combat.  Much new equipment and a lot
  of hard work and training were required to make the corps ready for the
  tasks ahead. Because of the size of the force that the general had been
  assigned, this required several months.  For General Franks was about to
  command a force roughly the size of General George Patton's Third Army
  (in the winter of 1944), but with the addition of its own small air
  force of helicopters.  As it was configured in the Persian Gulf, VII
  Corps was the largest armored formation ever commanded by one man.  And
  it had a special mission: to find and destroy the armored units of
  Iraq's elite Republican Guards@
  The deployment started in November.  When did the last of your units
  reach Saudi Arabia?
  Actually, our goal was to allow arriving units at least three weeks of
  organization and training prior to the start of offensive operations.
  One week just getting organized, unpacking, getting weapons together,
  and the like, and then two weeks of fairly intensive training.  The
  major maneuver units of the corps-as I reported to the Secretary of
  Defense [the Honorable Richard Cheney] at the briefing on the 7th of
  February-were ready to attack at any time.  I felt confident of this.
  I should also say that we were assimilating a huge amount of new
  equipment and high-technology gear at this time-GPS [Global Positioning
  System'] receivers, Pioneer RPVs [Remotely Piloted Vehicles, small
  unmanned reconnaissance aircraft], a new all-source intelligence system
  called Hawkeye-as well as swapping out a large number of our early-model
  MI tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles for new ones.  This was done
  under a special program run by Major General Pete McVey of TACOM, as
  well as teams from the Anniston Army Depot, and contractor teams from
  General Dynamics and FMC.  Everyone did an outstanding job!  Soldiers,
  civilian DoD employees, as well as the contractor field support teams.
  Just fantastic teamwork.
  GPS was a relatively new system.  How important was it to the planning
  and execution of what you did?
  Indispensable.  When we first deployed, we had none of the GPS receivers
  issued as yet.  Nevertheless, by the start of the ground war in late
  February, we [Vil Corps] had acquired over 3,400 of them.  As I recall,
  
  the Ist Infantry Division brought their own from Fort Riley, Kansas, Tom
  Clancy:
  General Franks:
  Tom Clancy:
  General Franks: while the rest of VII Corps got theirs from the
  emergency DoD procurement during the deployment.  Soldiers were taking
  them out of the commercial packing boxes and were using them in less
  than thirty minutes.  And even though we had not brought enough mounting
  brackets and external antennas, our troops were rapidly finding ways to
  mount them on anything and use them anywhere.  I remember seeing
  helicopter crews holding the receivers up into the plastic "greenhouses"
  of their choppers to get a fix off of the satellites.
  As for why GPS was important, consider this: When you are maneuvering
  four divisions in a very confined maneuver space on flat terrain, and
  you have weapons that fire at velocities approaching a mile a second,
  and are still lethal in excess of 3,500 meters, you want relatively
  precise navigational fixes for those units, so that you can minimize any
  chance of shooting up your own people.  On the night of the 26th of
  February, 1991, we had four divisions on-line, nine brigades with close
  to 2,000 combat vehicles, across about 120 kilometers.  When we jumped
  off over the berm, we had two armored divisions side by side on a front
  of only 40 kilometers [about 24.4 miles].  That's really tight!  And
  yet, by using GPS, our units were always able to know their position, as
  well as the planned position for units on their flanks.  You cannot do
  that in the desert with only a compass and a map.  We could not have
  functioned as well as we did without GPS.
  Often, my aide, Major [now Lieutenant Colonel] Toby Martinez, and I
  would take a HMMWV out in the desert to get oriented-to see first-hand
  navigation in the desert and to recalibrate my own time-distance
  sensings from Europe....  That is, I wanted to know instinctively how
  long it would take units to move distances in the desert; and I wanted
  to know what were the maneuver possibilities of the corps there.
  Commanders must have the ability to do that in their heads quickly to
  figure time distance.  Occasionally we would get lost by not trusting
  the GPS or my driver, Sergeant David St.  Pierre, or because of some
  other mistake, but it helped us get a feel for what the VII Corps had
  ahead of it.
  By mid-February 1991, the air campaign of Operation Desert Storm had
  been going on for almost a month, and the entire Allied Coalition army
  was lined up from the shores of the Persian Gulf to the sands of western
  Saudi Thelineup of Vi I CorpsandtheirIragi opposition atthestart
  ofoperationdesert Sa be r, the ground portion of the 1991 Persian Gulf
  war, The main target of the VII Corps advance was the Iraqi Republican
  
  Guards divisions shown here.  They included the Tawakaina (T Gd),
  Hammurabi (H Gd), and Medina (M Gd) divisions, as well as a number of
  Iraqi formations.  This graphic shows the Vil Corps units breaching the
  fortified berm, as well as the deceptive feint by the Ist Cavalry
  Division (Armored) up the Wadi al-Batin and back.  J,( A R@ , , E,
  Arabia.  As the ground war (caned Operation Desert Saber) kicked off on
  G-Day, February 24th, 1991, VII Corps began to move towards its target,
  the Republican Guards divisions hovering up along the old fraq/Kuwait
  border:
  Tom Clancy: As you lined up in late February, what did VII Corps consist
  or
  General Franks: Before the war, we had five divisions-about 146,000
  soldiers, 1,600 tanks, and 800 helicopters, with all the
  corresponding trucks and other transport vehicles.  Something over
  40,000 vehicles, consuming something like 2.5 million gallons [ten
  million liters] of fuel a day.
  And when the Corps got into combat, you're talking about thousands of
  tons of ammunition a day.  We called
  it "brute force" logistics.  I saw a lot of teamwork out there with the
  logistics troops.  That was essential to the conduct of the war, because
  if you forget logistics, you lose.  In fact, the keys to desert warfare
  are maneuver, control of the air, and logistics.
  One other thing I should tell you is that because of
  the way we assembled on the ground in our initial tactical assembly
  areas, we were able to turn west and use the same maneuver formation,
  east to west, that we later would use south to north.  The result was a
  full-scale dress rehearsal in the 160 kilometer move to our attack
  positions with all the units of the Vi I Corps maneuvering just as they
  would during the actual war.  We spent five days doing this, and it
  provided us a great opportunity to work out the bugs in our maneuvers
  and get a better sense for battle command.
  One other thing that happened was that there was a CENTCOM concern that
  the Iraqis might try a spoiling attack [as they attempted to do against
  the Arab and U.S.  Marine forces at Kafji] against our logistics centers
  along the Tapline Road [this runs parallel to the border], and interrupt
  the movement of XVIII Airborne and VII Corps.  To help deter this Iraqi
  option, we were assigned the 2nd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division,
  as well as the I st Cavalry Division, which was previously assigned as
  the CENTCOM reserve.
  
  This let us do two things.  One, we had a force to prevent the Iraqis
  from attacking south.  Second, it gave me a division I could move into
  the Rugi pocket [astride the Wadi al-Batin ] to conduct raids and
  tacking up the wadi, instead of maneuvering around them to the west.  I
  knew the I st Cavalry Division would revert to CENTCOM reserve at G-Day.
  So they were the logical choice for the Rugi pocket mission, thus
  freeing the 3rd Armored Division of that mission, and allowing me to
  position the 3rd Armored Division alongside the U.S.  Ist Armored
  Division west of the breach on the enveloping force.  Originally, I
  would have had to put the 3rd Armored Division up there, but with the
  coming of the I st Cavalry Division, I could free up 3rd Armored
  Division to go west.
  And so I ordered the I st Cavalry Division up the wadi to do a series of
  feints and demonstrations.  We later found out that the Iraqi 10th Jihad
  Corps had plans to stop us if we attempted to attack up the wadi.  Major
  General John Tilelli and the leaders and soldiers of the I st Cavalry
  Division did a superb job at this mission, as well as giving us a lot of
  early lessons learned on just how the Iraqis might fight.
  As G-Day approached, weather conditions were very bad, 't they'?  How
  did the weather affect VI I Corps?  weren
  General Franks: The weather was simply terrible.  On some occasions we
  couldn't fly [the VII Corps helicopters] due to rain, wind, blown dust,
  sand, and the like, plus it made close
  air support almost impossible.  Very cold.  Just terrible
  conditions.  But it was the same for both sides.  Yet because we came
  from training in winter weather in
  Germany, we felt we could operate much better in that kind of weather
  than the Iraqis.  We all had to use every
  Piece of clothing that we had.  Even the chemical-warfare
  suits felt good in conditions like that.  And blowing sand made
  visibility very limited. I was told later that there was more rain that
  year [ 19911 in January and February than had been seen in the previous
  ten years.  Whenever you
  look at the actions of the soldiers in the VII Corps, you have to
  factor in the environmental conditions.  They were just magnificent!
  Tom Clancy: On top of the bad weather, the corps had to jump off early,
  didn't you?  What did you encounter the first few days?
  General Franks: I got a call from John Yeosock, Third Army commander, at
  
  9:30 AM (0930 hours) on G-Day [February 24th, 1991 ] that said, "Can you
  go early?"  Right out of the blue they wanted to know if we could go
  some fifteen hours early, because of the success of the attacks of the
  other
  Coalition units [the two Marine divisions attacking into
  Kuwait along the coast].  We had wanted to do the breach
  of the Iraqi defenses in daylight-we had practiced for it in daylight.
  But even though it might mean we'd have to go at night, I told John that
  we could get going with two hours' notice.  Then I got down to the
  business of getting
  the VII Corps moving.
  We were ready to attack by noon ( 1200), but did not get the order until
  1:00 PM ( 1300) for a 3:00 PM ( 1500) attack.  We wasted a lot of
  daylight from 9:30 AM to 3:00 PM.  The Big Red One [the I st Infantry
  Division] started their artillery preparation at 2:30 PM (1430), and
  began attacking at 3:00 PM.  The 2nd ACR on the west in the enveloping
  force began their attack at 2:30 PM ( 1430), followed by the I st and
  3rd Armored Divisions.  The breaching went well, with progress excellent
  in the breach and to the west.  There was fighting, some close-in, and
  thousands of prisoners.  And we had some early casualties.  Over the
  next couple of days, we encountered a number of infantry attacks
  TtiERE AND BACK AGAIN: AN IN'FEI@VIEW Wll If (,ENEI@AL Fl@F.1) Fi@ANK,,
  a 39
  Al@
  3,d 2nd ACR
  After turning VIT Corps east to engage the units ofthe Republican
  Guards, a series of general engagements ensues.  The 2nd Armored Cavalry
  Regiment (2nd ACR) engages the Tawakalna (T Gd) Division in the Battle
  of73 Easting, while the lstand 3rd Armored Divisions ( Ist and 3rd
  respectively) moveup.  The British IstArmoured Division ( Ist UK)
  continues to engage regular Iraqi unitsalongthe "inside" oftheVII Corps
  zone, while the lst Infantry Division acts as the Vil Corps reserve.
  J,,A R@,, F, TfR/'R/,S@.S.  I 711,B) L@IIR,AIPHLR and captured
  thousands of prisoners.  And there were lots of small-arms and
  close-combat actions all around; contact was continuous.  As for how
  fast we were moving, the pace of the attack was about the same
  throughout the corps.  It did take a while to get all the vehicles
  through the breach, and some unexpectedly bad terrain slowed up some
  units with soft sand; but overall, we were able to keep up with a pace
  
  that kept the corps in enough of a balanced state for us to smash a fist
  into the Republican Guards.
  Tom Clancy: Now that you had the VII Corps moving, what was it that you
  were supposed to accomplish?
  General Franks: We were force-oriented" in our sector.  The mission was
  to destroy the Republican Guards divisions there.  And we had three
  divisions as our targets: the Tawakalna, the Medina, and the Hammurabi.
  In addition, there was the 10th Jihad Corps of two divisions [the Iraqi
  10th and 12th Divisions], the Iraqi 17th Armored Division, elements of
  other armored units, along with five additional divisions (with one in
  reserve) right over the berms from
  40 - ARMORFL) (-AV
  where we started.  There were also other enemy divisions in our zone.
  Though we knew where the enemy forces were physically, we were unclear
  of their boundary areas.
  And after the initial attack through the berms began, there was a lot of
  Iraqi unit movement.  Exactly where they were was hard to pinpoint due
  to all of this unit movement and the bad weather.  So we just had to
  find
  Tom Clancy: What were the VII Corps communications like, and what ere
  the command arrangements?
  General Franks: Our communications systems were a mixture of old and had
  the new Mobile Subscriber Equipment [based on commercial cellular phone
  equipment]; the rest of the
  Vil Corps did not.  "Interfaces" between the old and new communications
  systems is a good way to put how things
  were linked together.  Mainly the unit [divisional/regi mental/brigadel
  leaders went up front, either in combat vehicles or helicopters, and did
  a lot of face-to-face lead ership, because tactical communications were
  degraded over such long distances!l
  As for the command arrangements, I never moved my main command post out
  of Saudi Arabia and I never returned there during the four days of the
  ground war.
  During the days, I was most of the time talking face-to-face with
  commanders of units; and in the evenings I would go
  to the VII Corps Tactical Command Post [TCPI, which was directly behind
  or co-located with that of the 3rd
  
  Armored Division.  In the three full days of fighting, we had twenty-one
  face-to-face meetings with subordinate commanders.  Up-front,
  face-to-face leadership and com mand is the best.  It gives you the
  information you need for decisions, and lets you exercise the leadership
  necessary to keep the unit moving.  The night I ordered the ninety
  degree turn [see below], we had two M577s [armored command vehicles],
  two big map boards, and two tele phone hookups; and the rain was
  frequently running through the M577 canvas extensions, all over the
  maps.
  But normally we had at our tactical command post five
  M577s and communications equipment.  In my Blackhawk
  [helicopter] I had a paper map on a map board made by two NCOs out of
  scrap lumber using hand saws.  As for
  rest, I was getting about two to three hours of sleep a night.
  THERE AND BACK AGAIN: AN INTERVIEW WITfi GENEIZAL FIZEI) I I@ANK, - 41
  After running north for the first two days of the offensive, it was time
  for General Franks to make the first of several key decisions.  In this
  case, whether to continue north, or to move east to make contact with
  the divisions of the Republican Guards.  We'll let General Franks tell
  the story:
  Tom Clancy: Beginning on the third day (February 26th, 1991), the Vil
  Corps has made the run to the north.  What happens now?
  General Franks: On the afternoon of the second day [Monday, February
  25thl, I called my chief of staff, John Landry, to come forward with the
  G-2, John Davidson, the corps artillery
  commander, Creighton Abrams, and aviation commander, Johnnie Hitt, and
  meet me and my G-3, Stan Cherrie.  It was time to decide.  We had
  thought the Republican
  Guard Forces Command would stay where they were;
  and Major General John Stewart, the Army Central
  Command Intelligence officer [ARCENT G-2], confirmed this.  We defined
  two options: go north and continue in zones of attack, or turn east and
  head into the flanks of the mostly stationary Republican Guards.  This
  call was one of the major points in the war, and resulted in the Vil
  Corps changing direction to the east.  If we had continued moving north,
  
  we would have "pinched out"
  the XVIII Airborne Corps, meaning they would have been blocked out of
  action against the Republican
  Guards and would have had no mission.  With VII Corps turning east, it
  was then possible for the XVIII Airborne
  Corps to our west to get into position in a lane to our
  north that would allow a two-corps focused attack against the Republican
  Guards.  This was the scheme of maneu ver that I had briefed to John
  Yeosock, the Secretary of Defense, General Powell, and General
  Schwarzkopf earlier in February: Turn ninety degrees east with a big
  fist.  It was one of seven FRAGPLANs or audibles" we had devised that I
  could call, dependent on enemy move ment.  This one was FRAGPLAN 7,
  incidentally done by
  a British major, Nick Seymour, in my G-3 plans shop,  under the
  leadership of my plans officer, Lieutenant
  Colonel Bob Schmidt, U.S.A.
  Tom Clancy: On the morning of the third day, the weather had gotten
  worse.  Were you getting any J-STARS support at this time?
  General Franks: J-STARS support was intermittent because there were only
  two in the theater@ and there were other priorities.
  42 - AL@MORFI) ('AV
  The ground station for the J-STARS system was back at the Vil Corps main
  Tactical Operations Center [TOCI@ and the information was being relayed
  back to me as to approximate positions of the enemy units ahead of us. I
  also talked to General Schwarzkopf at this time, because there was some
  confusion as to how fast the VII Corps was moving.  This was difficult
  for me to understand, as I thought that communications through my chief
  of staff back to Third Army and to CENTCOM headquarters in Riyadh were
  clear as to our progress.  I told General Schwarzkopf of our progress
  and my decision to turn the VII Corps fist east into the Republican
  Guards.  I also told him I was not pleased with an order to send the
  British I st Armoured Division south to clear the Wadi alBatin, an area
  we had deliberately bypassed.  He told me to continue to press the
  attack, and that the Hammurabi Division had been seen getting on trucks
  to escape.
  As the Vil Corps moved east on the morning and afternoon of the 26th,
  still with very little in the way of air support and reconnaissance,
  they began to make increasing contact with Iraqi units.  Then, the
  
  contact that the corps had been working for occurred.  The lead elements
  of three armored cavalry troops of the 2nd ACR, as well as other units
  of the corps, began to crash into the screen elements of the three
  Republican Guards divisions in their sector:
  Tom Clancy: What's happening on the afternoon of the 26th?
  General Franks: The 2nd ACR under Colonel Don Holder was covering
  for the VII Corps, and I wanted them to find and fix the Republican
  Guards, and if possible find where the south ern elements of the
  Republican Guards were.  This was so we could find the flanks and move
  the Big Red One through them.  By doing this, VII Corps created a "three
  fisted" force of three U.S.  heavy divisions to smash the Republican
  Guards, with the British Ist Armoured
  Division to complete the attack cast as the fourth divi sion.  Late that
  afternoon, three cavalry troops of the 2nd
  ACR ran into a brigade of the Tawakalna Division [in
  what has come to be called the Battle of 73 Easting], and through
  heroic action, fixed and destroyed the Iraqi unit.
  At this point, I think the Iraqi command structure was shaken by the
  events of the day and they appear to have begun a general retreat.  This
  allowed us to get our
  heavy units in among them and start the process of destroying them.  I
  wanted to hit them with a lot of
  TIIERE ANI) BACK A(;AIN: AN IN I l@[@Vil@W Wi I [t (11@Nl@l@Al FRFI)
  Fl@ANK, - 43
  1 1 1 h
  Day 4 ofthe ground war found the VII involved in a battle of
  annihilation with the units ofthe Iraqi Republican Guards.  General
  Franks committed the entire corps to attacks to destroy entire Iraqi
  formations.  In these attacks, the Tawakaina (T Gd) Division is
  virtually destroyed, the Hammurabi (H Gd) Division is heavily damaged,
  and the Medina (M Gd) Division is rendered combat-ineffective.  By this
  time a general Iraqi retreat is in effect, trying to escape from the VII
  Corps assaults.
  J,( & R ) 4 @ El 7f@RPRISES l@ Ti,., B) L It P,4 A I PIIFR
  Tom Clancy:
  General Franks:
  
  44 0 ARMORED C-AV momentum at the point of main attack, so that we could
  maximize the destructive power of the units and minimize our own
  casualties.  This is the whole point of tempo, to have your own force at
  peak power and velocity at the point of main attack and be able to
  sustain that level until the end.  We had that.
  By now you and the VII Corps have achieved what you wanted.  You have
  the Republican Guards units in contact with three U.S.  divisions that
  are doing some very heavy damage to the Iraqis.  Did you have any idea
  just how much damage was being done in battles like the one on Medina
  Ridge?"
  My perception was that we [the VII Corps] were massed, and that the
  ground around the battlefield was literally shaking.  You could see the
  tracers from machine guns and hear the "crack" of tank cannons.  You
  could hear the "whoosh" of the MLRS rockets flying off to their targets.
  If you had been unaware of what was going on, you would have thought you
  were in a heavy late summer east coast thunderstorm.  Just a continuous
  rolling roar.  I
  knew what the sounds were and could sense just what toll the mass of VII
  Corps was inflicting.  lt was an enorously skillful maneuver in confined
  space by superb leaders and soldiers of the corps.
  By the close of the third day, the VII Corps was fully engaged in its
  assigned task, holding and destroying the Iraqi Republican Guards
  armored divisions in its sector.  As day three wound down and day four
  began, General
  g o e soun o e guns as e is on o saying.  us, his activities took on the
  form of sorting out the battlefield and working hard at
  y our o e groun war.  ere mos o
  e y en.
  great deal of restraint and discipline on our soldiers' part to limit
  the probabilities of fratricide and friendly fire.  The Ist and 3rd
  Armored Divisions were still in a "hasty attack"" mode against the
  remains of the Republican Guards divisions.  The Big Red One was in a
  pursuit-andexploitation mode,'@@ as was the British I st Armoured
  Division.  Early Wednesday morning, I had planned to order the British I
  st Armoured Division up from the southern part of the VII Corps zone,
  and come around to the north with the I st Cavalry Division.  At this
  point, the overall VII Corps scheme of maneuver was to link up in a
  double envelopment" around the remaining enemy forces.  When I visited
  the Big Red One early and talked to Brigadier General Bill Carter,
  assistant division commander, and Major General Tom Rhame, I saw they
  
  were clearly in pursuit, so I ordered them to go east for the "blue on
  the map" [the Army's nickname for the Persian Gulf].   I then ordered
  the British to continue east, the lst Cavalry to attack north of the I
  st Armored Division, and the I st and 3rd Armored Divisions to continue
  east to a limit of advance called Phase Line Kiwi.  I also ordered 2nd
  ACR to come to the inside of the Big Red One, but to the east of the 3rd
  Armored Division.
  We [Vil Corps] had established our own limit of advance when we had
  sketched out this double envelopment, and the ]st Armored Division hit
  Phase Line Kiwi, so we could bring the 2nd ACR up between the other
  units, and get the I st Cavalry Division to pass just north
  THERE AND BACK AGAIN: AN IN'l fli@VIEW Wi I 11 (',I@NI'RAI@ Fi@l:[)
  FRANKS - 45
  During the final hours of the morning of February 28th, 1991, the corps
  continued to attack and engage Iraqi units until the cease-fire at 0800
  (8 AM) local time.  The 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment was held as the
  corps reserve, and used after the war as a peacekeeping and humanitarian
  aid force.
  J@, A Ri,,E%T[RPRISLS.  1,Tf,, By L,,t R, AI PI(FR of the I st Armored
  Division, but south of the XVIII Airborne Corps.  If I'd had more room,
  I would have just gone around without any risk of colliding with units
  of the X-VIII and not had to maneuver that way.  At the end of the day
  two major things were going on.  Major General Ron Griffith's [commander
  of the I st Armored Division] cavalry squadron was in a big fight and
  could not let the I st Cavalry Division get through in daylight, so we
  decided to hold the I st Cavalry Division up, and delay their movement
  around the Ist Armored Division until daylight the next morning.  We
  just felt that there were too many possibilities in the dark for
  mistakes and fratricide, with one division passing through one brigade
  of another, after almost four days of continuous operations.
  Then, Major General Butch Funk's 3rd Armored Division had a real
  momentum to the east; and it began to look like the Big Red One was
  running a little off axis.  And, at the time, it appeared that I might
  have two divisions about to run into each other.  Consequently, I
  commanded the Big Red One to reorient themselves further east, and
  instructed them to stop, so the 3rd Armored Division could continue into
  Kuwait and Phase Line Kiwi.
  About that time, we got word of a "possible" ceasefire at about 5:00 AM
  (0500) the following morning.  This was the first I'd heard about this,
  so I called back to
  John Yeosock [the Third Army]: and he said, "Yes.  That's what it looks
  like."  So I got the word out to all the units
  
  cancel their movement through the lst Armored
  Division [because of the short time remaining for hostili ties], and
  for the 3rd Armored Division to continue the
  attack in their assigned direction until 8:00 AM (0800).
  Then about 7:20 AM (0720), we received a call over the corps radio net
  [at the Vil Corps forward TOC] that a unit was taking friendly fire.  So
  before I knew it, one of my staff broadcast a "cease-fire" order over
  the corps FM
  command net.  Now I knew that the original "friendly fire" call could
  not have come from the I st Infantry
  Division, because they were over 80 km (about 49 miles)
  away.  So we called them back and ordered them back to the attack.  But
  the word never got out to all the lower level units; and they
  essentially stood in place where they were.  We were, however, able to
  get the word to continue the attack back to the I st and 3rd Armored
  Divisions.
  And they continued to attack until 8:00 AM (0800).  And that was the end
  of it.
  During the one hundred hours of the ground war, just what did VI I Corps
  destroy?
  We destroyed, captured, or bypassed the entire Iraqi 7th
  Corps, which was composed of five infantry divisions, as well as a
  mechanized infantry division in tactical reserve.  As for the three
  Republican Guards divisions in our sector, we destroyed the Tawakalna
  Division, rendered the Medina Division ineffective for combat, I fiEl@E
  AND BACK A(IAIN: AN IN I [;I@VII-W WI-FL] (@[@Nl@]@Al Fl@1-11) Fl@ANKI,'
  - 47
  and forced the Hammurabi Division to retreat into Barry McCaffrey's 24th
  Mechanized Infantry Division, where a number of their vehicles were
  destroyed in a fight after the cease-fire.  We also attacked portions of
  the Adnan Division of the Republican Guards, destroyed the Iraqi 10th
  and 12th Armored Divisions, the Iraqi 17th
  Infantry Division, and a number of other elements of
  other Iraqi divisions.  As for equipment, the total turned
  out to be almost 4,000 Iraqi combat vehicles; and we
  
  took between 23,000 and 24,000 prisoners, though the
  total could have been higher since we did not have time
  to keep a good count.
  Tom Clancy: How many American and British personnel were lost
  from Vi l Corps during the war?
  General Franks: We had 47 killed in action and 192 wounded from U.S.
  forces, and 16 killed and 60 wounded from British forces, out of
  146,000 total Vil Corps soldiers.  It hurts-each one
  of them, for their families and relatives, for their com manders, and
  for their fellow soldiers.  One was too many.
  But the job was to accomplish the mission with the least
  cost and greatest speed possible.  I was, and am, enor mously proud of
  all of them.  Leaders and soldiers.  We
  were a team.  We were a family.  They took the fight to the
  Iraqis in the sand, the rain, the dark, and the mud, and they wrote a
  new page in the history of armored warfare
  in the desert sands of the Persian Gulf.
  Following the war, VII Corps helped to set up the cease-fire prograrh,
  and enforce the terms of the armistice between the Iraqis and the
  Coalition Allies.
  And then they went home to Germany-and, sadly, that meant the end of the
  line for the VII Corps.  By a strange and unlucky twist of fate, many of
  the people and units that did the most to win the Cold War have had to
  suffer "deactivation."  With the fall of the Warsaw Pact and Communism,
  there simply was not a need for two European-based corps.  And VII Corps
  was shut down.  Along with it have gone some of the oldest and most
  distinguished Cold War units.  The I I th ACR, for instance.  Others,
  like the 2nd ACR, have been brought home to the United States and
  reestablished with new missions.  For the 2nd, it has meant a move to
  Fort Polk, Louisiana, where they have taken on the light cavalry and
  scouting mission for XVIII Airborne Corps.  Today, they've given up
  their tanks and Bradleys for HMMWVS, and are waiting for the new XM8
  Armored Gun System (AGS).
  As for General Franks, he left Vil Corps before most of these events
  
  happened.  In August of 1991, he was invited by General Gordon Sullivan,
  the Army Chief of Staff, to command TRADOC.  His job there has been to
  head the intellectual brain trust of the Army, which determines just how
  it fights, and what it fights with.  Today (spring 1994), he still heads
  TRADOC and all of its bases and personnel resources:
  Tom Clancy:
  General Franks:
  Tom Clancy:
  General Franks:
  So as of now, you are the commander of TRADOC.  What is the job all
  about?
  I received a call in the early summer of 1991 from General Gordon
  Sullivan, the new Army Chief of Staff, saying, "Freddie, I want you to
  do something for me.  Command TRADOC."  And I said, "Wilco.  Thanks for
  the vote of confidence."  I took command here in August of 1991.  It is
  a great job and is right in the middle of all the changes coming down
  the road right now for the Army.  We have the responsibility to help
  lead the Army through intellectual change from the fixed, set-piece
  environment of the Cold War, to a force-projectionoriented, post-Cold
  War army.  Our job at TRADOC is to help the Army grow, to take the
  lessons learned on the battlefields off the battlefields, to see to it
  that those lessons are getting into our doctrine, and finally, to see to
  it that the Army grows on into the 2 ]st century.  TR-ADOC has existed
  for twenty years to serve the Army as a major agent of change, and it
  continues to serve the nation.  We feel we are out ahead of change.  We
  have finished revising our basic body of ideas of how we fight-FM 100-5,
  Operations.  We are experimenting in our Battle Labs with new ideas,
  based on the early glimmerings of changes in warfare we saw in Desert
  Storm.  I believe we are on the edge of major changes in the methods of
  land warfare.  For instance, future mounted organizational experiments
  might very well lead to cavalry as a model of rapid task organization,
  combined arms, and higher leader-to-led combinations.
  Is this job the ultimate expression of that promise you made yourself
  back at the amputee ward in Valley Forge?
  I guess that you do what you have to do, what you can do, within your
  own circle of responsibilities, to see to it that your part of the Army
  is doing the right things for the soldiers and for the country.  In
  short, yes!  And, I might add, of the promise to my fellow amputees back
  at Valley Forge that I would keep the faith with them, and with all of
  my fellow Vietnam veterans.  If we ever have to go to war again, they
  would have the right to expect that I would keep the faith with them and
  
  remember what we all went through together.  In 1994, at TRADOC, I
  complete thirty-five years of service, yet I stand ready to serve in any
  capacity in the armed forces that the nation might ask me to perform.
  Just where does the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment fit into the U.S.
  Army's future organizations and missions?  What you really have to say
  to yourself is that, in a world scenario where ambiguity seems to be the
  rule, and events are difficult to predict with any degree of certainty
  (especially as to who and where the opposing forces are going to be),
  the value of tactical reconnaissance goes way up.  Successful tactical
  reconnaissance always precedes, and is concurrent with, successful
  operations.  This has been true throughout the entire history of
  warfare. And that is the traditional job of the armored cavalry regiment
  in a heavy armored corps like Ill Corps.  This principle is true whether
  you are dealing with the force of another nation-state, or some other
  more unconventional type of force.
  During the Cold War, when we expected to deal with a relatively linear,
  structured battlefield, where we would fight outnumbered against much
  larger forces, the probability that you could predict the battlefield
  with some certainty was relatively high.  Therefore the value of
  tactical reconnaissance and security operations by cavalry, while
  important, was a lot lower than the combat power of the cavalry.  The
  post-Cold War operations scenarios present a different-even an
  oppositeset of circumstances.  The value of reconnaissance units-finding
  the enemy, fixing the enemy, finding enemy flanks and openings,
  providing connectivity between separated units-goes up immeasurably. And
  the value of an organization like an armored cavalry regiment, which is
  manned, equipped, and trained to operate decentralized over broad fronts
  as a mounted combined-arms team, goes up as well.
  Now the armored cavalry regiments have been equipped differently over
  the years.  Horses, sabers, pistols, and repeating rifles, armored cars
  and light tanks, and now heavy armor-although we also are in the process
  of equipping the 2nd Cavalry Regiment as a light cavalry regiment with
  HMM@s and the new XM8 Armored Gun System.  Thus, the value of both light
  and heavy armored cavalry within the divisional cavalry squadrons and
  the separate regiments on the current uncertain battlefields is enhanced
  in today's operational environment.  Tom Clancy: Putting yourself into
  the place of a CINC (commander in chief of one of the independent
  commands) leading a Joint Task Force (JTF) into a crisis area, what are
  the characteristics of an armored cavalry unit like the 3rd ACR which
  make it desirable to have under your command?
  General Franks: The 3rd ACR operates as a total combined-arms team and
  it operates as a self-contained unit.  It is very quick and agile,
  mentally and physically; it is capable of a wide variety of tactical
  operations; and it can adapt to rapidly changing battlefield conditions.
  It can find and fix an enemy, and then develop a battlefield situation
  
  faster than any other kind of unit that we deploy today.  And because of
  its history in the development of our country, it's a regiment that has
  a long history, and is a "family" of soldiers, NCOS, and officers. These
  are soldiers with a lot of spirit, pride, and aggressiveness; and they
  think of themselves as an elite unit.  This tends to magnify their
  combat power on the battlefield beyond their physical size.  Such
  feelings of pride and family, of course, are not only found in armored
  cavalry units.  Our ranger, airborne, and light infantry units have
  these same characteristics.  Other mounted units also form these tight
  bands.  It is combat power; and it makes a difference on the
  battlefield.  It did just recently on October 3, 1993, in Mogadishu,
  Somalia.  Another important characteristic is that the regimental
  command apparatus is quick and agile enough so that it can also take
  additional reinforcing units such as corps artillery, Apache
  helicopters, combat-service support units, et cetera, and continue to
  operate without a problem.  This is what we did with Colonel Don
  Holder's 2nd ACR during the Gulf War.  An armored cavalry regiment also
  has the advantage of not having a lot of what I like to call "overhead."
  It is commanded by a colonel with a very small staff, and it operates in
  a very decentralized style.  Thus, its success depends upon the
  initiative of small units and their commanders.   And it is very quick!
  The spirit of such a unit was shown by the 2nd ACR at the Battle of 73
  Easting during the war, when three young cavalry troop commanders, H.R.
  McMaster, Dan Miller, and Joe Sartiano, as well as their squadron and
  regimental commanders, took on a superior force of Iraqi armor and
  destroyed it.  That kind of physical and mental agility, along with
  mission versatility, is what we see more and more of in this post-Cold
  War landscape.  In our role as architects of the future, we in TRADOC
  will look to their lessons, as we experiment with different unit
  configurations made possible in part by advances in information-age
  technology, especially digital technology.  With the U.S.  Army down to
  just one of the armored cavalry regiments (the 2nd is being converted to
  a light cavalry unit, and the I ]th has been deactivated), what upgrade
  plans do you have for the 3rd ACR?  Here at TRADOC, we've done a study
  on the value of reconnaissance organizations Army-wide.  We're in the
  process of making adjustments to all of the various cavalry units-but
  principally in the divisional cavalry squadrons-to upgrade their ability
  to conduct and accomplish reconnaissance missions.  As for the
  independent cavalry regiments [the 2nd and 3rd], we will continue to
  modernize those from the armor standpoint [with the MI A2 for the 3rd
  ACR, and the XM8 AGS for the 2nd ACR].  Then, of course, we are working
  hard on making them more deployable.
  This is the key to our reorganization of the 2nd Cavalry, which is
  differently equipped [HMMWV squad carriers as opposed to M3 Bradley
  fighting vehicles], but capable of more rapid deployment.  And though it
  is equipped and put together differently from its heavier armored
  counterpart, it is put together with the same kind of spirit and
  
  aggressiveness.  The key to success, though, with both organizations
  will be to carefully choose where and when you use which type of unit.
  And as we discussed earlier, because of their ability to easily attach
  additional units like tanks or helicopters, you can make either unit
  into any kind of force that you choose to.  I see us evolving both types
  of cavalry regiments [heavy armored and light] as we move into the 21st
  century, particularly in the area of what I like to call "electronic
  Tom Clancy:
  General Franks: cavalry," which is what military intelligence is quickly
  becoming.  An example of this is the RAH-66 Comanche scout/attack
  helicopter which will be coming on-line early in the 21 st century.  Its
  ability to rapidly collect, process, interpret, and distribute
  reconnaissance data on the battlefield for the rest of the force will
  make it an enormously vital part of cavalry/combined-arms teams and
  operations in the future.  lt is part of a coming revolution in land
  warfare I mentioned earlier, made possible by quality, experienced
  soldiers and leaders, and digital technology.  What will the young men
  and women who will man the U.S.  Army cavalry units, in say the next ten
  years, have to look forward to?  I would say that they will continue to
  be asked to do 11 special" things on the battlefield, and that they will
  continue to challenge themselves to be up to the tasks and missions that
  our country will ask them to do.  And I believe they're up to it.  In
  fact, some of them have already proven it on the recent battlefields of
  the United States.
  Those young people are already writing their own chapters in the history
  of the cavalry in our country's history.  As I look forward and see the
  great young cavalry leaders moving now into positions of responsibility
  in the force, I'm sure they will continue to write great pages of their
  own, if and when called into future battles of our nation.
  To my mind, leadership-battle command-is all about trust.  A soldier
  said to me before the Ground War, "Don't worry, General, we trust you."
  Powerful.  Made me redouble my own efforts as a corps commander to be
  sure I was worthy of that trust.   It is the basic bond between soldiers
  and leaders on the battlefield, and between America and America's Army;
  and I think that we have that in the force and in America today.
  For more than three decades, General Fred Franks has led soldiers in the
  U.S.  Army.  If you ask those soldiers about him, you will find an
  intense respect and affection for this quiet, soft-spoken man of iron
  will.  In his decades of service to the nation, he and the Army he loves
  have faced many challenges.  Fred Franks helped that Army adapt to the
  lessons learned from Vietnam, and to break free from the Cold War focus
  at the dawn of a new era.  Whether he has been staring down Communist
  oppressors on the Iron Curtain, or leading troops to liberate the
  
  Kingdom of Kuwait, Fred Franks epitomizes the spirit of the cavalry.
  And that spirit reaches out to touch every soldier in the nation.
  TIIERE AND BA('K A(,AIN: AN INI ERVIEW Wi I'll GENERAL FREI) FL@ANKS m
  nyone who regularly watches the network news can tell you that the
  quipment the U.S.  Army buys and uses stinks.  Investigative reporters
  ave spent years telling the world that the Army's weapons can't shoot
  straight, or that they blow up or fall apart before anyone can use them.
  For a more balanced assessment of this hardware, you might ask the Iraqi
  Army.  Saddam's troops learned the hard way that most media commentators
  don't know much about military equipment.  In January and February 1991,
  every major weapons system in the Army got a thorough workout under
  extreme conditions.  Despite all the critics who predicted that our
  fragile, overcomplicated, "hi-tech" weapons would choke on the desert
  dust of Iraq and Kuwait and fall victim to the Iraqi Army's "simple"
  Soviet-designed weapons, the exact opposite occurred.
  In less than one hundred hours, the forces of the United States and our
  Coalition Allies totally defeated a force that had almost six months to
  dig in.  And American weapons were the stars of the show.  AH-64A Apache
  helicopters scored the first hits of the war on the night of January
  16th, 1991, taking out a big chunk of Saddam's air-defense network.  M
  IA I Abrams tanks were regularly shooting up late-model Soviet T-72
  tanks at ranges approaching two miles.  Whenever an Iraqi field
  artillery unit was foolish enough to open fire, within seconds, a hail
  of cluster bomblets from MLRS artillery rockets would rain down death on
  them.  Such was the level of violence heaped upon the retreating Iraqi
  forces that the war was terminated after only four days.  How did the
  Army develop and purchase the equipment it uses today?  Buried under the
  skins of all the vehicles, guns, and aircraft that the Army bought in
  the 1970s and 1980s was more than just a desire to throw technology and
  money at the modern battlefield.  The threat during those years was
  massive sudden assault by the forces of the old Warsaw Pact or the North
  Koreans.  What drove the development of these systems was a desire to
  dominate the battlefield, defeat the enemy army, and throw it back where
  it came from.  This desire was first embodied in the ideas of General
  Creighton Abrams, the Army Chief of Staff from 1972 to 1974.  General
  Abrams recognized that to win the battles we might be forced to fight in
  the last quarter of the twentieth century, the ground forces of the
  United States and our allies would have to fight a new kind of war. This
  would require the Army to acquire a new generation of weapons, man them
  with a new all-volunteer force of soldiers, and operate with new tactics
  that did not even exist in the minds of planners in the early 1970s.
  U.S.  ARMY Vl'lil('LE SY,"I-EMS - 55
  It is an unfortunate truth that the process of building new weapons in
  
  the American military takes time.  A lot of it.  An instructor at the
  Deftnse Management School at Fort Beivoir, Virginia, once likened a
  Department of Defense (DoD) acquisition program to a cattle drive.  Each
  program element is like a steer, with its own mind and goals.  The job
  of the program mafiager, usually a colonel or brigadier general, is to
  be the "trail boss"-the man responsible for putting the new weapon or
  system into the hands Of SOI@iers.  Program management is a thankless
  job.  It takes some of the best officers Away from their front-line
  units and places them in offices, where they have to fight a completely
  different kind of war from what they were trained for.  They are
  scrutinized by obnoxious journalists, overzealous legislators and their
  staffs, and pushy contractors desperately trying to hold on to their
  share of the defense budget.  This is not the career a true warrior
  might desire.
  But without a strong management team, no program will ever deliver 4
  system to a combat unit.  All it takes to make Army program managers
  shake in their shoes is the memory of the Sergeant York gun system in
  the 1980s.  Originally called the Divisional Air Defense System
  (DIVADS), it was designed to accompany armored forces to shoot down
  attack helicopters and aircraft, The DIVADS program had problems from
  the start.  Poorly written specifications required a mismatched
  collection of off-the-shelf components.  The chassis was reworked from
  the obsolete M48 tank, the old reliable Bofors twin 40mm cannon was
  shackled to a mechanical loading system that was a rat's n@st of
  complexity, the radar was adapted from the F-16 fighter, and a digital
  data bus linked sixteen different microprocessors in various "black
  boxes" packed inside the turret.  Meanwhile, a severely compressed
  schedule meant that the hardware and software never had time to mature.
  And if these internal problems wtren't enough, a storm of bad publicity
  undermined the program.  The Sergeant York never recovered from all its
  troubles, and eventually it was canceled.  Most of the fifty-odd
  vehicles that Ford Aerospace delivered to the Army eventually wound up
  as targets on Air Force practice ranges.  After spending several hu@dred
  million dollars to obtain precisely nothing, the Army learned some hard
  lessons in program management, with reduction of technical risks as a
  hallmark.
  The payoff is a force that is acknowledged as the best equipped i@ the
  world.  As if that is not enough, the current Army Chief of Staff,
  GetCral Gordon Sullivan, has planned a series of updates to existing
  systems, as wl] as acquisition of a few new ones as "force multipliers"
  (which is Army talk roeaning "anything that increases the effectiveness
  of what we already have").   Some are relatively small initiatives, like
  equipping the Army's fleet of vehicles and aircraft with the NAVSTAR
  Global Positioning System (GPS) to make n4,,igation more accurate.
  Others, like the new RAH-66 Comanche scout/attack helicopter, will
  require a substantial expenditure to give ground forces a better look at
  
  what is over the next hill.
  The equipment used by the U.S.  Army does notjust happen; it takes @ajor
  investments of taxpayer dollars and Army personnel.  After seeing what
  is ' out there, you can judge for yourself whether we have gotten our
  money's worth.
  56 8 ARMORED (.'AV
  U.S.  Army Armored Vehicles
  "Mud Bellys" and "Creepy Crawlers" are just a couple of the names that
  members of other services use to describe the vehicles used by the U.S.
  Army.  They can call them what they like. Army ground vehicles are today
  the most capable, mobile, reliable, and robust in the history of
  motorized warfare.  The root of this success is a surprisingly simple
  thing: a common automotive specification for every vehicle produced for
  Army service.  Each and every tank, armored fighting vehicle, and truck
  has to be able to climb the same slope (a 60% grade), cross the same
  types of transverse inclines (up to 45'), ford the same depths of water
  (approximately 3 feet/ I meter), and meet all the same climatic, safety,
  maintainability, and other specifications. Operation Desert Storm proved
  that the Army can now move any combination of its primary vehicles
  across virtually any navigable terrain, without any one type holding up
  the advance.
  This achievement is due to concerted, long-term efforts of the U.S. Army
  Tank and Automotive Command (TACOM), Located in Warren, Michigan, it is
  the heart of the Army's efforts to modernize its ground vehicles.
  Despite the common perception that agencies like TACOM are filled with
  overpaid armchair generals and corrupt political bureaucrats, nothing
  could be further from the truth.  TACOM is a mix of seasoned civilian
  specialists, ambitious junior officers, and senior staff officers who
  take the Army's field experience and turn it into the reality of steel,
  aluminum, rubber, and plastic.  The people of TACOM are driven
  professionals.  The crown jewels of their efforts are tanks and armored
  fighting vehicles.  Let's look at these first.
  The Ml Abrams Main Battle Tank
  It has a number of nicknames.  U.S.  troops call it "The Beast," 11
  Dracula," and "Whispering Death."  Whatever name you use, the M I Abrams
  is unquestionably the world's b@st main battle tank (MBT).  To
  understand why, consider a couple of incidents out of Desert Storm.  On
  one occasion, an MI fired its 120mm gun at an Iraqi T-72 tank.  The
  round went right through the T-72 and into another one directly behind
  it, destroying both tanks.
  Another more amazing M I story happened during General Barry McCaffrey's
  
  24th Mechanized Infantry Division's run to the Euphrates River.  It was
  raining heavily, and one M I managed to get stuck in a mud hole and
  could not be extracted.  With the rest of their unit moving on, the crew
  of the stuck tank waited for a recovery vehicle to pull them out.
  Suddenly, as they were waiting, three Iraqi T-72 tanks came over a hill
  and charged the mud-bogged tank.  One T-72 fired a high-explosive
  anti-tank (HEAT) round that hit the frontal turret armor of the M 1, but
  did no damage.  At this point, the crew of the M 1, though still stuck,
  fired a 120mm armorpiercing round at the attacking tank.  The round
  penetrated the T-72's turret, blowing it off into the air.  By this
  time, the second T-72 also fired a HEAT
  U.S.  AL@MY VEtilCL.E SYSTEMS - 57
  round at the M 1.  That also hit the front of the turret, and did no
  damage.  The M I immediately dispatched this T-72 with another 120mm
  round.  After that, the third and now last T-72 fired a 125mm
  armor-piercing round at the MI from a range of 400 meters.   This only
  grooved the front armor plate.  Seeing that continued action did not
  have much of a future, the crew of the last T-72 decided to run for
  cover.  Spying a nearby sand berm, the Iraqis darted behind it, thinking
  they would be safe there.  Back in the M 1, the crew saw through their
  Thermal Imaging Sight (TIS) the hot plume of the T-72's engine exhaust
  spewing up from behind the berm.  Aiming carefully through the TIS, the
  M I's crew fired a third 120mm round through the berm, into the tank,
  destroying it.
  By this time, as you might imagine, the crewmen of the M I were getting
  extremely agitated and making this fact known to anyone who would listen
  over the radio net.  Help in the form of another MI-equipped unit
  arrived shortly afterwards, and they began trying to extract the stuck
  MI from the mud hole.  Unfortunately, the Abrams was really and truly
  stuck.  And despite the efforts of two M88 tank-recovery vehicles, the
  tank would not come loose.  Ordered to abandon the stuck Abrams, the
  other MI s began to fire their own 120mm guns in an attempt to destroy
  it.  The first two rounds failed to penetrate the armor of the mud-bound
  tank.  When a third round was fired from a favorable angle, it finally
  penetrated the outer skin of the turret, causing the stored ammunition
  to detonate.  But rather than destroying the MI, the blast was vented
  upwards through a blowout panel, and the onboard fire-suppres- sion
  system snuffed out the fire before it could do any real damage to the
  electronic systems in the crew compartment.
  By this time, further M88 recovery vehicles arrived.  And along with the
  two earlier M88s, they finally managed to pull the tank out of the mud.
  Upon examination, the MI was found to be operational, with only the
  sights out of alignment from the blast of the ammunition cooking off.
  
  The M I was taken back to the divisional repair yard, where the damaged
  turret was removed (and sent back to the United States for analysis) and
  replaced, and the tank returned to action.
  The M I was born out of failed efforts to build a new main battle tank
  (MBT) to replace the M48/60 Patton-series tanks that were the mainstay
  of the Army's armored force in the 1950s, '60s, and '70s.  This series
  of tanks, which traced their lineage and basic design to the M26
  Pershing of World War 11, suffered severe losses in the 1973
  Arab-Israeli War (see the opening chapter of my novel The Slim ofall
  Fears) to wire-guided anti-tank missiles and the hordes of Soviet-built
  tanks that the Egyptians and Syrians threw at them.  Though the Israelis
  won these battles in the end, the cost in tanks and their highly trained
  crews was far too high for comfort.  Concern over the vulnerability of
  tanks to new man-portable anti-tank missiles (like the AT-3 Sagger) led
  some military analysts to question the survivability of armored vehicles
  on a modern battlefleld.
  Amid all this technical and tactical doubt, the Army was trying
  desperately to field a new MBT.  This effort started in a partnership
  with the West Germans to field a common tank for use by NATO.   This
  MBT-70 (later
  58 - AIZMORED CAV
  renamed by the U.S. Army as the XM803) was a marvel of mechanical
  engineering.  lt had a "kneeling" suspension, to present a smaller
  target when stopped, and a combined missile/gun weapons system which
  theoretically allowed it to engage and outrun anything on the
  battlefield.  But the MBT-70 was just too complex and costly to make it
  into service.  And in 197 1, Congress and the Army killed the program
  and started over.  The West Germans, meanwhile, went on to develop the
  successful, conventional Leopard 11 tank on their own, without the
  MBT-70's fancy gimmicks.
  After the failure of the MBT-70 program, the Army went back to the
  drawing board with a new program, designated XM 1, and a "clean sheet of
  paper."  The first decision was that XM I s would be armed only with
  guns.  Field experience with combined gun/missile systems on tanks had
  soured the Army on the idea; the shock of firing the gun tended to break
  delicate electronic and optical systems required by the missile system.
  But these guns would have the latest laser range-finding and
  fire-control systems, which meant that the main gun could be aimed more
  accurately than any tank weapon in history.  At the same time, a
  thermal-imaging sight for the tank commander and the gunner would allow
  them to see targets at night, or throuo,,h fog and dust, from their
  infrared (heat) signature.  The new tank would also carry the
  new-generation Chobham armor, to defeat the anti-tank missiles which had
  
  proven so deadly during the '73 Arab-Israeli War.  And finally, extreme
  high mobility became a key design point for the first time in decades.
  The Army gave contracts to General Motors and Chrysler to build
  prototypes for competitive trials.  (The Chrysier tank division was
  later bought by General Dynamics Corporation.) The GM vehicle was
  powered by a conventional turbocharged diesel engine, while the Chrysler
  entry had a revolutionary 1,500-horsepower Avco-Lycoming AGT-1500 gas
  turbine (aiet engine harnessed to a drive shaft).  Despite considerable
  pressure from the Army, Congress, and the Germans (who were trying to
  sell their Leopard 11 to the Americans), the Chrysier entry was selected
  by DoD and became the XM 1.  After development and testing, it was
  type-classified and given the official name of Abrams, after General
  Creighton Abrams, who had seen it through its tough gestation period.
  The very flrst M I delivered to the Army was named "Thunderbolt," the
  name of General Abrams'command tank during World War 11.
  The choice of a 1,500-horsepower turbine power plant was a calculated
  risk for the DoD team that selected it over the diesel engine in the GM
  design.  Gas-turbine engines present SoMe tough design challenges in
  automotive applications.  First, across a range of throttle settings,
  gas turbines tend to consume more fuel than an equivalent diesel or
  gasoline engine.  This is particularly noticeable when the M I is at
  idle or making a slow road march.  On the other hand, the turbine in the
  M I becomes more efficient, better in fact than any other kind of
  engine, at high cross-country speeds (say 30 to 40 mph/50 to 65 kph).
  Another problem is that turbines gulp huge amounts of air.  And they
  need extremely efficient air cleaners to filter out dust and
  particulates that could erode or destroy the costly turbine blades and
  other components, while the big
  U.S.  AIZMY VFIIICL,F SYSTEMS - 59
  exhaust plume of hot gas is hazardous to bystanders and highly visible
  to infrared sensors.  These drawbacks were understood and accepted at
  TACOM when the Chryster design was selected to go into production.  But
  the payoff for use of the turbine power plant is that the crew of the M
  I has 1,500 horsepower on tap to carry them across the battlefield at
  something over 40 mph/65 kph.  This mobility was the key to the M Is'
  performance during the Gulf War, and is one of the reasons that M I
  crews love their mounts so very much.  Early MI s carried a 105mm main
  gun.  This weapon, the M68 (based on the British L5), had been the
  standard U.S.  heavy tank gun since the late 1960s.  While the gun
  itself might have been somewhat outdated, the ammunition it fired was
  completely new.  By the 1980s a new generation of long-rod penetrators
  had been developed for use by the NATO allies.  Made of depleted uranium
  (called "Staballoy" by the U.S.  Government), which is extremely dense,
  these new rounds could punch through the front armor of any tank in the
  
  Warsaw Pact.  The use of depleted uranium (or DU) helps the long-rods to
  maximize their energy and maintain a high speed during the flight to the
  target.  In addition to the 105mm gun, the early MI s also carried an M2
  .50-caliber machine gun mounted on the commander's station, an M240
  7.62mm machine gun mounted over the loader's hatch, and a 7.62mm machine
  gun coaxial to the main gun.  Protecting the turret was the new Chobham
  armor, as well as a number of other innovations, such as an automatic
  fire-detection/suppression system.  The driver sat at the front of the
  hull in a reclined position (his seat is much like the one in an F-16
  fighter), with a motorcycle-style steering/throttle grip.
  During development and testing, the MI suffered a great deal of public
  criticism.  Despite all that, the new tank quickly began to acquire a
  reputation of awesome proportions.  In 1982, during REFORGER-82, the
  annual NATO exercise to test rapid allied reinforcement of forces in
  Europe, a brigade of M I s went head-to-head with a Canadian brigade of
  Leopard I tanks simulating an invader.  Making use of their superior
  mobility (up to 45 mph/70 kph), the American unit quickly found gaps in
  the Canadian lines and rapidly exploited them.  So impressed were the
  Canadians with the MI s, during the after-action review, they dubbed
  them "Whispering Death."  Compared to the diesel engines of their
  Leopards, the M Is' turbines were virtually shadow quiet.  As an added
  benefit, the turbine was proving easier to maintain than conventional
  diesels.  In fact, it takes a team of mechanics less than an hour to
  change out the entire AGT-1500/transmission power pack, compared to over
  four hours to change the diesel on the old M6OA3 Patton.  During the
  years that followed, more and more American units were equipped with the
  M 1.  With increasing field experience and constant advances in
  manufacturing technology, improvements were gradually introduced.  The
  first, simply known as the IP M I (for improvement program), included
  armorprotection enhancement, minor modifications to the gun system, and
  an increase in stowage space.  In 1988 the really new model the Army had
  been waiting for arrived-the M I A 1.  Since the M I's inception, there
  had been plans to mount a U.S.  version of the German Rheinmetall 120mm
  smoothbore can
  60 - ARMORI;D ('AV
  non (known as the M256).  In 1984, some fourteen M I s (known as M I E I
  s) were fitted with the 120mm gun for evaluation and testing.  With the
  success of these trials, the Army authorized production of the MI Al.
  Though the turret had to be redesigned somewhat to accommodate the new
  gun (the American version is produced by the Rock Island Arsenal in
  Illinois), the results were stunning.  With new German-designed,
  NATO-standard 120mm ammunition, this was the tank the Army took to the
  Persian Gulf, and victory over Iraq.
  In addition to the more powerful gun, the MI AI had other major
  
  improvements.  For the first time, a U.S.  tank was equipped with an
  atmospheric overpressure system to allow the crew to survive and fight
  on a battlefield contaminated with toxic chemicals or biological weapons
  or nuclear fallout.  A fan draws outside air through a series of
  filters, similar to those in a gas mask, but much bigger, and keeps the
  interior of the crew compartment at a slightly higher pressure than
  normal: Clean air can leak out, but no contaminated air can leak in.
  And then there was the armor.  While the Chobham armor of the earlier M
  Is was adequate, the Army was getting concerned about just how well it
  would hold up against the new long-rod penetrators being deployed on
  Soviet-designed tanks.  So TACOM told General Dynamics to add an
  additional layer of armor to the M IA I turret.  The exact details
  remain classified, but the new package probably consists of a
  stainless-steel shell surrounding a layer (probably an inch or two
  thick) of depleted uranium, woven into a wiremesh blanket.  Combat
  experience has shown this to be almost invulnerable to anything short of
  an AGM-65 Maverick or AGM- 1 14 Hellfire missile.  Two variants of the M
  IA I have this modification, the M IA I HA (Heavy Armor) and the M IA I
  HC (Heavy Armor-Common).  The M IA I HC also has a digital
  engine-control system, which improves fuel economy during idle and
  road-march periods.
  The M IA2 is externally distinguished by the Cornmander's independent
  Thermal Viewer (CITV), the stubby cylinder that sticks up on the right
  side ofthe turret roof.  The device just above the gun muzzle is the
  muzzle-reference sensor, which uses a laser beam to nieasure the "droop"
  ofthe gun barrel caused by barrel heating and temperature changes.  Note
  that the driver's hatch is open-it is raised slightly by pressing a
  lever and then pivoted to the left.
  U.S.  ARMY VEffiCI-E ',YSTEMS a 61
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  GENERAL DYNAMICS
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  better than you might find in a finely made Swiss watch.  And throughout
  the plant are people motivated by the knowledge that they are building
  the finest MBT in the world, as well as the only one currently in
  production.  It goes without saying that they value their jobs as much
  as anyone else, and they are working hard to keep them.  The quality of
  the work they do (in a union shop, no less) is so good that over 40% of
  the vehicles are perfect (called "zero defect") when the government
  acceptance inspectors look them over for the first time.  And perfect
  means just that.  Not so much as a scratch or bubble in the
  chemical-resistant paint, or a bulb burned out on the internal lights.
  This is one reason why the Abrams is the most successful tank in the
  world today.  Lima is currently shipping kits for M IA I tanks to the
  Egyptians, as well as producing complete M IA2s for Saudi Arabia and
  Kuwait.  Were it not for these export orders, the factory would have
  shut down, as there has been a gap between the initial U.S.  Army
  production lot of MIA2s and the remanufacturing program planned to start
  in 1994.  Without foreign sales, the U.S.  would simply be out of the
  heavy tank business.  Moving away from the production building, you find
  the shed where the M I A2s are stored and tested prior to delivery.  As
  you first approach an M I A2, there are very few visible differences
  from the basic M IA 1.  The commander's cupola (a ring of vision blocks
  just below the hatch) has a different shape, and there is a stubby
  rotating box that looks like a periscope-the commander's independent
  thermal-viewer (CITV) sight.  Yet inside, the MI A2 is virtually a new
  tank in every way imaginable.  Despite its weight, which approaches
  seventy tons (about 63,000 kilograms), the M IA2 has a sleek and deadly
  look.  And in spite of its extra layer of depleted-uranium armor, it
  still can move across the landscape at speeds approaching 45 mph/70 kph.
  As you climb aboard you notice the driver's position, which is sited
  directly under the main gun tube.  In fact, the front of the turret
  actually overhangs the driver's head when the turret is pointed directly
  forward.  You can climb into the seat either by rotating the driver's
  hatch to the side, or crawling through the turret basket from the rear.
  The seat is extremely comfortable, though a bit confining if you are
  
  over six feet tall!  The odd part is that as you lie there (the seat is
  inclined waj@ back to keep the height of the hull down), the feeling is
  more like being in a miniature submarine or fighter plane@ than in a
  main battle tank.  There also is a feeling of isolation from the rest of
  the crew, who are all back in the turret basket, four to six feet aft of
  the driver's position.   The controls are surprisingly simple and take
  only a few minutes to master.  The throttle and steering are controlled
  through a motorcycle-style handlebar.  It is fully adjustable and, with
  the armrests holding up your elbows, quite comfortable.  The throttle is
  controlled by twisting the right handle grip towards you, and the power
  comes on quite quickly.  There is a brake pedal in the normal place at
  the front of the compartment.  And the brakes are awesome!  It takes
  some brilliant engineering to make seventy tons stop on a proverbial
  dime.  Overall, the ride is surprisingly smooth, though there is a lot
  of noise from the clanking of the tracks until you get above 20 mph/33
  kph.  In fact, the ride resembles an American town car on a smooth
  street, even when the M I A2 is traversing rough terrain.
  Unless the driver's hatch is open (and you can poke your head carefully
  up under the turret overhang), You view the world through three
  prismatic viewing blocks built into the top of the hatch.  And while the
  driver does not have a thermal sight to help navigate, there is a
  low-light-intensification sight that can be installed to help see in the
  dark.  Just to your left is the new driver's information-system panel.
  In previous versions of the M 1, this panel was a series of analog dials
  and instruments showing such things as fluid status (fuel, oil, etc.),
  speed, heading, etc.  Now, the panel-called a Driver's Integrated
  Display (DID)-is a ruggedized orange electroluminescent display (similar
  to those on some portable computers) showing all of the previously
  mentioned items, as well as navigational instructions and vehicle
  systems status.  This DID is fed from the MIL Standard 1553 data bus
  (described below).  The driver, who is responsible for maintaining all
  of the automotive systems on the tank, will use this panel as the
  starting point in any diagnosis of a problem.
  The MI is the first U.S.  heavy tank since World War 11 to be built
  completely from armor plate instead of a cast hull and turret.  This not
  only provides a vastly superior level of protection, but makes the M I
  easier to build, upgrade, and repair.  In addition, the use of RHA
  allows GDLS to employ the latest in manufacturing technology.  Part of
  the secret to making a "zero defects" M I is that so much of the
  manufacturing process is done with computer-controlled machinery.  This
  includes everything from plate cutting and welding, to milling and
  finishing.  The hull armor ranges in thickness from two to four inches,
  and serves as an outer shell for the rest of the armor-protection
  system.  Along the front and sides, there is a whole system of layered
  armor.  This probably includes a layer of polyurethane foam backed up by
  a layer of Chobham armor (a sandwich of metal and ceramic blocks), which
  
  is probably itself backed up by a layer of depleted-uranium mesh and
  another inner hull of RHA plate.  And inside all of this is a special
  liner to prevent any spall fragments from injuring the crew or damaging
  any of the delicate systems.  All in all, the crew of an M IA2 sits
  behind an armor system that is probably tougher than the eighteen inches
  of solid steel surrounding the control tower of a battleship like the
  USS Iowa (BB-61).
  In the rear of the M IA2's hull is the key to the M I's performance, the
  1,500 horsepower AGT-1500 gas-turbine power pack.  If you look inside
  the engine compartment, the biggest surprise is just how small the
  turbine actually is.  The bulk of the engine compartment is taken up by
  the air-filter and exhaust system for the turbine, and the transmission.
  It is a six-speed (four forward, two reverse) hydro-kinetic unit that
  automatically shifts on the fly.  The transmission drives the rear
  sprockets.  The sprockets are big steel wheels with gear teeth that mesh
  with steel connector blocks on the tracks to pull the track over the
  return rollers and front idler.  The track itself is of an improved
  design, with rubber pads that can be replaced without having to dismount
  the track itself.  It is this combination that allows the MI A2 to
  accelerate to 20 mph/33 kph in
  U.S.  ARMY VEHICLE SYSTEM-, - 65
  only 7.2 seconds, move at road speeds of 42 mph/69 kph, and travel
  across open country at 30 mph/49 kph.
  Also located here under armor are the fuel tanks, with over 490 gallons
  of tankage provided.  Though the AGT-1500 can burn anything from JP-8
  jet fuel to alcohol, the Army uses plain diesel fuel to simplify the
  logistics chains to the armor units.  Burning more than a gallon per
  mile, an M I running at cruising speed has a range of over 250 miles.
  GDLS has taken the thirst of the MI A2's power pack into account by
  adding a digital control system, which more precisely regulates the flow
  of fuel and improves fuel economy.  And to deal with the continuing
  problem of high fuel consumption at idle, the Army is testing an
  auxiliary power unit (probably a very small rotary engine tucked into
  the battery compartment in the hull) to provide electrical power without
  having to run the turbine.  This would improve fuel economy
  significantly.  All of this mobility would be worthless but for the
  payload that the hull carries around-the turret with its three crew
  members and weapons.  The turret itself has an inner and outer RHA
  shell, with the armor-protection package sandwiched between. The turret
  sits on a ring mounted on the hull.  Hanging down from the turret into
  the turret ring in the hull is what is called the turret basket, which
  provides a floor and containment for all of the turret equipment. In the
  middle of the basket is a slip ring, which provides electrical power,
  hydraulics, and a connection to the M I A2's digital data bus. Inside
  
  the turret are positions for the loader (left side, aft), gunner (right
  side, forward), and the commander (right side, aft), as well as the M256
  120mm main gun.  To the rear of the turret are a pair of armored storage
  compartments for the 120mm main-gun rounds.  To crews who have served in
  earlier versions of the M 1, the turret of the M I A2 seems surprisingly
  roomy.  This is because in designing the M I A2, GDLS has stripped out
  virtually every electrical system and "black box," and completely
  re-engineered the old-style analog systems, into newer digital ones.
  This has allowed them to repackage the new systems into more numerous,
  smaller containers which can be stuffed up into the "nooks and crannies"
  of the turret.  And what these new systems do is more than just emulate
  the old analog systems.  Those older systems were essentially
  stand-alone black boxes, each of which had its own special function or
  job.  For example, the control system for the turbine power pack on the
  MI AI had absolutely no connectiofi with the main-gun fire-control
  system or the gunner's thermal sight.  This is completely changed on the
  M I A2.  Each of the M I A2's electrical and electronic subsystems has
  been designed to work in harmony with all the other systems of the tank.
  These include:
  The Gunner's Primary Sight and Gunner's Control and Display Panel
  (GCDP)-The Gunner's Primary Sight is the primary thermal/day sight used
  by the gunner for aiming of the M256 120mm main gun.  It has been
  improved over previous versions of the TIS (Thermal-Imaging Sight) by
  being stabilized in two axes, allowing it to be used to track crossing
  targets and heli
  66 - AL@MOIZEI) CAV
  copters/aircraft.  It has both day (visual) and thermal (heatsignature)
  viewing options.  The GCDP is the gunner's path into the vehicular
  network and allows him to control every aspect of the M I A2's weapons.
  lt is a multi-function display (M FD) with multiple screens, or "pages,"
  that can be selected to show the status of various systems.  - The
  Driver's Integrated Display-This provides the driver of an
  MI A2 with a replacement for all of the analog displays on the older M
  IA 1.  lt is an MFD with pages for navigation, fluid status (fuel, oil,
  etc.), and a variety of other functions.  - The Commander's Independent
  Thermal Viewer (CITV) and Commander's Integrated Display (CID)-This is
  the largest and most powerful of the MFD control stations on the M I A2.
  The CITV is independent of the Gunner's Primary Sight and allows the
  tank commander to view the surrounding area no matter where the gun
  tube/turret is pointing.  The tank commander can set the CITV to
  automatically scan a particular sector, or control it with an
  aircraft-style control grip on the right side of the station.  The grip,
  which includes triggers and turret slave buttons, also has an analog
  input device-or "mouse"-which allows the tank commander to designate
  
  points on the CID MFD screen.  Should a target be sighted, the commander
  can take control of all turret systems, including the main gun, directly
  from this position.  The CID panel gives the commander an interface to
  all of the various vehicle systems, as well as an input to the
  Inter-Vehicular Information System (IVIS), which allows an MI A2 to
  communicate with other tanks in a unit without use of a voice radio
  channel.
  The Position/Navigation (POS/NAV) Sensor Unit-This is an inertial
  guidance unit that accurately senses and maintains a record of where the
  MI A2 has been and gone.  lt feeds directly into the IVIS system to
  provide a ground truth of just where the
  M IA2 is located.  It is accurate to within about 17 yards/ 17 meters
  for every 1,000 yards/ I kilometer traveled.  9 The Turret Electronics
  Unit-This provides control and interfaces for all of the electronics in
  the MI A2's turret.  It acts as a switch board for data flowing between
  systems such as the CITV, CID, and the Radio Interface Unit.
  9 The Radio Interface Unit (RIU)-This is the heart of the IVIS
  system.  It is the information gateway between the M I A2 vehicle sys
  tems and the two onboard AN/VRC-92A SINCGARS secure
  VHF radios.  The SINCGARS radios are extremely secure, com bining
  encryption and frequency-hopping to defeat enemy eaves dropping.  The
  RIU controls the radios and the nets they are hooked into, as well as
  distributing information to other
  U.S.  ARMY VElil('LE SYs i i.@m,, 67 A view of an IVIS terminal "page"
  as seen by the commander of an M I A2 Abrams main battle tank.  It shows
  a movement by four MI s (the four small circles on the left) moving
  towards an objective (called "OBJ DOG") through a phase line (called
  "FOX").
  J,(k R@4, E17LRPRISL@ L Til, Bi LAtk4 ALPIIER
  IVIS-equipped vehicles and artillery/aircraft assets on the TACFIRE fire
  control network.  The Hull Electronics Unit (HEU)-The HEU controls all
  of the electronics subsystems in the hull, everything from monitoring
  the fuel level to indicating whether or not the headlights are on.  The
  Fire-Control Electronics Unit (FCEU)-The FCEU provides fire control for
  the M256 120mm main gun.  This system monitors environmental conditions,
  gun tube temperature and wear, ammunition type and status, and a variety
  of other functions.  It is designed to be able to control and fire the
  new generation of guided tank-gun ammunition (including anti-aircraft
  shells) that is coming on-line.  The Digital Electronics Control Unit
  (DECU)-The DECU controls and monitors the AGT 1500 engine.  It can
  assess the status of the engine and report this to the crew.  In
  
  addition, like all the other vehicle systems, it can report this
  information over the fVlS system.
  All of these subsystems are linked via a data highway or network.  This
  data network (known officially as an MIL Standard 1553 data bus) allows
  each system to send information to the various displays around the tank.
  It is completely redundant, so that if the 1553 data bus cable should be
  cut at any point, the data flow is automatically routed around the break
  onto a second cable.  Later versions of the M I A2/ IVIS software may
  even be capable of ordering replacement parts, ammunition, oil, and fuel
  for a tank, and telling combat support units just when and where to
  deliver it! All without active intervention by the crew.  Field
  evaluations of MI A2-equipped units at Fort Hood, Texas, and the
  National Training Center (NTC) at Fort Irwin, California, indicate that
  they will be from three to five times as lethal in combat as a similarly
  equipped unit of M IA Is.
  68 - AL@MORED CAV
  All of this technology is quite exciting and sexy, but just how would an
  M I A2 use all of it to engage and destroy an enemy force?  Consider a
  four-tank cavalry platoon of M I A2 s moving to contact with an enemy
  force of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles.
  Before they get started, the platoon commander sets up the map overlays
  on the CID MFD (Multi-Function Displays) in the command tank.  The
  commander can use the existing database of map information, or input it
  himself.  The route of march, expected contact points, obstacles, etc.,
  can all be inputted onto these electronic maps, and even updated as the
  unit moves forward and observes changes in the tactical situation. After
  sending the maps/overlays to the other tanks in the platoon (as well as
  the company/troop commander) via the fV]S network, the unit mounts up
  and then forms up into the march formation (probably a box or wedge
  formation).  Then the tanks rapidly move across the terrain.  The
  drivers are guided by inputs from their DIDS, and even by on-the-fly
  cues fed through the FVIS system.  Each tank commander sets up his CITV
  to scan a pre-selected sector of the area around the platoon.  The
  loaders probably have an M830 High-Explosive Anti-Tank (HEAT) round
  loaded, since it has excellent effects against all kinds of targets. The
  gunners are meanwhile scanning through their thermal sights, watching
  for trouble.  All without a word being spoken.
  Let us assume that the platoon suddenly comes upon an enemy combined
  tank/mechanized infantry unit behind some hastily constructed obstacles
  (called "cheap tricks" by U.S.  forces).  As the gunner of the first
  tank to sight the enemy begins to use the laser range finder to sight on
  the lead enemy tank, the platoon commander sends a contact position
  report over the IVIS system to the rest of the platoon and to higher
  
  echelons.  This states the composition and position (fed automatically
  from the laser range finder and POS/NAV system) of the enemy force.  As
  the first HEAT rounds exit the gun tubes, the breeches of the M256
  cannons open and eject the base cap of the expended round (the round
  case is consumed during firing).  The gunner then yells over the
  intercom- what kind of round-M830 HEAT or M829 APFSDS (called "sabot" by
  the crews)-he wants the loader to load in the gun next.  The loader
  twists to his right, bangs his right knee against a switch which opens
  the armored blast door to the ready ammunition-storage compartment, and
  hafts a round of the proper type out.
  Releasing the knee switch (the blast door closes quickly and
  automatically), he then slams the round into the breech with his right
  arm, gets his hand clear, and yells, "Up."' This is the signal to the
  gunner that the next round is ready to fire.  While the loader has been
  doing this, the gunner has been selecting on the GCDP what kind of round
  is going to be fired and taking aim at the next target.  After using the
  laser rangefinder to verify target range, the gunner yells, "On the
  iial,!"  and depresses the triggers.  The fire control takes information
  from the crosswind sensor, as we]] as the other M I A2 systems, and
  makes minute corrections to the aim, or lay, of the gun tube.  There is
  an incredible noise and blast as the round fires, and the breech/recoil
  system begins to dissi
  U.S.  AL@MY VFIiIC-I.E SY-,'I'EMI,' m 69
  pate the energy of the recoil.  During this time, each member of the
  turret crew has to be careful to keep arms and legs safely away from 115
  tons of gun recoil force that is slamming just inches away from them.
  This process will be repeated every three to five seconds in each tank,
  until the enemy unit is either in retreat or, more likely, completely
  destroyed with survivors surrendering.
  While all this is going on, the tank commanders are using their CITVs to
  scan other sectors of the battlefield to see if other enemy forces are
  approaching from any other sector.  Let us assume that the platoon
  commander spies such a unit (say enemy tanks attempting to hit the
  platoon's flank) off to one side.  Seeing the pending danger, the
  commander immediately centers up the lead enemy tank in his CITV viewer
  screen and hits the SLEW/SLAVE button on the middle of his hand
  controller.  In less than two seconds (this is verj,, fast), the turret
  has rotated, and the gun tube is centered on the new target.  A flick of
  the thumb switch for the laser rangefinder, and the commander is ready
  to start the new engagement.  Once he hears the loader's "Up!"  call on
  the intercom, he himself yells, "On the waj,!"  And the first round is
  headed to the new targets.  Total time from first sighting to the round
  flying is probably less than five seconds.  As the gunner takes the cue
  to the new targets and begins to engage them on his own, the platoon
  
  commander will be using the position of the first enemy target tank to
  send a message over the fVlS system to let the other tanks in the
  platoon know @,hat he has found.  Using the thumb pointer/mouse, he
  pages down through the various message forms, finds the proper one, and
  sends out a message about the new threat.  The rest of the unit's M IA2s
  would join in as quickly as possible to deal with the second threat,
  while the platoon's commander would probably be updating the map
  overlays (and sending the updates through the FVIS system) for the
  platoon and higher authority with the positions of the enemy force's
  "cheap tricks (hasty obstacles)," so that the company/troop commander
  can send an engineering vehicle or M9 ACE to clear them.  All without
  one word being spoken over the voice radio channels.
  While all this has been happening, the drivers have continued to move
  forward towards the platoon's objective, without disturbing the gunnery
  of the tanks one bit.  Should the enemy bring down artillery fire, the
  platoon commander can quickly use the IVIS system to call for
  counter-battery fire or air strikes via the IVIS/TACFIRE interface.  And
  because of the POS/NAV system's inputs, the risk of accidentally calling
  down fire on a friendly unit and causing "fratricide" casualties is
  greatly reduced.  Again, without a single voice message being sent.  So
  rapid has been the destruction of the enemy units that they probably
  will not have had time to contact their superiors to report on the
  battle.  Much as in Ridley Scott's terrifying film Alien, the only
  notice that the enemy's higher authorities may have that something has
  happened may be a scream on the communications circuits and then
  silence.  Dead silence.
  Once the enemy unit has been destroyed and the platoon's objective
  taken, the platoon commander can use the IVIS system to request
  resupply, ask for another mission, or submit his after-action report. So
  powerful is a unit equipped with the MI A2/IVIS system, that missions
  that might normally be Soldiers exit the rear ramp ofan M2 Bradley
  infantry fighting vehicle. Note the thickness of the ramp, which has a
  rounded hinged hatch to allow entrance and exit without dropping the
  ramp.
  Offl(i,@i t S AR@1) Pt/(,/(, assigned to companies or battalions can now
  be assigned to platoon-sized teams, and carried out successfully.  The
  downside to all this power and flexibility is that it is going to take a
  tank commander with exceptional situational awareness and brains to get
  the most out of the M IA2.  But if you have any experience with the new
  generation of kids who have spent their lives playing video games and
  working on computers, I think you can believe they can make the system
  work.  Even an older guy like me can do it ...  and I have'
  The M2/3 Bradley Infantry/Cavalry Fighting Vehicle
  
  Over the past ten years or so, a lot of ink has been spilled and a lot
  of TV time has been spent knocking the M2/3 Bradley Fighting Vehicle.
  To set the record straight, let us get one thing completely clear: The
  Bradley is not a tank!  Its job is very different from that.  Despite
  what legions of poorly informed journaiists and so-called "defense
  reformers" have said, the M2/3 does the job it was designed for, and
  does it better than any vehicle of its kind in the world today.
  What does the Bradley do?  The M2/3 is not designed to fight tanks,
  though it is equipped with a missile launcher for the TOW-2 anti-tank
  guided missile (ATGM) and a 25mm M242 Bushmaster cannon.  It is not
  designed to absorb damage from MBT gun rounds and heavy ATGMS, though it
  is highly survivable against such weapons.  Once again, the Bradley is
  not a tank!
  What it is, though, is a well-armed, armored battle taxi designed to
  deliver a squad of infantry or a team of scouts to the edge of a
  battlefield, support them with fire as necessary, and then re-embark
  them for movement under armor to the next objective.  Some of its other
  important missions are to provide scouting for cavalry units and
  infantry support for armored units on the battlefield.  And in that job
  it is unsurpassed.  Only two other vehiclesthe British FV-432 Warrior
  and the Russian BMP-3-are even in the same class as the Bradley.  And
  even these vehicles lack some features of the M2/3.  This is not to say
  that the Bradley is the ultimate weapon.  Like most designs, the Bradley
  was a compromise that balanced different threats, missions, U.S.  ARMY
  VEIIIC'I-E SYSTEMS - 71
  capabilities, available technologies, and costs.  But to understand how
  this happened, you need to know a little history.
  The story of the M2/3 fighting vehicle starts in the late 1930s when the
  intellectual father of armored warfare, German General Heinz Guderian,
  wrote in his book Achtiing-Paii--er.1 of the need for armored infantry
  carriers to accompany the new tank units that were taking shape in the
  major European armies.  Initially, these were open-topped half-tracks
  carrying a squad of infantry, with a machine gun for fire support.  The
  armored infantry units would ride just behind the tanks and dismount to
  support the tanks when they became engaged.  These early vehicles, with
  unpowered front wheels, lacked true cross-country mobility.  And with
  their thin armor and open tops, they were vulnerable to anything larger
  than a machine-gun bullet or shell fragment.  After the war, various
  improvements to the basic half-track design were manufactured, such as
  the British Saracen, a fully enclosed 6x6 wheeled vehicle with a small
  machine-gun turret.
  But the first real improvement on the road to a true Infantry Fighting
  Vehicle (IFV) came from an unusual source: the Food Machinery
  
  Corporation (FMC) of San Jose, California.  FMC, best known for their
  production of institutional food-processing equipment, as well as naval
  gun mounts and missile launchers, came up with a concept for a fully
  tracked, armored personnel carrier (APC), manufactured from a specially
  hardened grade of aircraft aluminum.  When this came into service with
  the U.S.  Army in 1959, it was type-classified as the M 11 3.  With a
  watertight hull and mounting a light machine gun, the M 1 13 could carry
  a squad of infantry with all their weapons, swim across rivers and lakes
  without any special preparation, keep up with the new M60 Patton series
  of MBTS, and stand up to heavy machine-gun fire.  It was cheap and easy
  to build, and it quickly became the most popular armored vehicle ever
  built.  By 1993 over 70,000 had been produced, with vehicles still being
  manufactured overseas.  It has served in dozens of conflicts all over
  the world, starting with the Berlin Crisis in 1961.
  But while it has done yeoman service for over three decades, it clearly
  was not the ultimate expression of what General Guderian had in mind
  when he wrote Achtiing-Panzer!  in 1937.  For instance, its light armor
  made it vulner- able to the new generation of portable anti-tank weapons
  coming into service in the 1960s and 1970s.  Most of the countries that
  produced armored vehicles knew this, and a race ensued to be the first
  nation to field a true IFV.  And when the Soviets unveiled the BMP- I
  IFV in 1967, it sent shock waves throughout the world's armies.   Armed
  with a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launcher, an AT-3 Sagger ATGM
  launcher, machine guns, and ports for the embarked infantry squad to
  fire from inside the vehicle, the BMP-1 was a revolution in armored
  infantry tactical thinking.  Of course it had shortcomings: The crew
  compartment was incredibly cramped; to reload the Sagger launch rail,
  the gunner had to open a hatch and unfold the missile's fins with a
  stick; and the flattened off-center turret had large blind spots in its
  field of fire.  But with its high mobility and heavy weapons load, the
  BMP- I left the designers of Western armored vehicles scrambling for a
  response.
  72 - AL@MORED CAV
  Meanwhile, the U.S.  Army was not idle all this time.  But the various
  designs for an IFV by American manufacturers had shortcomings that were
  not acceptable; and a number of prototypes failed to meet the Army's
  expectations.  Part of the problem was cost.  IFVS, with their expensive
  weapons mounts and sensors, cost two to three times what an APC like the
  M 113 does.  And the electronics necessary to control the various
  weapons systems simply did not exist in the 1960s.  Yet with the
  development of solid-state integrated circuit technology in the 1970s,
  the time seemed right to try again.
  By the early 1970s, the U.S.  Army had made up its mind to get serious
  about IFV development, and contracted with FMC to produce something
  
  called the XM723 Mechanized Infantry Combat Vehicle (MICV).  This was
  designed to accompany the new MI Abrams tank into battle.  The XM723
  utilized a novel (and heavy) steel/aluminum hull armor, as well as
  components from the Marine Corps LTVP-7 armored amphibious tractor, to
  carry the weight of the heavier armor and a one-man 20mm cannon turret.
  At the same time, the Army was developing a new cavalry/scout vehicle,
  called the XM800, to replace the aging M 1 14 cavalry vehicle. Congress,
  always cost-conscious, killed both programs, and ordered the Army to
  merge the two requirements into a common vehicle.  From this, the M2/3
  infantry/scout fighting vehicle was born.  It was not a happy gestation.
  There were many compromises that went into the new vehicle-and many
  enemies to overcome.
  The worst of these was a band of military reformers who inhabited
  various departments of the Pentagon in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
  Called by various names, such as the "lightweight fighter Mafia" or the
  "simple-is-better crowd," they advocated a return to simpler,
  low-technology weapons, bought in large numbers to meet the growing
  array of Soviet Bloc weapons systems coming on-line at the time.  They
  despised the apparent complexity and cost of the weapons that all the
  services were then developing.   And it was their sworn mission to find
  ways to kill these programs.  Stories were leaked to the media.  As
  M2/3 Bradley Fighting Vehicle.  J,,K R@,@ L'TfRPRISf,.S, 1, Ft), fi@ /@,
  lt Rl AI PIILR Thermal Sight tennas
  Grenade Launch OW Missile Launcher
  7.62 Coaxial Machine Gun
  M242 25mm Bushmaster w Periscopes
  Transmissi
  Headlight
  Armor Blocks
  Eng  ack -PMC
  Torsion Bars/ el
  U.S.  AL@MY VElilCLI@ 1,YS'l EMS a 73 an example, a scathing feature on
  the CBS program 60 Minlites put the Bradley program under a cloud that
  would not go away until the 1991 war in the Persian Gulf.  As for the
  people who count, the Bradley crews themselves, these guys love the
  vehicle and would hate to be in anything else.  But enough about
  politics.  Let's take a look at the inside of the Bradley.
  The M2/3 Bradley-A Guided Tour
  
  The M2/3 Bradley Fighting Vehicle (BFV) is a 30-ton/27.2-metric ton
  armored vehicle which carries a basic crew of three.  Depending on which
  version of the vehicle you are looking at (the M2 is the infantry
  carrier and the M3 is the cavalry/scout vehicle), the Bradley can carry
  a variety of payloads.  The M2 carries a small (six-man) infantry squad,
  while the M3 carries a pair of scouts, with additional radios,
  ammunition, and TOW missile rounds.  In fact, the only noticeable
  external difference between the two versions of the Bradley are the side
  firing ports for the squad M 16s, which are absent on the M3.  The two
  rear-door firing ports are retained in both versions.  And while the
  Bradley is nowhere near as sleek and low as its foreign counterparts, it
  does have the advantage of being the most heavily armed IFV in the
  world.  The basic M2/3 variant which came into service in 1982 carried
  the same armament package as the M2A2s and M3A2s being produced today: a
  25mm cannon, a 7.62mm coaxial machine gun, and a two-round TOW-2 ATGM
  launcher.  In addition, the embarked troops or scouts carry their
  personal weapons, including the latest M 16A2 assault rifle and the new
  AT-4 anti-tank rocket.  The major differences between the earlier and
  present vehicles are in automotive performance and crew protection, plus
  an improved TOW missile system.  There also is a better NBC breathing
  system, allowing the crew of the vehicle to breathe from a central
  hose-fed filter system, rather than using individual MOPP-FV (MOPP
  stands for Mission-Oriented Protective Posture) chemical-warfare suits.
  The original M2/3 specification required armor capable of standing up to
  heavy machine-gun (.50-caliber/ 12.7mm) fire and fragments from
  artillery and mortar shells.  But with the increasing use of heavier
  automatic cannons and manportable anti-tank weapons, the armor on the
  newest Bradleys has been upgraded
  The view through the rear ramp hatch of a Bradley fighting vehicle.  The
  fold-down seats are evident, as well as the turret "basket" in the front
  ofthe vehicle.  D (;Rf,,Slll It to survive hits from heavy 30mm cannons
  (like the GAU-8 on the A- JOA "Warthog") and light anti-tank weapons
  like the Soviet RPG-7.  The -A2 versions of the Bradley carry
  distinctive plates of add-on armor, plus deeper side skirts to protect
  the tracks and lower hull.  Still, I must emphasize again that a BFV was
  never designed to stand up to heavy tank-gun or missile fire.  The M2/3
  was meant to work in a combined-arms team with the M I Abrams, and not
  to fight enemy tanks by itself.  (When this happened during the 1991
  Gulf War, the Bradleys suffered in the process, but they gave as much
  punishment as they took.)
  Like its heavy cousin, the M 1, the Bradley has survivability features
  designed to save lives if something nasty penetrates the crew
  compartment or turret.  To begin with, the M2/3 is equipped with a
  fire-suppression system that will snuff a catastrophic fire in the event
  
  of a fuel or ammunition hit.  In addition, all of the M2A2s and M3A2s
  are equipped with spall liners to help keep fragments from injuring the
  crew if a projectile penetrates the hull armor.  Unless a Bradley crew
  member is right in the path of a tank round or missilewarhead jet, he
  will usually survive.  And if you are an enemy commander who sees a unit
  composed of M Is and Bradleys, you are going to shoot at the tanks
  first, since they are the greatest threat to your existence.  This
  simple lesson from the Gulf War of 1991 has convinced the Army to attach
  MI s directly to cavalry squadrons in the heavy armored and mechanized
  divisions.  If you walk up to a Bradley, you enter the rear compartment
  where the precious cargo" of personnel and ammunition is stored.  You
  enter through an opening equipped with a heavy hydraulically powered
  ramp door.  In the M2 versions of the Bradley, there are seats for six
  infantrymen and their weapons, plus stowage space for ammunition.  The
  entire stowage layout of the IFV Bradley has recently been improved,
  with the 25mm ammunition stored under the floorboards and five TOW
  missiles in vertical racks.  There are also firing ports and vision
  blocks for specially shortened versions of the M 16 assault rifle-these
  have rarely been used in combat.  The original IFV concept of
  infantrymen fighting from inside an armored vehicle just never has taken
  hold in the armies of the world.  The simple truth is that in the end,
  soldiers have to get out in the open to use their individual weapons
  effectively.  And all the smart bombs and guided missiles will never
  change that!  The old grand master of science fiction, Robert Heinlein,
  was right.  Someday, there will be starship troopers!  The M3
  cavalry/scout version of the Bradley is similar to the M2, except that
  four of the seats have been deleted to make room for more TOW rounds and
  the specialized radio gear used bY the two dismount scouts that ride in
  the back.
  As you move forward in the Bradley, You come to the turret basket.
  Inside the turret are seats and hatches for the vehicle commander (on
  the right) and the gunner (on the left).  Both positions are
  surprisingly comfortable, even for folks over six feet.  Much like the M
  1, there is a thermal sight boresighted to the gun tube, although the
  image appears on a red background instead of the more common green found
  on the MI.  One quickly finds out that the most important thing in the
  entire turret is a socket wrench (the crews prefer a Sears Craftsman
  model, they tell us) used to manually operate the
  U.S.  ARMY VEHICLE L,YSTEMS - 75
  Control S.,face
  Wire Disp@.s@,@ Safety & Aming D-ice\ wi.g, Be.c.n Electro.ic.@ UnitN
  Electroni- UnitN The-al
  Main WatheadN Beacon
  
  Xenon E@t@ndable P,Obe Launch N t., Beacon Precus-, Warhead \Gyo
  to, co.t,.l Surface
  Wire DispenserN
  Electonics Unit
  The@mal
  Beacon
  Xenon
  Be.c.n
  v G, Dual Down@ad
  Fi@ing Warheads light Motor ABo@ F.- A cutaway of a TOW-2A wire-guided
  anti-tank missile.  J@(K R)14@ ENT@RPRISts, LrD..  R@ L.4tk4 ALPIIER
  BEI,Oli@ A cutaway of a TOW-2B wire-guided anti-tank missile.  The two
  downward-firing warheads are located at the front ofthe missile.  J41K
  Ri,,E,rERPRist.@, Lil,., 8k L4i @ Al@PlIER machine gun and cannon feeds
  during reloading.  This may seem rather crude for an armored vehicle
  costing over a million dollars a copy, but it is simple, it works, and
  it allows the ammo feeds to be kept compact (unlike, for example, the
  bulky and complex linear linkless feed system on the AH-64 Apache
  helicopter).  The Bradley's gun is stabilized, and firing on the move
  requires very littie correction.  The cannon, machine gun, and TOW-2
  missiles can be fired from either seat.  Firing the weapons is not much
  more difficult than playing a video game.  For the guns, it is simply a
  matter of selecting what kind of weapon and ammunition you want, using
  your hand grips to put the crosshairs on the target, and pressing the
  thumb trigger.  Seventy-five rounds of 25mm armorpiercing ammunition and
  225 rounds of high-explosive 25mm ammunition are usually loaded and
  ready to fire; two TOW-2 rounds and 800 rounds of 7.62mm machine-gun
  ammunition are ready-loaded as well.
  The TOW missile is the primary anti-armor weapon of the Bradley, and it
  has a long and fascinating history.  In 1958 the Army began to
  investigate the idea of a Tube-launched, Optically tracked, Wire-guided
  anti-tank missile; hence the acronym TOW.  By 1963, Hughes had built a
  successful prototype, and the first production missiles were delivered
  to the Army in 1969.  The first TOW was fired in combat by a UH-1
  helicopter on May 22nd, 1972, knocking out a North Vietnamese T-54 tank
  at a range of 900 meters.  Subsequent combat involving TOW provided
  evidence that it was an immediate classic.  Tubelaunching reduces the
  back-blast problem of earlier anti-tank weapons, for a small charge
  
  expels the missile from the tube.  When ejected, the guidance fins pop
  out, and the rocket motor ignites at a safe distance from the launcher
  and its operator.  Wire guidance means that the missile is under the
  gunner's control from just after firing until target impact, or until
  the wire runs out.  On the TOW-2, there is a xenon beacon lamp in the
  tail of the missile, very bright in the infrared part of the spectrum,
  which makes it easy to track-even at night through fog, snow, or
  sandstorms, when the optional TAS-4 thermal sight is attached.  All of
  this means that if the gunner keeps the optical tracker's crosshairs on
  the target, the missile will hit. System reliability in combat has been
  over 95%, which is amazing by any standard.
  Mounted on a simple tripod, a complete TOW-2 system weighs 280 Ib/ 127.3
  kg and can be carried by a three-man crew.  The minimum range of TOW is
  65 meters, with a maximum range of 2.3 miles/3.75 kilometers (the length
  of the wire).  The missile is subsonic: 623 knots/ 1,000 kph at peak
  velocity, which drops off rapidly after rocket-motor burnout.  This
  happens shortly after launching, and then the missile just coasts along,
  with the TOW taking about fifteen to twenty seconds to reach maximum
  range.  A twin TOW launcher is mounted on the Bradley Fighting Vehicle;
  and a single launcher can be fit ted to a HMM@, or almost any light
  wheeled or tracked vehicle.  It is also used on the AH- I Cobra and many
  other helicopters worldwide.  There have been five versions of the TOW,
  each with increasingly powerful warheads.  Total TOW production is well
  over 500,000 units to date, with additional units still being produced
  as of early 1994.  TOW is considered a 11 wooden round," and stays
  "fresh" in the canister, with a shelf life of up to twenty years in
  storage.  All versions are compatible, as long as the launch-control
  unit has the correct software updates.  The current version is the
  TOW-2B, which was developed to defeat the latest composite and
  explosive-reactive armor systems and is programmed to fly directly over
  the target, where a sophisticated sensor triggers two downward-firing
  warheads.  These warheads have dense metallic liners that become
  "explosively forged projectiles" to penetrate the target's thin roof
  armor.
  In 1993, the Arm awarded Hughes a contract to produce 18,800 Tow .  y 2A
  and TOW-2B missiles.  This works out to a unit cost of about $9,800-a
  bargain price to kill a $250,000-dollar Soviet-type tank.  To fire a
  TOW-2 missile the gunner simply keeps the crosshairs of the sight on the
  target, and the missile flies right into it.  All you have to do is
  erect the two-round launcher (it can be reloaded from a hatch in the
  rear compartment roof), fire, and track the target in the sight. Despite
  fears that the new reactive appliqu6 armor on some tanks might defeat
  the TOW-2's warhead, experience in the Gulf War proved this to be false.
  TOW-2 can defeat any tank on the battlefield, with the possible
  exception of an M I Abrams or a British Challenger 11!  The major
  limitation on use of the TOW system is that the Bradley has to be
  
  stopped to fire it.
  The Bradley's guns are also easy to use.  Although there is no laser
  rangefinder, range estimation is quite simple.  You just punch in an
  estimated range on the weapons-control panel (there is a reticule in the
  sight to help you).  Crews are trained to estimate range by judging the
  apparent height of the target
  U.S.  AL@MY VEfilCLE SYSTEMS - 77
  in the gunsight-the closer the target the bigger it appears.  Then you
  put the "death dot" of the sight onto the target and squeeze off a few
  ranging shots.  Once you see the target bracketed, all you have to do is
  fire as many rounds as you need.  The target quickly becomes obscured
  with dust and smoke from hits and near misses, and probably has also
  been destroyed as well.   At 300 rounds per minute, it feels like you
  are shooting at the target with a fire hose!  But gunners are trained to
  conserve ammunition by firing single shots until they see a hit on the
  target; then they fire three-round bursts until the target is destroyed.
  Like the M 1, the Bradley has a pair of the new SINCGARS radios for
  communications, though the current -A2 versions do not yet have access
  to the IVIS system.  There is, however, a program under consideration
  for equipping the M2A2 and M3A2 with a downgraded IVIS terminal and GPS,
  but budget constraints may slow this process down until the new -A3
  versions of the Bradley come on-line late in the decade.
  If you exit the turret basket and head forward on the left side of the
  vehicle, you come to the driver's position and hatch.  This is a very
  comfortable seat with a friendly instrument console.  The Bradley is
  powered by a 600horsepower turbocharged diesel engine with an automatic
  transmission.  To start the vehicle no keys are required.  You just pull
  a knob on the dashboard to activate the fuel pump, then push the shifter
  knob to the START position.  The engine catches quickly and warms up
  smoothly.  All that is then required is to shift down to the DRIVE
  position with the selector and press the accelerator.  The vehicle
  accelerates quickly, and before you even know it, you are doing over 30
  mph/48 kph.  The Bradley has a top speed of over 45 mph/65 kph, and has
  no trouble keeping up with the MI Abrams, either on-road or
  cross-country.  The only trick to driving the -A2 version of the
  Bradley, which has an aircraft-style control wheel, is that it tends to
  be a bit loose in the rear during turns.  However, you quickly get used
  to that; and after a while, driving the beast becomes a joy.
  One chore that takes some time is setting up the Bradley for swimming.
  Because of all the rivers in Europe and Korea (where the Army expected
  to fight during the Cold War), the Bradley was designed to swim like its
  older cousin, the M 1 13. But because of the extra weight of the turret
  and armor, the M2/3 requires a bit of additional buoyancy.  To make this
  
  possible there is an erectable "swim curtain" of rubberized fabric over
  a steel frame to keep the upper deck free of water; and it works just
  fine.
  In conclusion, the Bradley may not be the ultimate armored fighting
  vehicle, but it is a mature weapon system that is still evolving to keep
  pace with rapid changes in key technologies.  Maybe not as sexy as an
  Abrams tank, but just as vital and necessary.
  The M113 Armored Personnel Carrier
  The M 1 13 armored personnel carrier (APC) was the first modern "battle
  taxi" for infantry to use on the battlefield.  It was designed to take
  advantage of technology breakthroughs of the 1950s in casting and
  welding aircraft-quality aluminum to create structures with the same
  strength as much heavier steel construction.  This light weight allowed
  the FMC designers to use a relatively small automotive engine to drive a
  tracked vehicle with a substantial payload and the ability to float and
  swim across lakes, rivers, and streams.  Even today when you look at one
  of the early-production M I 13s, they still have a clean, almost modern
  look.  It is almost as if Frank Lloyd Wright took a shoe box and made it
  into a perfect shape to transport what the U.S.  Army calls its "most
  precious cargo," the infantry.
  Over the years, FMC and its licensees have produced something over
  85,000 MI 13s for use by over two dozen countries (the Israelis call
  their MI 13s "Zeidas").  And while this venerable vehicle is no longer
  in production at FMC's San Jose, California, factory, it continues to be
  produced in places such as Turkey and Italy.  Over 32,000 remain in
  service with the U.S.  Army.
  The basic model is the infantry squad carrier.  This version of the M 1
  13 can carry a full squad of infantry (between ten and twelve soldiers),
  along with all of their weapons, It should be noted that this is a full
  squad, not the reduced unit carried by most IFVs like the M2 Bradley
  (which can carry only six dismount soldiers) or the BMP.  It can also
  mount a machine gun (typically an M2 .50-caliber) or automatic grenade
  launcher (such as the 40mm Mk 19) on a rotatable mounting ("pintle") at
  the commander's hatch.  To fire this external weapon, the commander has
  to open the hatch and stand on his seat.  The troops sit in the back on
  bench seats with stowage for weapons and ammunition under the seats and
  on the sidewalls- They enter and exit the vehicle through a rear door
  equipped with a hydraulically powered ramp for easy access.  The driver
  and gunner (if carried) sit in the front near the engine and
  transmission.  Recently, FMC has begun shipping kits to improve the
  survivability of the M 1 13 by installing interior spall liners,
  additional external armor, an upgraded engine and transmission, and
  external fuel tanks to reduce the risk of internal fires.  Known as the
  
  MI 13A3, the conversion kit is being installed on existing M 113s at
  several Army depots.  These will be used by Army Reserve and National
  Guard units, and they will also be assigned for ambulance and support
  duties in active units.  The M I 13A3 is a first-rate APC with many
  years of life ahead.  It is cheap, rugged, and versatile.  Not bad for a
  vehicle that was designed about the time I was a child.
  While FMC and its licensees built tens of thousands of the basic squad
  carriers, they also built thousands of other M 113 variants.  The most
  important of these is the M577 command vehicle, which is used as a
  mobile command post by U.S.  armored units.  The M577 is essentially an
  M 1 13 chassis with a raised roof and sides and additional generators to
  power the numerous radios that are stored in racks inside the rear
  compartment.  The exact combination of radios depends on just what kind
  of command post it is (company, battalion, regiment, etc.) and whether
  it is stationed in a rear area or up front.  It is additionally equipped
  with an expandable shelter tent in the rear of the vehicle to provide
  room for tables and map boards.
  U.S.  AL@MY VLIIICI.E,YSI'EMS o 79
  A 3rd ACR M 1 13 configured as a fire-support team vehicle (FIST-V).
  J,,it, I) GAf,,Ii, 1, It should be said that this venerable vehicle
  does have shortcomings, the most glaring being the inability of the M577
  to operate effectively while on the move.  Because it must be stationary
  for the onboard radio systems to operate, it becomes vulnerable to enemy
  artillery fire directed by radio directionfinding (DF) units.  To help
  overcome this shortcoming, FMC is delivering kits to upgrade the M577
  fleet to a configuration known as M577A3.  This adds new radios and
  command and control displays, and provides some limited capability to
  operate on the move.  As such, it will provide an interim C' (command,
  control, and communication) capability until the introduction of the new
  XM4 C' vehicle.
  A more lethal version of the M 11 3 is the M901.  This model combines an
  M 1 13 chassis with an erectable two-round launcher and sight (called a
  "hammerhead") for the TOW anti-tank missile.  Designed to provide some
  antitank muscle to infantry units equipped with M I 13s, it represents a
  compromise between mobility and firepower (having TOW missiles only).  A
  similar vehicle (called an M981 FIST-V), with a laser target designator
  in place of the missile launcher, is used by fire-support teams, though
  the Army is also starting to use M2/3s for FIST teams as well.
  The versions of the M 1 13 most likely to be found in armored units are
  the M 106 and M 125 mortar carriers.  The M 106 carries an 81 mm mortar,
  while the M 125 carries the more powerful 106mm mortar; otherwise the
  vehicles are identical.  The mortars are mounted on a rotating base
  plate (much like a "lazy Susan") to fire through a large circular hatch
  
  in the roof.  There is stowage for mortar rounds and radios for the
  various radio unit networks (nicknamed "nets").  The M 106 is the most
  common version, with a pair of these usually assigned to each armored
  and mechanized company and cavalry troop.   Their primary mission is to
  provide direct smoke and fire support, so that the captains and
  lieutenants who command small units can have their own artillery on
  call.
  The M 1 13 is an old soldier in comparison with the vehicles that
  replaced it.  Around the world, various military forces have replaced
  the old aluminum
  80 - AL@MOREI) (@AV
  WW
  GENERAL DYN lqs
  The M93E I Fox NBC Vehicle.
  J,, & R):,, E@liRPRISI.@.  I.Tl,, B) L,t P, AlplIL:R
  box with such wonderful vehicles as the Bradley, the Warrior, and the
  BMP.  But it should be remembered that no military force, including that
  of the U.S., can afford to base its entire armored force on expensive
  vehicle chassis like the Abrams and the Bradley.  And so the M 1 13
  provides a good, simple base for a number of different applications; it
  is more than adequate for these jobs.  There is an old saying,
  attributed to the former chief of the Soviet Navy Admiral Gorshkov:
  "Perfect is the enemy of good enough."  For a good many of the jobs that
  the U.S.  Army will have in the 21 st century, the M 1 13 will be more
  than good enough.
  The Fox NBC Reconnaissance Vehicle
  Of all the threats faced by the troops of the Allied Coalition during
  Desert Storm, the one that caused the most fear and concern was Saddam
  Hussein's arsenal of chemical and biological weapons.  Built up over a
  period of years, the Iraqi stockpile was varied and battle-tested.  In
  actual combat against the Iranians and the Iraqi Kurds, this array of
  chemical agents proved worthy of the popular nickname "the poor man's
  atomic bomb."  And despite the claims that there were no known Iraqi
  chemical attacks during the war, the threat was very real and very
  frightening to the U.S.  Army.  Part of the reason for this fear was
  that the U.S.  Army had, over a period of decades, allowed its ability
  to fight and survive on a chemical battlefield drop to near the bottom
  of its priority list.  This is not to say that chemical and biological
  warfare did not figure into U.S.   Army plans.  The overpressure
  filtration system on the M IA 1 /2 Abrams tanks and the improved
  
  chemical-warfare suits issued to U.S.  personnel in the Gulf were proof
  that some progress had been made.  But these were passive measures only,
  and they did not solve several basic problems.  For example, on a
  battlefield, you need to know itll ediatell, if a chemical attack has
  taken place.  The U.S.  Mk 8 detector, which was the Army's primary
  means of sniffing out chemical attacks before the Persian Gulf War,
  could begin to do
  U.S.  ARMY VEHICLE SYSTEMS - 81
  that.  That is, it could sound an alarm.  But it could not determine how
  wide the contaminated area was, or what kind of agent had been used-two
  factors that are vital in allowing an army to fight effectively on a
  chemical battlefield.  Prior to the deployment of U.S.  forces to the
  Persian Gulf in 1990, the only way to evaluate the type and scope of a
  chemical attack was to send out soldiers with strips of indicator paper
  (specially treated to turn color in the presence of various chemical
  agents).   Considering the variety and size of Saddam's chemical
  arsenal, something better was needed.
  The Germans contributed the answer to this problem-an odd-looking
  armored vehicle called the Fuchs (Fox).  Originally produced by Thyssen
  Henschel, the Fox (which has been type-classified as the M93) is a
  wheeled armored vehicle packed with special equipment for assessing the
  type and range of nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) attacks.
  Powered by a 320-hp diesel V-8 engine, and riding on six large rubber
  tires to maximize mobility, the Fox has a top speed of over 65 mph/ 106
  kph and an unrefueled range of 500 miles/820 km.  It carries a crew of
  four (driver, commander, and two sensor operators) in an armored citadel
  equipped with an advanced overpressure filtration/air-conditioning
  system.  This allows the crew to operate in a fairly normal environment
  without the need for chemical suits and masks.  And while the armor is
  not of the stature found in the MI A2 or the Bradley, it protects
  against machine-gun and mortar fire, which are major threats to
  reconnaissance vehicles such as the Fox.  So comfortable is this system
  that many unit commanders I have met would like to take over a Fox for
  their personal command vehicle.  One went so far as to compare the ride,
  seats, and air-conditioning to a really nice GM or Winnebago motor home!
  The real payload of the Fox is the integrated sensor suite located in
  the rear compartment of the vehicle.  The most impressive of these is a
  funny-looking system used to survey and assess areas suspected of being
  contaminated-or 11 slimed"-by chemical agents.  On the rear of the
  vehicle are a pair of mechanical arms carrying rollers with a sticky
  silicone rubber coating.  One at a time, these are lowered to the ground
  and allowed to roll along the surface, picking up traces of any
  chemicals that might be present.  Once this has been done for a short
  time, the arm is raised (and the other lowered) to a sensor head for
  
  analysis by a mass spectrometer.  This has the capability to identify
  dozens of chemi@ cal agents, from mustard gas to the latest lethal nerve
  agents.  The computerized analysis gear is tied to an inertial
  navigation system (similar to the POS/NAV system of the M IA2) which
  maintains a map record of the area that has been surveyed.  In addition,
  there is a sensor to detect radioactive fallout or nuclear
  contamination, if present.  Once an area has been surveyed, the data can
  be relayed back to the commander of the friendly forces via a pair of
  SINCGARS radios.  And should it be required, the Fox can lay a trail of
  brightly colored markers, to flag a contaminated area or show a safe
  transit lane through such a zone.  Sixty of these sly little vehicles
  were donated by the Germans to the U.S.  to support the coalition forces
  in the Gulf.  Ten went to the two Marine Corps
  82 - AIZMOREI) ('AV
  divisions on the eastern end of the front, and the other fifty went to
  Army units in the Vil Corps and XVIII Airborne Corps.  Two were assigned
  to each brigade or regimental headquarters to scout for zones of
  chemical contamination during the drive into Iraq and Kuwait.  And while
  you did not see much of them on CNN or the other news services, rest
  assured that right behind the leading armored wedges of the U.S.  forces
  were the Foxes doing their job.  Fortunately, it seems there were no
  actual chemical attacks, though a number of Iraqi storage bunkers were
  shattered by bombs and artillery shells, causing chemical spills and
  downwind diffusion of toxic agents.  The work of the small force of
  Foxes continued after the cease-fire; they were busy for weeks surveying
  the battlefields of Iraq and Kuwait, looking for traces of deadly
  chemicals.  By all accounts, they were extremely successful, with not
  one known Allied casualty due to Iraqi chemical weapons.
  The positive experience that U.S.  forces had with the Fox has
  translated into a program to acquire more of the vehicles and upgrade
  them with new and improved capabilities.  General Dynamics Land Systems
  (the maker of the MI A2 Abrams), in partnership with Thyssen Henschel,
  was selected by the Army to provide additional Fox NBC reconnaissance
  vehicles.  In addition to the sixty vehicles already donated by the
  Germans, another fortyeight Fox/M93 vehicles have been procured to
  support other units that the U.S.  military might send into combat.  In
  addition, the entire fleet of Foxes will be upgraded with GPS receivers
  to improve navigational accuracy.  Planned enhancements include
  additional sensors, a central computer with commander's display and
  printer, as well as an erectable mast capable of sensing chemical gas
  clouds and their characteristics (size, agent, speed and direction of
  movement, etc.).  By the time this procurement has been completed later
  in the 1990s, the improved Fox/M93Al vehicles of the U.S.  Army will be
  the most capable NBC reconnaissance vehicles in the world.  The only
  thing that Fox will not have is numbers, for the Army could probably use
  
  two or three hundred of the handy little vehicles.  Nevertheless, the
  hundred or so assigned to field units will help the Army cope with the
  NBC threat on future battlefields, as well as with the growing
  possibility of toxic or radioactive terrorism.  With periodic updates of
  the mission software and equipment, the NBC Foxes will continue in this
  role for several decades to come.  Danke sc-hc5n, Deitts(-hland!
  Other U.S.  Armored Vehicles
  Thus far, we have only discussed a few of the vehicles that make up the
  armored forces of the U.S.  Army-those with an obvious military
  function.  The next few vehicles we will explore are more like what we
  might see on our local streets.  What makes these different from their
  civilian counterparts is their need to do theirjobs on the battlefield.
  This makes them more expensive than their civilian equivalents, and
  sometimes compromises their performance by comparison.  Butjust as much
  as the M I A2 and the Bradley, they are combat vehicles.
  U.S.  AL@NIY Vi;iil(-[ 11 @,YSI [@M,@, - 83
  M88 Armored Recovery Vehicle
  Fact: Tanks and other arniored vehicles are heavy.  Another fact:
  Tracked and armored vehicles break down, sometimes a lot!  And when a
  big iron beast like an MI A2 breaks a track or its transmission dies
  (and these things do happen), then you need one hell of a tow truck to
  drag it back to the repair yard and get it going again.  And this is
  thejob of the M88 armored recovery vehicle.  Built by BMY Combat Systems
  in York, Pennsylvania, the M88 is a heavy tracked armored vehicle
  equipped with the necessary tools to extract or tow a heavy armored
  vehicle back to a field-maintenance unit that can repair and return it
  to service.  Even vehicles that have been heavily shot up can frequently
  be put back into service with just a few hours in the shop.  For
  example, during Desert Storm, if an M I suffered turret damage, it could
  be taken to a repair line, where the whole turret could be replaced in
  just a few hours.  The problem is to get it there.
  As we noted earlier, the current version of the M88, known as the M88AI,
  is somewhat underpowered (only 750 hp) and light (56 tons/50,909 kg)
  compared to the MI.  This makes it difficult to tow one of the big
  Abrams tanks if it is heavily damaged or stuck.  To make up for these
  shortcomings, the Army and BMY have developed and tested the M88A2.  lt
  weighs 70 tons, and is powered by a 1,050-hp turbocharged diesel engine
  and beefed-up transmission, giving it the capability to recover even the
  largest armored vehicles.  The vehicle's boom/hoist winch has a 70-ton
  pull; it can upright an overturned tank or remove the 2 5-ton turret of
  an MI A2.  Deliveries of this new version should begin in 1995, though
  subsequent deliveries may be delayed by funding.  Nevertheless, the Army
  wants this vehicle very badly!  Because they never want another M I
  
  having to fight for its life waiting for a tow!
  M9 Armored Combat Earthmover (ACE)
  Is there anything in the world more "blue collar" than a bulldozer?  For
  most of this century, this distinctly American construction implement
  has been changing the face of the earth.  It's also a significant piece
  of combat equipment.  Bulldozers have been used by American combat
  engineering units since they were introduced in World War 11 by the
  famous U.S.  Navy Construction Battalions known as "Seabees."  Since
  that time, they have been used by all four branches of the service in
  everything from base civil-engineer ing projects to building defensive
  positions in the field.  Armor commanders have always wanted a bulldozer
  that could accompany them into combat.  An armored bulldozer resistant
  to small-arms fire and shell fragments could dig fighting positions and
  breech obstacles while under fire.  But the project to design such a
  bulldozer was way down on the Army's priority list as compared to
  projects like the Abrams MBT and the Bradley IFV.  In addition, the
  original contractor for the project, now
  84 - Al@MOI@[;D C'AV
  called the M9 Armored Combat Earthmover (ACE), fell behind schedule and
  went over budget.  In the end, after accepting the prototypes and
  conducting operational trials, the Army reopened the contract for bids
  and awarded it to BMY.  BMY got the vehicle into production: and ACEs
  began to roll off the line in 1988.
  The M9 ACE looks like a metal box with small tracks on the sides and a
  bulldozer blade on the front.  Inside is an armored one-man cab, with
  its own NBC filtration system to allow the driver to operate the ACE in
  a contaminated environment.  The M9 is powered by a 295-hp Cummins V903
  diesel engine running through an eight-speed (six forward, two reverse)
  automatic transmission.  It can move at up to 30 mph/49 kph on roads, so
  it can self-deploy, without requiring a low-boy tractor trailer to haul
  it up to the front line.  lt can even swim at 3 mph/5 kph.  It is
  air-transportable by any of the major transport aircraft from the C-130
  Hercules to the C-5 Galaxy.  And thanks to a unique hydropneumatic
  suspension, it can sccop up 8.7 cubic yards of earth in its front
  scraper bowl in a single push, and can perform other earthmoving tasks
  such as ditching, scraping, hauling, winching, and towing.
  But most important, the M9, and a similar British vehicle called the
  Combat Engineer Tractor (CET), are the only earthmovers capable of
  working and surviving under fire.  Tanks can be fitted with crude dozer
  blades, to plow through obstacles, but tank drivers are not trained for
  earthmoving and construction work.  For that, you need an ACE.
  Enter Saddam Hussein and his decision to roll into Kuwait in August of
  
  1990.  Almost as soon as the first units of the 82nd Airborne Division
  and the Marines began to land in northern Saudi Arabia, their commanders
  were screaming for equipment to help them dig in.  The fear was that
  with only light units and limited weapons, these forces would be nothing
  more than "speed bumps" if Saddam's heavy armored forces were to move
  south.  Historically, forces that are properly dug in are three to five
  times more effective than those out in the open.  Thus, within days of
  the order starting Desert Shield, BMY received a call to move all the
  M9s that could be collected from the delivery holding area and
  production line (about ninety-nine, I am told) to the airbase at Dover,
  Delaware, to be shipped by C-5 Galaxy transports directly to the U.S.
  forces in Saudi Arabia.  The only preparation for their new duty was a
  coat of new desert-tan CARC (Chemical Agent Resistant Coating) paint to
  help them blend into the Arabian terrain.  So vital were the ACEs that
  they went ahead of such important equipment as AH-64A Apache attack
  helicopters, and even ahead of ammunition!  As soon as they arrived,
  they were trucked to the forward units that needed them so dearly.  For
  the next few months, they were constantly busy digging fighting
  positions, anti-tank ditches, and a variety of other earthworks.  Even
  the Marines out near the coast asked for some ACES, and had thirty
  delivered in short order.
  Later during Desert Shield, when the threat of an Iraqi invasion of
  Saudi Arabia had been blunted and the idea of an offensive to liberate
  Kuwait had taken hold, it was the M9 and other engineering tools that
  would make it pos
  U.S.  ARMY VEfilCL @.  SYSTEMS - 85
  sible.  Equipment like the ACE allowed the U.S.  to plan for breaching
  the defenses that Saddam's forces had constructed along the border with
  Saudi Arabia.  Trials with M9s told the U.S.  Army that the ACE was
  capable of rapidly breaching the tall sand berms that the Iraqis had
  built along the border.  The challenge here was for each M9 to rapidly
  cut three to five lanes through the berms (which were 20 to 30 feet/6 to
  9 meters tall, and 50 to 80 feet/ 15 to 25 meters thick) so that the
  armored spearheads could rapidly transit into the enemy positions
  beyond.  And so when Desert Storm opened for the ground forces in
  February of 1991, the M9s led the way.  As soon as the berms had been
  cut, the ACEs followed behind the armored spearheads, ready to do any
  job that might be required of them.   lt was a performance that was
  almost flawless, and almost unknown to the rest of the world.  But just
  ask the Army captains and lieutenants who ted those forward platoons and
  companies/troops whether or not they were glad the M9s were there.  I
  think you will find them unanimous in their praise.
  U.S.  Army Trucks and Other Transport Vehicles
  
  The U.S.  Army Truck/Transport Philosophy
  While the German Wehrmacht introduced the world to their Blitzkrieg
  concept of mobile warfare, it is important to remember that even after
  two years of war, the German Army was still primarily a horse-drawn
  force.  In fact, it was the Americans who created the world's first
  truly mobile army.  The key to this mobility was wheeled vehicles.
  Virtually every American serviceman knew time in ajeep or heavy truck.
  Even the famous 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions rode into the Battle
  of the Bulge in late 1944 in trucks, not airplanes and gliders.  Wheeled
  military vehicles are not sexy.  They are not flashy.  They are simply
  necessary.  For without the "low-boy" trucks to carry armored fighting
  vehicles to the front (they wear out tracks and transmissions relatively
  quickly), fuel trucks to carry diesel to fill their tanks, and cargo
  trucks to carry food, spare parts, water, and all the other stuff needed
  to make war, there would be no armored warfare.
  The current generation of Army wheeled vehicles was designed with the
  idea of moving with and supporting highly mobile tracked vehicles like
  the M I Abrams MBT and the M2/3 Bradley fighting vehicle.  They can
  climb the same hills, ford the same streams, and move across the same
  kinds of terrain as their heavier counterparts.  This is why the TV
  pictures of the armored wedges of American vehicles showed so many
  trucks and other wheeled vehicles moving in mixed formations.  They move
  with the armor, because they were designed to.  This ability doesn't
  just happen.  lt is designed in from the start, and represents a
  commitment of decades to the concept that all of the Army's vehicles
  should be able to move together.
  Program History-Every war tends to create its own icons. Who can forget
  the F-4 Phantom jet, the UH- I "Huey" helicopter, or the AK-47 assault
  rifle from Vietnam?  In Desert Storm, along with the F-17A stealth
  fighter, the SCUD surface-to-surface missile, and the Patriot
  anti-aircraft missile, there was the High-Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled
  Vehicle (HMMWV, pronounced "Humvee") or "Hummer" (AM General's
  trademarked product name).  Virtually every serviceman in Southwest Asia
  rode one sometime during Desert Shield and Desert Storm.  President and
  Mrs.  Bush traveled in one, and even ate their Thanksgiving dinner on
  the hood.  And while the cutting edge of the Army in Desert Storm may
  have been concentrated in a few thousand MI Abrams tanks and M 2/ 3
  Bradley fighting vehicles, the numbers of HMMWVs used during the war was
  about twenty thousand!  Used for everything from a personal transport
  for officers to a medium truck mounting TOW anti-tank and Stinger
  anti-aircraft missiles, these served with a distinction worthy of their
  distinguished grandfather, the World War 11 Willys Jeep.  The HMM@ is
  the replacement for the Army's last jeep model, the M 151 (built by
  Ford); and today it is the most widely used vehicle in the U.S.
  military.
  
  So just what is a HMMVN?  The U.S.  Army calls it a four-wheeled vehicle
  in the "medium" (4,000-to-10,000-lb/ 1,818-to-4,545-kg) class.  But the
  forces that use the HMMWV (all four branches of the U.S.  military,
  along with numerous foreign countries) look upon it as a "do everything"
  vehicle.  It performs all of the missions that used to be accomplished
  by the old M 151 jeep, as well as the old I - V4-ton truck (called a
  "five quarter") and six other truck types.  This simplifies the skills
  needed to operate and maintain it, and greatly reduces the need for
  separate lines of spare parts.
  Thanks to TACOM's unified-design philosophy, the HMMWV is probably the
  most mobile and rugged wheeled vehicle ever built.  Like its more deadly
  tank and IFV counterparts, it was designed to the same standards of
  mobility as all the Army's vehicles.  lt climbs the same hills, U.S.
  ARMY VEHICLE SYSTEMS - 87
  fords the same streams, and has the same kind of redundancy and
  reliability as every vehicle of the current generation.  That is the key
  to the Hummer's extraordinary success.
  The basic version is known as the M998, which provides the chassis for a
  whole family of different variants.  Some of these include:
  * The M998 open-topped cargo/troop carrier used for general pur pose
  operations and transport.
  * The M 1026 armament carrier capable of mounting an M2 .50-cal iber
  heavy machine gun, an M60 7.62mm light machine gun, or an
  Mk-19 40mm grenade launcher.
  * The M966 TOW-2 missile carrier.  It utilizes a light TOW launcher
  tripod (which can be dismounted), and has room for six TOW-2
  rounds under the rear roof shell.
  * The M966 mini-ambulance, and the M997 maxi-ambulance.  These are the
  primary medevac ground assets of the U.S.  Army, and
  proved to be extremely effective during Desert Storm.
  - The M 1037 shelter carrier, which is used for a variety of functions
  from command and control to mobile workshops.
  - The M 1097 "Heavy Hummer," which may be armored against small-arms
  fire.  These 10,000-lb/4,545.5-kg vehicles are being adapted as a squad
  carrier for light infantry, and as a new scout vehicle being developed
  by TACOM.
  
  There can be little doubt that AM General and the Army will be
  developing additional HMMWV variants.  They should be successful, for AM
  General has a successful history going back over fifty years.
  The story of the HMMVVV is an evolutionary one.  It is produced by the
  same company, AM General (a direct descendent of Willys), that produced
  the original Jeeps.  And while AM General has changed ownership more
  often than just about any other defense contractor (from Kaiser Jeep, to
  American Motors, to LTV, and finally to the Renco Group), the HMMWVs
  that come off of the line today are being made by the sons and
  daughters, and even the grandsons and granddaughters, of the men and
  women who built military vehicles during World War 11.
  It would be nice to say that the HMM\VV has the same kind of high-tech,
  sexy design philosophy as the MI or Bradley.  In fact, the design of the
  HMM\VV is a marvel of engineering conservatism.  The primary chassis
  structure of the Hummer is a pair of massive steel beams that run the
  entire length of the vehicle.  The HMMWV rides on four specially
  designed wheels, each driven by a novel geared hub.  The bodywork is
  almost entirely built of lightweight aircraft-quality aluminum alloy, so
  resistant to corrosion that AM General warrants the HMMWV against it for
  fifteen years!  The Hummer is powered by an eight-cylinder, 150-hp
  General Motors diesel engine driving a three-speed automatic
  transmission.  The result of all this is a vehicle with an extremely low
  88 - AIZMORI--'D CAV
  center of gravity, which can climb a]Most any hill, ford some 2.5 feet
  (76 cm) of water, run across ice, snow, and sand with ease, and climb
  steps and logs almost two feet tall.
  Driving the Hummer-When You first walk up to a Hummer, the first thing
  that strikes you is just how incredibly boxy it is.  AM General is proud
  of saying that not one penny of taxpayer money has ever gone into making
  the HMM@ stylish or attractive.  In fact, it reminds one of the Air
  Force's A- IOA Thunderbolt 11 (known affectionately as the "Warthog").
  Both are designed to be functional, not pretty.  But to the folks at AM
  General and in the Army it is a thing of beauty.  "Functionally
  elegar)t,, is how they describe it.
  The military HMMWV has little in the way of creature comforts, and the
  back seats of early models of the HN4Mwv are considered a form of
  torture by some passengers.  If you are looking for luxury, forget this
  beast.  As you sit down, it is vital to buckle up the safety belts.  The
  ride of a 14MMWV can be rough when crossing broken terrain, and most
  military HMMWVs have no doors!  Only the weapon carriers and a couple of
  other variants have hard doors, though all other HMMWVs have the
  provision for canvas doors and covers.  Each military Hummer is CO\,ered
  in the same kind of chemical-resistant CARC paint that is used on
  
  virtually every other Army vehicle being produced today.  In most cases
  there are rnountings for radios between the driver's and front passenger
  seats, and many HMMWVs have dashboard mounts for the military Trimble
  GPS receiver.
  As you view the dashboard, YOU will be decidedly underwhelmed if you are
  looking for the state-of-the-art electronics of the M I A2.  There are
  about the same instruments you might expect to find in an old
  Volkswagen: speedometer, fuel gauge, and a few indicator lights.  The
  steering wheel is bare black plastic, with a pair of shifter knobs, one
  for selecting the normal gears ( NEUTRAL, DRFVE, REVERSE, etc.), and a
  second one for selecting high or low range for the transfer case.  As
  with most military vehicles, there is no key, just a switch on the upper
  left portion of the dashboard with positions for START, OF-F, and DRIVE.
  To secure the vehicle you pull a steel cable out from the dash and
  padlock it to the steering wheel.  Starting the Hummer is quite
  straightforward, arid the engine quickly comes to life.  For those used
  to the soft purr of a gasoline engine in a normal road car, the decided
  rumble of the HMMWN's GM diesel may seem rather extreme.  Actually, the
  diesel in the Hummer is quite smooth, with a very nice power curve.  The
  key to getting the most from the powerful diesel is to think a little
  ahead of where you normally would driving a conventional road car: There
  is a slight throttle lag after you push down the accelerator pedal
  before the power finally begins to come on.  Unlike many off-road
  vehicles, the HMMWV is always in four-wheel drive (unless you put it in
  neutral for towing).  You choose the high- or low-gear range on the
  transfer case.  YOU would choose HIGH for highway driving.
  Surprisingly, driving the HMMWV requires a delicate touch, and not the
  rough kind of driving usually associated with conventional trucks and
  four
  U.S.  ARMY VEfijCLE SYs i t;ms v 89
  wheel-drive (4WD) vehicles.  In feel, it is something like a Cadillac
  road car, with gentle steering commands and thoughtful use of power
  required to get the most out of it.   And yet in all other respects, it
  does not drive like a luxury car.  The best word to describe the
  sensation of driving the Hummer is authority.  Whether it is climbing
  over rocks (the HMMWV has a minimum of 16"/41 cm of ground clearance) or
  fording streams (up to 30"/76 cm of running water), it feels capable of
  accomplishing any task.  Of course the HMMWV can't be driven recklessly.
  Rather, it is a vehicle which rewards a thoughtful, careful driver with
  performance that has to be seen to be believed. A major at the National
  Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, once told me that if you ever
  run into a piece of terrain that a HMMVN cannot reach or climb, you
  probably don't want to own it anyway!
  The Hummer is capable of several extraordinary tricks.  For example,
  
  there is the matter of climbing steep hills, and then descending them!
  To climb almost any hill you might want to get to the top of, all you
  have to do is tighten your seat belt (so you don't have to worry about
  falling out), drop the shifter down into the D I position (low range,
  low gear), and gently apply the accelerator.  Almost like magic, you
  will head up the hill at a steady, albeit slow, rate.  The key here is
  applying steady, constant power to the fat tires.  (Incredible as it may
  sound, mud, gravel, soft sand, and snow can be dealt with simply by
  slowing down a bit and gently applying the power.) As amazed as you will
  be to get to the top of a hill, getting down is even more impressive.
  The trick is to again put the transmission into D I position, and head
  on down.  The major point is to make sure that you never touch the
  brakes!  Odd as this may sound, when descending, you are actually just
  hanging on the compression of the HMM@'s diesel engine, and touching the
  brakes would just lock them up and might start you sliding dangerously.
  It is an amazing feeling to look down a stope that you frankly doubt you
  could climb on foot, and yet you are driving down it with a feeling of
  authority and confidence.  This was demonstrated most convincingly by a
  major of the Dragon Observer/Controller team up on the live-fire range
  at the NTC.  When he wanted to show some members of my research team the
  range instrumentation at the top of a mountain (a particularly tall and
  treacherous-looking rock pile), he just shoved his Hummer into D I and
  headed up without giving it a thought.  The "path" (if you care to call
  it that) was just gravel and rock shale.  He later told us that the only
  ways to the top were via helicopter-and HMMWV!
  I'll end my discussion of the Hummer for now by describing a
  particularly famous photo from the Persian Gulf War (the war was filled
  with Hummer stories).  It shows a HMMVN of the 82nd Airborne Division
  loaded almost to the breaking point (the wheels and axles are just
  jammed all the way up into the wheel wells) with ammunition and
  equipment, carrying a couple of airborne troopers, and towing a 105mm
  howitzer to boot!  Later we will describe the Army's plans for this
  fascinating vehicle, which has in fact become so popular that AM General
  sells commercial and private versions of the HMM@.  And while they are
  not cheap ($40,000 to $60,000 as of 1994), they are probably the finest
  4WD/utility vehicles being built today.  I should know since I've bought
  one for myself.
  M1070/MlOOO Heavy-Equipment Transporter System (HETS)
  One does not just unload a battalion of M I A2s or Bradleys and run them
  into combat a couple of hundred miles to the front.  Armored vehicles
  are mechanically demanding brutes which generate a lot of wear and tear
  on themselves for every mile they run.  Thus, since it became common for
  armies to use heavy armored vehicles, there have been special
  transporters to carry them to the fighting fronts.  Resembling low-boy
  semi-tractor-trailer rigs, these are designed so that the armored
  
  vehicle drives up a ramp onto the trailer, which then hauls it to a
  forward assembly area.  The problem with the current HETS, known as the
  M91 I /M746 with 747 (the first number is the designator for the
  tractor, the second is for the semi-trailer), is that the greatly
  increased weight of the M I MBT limits it to paved roads and speeds no
  faster than 15 mph/25 kph.
  To make up for these shortcomings, the Army is starting to field a new
  unit, the M 10 17/M I 000.  Produced by Oshkosh Corporation of Oshkosh,
  Wisconsin, it can move both on and off road with a seventy-ton payload
  (such as a loaded Abrams), at speeds approaching 30 mph/50 kph.  And in
  perhaps its most important role, it will be able to maneuver on the
  Army's new class of roll-on/roll-off transport ships without even having
  to use reverse gear.  This allows the M 10 17/M 1000s to move their
  vital cargo off the ships with a minimum of support equipment and dock
  facilities.  And that can be the difference between winning a battle,
  and having the bad guys sunning themselves on the beaches of one of our
  allies.
  M939 5-Ton Truck
  Army units need a lot of stuff.  Stuff to eat.  Stuff to drink.  Stuff
  to shoot.  And all this stuff has to be moved somehow.  This means
  trucks. Lots of them.  The most common of these trucks is the classic
  5-ton (this refers to the payload) M939.  The newest version of this
  venerable design, the M939A2 is produced by the BMY Truck Company.  The
  unique feature of the M939A2 is a new central tire-inflation system that
  allows the driver to alter the tire pressure, and thus the traction,
  with the flick of a switch from inside the cab.  This improves the
  performance of the M939A2 in soft sand and mud.
  Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck (HEMTT) Family
  The Heavy Expanded MobilitY Tactical Truck (HEMTT) family of trucks is
  designed to provide forward units with fuel, water, dry foods, and
  U.S.  ARMY VEIIICL-E 1,YS I FM, o 91
  other supplies.  Produced by Oshkosh Corporation, they also provide a
  platforni for cranes and other service equipment needed to maintain
  other Army vehicles.  With a 10-ton/9.090-kg payload and powered by a
  445-hp diesel engine, the HEMTT can move at 55 mph/90 kph across a
  variety of terrain.  There are currently five configurations, all of
  which gained combat experience during Desert Storm.  The M977 is a light
  cargo carrier with a crane: the M978 is a fuel tanker with a
  2,500-gallon/9,433-liter capacity; the M983 and M984 are tractor and
  wrecker versions respectively: and the M985 is a heavy cargo carrier
  with a material-handling crane.  All in all, the HEMTTs are a capable
  series of transporters, with a great deal of growth left in the basic
  
  design.  It is almost certain that the Army will be developing further
  variants of this excellent vehicle.
  Coming Developments
  In the 1980s, with the introduction of the AirLand Battle Doctrine and
  the institution of synchronized-maneuver warfare, the U.S.  Army
  underwent a major revolution.  And just when the bad guys are dreaming
  up more trouble, here comes General Gordon Sullivan, the Army Chief of
  Staff, with some bad news.  Because the revolution of the 1980s worked
  so well, the Army has decided to have another one in the 1990s.  By
  1997, virtually all of the systems described below will be on-line and
  in actual maneuver units.  Some of them, like the M2A3/M3A3, are
  upgrades of existing systems.  Others, like the XM8 Armored Gun System
  (a powerful light tank), represent entirely new ideas.  These new
  systems are designed to give excellent value for the limited procurement
  dollars that will be available in the late 1990s.  And for those of you
  who consider defense spending bloated, consider this: Since the close of
  Desert Storm in 1991, the Army procurement budget (money to buy new
  equipment from tanks to desktop computers) has dropped by two-thirds! In
  spite of this, General Sullivan is still pursuing his idea of digitizing
  the battlefield by 1997 with passion and vision.  And the way he has
  been going, it might just work.
  The M2A3/M3A3 and Bradley Stinger Variants
  By now you might be wondering when the Bradley will get the same digital
  makeover as the MI A2.  With its onboard digital data bus and the IVIS
  vehicle network system, the M IA2 enjoys a tremendous command and
  control advantage over just about everything else on the battlefield.
  But the current version of the Bradley has none of these systems@ it
  rides beside the new tank dumb and blind by comparison.  Without an IVIS
  interface, the best Bradley commanders can do is listen for voice radio
  messages from their Abrams companions.  FMC is leading the effort to get
  some type of digital command and control system for the M2A2/M3A2.  And
  GDLS modified some six M2A2s into
  92 - Al@Mol@l@1) ( AV
  IVIS-capable units for testing and evaluation at Fort Hood and the NTC.
  In the short term, there will be a program to upgrade the Bradley -A2
  fleet with interim kits that can be installed at Army depots or bases.
  This will probably include the addition of a GPS receiver, a laser
  rangefinder, and perhaps a simple terminal for the vehicle commander. lt
  will probably not be tied to any of the vehicle systems, and will simply
  feed its data through the SINCGARS radios.  Thus, such vehicles would be
  IVIS-capable, but not really fully integrated.
  Another version coming soon is the Bradley Stinger Vehicle.  This
  
  variant of the Bradley is meant to fill some of the gaps in the Army's
  air defense.  Despite excellent performance by Army units firing the
  Patriot anti-aircraft missile during Desert Storm, things might have
  been quite different had Iraq chosen to attack forward units with their
  remaining ground-attack aircraft and helicopters.  This is because the
  forward air defenses of the Army maneuver units were limited to a few
  obsolete systems, such as the Chaparral anti-aircraft missile, the
  PIVADS 20mm anti-aircraft gun (an M 1 13 carrying a Vulcan rotary
  cannon), and the Stinger-RMP light anti-aircraft missile.  The Stinger
  is the best of these, with a state-of-the-art seeker head which can see
  through almost any combination of decoys and jamming.  The problem for
  the U.S.  Army's armored forces is that Stinger is currently deployed
  only with manportable teams and a handful of Avenger anti-aircraft
  vehicles (HMM@s with a pedestal mount for eight Stingers and a
  .50-caliber machine gun).
  To help rectify this problem, the Army is developing a version of the
  Bradley designed as an anti-aircraft system to defend the armored
  forces.  Currently in test, the Stinger Bradley has a new turret and
  extra stowage in the rear compartment for missiles and 25mm gun rounds.
  The turret has been modified with the TOW-2 launcher replaced by a
  four-round launcher pack of Stinger missiles.  A new command and control
  system allows targeting data to be fed from the Forward Area Air Defense
  System (FAADS) early warning net.  The fire-control system was modified
  to allow firing of the Stingers and engagement of fast-moving air
  targets with the 25mm chain gun.  This also requires Identification
  Friend or Foe (IFF) interrogation gear.  The exact number to be
  produced, as well as scheduling and fielding doctrine, is still being
  considered at TRADOC; but the Bradley Stinger is on its way to becoming
  the best mobile antiaircraft platform the Army has ever deployed.  The
  only problem on the horizon is that old bugaboo of money.  Somehow the
  Army must find a way to shoehorn the Bradley Stinger program into an
  already stretched budget. They probably will; they know that not every
  future enemy will be as ineffective as the Iraqis!
  A long-term improvement to the basic Bradleys will be the M2A3/M3A3
  Bradley fighting vehicle.  Under this program, FMC would take existing
  M2/3 chassis from the early Bradley production runs, strip them down,
  and remanufacture a new vehicle from them, much like the U.S.  Army MIA2
  program at GDLS.  The vehicles would be fully integrated through an MIL
  STD 1553 data bus, with all analog systems converted to more reliable
  digital ones.  Some of the ideas under consideration include an
  independent thermal viewer for the commander (like the CITV on the M
  IA2) and a laser
  U.S.  ARMY VElfICLE,YSTEMS - 93
  rangefinder/designator to support scouting and laser-guided weapon
  
  delivery.  New thermal sights would probably take advantage of the
  second-generation FLIR technology used in systems like the RAH-66
  Comanche scout/attack helicopter, providing much better display
  resolution than existing systems.  There will also probably be an
  inter-vehicular network compatible with the IVIS system on the MI A2.
  This could be a second generation system that overcomes the data
  bottlenecks of the current IVIS system (which has a transfer rate of
  between 1,200 and 2,400 bits per second, about the speed of a relatively
  slow computer modem).  On a more mundane note, FMC is experimenting with
  a set of inflatable floats to replace the present swim curtains. There
  are even some unconfirmed rumors of work on plastic fighting vehicles at
  FMC.  Layers of plastic, Kevlar, and other composites might replace
  portions of the ballistic hull armor on vehicles such as the Bradley.
  Such a vehicle would have the advantage of being lighter, cheaper to
  operate (better fuel economy, less wear and tear on components), and
  might even be "stealthy," due to the lower radar cross section (RCS) of
  a plastic upper hull.  For now such dreams will remain in the design
  shops of FMC and the halls of TACOM in Warren, Michigan. Money for new
  systems is very scarce right now, and the effort to design and field the
  -A3 Bradley will have to wait its turn in the funding cycle.  And more
  mature programs, such as the MI A2 and the AH-64 C/D Longbow Apache,
  which are in production or testing, have a higher priority.
  Nevertheless, sometime around the dawn of the 21st century, watch for a
  new version of the Bradley to take its place among the newest digi tal
  systems fielded by the U.S.  Army.
  The XM8 Armored Gun System
  Quietly tucked into a corner of the manufacturing floor at FMC's San
  Jose, California, plant is an assembly line that may be soon producing
  one of
  XMS Armored Gun System.  Note the driver'@ hatch with panoraniic vision
  bl()cks.  The rather ii@irrow tracks are iiidic@itive of the vehicle's
  light'Aeight.  I lf( ("RIIIRIIIIII
  94 - AL@MORED C'AV
  the most exciting armored vehicles in history, the XM8 Armored Gun
  System (AGS).  Actually a highly capable light tank (that term having
  fallen out of favor within the U.S.  Army), the XM8 is a response to the
  problem of light cavalry, infantry, and airborne forces lacking an
  armored punch.
  The idea of a light tank is that it can destroy anything weaker and hide
  or run away from anything stronger.  At less than half the weight and
  half the cost of a main battle tank, but carrying a nearly equivalent
  weapon, a light tank theoretically gives you more bang for the buck.  In
  practice, light tanks have usually proven to be more expensive, less
  
  effective, and less survivable than their designers hoped (which is why
  the term "light tank" is out of favor) .
  Since the Vietnam War, armored fire support for light forces has been
  the job of the M551 Sheridan light tank.  Unfortunately, the M551 never
  lived up to expectations, and has been a disappointment to its users.
  Its aluminum armor proved ineffective against hand-held anti-tank
  weapons in Vietnam, and its complex 152mm gun/missile launcher was
  chronically unreliable.  lt also had a nasty habit of shedding a track
  in tight turns.  In fact, the only really quality service the Sheridan
  has been able to give the Army has been as a cheap and available chassis
  for the OPFOR teams who simulate enemy tank battalions at the NTC at
  Fort Irwin, California.  Today (early 1994), the last active combat unit
  equipped with the M551 is the airborne tank battalion of the 82nd
  Airborne Division.  And the only reason it remains is that the Sheridans
  can (just barely) be airdropped.  Other than that, the Army would just
  as soon scrap them.
  But the failure of one weapons system in no way eliminates the need and
  mission for light armored support to light infantry, cavalry, and
  airborne troops.  In fact, the need has grown with the loss of basing
  rights for American forces (such as in the Philippines) in the 1980s and
  1990s.  And while General Sullivan plans to keep eight full combat
  brigades' worth of equipment on ships ready to steam, there still will
  be a need to airlift rapid-response forces into a crisis area.  To fill
  this need, the Army initiated the AGS program in the 1980s, to provide a
  light, survivable armored vehicle with good firepower that could be
  air-transported almost anywhere.  A competition was held, and FMC was
  declared the winner.  Six XM8 prototypes will be completed by the fall
  of 1994.  If the program stays on schedule, the first unit of XM8s, an
  airborne armored battalion of the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg,
  North Carolina, will come on-line in the fall of 1997.
  The XM8 has an aluminum hull and turret, and is armed with a softrecoil
  105mm gun capable of firing the same ammunition as the early versions of
  the M I Abrams.  The Army has adapted an autoloader from the U.S. Navy's
  5" Mk-45 gun mount to handle and load the shells in the AGS.  It can
  hold up to twenty-one ready 105mm rounds and nine more in storage
  compartments in the front of the vehicle.  It will be capable of loading
  a fresh round every five seconds, and should be quite reliable, based on
  the history of the naval gun mount and initial tests.  Because of the
  autoloader, the crew of the XM8 has been reduced to just three, with the
  driver in the front hull, and the gunner and
  U.S.  ARMY Vl:lfl( I-F Syl,, I
  Exterior vieA of XM4 Command and Control Vehicle.  The very tall (
  10meter/30-foot) antenna telescopes down fc)r stowage on the move.  flf(
  
  ('IIRPIIRIIIIII
  commander on the right side of the compact turret.  There is a thermal
  sight for the commander and gunner, as well as a 1553 data bus linking
  all of the vehicle systems.  And plans are being made to possibly add an
  IVIS-style inter-vehicular network system.  Powered by a 550-hp diesel
  engine with a hydromechanical automatic transmission, the XM8 will be
  capable of speeds up to 45 mph/74 kph, depending on the terrain and the
  installed armor package.
  The armor is the big innovation on the AGS.  In addition to the aluminum
  hull and turret, there is a layer of silicon carbide (the stuff that
  industrial drill bits are made of) tiles embedded in resin sheets bolted
  onto the hull to provide a level of protection similar to that of the
  -A2 version of the Bradley (called Level I protection).  Additional
  overlay armor can easily be attached to the hull and turret to tailor
  the armor protection to the mission requirements and anticipated threat
  levels.  Some of the add-on armor is composed of silicon carbide tiles,
  while other add-on plates are made of titanium or composites.  When the
  Level Ill package is added, the XM8 is probably more survivable than the
  late models of the M60 Patton, which is still a formidable tank.
  The reason for all of the armor options is that above everything else,
  the AGS is designed for deployability.  Right now, it is jkist not
  practical to airmail an armored unit to someplace like Saudi Arabia
  without crippling the air transport system of the U.S.  military.  For
  example, when the 24th Mechanized Infantry went through the berms into
  Iraq, it had over 6,000 vehicles ranging from M IA Is to H M MWVS!  With
  a C-5 Galaxy (our largest tranport plane) limited to carrying only a
  single M I tank, and with only 150 of these priceless birds in service,
  it might take weeks to deliver a single armored division to the Middle
  East.  But the XM8 is significantly smaller and lighter than an Abrams,
  and a C-5 can carry up to five with Level Ill armor installed, ready to
  roll off.  The same C-5 can carry five XM8s with Level 11 armor and drop
  them by parachute into a drop zone.  Within half an hour of hitting the
  ground, their crews (without any other supporting personnel) can have
  them ready to fight.  And since a broken vehicle is about as useful as a
  dead one, the AGS is designed to be supported by a bare minimum of
  support personnel.  For example, the three
  96 5 ARMOI@L@D ('AV
  Interior view of the prototype XM4 Cornrnand and Control Vehicle (C2V).
  Note the extensive rack space for computers and radios, and the four
  very comfortable crew scats.  Flf( ("IRIYIRITIIII
  man crew can remove the entire power pack in less than ten minutes, and
  can resupply all of the ammo in less than twenty.
  
  The AGS will be the cutting edge of the Army's light forces in the 21 st
  century.  In addition to the tank bataltions of the 82nd Airborne and
  101 st Air Assault Divisions, the XM8 will equip the new 2nd Armored
  Cavalry Regiment (Light).   This regiment will provide scouting and
  screening for XVIII Airborne Corps (composed of the 24th Mechanized,
  82nd Airborne, and 101 st Air Assault Divisions).  Currently, there are
  plans to buy about 800 XM8s, with requirements for perhaps a thousand
  more for the light infantry divisions and the Reserve/National Guard
  force.  In addition, Taiwan has expressed an interest in buying some
  XM8s, so stay tuned for news on this neat little vehicle.  lt will be a
  handful when it arrives!
  The XM4 Mobile Command Post
  The venerable M577 has been around the U.S.  Army since the 1960s; and
  even with the new -A3 version being fielded as of the mid-90s, the
  simple truth is that the Army needs a new mobile command post.  To
  accommodate this requirement, the Army has contracted with FMC to build
  a new Command and Control Vehicle (called C2V by FMC) that has been
  type-classified as the XM4 Mobile Command Post.  Built on the same
  robust chassis used for the MLRS launch vehicle, the C2V, now undergoing
  tests with the Army, carries a roomy box-like shelter.  lt is powered by
  a 600-hp diesel engine.  Equipped with ballistic armor capable of
  stopping light machine-gun fire, and an
  overpressure/filtration/air-conditioning system, the XM4 will provide
  field
  9 7
  commanders from battalion to corps level with a vehicle capable of
  conducting operations even while on the move.
  The heart of the system is a flexible set of racks that can hold a
  variety of radios, computers, and electronic boxes.  For example: an
  armored battalion/armored cavalry squadron command post might have four
  of the SINCGARS radios as well as command and control terminals tied to
  the regimental/brigade, company/troop, fire-support, and air-defense
  radio nets.  These radios will be connected to a 33-foot/ IO-meter-tall
  erectable mast antenna, as well as to UHF whip antennas that allow the
  XM4 to command even while on the move.  This helps reduce the
  vulnerability of the C2V to enemy artillery or air strikes that might
  try to home in on the XM4's radio transmissions.  As for the
  six-to-eight-man crew, two of them will function as drivers/mechanics,
  and the rest will be in the back running various systems.  And while the
  accommodations will not exactly be plush, the C2V will be the most
  comfortable vehicle in the Army.  Though such comfort may seem a bit
  unfair to the line soldier, consider that a commanding officer may only
  get a few hours sleep a night while being expected to function at full
  
  efficiency.  This can mean life or death for the soldiers under his
  command.  For this reason, the environmental-control system on the XM4
  is the most robust of any vehicle yet produced for Army service.  And
  even the seats are designed to reduce fatigue and help the command crew
  stay sharp.  FMC says that the chairs were modeled on the seats in
  airport rental-car shuttle buses, which, if you travel a great deal as I
  do, you know are some of the most comfortable in the world.
  The XM5 Electronic Fighting Vehicle
  During the 1980s, the Army modernized its battlefield electronic warfare
  (EW) capabilities.  A major innovation was the EH-60 Quick Fix EW
  helicopter, used successfully during Desert Storm.  The EH-60 can
  rapidly get directional fixes and then jam a variety of different
  communications, radar, and other electronic systems.  Now ground forces
  will gain a similar capability with the XM5 Electronic Fighting Vehicle
  (FFV).  Utilizing the same basic chassis as the XM4 C2V, it has the same
  basic enclosure.  The only major external differences are a taller
  erectable antenna mast (98.4 feet/30 meters in height) and a different
  power system.  The interior is roughly similar to the XM4, with similar
  racks of gear and the same comfortable seats and appointments.  What is
  different are the types and missions of the "black boxes."  These allow
  the crew of six to eight to scan for enemy transmitters, determine lines
  of bearing to the targets, pass the enemy positions along the
  intelligence chain of command (for possible attack by aircraft,
  helicopters, or artillery), and then, if desired, jam the enemy systems.
  While the Army and FMC decline to comment on the range of jamming
  options and how many channels each vehicle might be able to monitor and
  jam at once, it is clear that the XM5 will be a new ball game for the
  electronic warriors of the U.S.  Army.  And with many systems being
  software-driven, the XM5 will be capable of rapid reconfiguration to
  meet the changing tactical situations it will inevitably encounter.
  Ever since the introduction of rifled tube artillery and mortars in the
  late part of the 19th century, no single class of weapon has caused more
  -Lcasualties than artillery.  For no other form of weaponry has the
  ability to place a greater weight of explosive onto a target.  By the
  close of World War 1, artillery shells had grown in weight and
  capability to a point where proper use of artillery was seen as the key
  to the success or defeat of any attack or defense.  And with the advent
  of chemical weapons by the Germans, and later by the Allies, a new and
  more deadly payload had been added to the capabilities of artillery
  systems.  Since that time, nuclear warheads, land mines, cluster
  munitions, and even laser-homing warheads have come to be fired by the
  guns- or tubes as they are called by the Army-of the artillery.  And the
  addition of rocket artillery and mortar systems has made the artillery
  even more powerful.
  
  Shortly before the start of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, many analysts
  looking at Iraq's military focused a great deal of attention-and
  dread-on the huge Iraqi stockpile of tube and rocket artillery, as well
  as the huge supply of ordnance to fire from them.  Armed with a wide
  variety of systems, from the awesome South African G5 155mm howitzer
  (designed by the brilliant but mercenary Dr.  Gerald Bull) to huge
  Soviet multiple rocket-launcher systems, the Iraqi artillery could
  deliver anything from chemical weapons to small mine- fields.  So
  dangerous was the threat that CENTCOM planners in the "black hole"
  planning center in Riyadh expended almost half of their "battlefield
  preparation" air strikes on eliminating the thousands of guns and rocket
  launchers in Kuwait and southern Iraq.  And General Norman Schwarzkopf
  considered the elimination of the Iraqi artillery so essential that he
  insisted that Allied fliers eliminate at least half of it before he
  would start the ground offensive.  In retrospect, this was probably
  wise.  So for several weeks before G-Day, fliers from all of the Allies
  and services pounded the Iraqi artillery into silence.  The result was
  that Saddam's vaunted artillery was scarcely felt by Allied forces on
  G-Day and after.
  Meanwhile, from the very beginning of the air offensive, Allied
  artillery was integrated with the aerial bombardment effort.  Whether it
  was an artillery raid over the border by Marine 8" self-propelled
  howitzers, or attacks upon enemy command and control bunkers by Army
  Tactical Missile Systeni (ATACMS) missiles, the Allied artillery was
  swift, accurate, and deadly.  Every time an Iraqi artillery battery
  opened up, an Allied artillery spotting radar would track the flight of
  the shells back to their point ot' origin, and
  U.S.  AL@MY ARI li@l f@RYIY"l quickly order a battery of Multiple-Launch
  Rocket System (MLRS) rocket launchers to destroy it, usually within less
  than a minute of the Iraqi battery firing its first shells.
  Ironically, at a time when artillery has become more deadly than ever,
  the U.S.  Army is phasing out many of the heavy guns that have been its
  mainstays since the Second World War.  Today, monsters like the 175mm
  and 8" self-propelled howitzers are being retired in favor of new
  variants of the MLRS and M 109.  By 1997, only these two systems will be
  found in the heavy divisions of the Army.  Improved performance will
  have to be based upon better software, data links, and superior
  warheads.  Let's have a look at them and see how that is being done.
  The M270 Multiple-Launch Rocket System
  (MLRS)
  The use of rockets as artillery dates back to roughly the year 1000 AD,
  when the Chinese used primitive black powder rockets to frighten the
  horses of their enemies.  Eventually, the Chinese, Mongot, and Indian
  
  armies had specialized troops whose job was to tactically employ rockets
  as bombardment artillery, incendiary devices, and possibly as signaling
  devices for messages between friendly troops.  Much later, the British
  Army adopted an improved version of the black-powder rocket, designed by
  Sir Walter Congreve, for use in the wars of the Napoleonic period.  Such
  rockets were used to telling effect during the Battle of Bladensberg
  (just prior to the British burning of Washington, D.C., in 1814), and
  the bombardment of Fort McHenry near Baltimore ("the rockets' red
  glare").  By the time of World War 11, improved propellants and
  explosive payloads had begun to make the rocket into a really effective
  piece of artillery.  The Russians and Germans produced the Katyusha and
  Nebelwerfer rocket systems for use in the Red Army and Wehrmacht, and
  both systems were much feared by their adversaries.
  The U.S.  Army used rocket artillery on a limited basis during the war,
  but the bulk of the postwar U.S.  effort in this area went into guided
  missiles and nuclear-armed rockets like the Lance and Honest John.  Only
  in the 1970s did the U.S.  Army officially perceive a need for rocket
  artillery.  Several factors drove the establishment of the new program
  that would become Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS).  One of these
  was the extensive use of rocket artillery in the armed forces of the
  Warsaw Pact and Soviet client states around the world.  A more practical
  rationale for acquiring the system was the highly effective performance
  of Soviet-supplied rocket artillery used by the Egyptians and Syrians
  against the Israelis during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.  The team of U.S.
  Army officers sent to survey the battlefields after the war noted the
  effects of the rocket artillery, and reported their findings back home.
  After reviewing the reports, Army officials decided to initiate a new
  rocket artillery program for the Army, and this became MLRS.
  100 - ARMOI@ED CAV
  The Iraqis called it "Steel Rain," and the name was well deserved.
  Throughout the 1991 Persian Gulf War, any time an Iraqi artillery
  battery opened fire, an Iraqi command center began transmitting, or a
  high-value Iraqi target was found within thirty kilometers of the Allied
  front lines, ordnance fired from an MLRS would arch into the Arabian sky
  within a matter of seconds, and rain death and destruction on the Iraqi
  unit.  Such was the power of this new weapon that, early in the war, it
  was often reserved for the purpose of eliminating Iraqi artillery firing
  on Coalition troops.  Counterbattery fire it is called, and it was the
  mission of the MLRS batteries deployed by the U.S.  and Great Britain to
  stop the Iraqi guns from firing once they were identified. At this task,
  and at many others, the MLRS proved to be the most flexible artillery
  system in the Allied arsenal.
  The development of the MLRS system was one of the most troublefree and
  efficient Army programs of the entire post-Vietnam period.  Requirements
  
  for the system were developed by TRADOC; and in 1976, a program office
  was established at the Army Missile Command at the Redstone Arsenal in
  Huntsville, Alabama.  In 1977, the program office initiated a
  competition between Boeing and LTV Aerospace (now Lora] Vought Systems)
  to be the prime contractor for the effort.  Another major program
  milestone occurred in 1979, when the U.S.  Army signed a Memorandum of
  Understanding (MOU) with the United Kingdom, Germany, and France to
  produce the MLRS system for export to those NATO nations.  Later on,
  Italy joined the MOU.  The Netherlands, Turkey, Greece, Bahrain, Korea,
  Israel, and Japan are also MLRS users.  In 1980, the LTV team was
  awarded the contract for integration and production of the overall MLRS
  system, which is built in Camden, Arkansas.  The first units were
  delivered to the U.S.  Army in 1982, with the first MLRS units reaching
  service later that year.
  The MLRS launch vehicle is based on the M993 tracked carrier produced by
  FMC Corporation of San Jose, California.  The M993 uses technology and
  com-portents (such as suspension and power train) from the Bradley
  program, and has very similar driving and handling characteristics to
  the Bradley.  The engine, a 500-horsepower Cummins V-8 diesel, drives a
  fourspeed (three forward, one reverse) automatic transmission.  The
  power train provides enough power to move the MLRS across the
  battlefield at a top speed of over 40 mph/64 kph.  One interesting
  feature of the suspension is that the hubs are equipped with special
  locks (called suspension lockouts), so that the vehicle is more stable
  during rocket/missile launches.
  The MLRS has the same ability to cross terrain as the other U.S.  Army
  vehicles of its generation, and is air-transportable by a number of U.S.
  airlift aircraft.  Unlike the Bradley, the armored crew compartment
  (bullet-proof against small-arms fire and artillery/mortar fragments) is
  in a cab at the front of the vehicle.  The crew cab has room for three
  soldiers: typically a driver, gunner, and section chief.  All crew
  members are cross-trained, and two soldiers can operate the system
  easily.
  U.S.  ARNIY Ai@rii I ERY 1,YSFi;m,., a 101
  MLRS showing the rocket launche at maximum elevation.  The twelve rocket
  tubes are clearly visible in this OFMC view.  F.@f('CORPOk4TIO.%
  The cab is equipped with an overpressure system to provide filtered
  breathable air during firing.  And the crew remains in the cab for all
  firing operations.  The crew cab is also equipped with a set of armored
  louvers to protect the windshield from being scorched by the rocket
  exhaust, or harmed by debris kicked up by the rocket blast.  Inside, in
  addition to the driver's-side controls, are a terminal to provide fire
  control and communications to the Battery Control System (BCS)
  
  artillery-control network and two of the SINCGARS radios for voice and
  data communications.  BCS is tied into the TACFIRE control system, which
  works at the division/regiment through squadron/battalion level to
  provide a clearinghouse for artillery requests-called "fire
  missions"-from front-line units.  The fire-control portion of the system
  takes positional data from an inertially aided navigational system to
  provide "instant" firing options for the MLRS crew.  And it is this
  ability to instantly react to fire commands that makes the MLRS system
  so special, as we will examine later.
  The payload for the MLRS system is carried at the rear ofthe vehicle-the
  M270 multiple-rocket launcher.  The launcher is hydraulically actuated
  and aimed by the fire-control system.  It is capable of loading and
  carrying a pair of pre-loaded rocket/missile pods.  The basic weapon
  ofthe MLRS system is a family of unguided rockets carrying a variety of
  different payloads to a maximum range of about 20 miles/32 km.  The pod
  of six rockets is designated M26 (each MLRS launcher carries two M26s).
  The rockets, which are known as M77s, are 12' 10.8"/393.2 cm long,
  8.94"/227mm in diameter, and weigh 676.5 Ib/307.5 kg each.  The M77
  rocket is capable of carrying a number of warheads.  These include the
  following options: M77-The primary warhead, and the only one used during
  the 1991 Persian GulfWar, is composed ofa package of644 M77 dualpurpose
  submunitions.  Each submunition weighs about .5 Ib/.25 kg, and is about
  the size of a hand grenade, with both a fragmenting case and a shaped
  charge for use against vehicles.  As the
  102 - AL@MOREI) CAV submunitions are dispersed out of the warhead, each
  one trails a streamer to stabilize it and make the submunition pattern
  more predictable.  Overall, a single M26 rocket pod will spread its
  payload of submunitions over an area of fifteen to thirty acres
  (depending on overlap).  Exposed troops will theoretically be killed
  anywhere within the impact zone, and a direct hit from a single
  submunition will usually destroy a truck or soft-skinned vehicle or
  disable a light armored vehicle.  XR-M77-During the Gulf War, it became
  apparent that the Iraqi Army had tube artillery (specifically, the South
  African G-5) with a range of up to 25 miles/40 km.  Because of this, the
  U.S.  Army decided to modify the M77 rocket to extend the range to 28
  miles/45 km.  This is accomplished by decreasing the load of
  submunitions by about 20% to 518 (down from 644), and increasing the
  length ofthe rocket motor.  AT-2-A dispenser for AT-2 parachute-retarded
  anti-tank mines is being developed for the MLRS rocket by a German
  industrial consortium.  The warhead contains twenty-eight ofthe AT-2s,
  each of which can disable a heavy tank.  SADARM-Under the
  Sense-And-Destroy ARMor (SADARM) program, the U.S.  Army has developed
  (Aerojet Electrosystems Co.  is the prime contractor) a special munition
  which can sense the presence of an armored vehicle or artillery piece
  while descending on three small parachutes.  The sensor is a dualmode
  seeker (infrared and millimeter-wave radar), which can sense the "hot
  
  spot" of a tank's engine compartment, as well as the vehicle's "center
  of radar mass," which is normally the turret structure.  Each rocket
  carries six of the SADARM munitions (there is also a program to deploy a
  155mm tube-artillery shell capable_of deploying two smaller SADARM
  munitions), which are eje .  cted over concentrations of vehicles.  When
  the sensor detects an armored vehicle or artillery piece in its field of
  view, it fires a self-forging projectile down into the top ofthe target.
  The status of this program is in doubt at the moment due to budget cuts.
  TGW-Another "smart" warhead for the MLRS was the Terminally Guided
  Warhead (TGW) munition.  The TGW was a large anti-armor munition which
  used a "smart" millimeter-wave radar seeker to search out tanks and
  other priority targets.  Once a TGW munition recognized a valid target
  (it can discriminate between various types of targets such as tanks,
  IFVS, artillery, etc.), it maneuvered over, and dove into the top ofthe
  target, destroying it with a large shaped charge.  Each rocket would
  carry three ofthe TGW munitions.  The United States opted out ofthe
  U.S.  ARMY Al@ I ILLEI@Y l,YS I FM, a 103 TGW program; France, Germany,
  and the United Kingdom are struggling to maintain it.
  While there are many initiatives to develop and deploy improved
  warheads, only the basic M77 is in service.  And it was this version
  that went to war in 1991.  Overall, 201 (189 U.S., 12 British) MLRS
  vehicles fired a total of 9,660 M77 rockets during Desert Storm.  These
  delivered some 6,221,040 of the deadly submunitions on Iraqi targets.
  The commander of the one British MLRS battery (twelve launchers) called
  it "the grid exterminator," because of its ability to completely
  devastate an entire grid square (a square kilometer on standard military
  maps).
  Good as unguided rockets are, there are times that a field commander
  wants to hit targets farther away than the 20-mile/32-kilometer range of
  the cur- rent variants being deployed.  Many of the things that might
  cause a commander concern-such as surface-to-air missile (SAM) sites,
  command posts, and logistics centers-are usually deployed in what is
  commonly known as the "rear echelons."  Up until recently, the only
  options open to an Army commander to strike at such targets was to call
  the Air Force or Navy for an air strike, or risk a highvalue asset like
  an AH-64 Apache attack helicopter or a special-operations team to
  destroy them.  In 1991, though, the Army deployed to the Persian Gulf
  105 units of a new surface-to-surface weapon (SSM) known as the Army
  Tactical Missile System (ATACMS).  ATACMS is a stubby little SSM about
  12 feet/4 meters in length, and 2 feet/.6 meters in diameter, with a
  range of between 60 and 90 miles/ 100 to 150 kilometers.  It carries a
  payload of 950 M74 cluster bomblets, each of which roughly approximates
  a hand grenade in its effects.  There are plans for other types of
  warheads for use against special targets.
  
  Built and assembled at several facilities in Texas by Loral Vought
  Systems, each ATACMS is packed into an MLRS pod (which normally holds
  six M77 rockets), and can be loaded and fired by any MLRS launcher that
  has been modified with the appropriate fire-control and software
  upgrades.  What makes ATACMS different is more than a simple extension
  in range.  ATACMS has a highly accurate guidance system, which allows it
  to place its cloud of M74 bomblets exactly on target.  And while the
  M74s do not quite pack the punch against armor that the M77 submunitions
  do, they are optimized for effects against "soft" targets.  This means
  that things like radar sites, command-andcontrol vans, trucks, and fuel
  dumps are quite vulnerable to ATACMS missile strikes.  This is not to
  say that the Army plans to dump ATACMS missiles all over the
  battlefield.  If their use in Desert Storm is any indication, the U.S.
  Army tends to treat them like "silver bullets."  In fact, only thirty of
  the 105 ATACMS missiles that were shipped to the Persian Gulf were fired
  by the eigh- teen M270 launchers that had been modified to fire the new
  missiles.  The first shot fired in combat by VII Corps was a single
  ATACMS fired at an Iraqi SA-2 Guideline SAM battery.  The battery was
  destroyed.  The key point of this mission is that the Air Force called
  for the strike on the first day of the air war, to make it safe to fly
  their missions over the target zone!
  So just how does one make use of all the technology and firepower
  embodied by the MLRS system?  Well, consider the following example.  An
  American force is massing for an attack on an opposing enemy ground
  force.  The other side is not as stupid as Saddam Hussein, and they
  begin to detect signs of the coming attack.  In response, the enemy
  commander plans a night artillery attack with heavy-tube artillery on
  the American force as it is concentrating, and thus when it is most
  vulnerable.  The first sign is the flash of the enemy guns on the
  horizon.  The next signal is more useful to the Americans.  Somewhere
  along the American line sits an observation post with a Q-37 Firefinder
  artillery-spotting radar.  The radar, which is designed to track the
  incoming shells back to their positions of origin, rapidly plots the
  positions of the enemy batteries on a terminal connected to the TACFIRE
  artillery-control network.  So quickly does the Q-37 crew do their job,
  that all of the enemy batteries are probably plotted before the first
  shells have hit the ground.  Up at the headquarters of the American
  unit, the TACFIRE computer is allocating fire missions for artillery
  units that have been programmed to stand by for such assignments.  In
  fact, all of the fire missions for these units will probably be
  delivered electronically before the second rounds are fired by the enemy
  batteries.
  Things really begin to happen quickly now.  Each battery commander with
  a counter-battery mission will execute it as quickly as is possible. The
  quicker the enemy batteries are silenced, the fewer Americans will wind
  up in the hospital or in body bags.  So vital is this mission that the
  
  current U.S.  Army standard for responding to a counter-battery fire
  mission is about one minute flat.  If the MLRS battery commander is
  already stopped and emplaced, then all they need to do is set the
  position of the enemy battery into Interior of MLRS crew cabin.  The
  gunner is entering targeting information on a keyboard.  The large
  guarded toggles to his right are safety and arming switches.  Both
  crewmen are wearing standard CVC (Combat Vehicle Crew) helmets with
  built-in microphones.  FilC CORfy)RATION
  U.S.  ARMY AR I ILLERY SYS I-EMS - 105
  the fire-control system and fire.  But one of the best things about the
  MLRS system is its ability to move around in support of mobile units.
  So let's assume that the unit we are looking at has been on a road march
  to the front.  Each battery has a total of nine launchers (in three
  platoons of three), as well as eighteen M985 artillery ammunition
  carriers with trailers.  These are variants of the M977 HEMTT truck, and
  each one tows a trailer equipped to carry the rocket pods for the MLRS
  system.  Each M985 truck can carry eight pods of rockets, and each
  trailer carries eight more.  In this case, we'll assume that two of the
  platoons are loaded with M26 rocket pods (twelve rockets per launcher),
  and the other section has been loaded with ATACMS missiles (two per
  launcher).  The battery commander decides to use only the six vehicles
  loaded with rockets, and hold the three launchers with their load of
  ATACMS
  missiles in reserve.
  As soon as the fire mission is received, the battery commander orders
  the ammunition carriers to get away to a safe distance (to protect them
  from the rocket blast and any enemy counterfire), and the battery
  sections to deploy.  Because each vehicle has its own POS/NAV system
  being fed updates from a NAVSTAR GPS receiver, each vehicle commander,
  and the onboard fire control system, can determine the position of each
  launcher with an accuracy of plus or minus 16 feet/5 meters.  This also
  means that the launchers don't have to be sited near each other to get
  an accurate dispersion pattern from the @arheads of the M77 rockets.
  This data is automatically fed into the fire control system, as well as
  the position of the target.  The gunner's only job at this point is to
  monitor the system and tell it just how many rockets it is to fire (any
  number from one to twelve rockets per vehicle is possible), and await
  the fire command from the battery commander.  The driver is somewhat
  busier, setting up the vehicle to fire.  He locks the suspension to hold
  the vehicle steady, lowers the armored louvers over the windshield to
  protect them from the coming blast, and turns on the cab
  overpressure/filtration system to protect the crew from rocket exhaust
  fumes.  While this may sound like a lot, it all happens in just a matter
  of seconds, and the MLRS is ready to fire.
  
  When the six firing vehicles indicate that they are ready, the battery
  commander orders them to open fire, probably within no more than a
  minute after having received the fire mission from the TACFIRE system.
  The armored box containing the rocket pods at the rear of each launcher
  swivels and tilts to the proper angle and bearing (as set by the
  fire-control computer), and the first rocket is fired, followed at
  intervals of about five seconds by the others in a "ripple."  As the
  motor fires, and the rocket moves down the launch tube, it rides on a
  set of helical rails that impart a slow spin to help stabilize the
  rocket when it is ejected free.  After it emerges from its launch tube,
  a small pyrotechnic charge helps to deploy and lock into place the four
  curved fins at the rear of the rocket.  The curvature of the fins makes
  the rocket continue to spin.  Also, the launcher automatically re-aims
  itself after launching each rocket to make up for any "jiggle" that
  might be caused by the rocket back-blast.  (Crew who have fired the
  rockets tell us that the sound inside the vehicles is like the inside of
  a thundercloud.  And to nearby observers, the firing of MLRS rockets
  seems to sound like ripping glass.  Whether you're inside or outside,
  the sight is impressive as the rockets fly out, particularly at night.)
  After the HTPB propellant rocket motor burns out a few seconds later,
  the rocket follows a ballistic course the rest of the way to the target.
  Once the rocket is over the target area, the electronic fuse detonates
  the dispersion, or core charge, at the center of the warhead.  Then the
  M77 submunitions, which are packed in polyurethane foam, are dispersed
  and fall in a cloud towards the target. Since the six MLRS vehicles
  deliver a total of some 46,368 M77 munitions onto the enemy artillery
  site, the results are horrific: In all likelihood, every gun and
  artillery tractor will be struck by one of the submunitions, and either
  damaged or destroyed.  Vehicles containing ammunition will have their
  loads detonated by contact with the M77s. And it goes without saying
  that the artillery crews are probably not going to survive.  In fact,
  all that will probably be left at the site will be scrap iron and
  shredded flesh.  This all happens before the guns have finished firing
  their third or fourth shell.  All along the front, enemy artillery units
  simply "dissolve," without so much as a whimper from their commanders.
  In a little while, the enemy high command will call, but nobody will be
  home to answer.  But this is hardly the end of the story, for the
  battery commander now has the problem of making sure that what has just
  been done to the enemy battery does not happen to hi.@ battery.
  Ordering the battery into motion, he selects a grid coordinate where the
  battery can reform and reload the
  U.S.  ARMY ARTII.[.ERY SYSI EMI, n 107
  now-empty launchers.  (This is what the U.S.  Army means when it
  describes MLRS as a "shoot-and-scoot" system.) Meanwhile, as the battery
  heads for the reload point, other events are under way.  Several
  
  American radio-directionfinding (RDF) units have been tracing the
  communications signals from a number of rear-area (within 60 to 90
  miles/ 100 to 150 kilometers of the front line) enemy command posts
  (CPs); and the American force commander has decided to deal with them
  now.  Once the positions of the enemy CPs have been determined, each is
  assigned a fire mission from an ATACMS missile launcher.  Once again,
  the TACFIRE system sends a string of instructions down to the battery to
  the onboard BCS terminals.  The battery commander then likely just peels
  off the three ATACMS launchers to the side of the road, where they fire
  and then move along to the reload site on their own.
  The setup procedure for the crew to fire ATACMS is almost identical to
  that of the M26 rockets.  Only the end result is slightly different.
  Once again the launcher is locked down and sealed, the target positions
  are fed automatically into the fire-control system, and the launch
  signals given.  Since ATACMS are valuable and their quantity limited,
  only one missile will be fired per target.  As each missile clears the
  launch pod, the guidance fins deploy, and the missile heads off to its
  target looking for all the world like a cartoon weapon (ACME: a name you
  can trust!).  The ATACMS is so stubby and bloated that a painted shark
  mouth (like the Flying Tigers used to paint on their P40s) would not be
  out of place on it.  Meanwhile, using an inertial guidance system based
  on a special ring laser gyro, the ATACMS maneuvers so that it will
  arrive directly over its target.  It takes several minutes to fly the 60
  to 90 miles/ 100 to 150 kilometers.  Once there, a small core charge
  detonates inside the package of cluster bomblets within the warhead. The
  bomblets then disperse over the target area, each with the destructive
  power of a hand grenade or small mortar round.
  For a lightly protected target like a headquarters unit, this will prove
  extremely destructive, and will probably destroy everything except
  armored vehicles.  The most likely sign of success for the ATACMS strike
  is the enemy headquarters radio circuits going silent, never to flash
  their electronic signals again.  As for the MLRS battery, it will by
  this time have moved to its reload position, and be re-arming the
  launcher vehicles.  This is accomplished by having the M985 winch a pair
  of loaded rocket/missile pods to the ground behind each launcher.  Once
  this is done, the launchers' own built-in loading gear winches each pod
  up into the M270 launcher, and the battery is ready to go back into
  action.
  As you can see, the MLRS system has features that make it one of the
  most flexible and powerful weapons in the Army inventory.  By late 1993,
  some six hundred launchers had been delivered to the U.S.  Army, with
  more in the hands of the MLRS consortium partners.  The Army is
  currently planning to field almost 1,300 launcher vehicles, and maintain
  a large inventory of MLRScompatible rockets and missiles, though budget
  cuts may force this number much lower than planned.  Nevertheless, it is
  
  the truth of the moment that
  108 - Al@mOlIED (-AV
  MLRS is the finest artillery system currently in use by the U.S.  Army
  today.  And until the M 109A6 Paladin 155mm self-propelled gun comes
  on-line later in the decade, it will remain the longest-ranged, fastest,
  and most accurate artillery system in the Army.
  The M109A6 Paladin 155mm
  Self-Propelled Howitzer
  Under General Sullivan's plan to modernize the Army by 1997, even the
  fairly mundane-looking and comparatively old-fashioned tube artillery is
  getting a digital makeover.  In fact, all the qualities that make the
  MLRS system so useful-speed, responsiveness, positive navigational
  accuracy, and inter-vehicle connectivity-are currently being planned for
  the next version of the U.S.  Army's self-propelled howitzer (SPH), the
  M 109.  The reasons for this upgrade are simply that tube artillery can
  (still) deliver a greater weight of accurate firepower on a target than
  any other weapons system.  It is efficiency, simple and pure, that
  drives U.S.  Army SPH development, and that efficiency is the reason for
  the upgrade program known as the M 109A6 Paladin.  It is an efficiency
  based upon the historical utility of self-propelled artillery.  This
  particular development in the field of ballistic weapons has an
  important past, and a vital future.  Let's take a look.
  Big guns are heavy.  When mobile artillery was first conceived in the
  15th century, artillery pieces had to be hauled by large teams of oxen.
  While an ox is slower, meaner, and dumber than a horse, it has more
  strength and endurance for the long haul.  But by the 17th century, guns
  and carriages could be made strong and light enough for a pair of horses
  to pull them along, though the gun crews still had to slog along on
  foot.  In the late 18th century, some armies began to mount the gunners
  on their own horses, and they were accompanied by light two-wheeled
  carts called "caissons" to carry gunpowder and projectiles.  This "horse
  artillery" could move at cavalry speeds, and was drilled to get the guns
  in and out of action ("limbered" or "unlimbered") extremely quickly.  By
  World War 1, trucks or tractors began to replace the horse, and rubber
  tires replaced the iron-rimmed wagon wheel.  But at the start of the
  Second World War, most armies still had some horse-drawn artillery.
  With a motorized carriage, a force could move guns at highway speeds, at
  least until the highways turned to mud.  Then the guns, like all the
  other things dependent upon wheeled transport, bogged down, a victim of
  "General Mud."
  Clearly, a superior form of transport for artillery was needed.  The
  solution was tracked, self-propelled artillery.  The World War 11 German
  
  Wehrmacht was the first to systematically introduce self-propelled
  artillery by pulling the turrets off obsolete tank chassis and rigging
  improvised mountings for field guns.  The gun, the crew, and some
  ammunition could now move cross-country and keep up with the Germans'
  advancing Panzer units.  Unfortunately, these early open-topped systems
  provided no overhead
  U.S.  Al@My Al@Tll I F.I@Y SYSFEMI, - 109
  protection for the crew against shell fragments-or for that matter,
  against t@e rain!  The Allied forces also developed self-propelled
  artillery pieces during World War 11, notably the M3 "Priest," with a
  small 105mm pack howitzer in the mount.  By the 1950s, the U.S.  and
  British Armies had begun to introduce self-propelled 105mm guns with
  fully enclosed turrets.  These vehicles looked like tanks, though the
  bulky turrets had a limited traverse (theY could not rotate 360 degrees,
  like a tank turret).  To stabilize the chassis against the recoil of the
  gun, some models required the use of a "spade"a broad spiked blade on a
  hinged mounting at the rear of the chassis.  This was lowered before
  firing to dig into the ground and thus stabilize the vehicle against the
  gun's recoil.
  The design of a self-propelled gun, like that of any other armored
  fighting vehicle, involves trade-offs between mobility, protection,
  weight, speed, ammunition capacity, and mechanical complexity.  National
  style and doctrine also play a role.  For example: To save on scarce
  manpower, the Swedish Army designed their i55mm self-propelled gun with
  a sophisticated mechanical autoloader; Sovietdesigned self-propelled
  guns are designed to use flat-trajectory, direct fire to siMplify fire
  control and provide a secondary anti-tank capability.
  The origins of the American M 109 program date back to the 1960s, when
  the Army decided that their next generation of SPH would put the gun,
  crew, ani ammunition under armor to protect against counter-battery and
  smallarWs fire.  The initial results of this program were the M 108
  (with a 105mm howitzer) and the M 109 (with a 15 5mm howitzer).  These
  were guns on a tracked chassis, with an armored box or cab built over
  the top of the chassis.  The armored cab had room for the crew to load
  and fire the howitzer, as well as stowage for ammunition.  These
  relatively simple vehicles were adequate for service in the Vietnam War
  and the early days of the Cold War, but new operational needs emerged in
  the 1980s.  One was the need to accurately survey and locate the site
  used as a firiDg position, without leaving the protection of the vehicle
  (the more accuratelY you know where you are, the more accurately you can
  aim at your target).  In addition, the time required to set up a battery
  and establish secure commu
  The M109A6 Paladin Self-Propelled Howitzer (SPH).  1.  /1), H@ 1, It HA
  
  l I /'l IER ],( k R) i % E% 7[RI'Rlsfs.
  110 a ARMORE[) CAV nications determined the unit's ability to respond to
  an immediate request for fire.  As late as the Persian Gulf War of 1991,
  the U.S.  Army standard for setting up an M 109A2 battery (eight M 109s
  along with their ammunition c@irriers) was around eleven minutes.
  Compared to the responsiveness and performance of the MLRS batteries,
  which measured their response time in seconds, tube artillery in the
  Gulf War seemed sluggish.  But even before the forces of the United
  States began to deploy to the Gulf in 1990, the Army was already well
  into the development of a new generation of M 109, the M 109A6 Paladin.
  The idea behind the development of the Paladin is similar to the one
  that led to the MI A2 Abrams.  Take an existing vehicle chassis (such as
  an earlymodel M 109A2 or M 109A3), strip it down to the bare bones,
  rework all of the automotive and suspension components (essentially
  "zeroing" the vehicle from a "wear and tear" standpoint), replace all of
  the old vehicle electronics (called "vetronics" in the jargon of the
  industry) with newer, more reliable digital systems, tie them all
  together with an onboard data bus, and add the necessary digital
  communications, navigation systems, and a fire-control computer to
  provide rapid response to requests for artillery fire.  In this way, the
  Army can take a gun that is essentially obsolete and make it into the
  world's best tube-artillery system in one major upgrade.
  As you walk up to a Paladin, there are few external details to tell you
  it is different from any earlier M 109 model.  Only the larger turret
  bustle and additional radio antennas mark it as something new.  Inside
  is another thing.
  Normally, the crew enters the vehicle from the rear by ducking under the
  bust - le overhang and climbing through the main hatch.  This normally
  is done on hands and knees.  But once you're inside, as you stand up,
  you get the feeling you could play handball in there.  There is a lot of
  room.  Unlike inside the tight confines of an Abrams or Bradley, even
  someone over six feet can stand and move around comfortably.
  The interior layout of the Paladin is much like that of the Abrams, with
  the driver up forward, the vehicle commander and gunner positions on the
  right side of the gun turret, and the loader on the left.  Lining all of
  the interior surfaces is a Kevlar spall liner designed to reduce the
  danger of spat] fragments to the crew.  To the rear of the turret is the
  storage area for ammunition and propellant charges.  The Paladin has
  room in the rear bustle to store a total of thirty-seven NATO Standard
  155mm rounds, a pair of Copperhead laser-guided projectiles, and the
  necessary propellant charges to send them on their way.  Some of the
  different ammunition types include:
  High Explosive (HE)-A steel-jacketed case filled with PBX-series
  
  explosive.  Impact-fused, it detonates on contact with the ground, with
  blast and fragmentation effects.  High-Explosive, Variable-Time
  (HE-VT)-An HE shell fitted with a radar proximity fuse.  The fuse can be
  set to explode at a particular height over the ground, showering the
  target with fragments when it detonates.
  U.S.  AL@MY Al@ I ]l@l-I;IZY SY@"I
  White Phosphorus (Wp)-Called "Willie Pete" by the troops, this round has
  a case filled with chemical white phosphorus and a small bursting
  charge.  When the shell hits the ground and the burst charge detonates,
  the white phosphorus spontaneously ignites in the presence c)f oxygen
  (as in air or water).  In addition to incendiary effects, it generates a
  dense cloud of white smoke that can serve as a target marker for other
  weapons.  The downside of WP is that it is dangerous to manufacture and
  handle.  And the terrible burns it inflicts have led some people to
  regard it as a particularly atrocious and inhuman weapon.  In spite of
  this, virtually every nation with artillery uses WP rounds.  Field
  Artillery Containerized Anti-Tank Mine (FASCAM)-This is an artillery
  shell containing a number of anti-tank mines capable of blowing the
  track c)-ff an armored vehicle or destroying a wheeled vehicle like a
  truck.  FASCAM rounds can be lobbed into an area like a crossroads or a
  pass, where they can block the movement of an enemy force until they are
  cleared.  Smoke-Frequently, srnc)ke rounds (shells with pyrotechnic
  smoke generators in them) are carried as a means of marking a position
  or masking movement from an enemy.  Smoke rounds come in a variety of
  colors, such as recl, blue, purple, and orange.  Jabberwocky-This proi
  ectile, named after Lewis Carroll's poem, is a shell containing a
  powerful little broadband-radio noise-jammer designed to disrupt enemy
  communications.  When the Jabberwocky is over its target area, it
  deploys a parachute to retard its fall and soften its Ian cling.  After
  landing, it deploys an antenna and starts jamming.  A stnall thermal
  battery built into the shell case provides power for a few hours.
  SADARM-Like the M 7 7 MLRS rocket, there is in development a 155mm
  artillery shell capable of carrying and dispersing several SADARM
  "skeets" to destroy enemy tanks and vehicles.  This program appears to
  have become a victim of budget cuts, and a replacement called BAT (with
  a ti acoustic sensor) is slated to take its place.  Copperhead-This is t
  he crown jewel of American artillery.  Designed for use against tanks
  and point targets, the Copperhead is the artillery equivalent of a
  laser-guided bomb.  When it is fired, small guidance fins pop c),ut from
  the body of the shell, and a laser seeker in the nose starts searching
  the ground for a spot of laser light pulsing with a specific code.  This
  is the signal from a laser designator which is marking-or "painting"-the
  desired target.  The laser designator, with a range of several
  miles/kilometers, can be a hand-held unit operated by a forward
  observer, or it can be mounted on a combat vehicle "r helicopter.  When
  the seeker detects the laser spot, it homes in, adjusting its course
  
  with the uidance fins. The high-explosive warhead detonates on contact,
  and is sufficient to destroy a tank.  The only problem with the
  Copperhead is that the supply is limited.  Because of cost, the
  production line was shut down before completing the planned production
  run, and Copperheads have to be used sparingly.  Nevertheless, this may
  be the most accurate and deadly point-target artillery weapon in the
  world today.
  This is not a complete list of everything that can be stuffed in a 155mm
  shell.  It is only a general introduction to the capabilities of U.S.
  Army artillery.  Meanwhile, some of you may be wondering about the
  exclusion of nuclear and chemical weapons from the list of artillery
  munitions.  The simple truth is that such weapons are a thing of the
  past.  At one time, the Army had a 2-kilotonyield nuclear artillery
  shell called the W82, but in 1991 President Bush ordered the removal of
  all nuclear weapons from deployed U.S.  forces.  In addition, U.S.
  forces also deployed a small but powerful array of chemical weapons.
  Luckily, the program was terminated as a result of a series of
  international treaties; and the stockpiles are gradually being destroyed
  at incinerators in Kentucky, Utah, and Johnston Atoll in Micronesia.
  Structurally, the Paladin is mainly built of aluminum (like the Bradley
  and the M 1 13), though significant portions are still composed of
  high-quality steel.  Weighing in at 63,300 lb/28,181 kg, it is powered
  by a 440-hp turbocharged Detroit Diesel V-8 engine driving a six-speed
  (four forward, two reverse) transmission.  This provides for a top speed
  of 35 mph/57.4 kph and a cruising range of 214 miles/351 kilometers. The
  business end of the Paladin is an M284 155mm, 39caliber cannon mounted
  on a M 182 gun mount.  It is capable of firing conventional ammunition
  out to a range of 14 miles/23.1 kilometers, and rocket-assisted rounds
  out to 18.3 miles/30 kilometers.  What makes the Paladin so different
  are all of the systems that have been improved or replaced.  The major
  upgrades include:
  Suspension System-With the weight of the Paladin growing to almost
  64,000 lb/29,091 kg, the suspension of the original M 109 would have a
  difficult time maintaining stability during crosscountry dashes from
  firing position to firing position.  To make up for this, the M 109A6
  has been designed with longer torsion bars and hydropneumatic bump stops
  to smooth out the ride and provide greater support for the increased
  load of the new vehicle.  Automatic Fire-Control System 'AFCS)-The AFCS
  provides an integrated solution to the problem of determining vehicle
  position, receiving fire missions, and automatically pointing the gun at
  a target.  It has an inertial navigation system called Modular Azimuth
  Positioning System (MAPS).  In addition, the system can receive
  targeting data over the onboard radios directly into the fire-control
  system.  This means that all the crew needs to do to put rounds on
  target is to fit the proper fuse onto the nose of the shell, U.S.  ARMY
  
  Al@] II L@IIIZY 1,Yll [@m,, - 113
  load the shell and propellant bag into the weapon, and pull the fir ing
  lanyard.  And while MAPS currently lacks a NAVSTAR GPS
  receiver, it is likely that this will be installed in the very near
  future.  * Voice/Digital Communications Systems-Where previous ver sions
  of the M 109 were limited to receiving their fire missions
  via a landline from the battery operations center, the Paladin has a
  pair of AN/VRC-89 SINCGARS radios to provide both secure voice and
  digital communications, as well as a data link to the
  TACFIRE/BCS system.
  * Automatic Remote Travel Lock-Because of the length of the
  M 109 gun barrel, it is necessary to lock it down during movement to
  relieve stress that might warp or distort the tube, affecting gun
  accuracy and safety. Previous versions of the M 109 required a
  crew member to exit the vehicle and manually lock the barrel into its
  travel lock.  On the Paladin this is done automatically in less that
  fifteen seconds.
  * Driver's Night Vision Device-Previously, the M 109 had difficulty
  making night marches and participating in night artillery raids, due to
  the lack of any onboard night-vision system.  This shortcom ing has been
  rectified in the Paladin through the addition of a an
  AN/VVS-2(V4) night-vision system.  This is a "clip on" viewer
  which can be installed rapidly (within fifteen seconds) without tools
  on the driver's periscope.  It is a relatively new system that uses
  light/image intensification to provide a clear outside view, even on
  moonless nights.
  Microclimate Cooling System (MCS)-Under the best of condi tions, the
  firing of a 155mm howitzer is hot, dirty, and dusty work.
  When the crew is wearing MOPP-FV chemical-protection suits, it can ;e
  downright debilitating.  To overcome the heat and fumes, the
  Microclimate Cooling System (MCS) provides filtered and
  cooled air to make the wearers more comfortable.  Each crew mem ber is
  attached to the MCS by a hose-fed face mask.  Even
  Field Artillery Ammunition Supply Vehicle showing the fold-out
  poweroperated conveyor system that can be used to transfer ammunition to
  ali M 109.  B tf) (",IB, I Si@,l@,,ts
  
  114 - ARMORFD ('AV
  when the crew is not wearing MOPP-IV suits, they wear the masks to avoid
  inhaling propellant fumes from the gun.  Electrical Power System-All of
  these electronic "goodies" require a lot of power.  To accommodate the
  increased power requirements of the M 109A6, a 650-amp alternator has
  been installed to support the increased electrical load.
  What all of this means is that the M 109A6 is able to do with a cannon
  almost everything that the MLRS system does with rockets and missiles.
  And it can do it with similar mobility and speed.  It is designed to be
  part of the 21 st century digital battlefield.  And unlike earlier
  versions, which had to stay behind the front to survive, the Paladin can
  move with the most forward elements of an armored force.  At a moment's
  notice, it can stop in place and have the first round "on the way" in
  less than sixty seconds.  The ability to "shoot and scoot" increases the
  system's survivability against counter-battery fire.
  There is a special vehicle designed to keep the Paladin full crf
  ammunition and ready to shoot.  Called the M992Al Field Artillery
  Ammunition Supply Vehicle (FAASV), it carries ammunition, propellant,
  and fuses to Paladin units at the front lines.  FAASV is based on an
  M109 chassis, with an armored box that holds up to 90 shells, 3
  Copperhead laser-guided rounds, 99 propellant charges, and 104
  projectile fuses.  The M992Al can move with the Paladin, operate in the
  same area, and even resupply it while under fire.
  The FAASV has a conveyer system that can pass ammunition and propellant
  charges between it and an M 109A6 without requiring the crews to exit
  the vehicles.  This makes a big difference should a Paladin battery come
  under enemy fire (though under safer conditions, crews usually prefer to
  move the ammunition and propellant charges between vehicles by hand). In
  addition to these capabilities, the FAASV can be used as a prime mover
  for virtually any of the towed howitzers in the Army inventory should it
  be necessary.  It even has the muscle to tow a disabled Paladin!
  Each of the 82.4 Paladins that the Army plans to buy will have its own
  FAASV assigned to support it in the field.  Older self-propelled guns
  will retain ammunition carriers such as the M548, which is based on the
  M 1 13 chassis.
  So just what does all of this mean to the crews who will operate the
  Paladins and the commanders who will depend on it for responsive,
  accurate artillery fire?  Well, consider the following example.  One of
  the most popular uses for mobile artillery during Desert Storm was the
  armored artillery raid.  These were hit-and-run raids into Iraq and
  Kuwait by self-propelled artillery to attack targets that required
  something more than a few bombs to destroy, but were beyond the range of
  
  the 16"/406mm guns of the battleships Wi.5(,olisin and Mi,@soiiri.  So
  valuable were these raids that they appeared on the daily air tasking
  order issued from the "black hole" headquarters in Riyadh which
  controlled all bombardment of Iraq and occupied Kuwait.
  So let us assume that we have a battalion of Paladins that has been
  assigned to move across the front lines to conduct such a raid on an
  enemy fuel
  U.S.  ARMY ARFII-LERY SYSTEM, - 115
  depot some 30 miles/50 kilometers behind the front.  Theirjob will be to
  rapidly move about 18 miles/30 kilometers into enemy territory, rapidly
  set up, and fire a dozen or so rounds from each vehicle.  They then will
  have to quickly move to another position to repeat the procedure, and
  then run for home across their own lines.
  An artillery battalion never sets off on such an adventure without help
  and a lot of planning; and so this mission is laid out to the last
  detail.  The battalion itself is composed of three artillery batteries,
  each of which is composed of eight M 109A6 Paladins (organized into two
  platoons of four vehicles each), eight M992AI FAASVs (four per platoon),
  and a pair of modified M577s called Platoon Control Vehicles (PCVs-one
  per platoon). The PCVs are designed to take fire missions from the
  TACFIRE system and rapidly distribute them among the M 109A6s in the
  platoon.  If necessary, however, Paladins can accept and process fire
  requests directly from a forward or aerial observer.  According to the
  Army's usual practice, the guns are escorted, in this case by an armored
  cavalry troop (nine M IA2s, thirteen M3 Bradley scout vehicles, an M981
  FIST-V, and a pair of M 125 106mm mortar carriers) and a few OH-58D
  Kiowa Warrior scout helicopters to guard the task force's flanks.  Not
  so large a force that it attracts a lot of enemy attention, but large
  enough to destroy the enemy supply base or blunt the nose of an enemy
  offensive probe.
  The artillery task force sets out after dark, with the scouts of the
  armored cavalry troop leading the way, and with the Paladins and PCVs
  behind them.  Seeking a seam in the line where enemy coverage is thin,
  the force moves through as quickly as possible to minimize their
  exposure to enemy observation.  Thanks to the FVIS system on the cavalry
  vehicles and the interface (a sort of digital "hook") to the TACFIRE
  system, all of the maneu- ver orders are issued without any need to
  communicate via the voice radios, and thus attract enemy attention.
  Also, with every vehicle having a precision navigation system, there is
  no need for them to travel together.  In fact, the task force could
  break into small platoon-sized groups and move separately to the first
  assembly area.  Meanwhile, the FAASVs and a few of the tanks and scout
  vehicles lag behind to set up a resupply area, ready to move wherever
  
  the artillery task force needs them.  As is normal in such operations,
  several small two-man teams of Army Rangers from the Special Forces
  Group at Fort Banning, Georgia, are placed ahead as scouts and forward
  observers.  These teams observe any enemy movement in the target area,
  and they will provide corrections for the artillery strikes.  The move
  to the first fire position is quick, taking less than an hour from the
  time of crossing the front line.  As soon as Paladins are in their
  planned firing positions, each vehicle sends a data-link signal up the
  network to indicate it is ready to fire.  What happens next will be
  fast.  Very fast.
  In the task force commander's vehicle, a message is tapped out on a data
  terminal (called a "Data Message Device" or DMD) calling for a fire
  mission on the fuel depot.  Each platoon is assigned a different part of
  the facility.  At the end of the message is a final piece of data, the
  "time on target" (TOT) for the artillery barrage.  To maximize the
  effect of surprise, the commander tries to synchronize the firing of
  every gun, so that the first rounds all impact simultaneously.  Once the
  fire mission is on the way over the network, and the TOT is being
  counted down, the breeches of the howitzers are opened, projectiles
  (conventional high explosive for this job) and powder bags are rammed
  in, the breeches closed, and the final checks made.  The Paladin
  commanders and gunners punch in the target coordinates, and the MAPS
  system continues to update gun location and direction, calculating just
  where to point the gun in elevation and azimuth.  The crews, breathing
  through their MCS masks, are already preparing the second shot when the
  fire-control system fires the first round.  In less than a second
  (depending upon their positions relative to the target area), all
  twenty-four Paladins have fired their first round, and the crews are
  loading their second.  Normally, the Army standard is for a crew to be
  able to load and fire one round per minute until the ammunition runs
  out.  But there is also a rapid-fire drill, with the crew doing a
  frantic but precisely orchestrated dance inside the turret of the M
  109A6, firing around a dozen rounds in just over three minutes.  This is
  what happens now.  In a little over 180 seconds, some 2 8 8
  high-explosive shells are exploding on the enemy fuel depot some 12
  miles/20 kilometers away.  Meanwhile, the team of Rangers, in a
  concealed overwatch position, are tapping out battle-damage assessments
  on a small telecommunications terminal, to inform the task force
  commander if the target has been destroyed, or if it has to be hit
  again.  As the fuel dump goes up in flames, it is time to go home.
  "Shoot and scoot" is the name of the game here, and that is exactly what
  happens now.  As soon as the last of the rounds have left the gun tubes,
  the Paladins, PCVS, and their cavalry escorts are running to the
  secondary fire position that has been laid out for them.  Only about a
  ten-to-twelve minute dash from the primary position, the Paladins stop
  here and see if they need to fire more upon the depot, or to take action
  
  to insure their own escape.  In this case, the decision is for a quick
  12-round fire mission of FASCAM mines upon the probable enemy approaches
  to their escape route home and to the depot (to keep them from fighting
  the fires).  This done, everyone heads by planned routes back to
  friendly lines.  Along the way, if one of the OH-58Ds Kiowa Warrior
  scout helicopters sights anything pursuing the retreating Paladins, the
  Paladins themselves can be their own best help, with a quick fire
  mission of Copperheads.  All the gunner/observer on the chopper need do
  is lay the laser designator on the targets, punch in a designator code,
  feed the request for fire mission onto the network and, within sixty
  seconds, a Copperhead will be arching over the battlefield for a direct
  hit on the intruder.
  Since there was no need for extra ammunition, the FAASVs with their
  escorts are now headed back for a rendezvous with the task force
  Paladins back behind friendly lines.  Each M 109A6 is given a grid
  coordinate to meet up with its assigned FAASV, and then the process of
  resupply and clean-up begins.  For the gunners and loaders, this means
  getting out the cleaning rods
  U.S.  ARMY ARTILLEI@Y SYSTEMS n 117
  and Break-Free cleaner to clear the powder residue from the gun barrels
  and breeches, and restocking the ammo and propellant racks.  For the
  driver, it is maintenance of the tracks and checking the vehicle fluids.
  For the commander, mission and ordnance reports, and starting to get
  ready for the next day's fire missions.  Such is the daily life for what
  has become known as the "king of battles," artillery.  And right now,
  the M 109A6 rules the kingdom.
  The Future
  We have spent a lot of words looking at the importance of artillery on
  the modern battlefield.  If this has proven anything, it is that the
  long reach of artillery can "vaporize" entire enemy units at the flick
  of a switch.  And while other types of fire such as that from
  helicopters and tanks can reach out and kill a single vehicle with
  deadly accuracy, artillery can kill many beyond visual range in a single
  strike.  Though this might seem to be enough, there are already
  initiatives afoot within the Army to make cannons even more deadly.  The
  first of these is a new artillery-control system.  While the TACFIRE net
  has been a capable control system, it suffers from several shortcomings.
  One is a shortage of interface "hooks" with other maneuver and
  vehicle-control systems.  Another is the dependence of TACFIRE upon
  large, centrally located computer processors at the battalion artillery
  command post.  The destruction or failure of the TACFIRE processor means
  the loss of the whole system served by that processor.  To get around
  this, the U.S.  Army is starting to deploy a new artillery-control
  
  system called the Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Data System
  (AFATDS).  AFATDS is designed to overcome the TACFIRE's limitations,
  while adding new capabilities that had not even been imagined when
  TACFIRE was designed.  For starters, AFATDS is composed of numerous,
  smaller computer processors that work in what is called a "distributed"
  architecture.  This means that a computer processor can be placed
  anywhere on the AFATDS network and contribute its power to the job of
  running the network.  In addition, the AFATDS consoles and user
  interfaces have been completely redesigned, so that they are easier to
  use and can be rapidly reprogrammed to accommodate new tactics and
  artillery systems.  AFATDS has also been designed to work with and
  "talk" with a wider variety of U.S.  Army systems than TACFIRE, so that
  more people in a given unit can call for and receive artillery support
  when and where they need it.  AFATDS is a long-overdue capability for
  those who manage the big guns.  As for the guns themselves, there are
  several possibilities.  The U.S.  Army has been doing research and
  development on an Advanced Field Artillery System (AFAS).  This is a new
  kind of howitzer that uses a liquid propellant (LP) instead of the
  bagged solid propellants used today.  LPs have the advantage of being
  both more efficient and more capable of being controlled than
  pre-measured bags of solid propellant.  The downside is that storage and
  management of the LP are more difficult, and this has required some very
  advanced chemical engineering just to make it work.  Some in the Army
  argue that it is a "high-risk" technology, not yet mature enough to put
  in the field.  So some artillery experts are promoting an alternative to
  LP, called a 'Unicharge."  Unicharge is a new family of NATO propellants
  that are more efficient and powerful than the normal bagged charges. The
  use of Unicharge requires a slight redesign of the howitzer (a
  1,400-cubic-inch chamber rather than the 1, 100-cubic-inch chamber on
  the M 109A6), but it promises the same kind of range and accuracy as the
  LP weapons currently under development.
  So the question is, which one to develop and field?  If money were not a
  consideration, it is probable that the Paladin would be immediately
  modified to take the Unicharge 15 5mm gun, and the LP technology would
  go back to the laboratories for more work.  But money is an issue, and
  always will be, especially in these times of drawdown and cutback in the
  armed forces.  While the debate over the risks and advantages of LP
  versus solid propellants is beyond the scope of this discussion, it is
  sure to be a volatile and vigorous battle within the artillery
  community.
  On the MLRS side, things are a bit clearer.  The XR-M77 and SADARM
  warheads are ready to be produced; they can be fielded as soon as
  Congress supplies the money.  There is even work beginning on an
  extended-range variant of ATACMS, to strike up to 186 miles/300
  kilometers away.  More is to come.
  
  U.S.  ARMY ARTII.I-ERY SYSI'Ems 119
  arly on the morning of January 16th, 1991, an Iraqi technician was
  walking from one building to another at an air-defense command, control,
  .Lcommunications, and intelligence (CII) center in south central Iraq.
  His name and job are still unknown, but on that night he became,
  briefly, a TV star.  For as he walked to the door of the building ahead
  of him, four bizarrelooking shapes were hovering close to the ground
  eight kilometers to the south.  Suddenly, tongues of fire erupted from
  the hovering shapes, arching like fiery arrows into the buildings.  One
  after another, the vans, antennas, generators, and barracks of the
  command center exploded into flame.  Stunned by the blasts, the
  technician started running, probably trying to reach his duty station.
  He never made it, for as he reached the door to the building and opened
  it, a Hellfire missile flew directly through the door ahead of him.  As
  the warhead detonated, destroying that side of the building, the blast
  consumed the technician, making him one of the first Iraqi casualties of
  Saddam Hussein's insane dream to rule Kuwait.  Video cameras attached to
  the thermal gunsights of the helicopters captured the event in ghostly,
  blurred images the Pentagon released for public distribution.
  The instrument of the technician's death was neither an Air Force F-17A stealth fighter nor a Navy BGM-
  109 Tomahawk cruise missile, but a
  flight of U.S.  Army AH-64A Apache helicopters.  These Army Apaches were
  landing the first blows of Desert Storm.  Even before the high-tech
  F-117s and Tomahawks hit their targets around Iraq, Task Force Normandy
  was striking at a pair of Iraqi air defense centers (known as Objectives
  Nebraska and Oklahoma) along the southern border.  The task force was
  composed of two flights of Apaches (four in each flight; they were
  code-named Team Red and Team White), along with a pair of Air Force
  MH-53J Pave Low special-operations helicopters (for communications,
  navigational, and rescue support if required).  The task force was the
  first element of the Coalition forces to enter enemy territory, and it
  blasted open two holes in the Iraqi air defense barrier.  Destroying
  these targets was vital, since strike aircraft scheduled to hit SCUD
  launchers in western Iraq and other targets had to fly through zones
  controlled by the two air-defense centers.  Unless they were destroyed
  in the opening seconds of the air campaign, there was a real chance that
  Iraqi air defenses might have inflicted heavy losses on the Coalition
  aircraft, and warned other targets deeper in Iraq to get ready.  The
  destruction of these targets was so critical that General Norman
  Schwarzkopf, the CENTCOM commander, demanded a 100% guarantee of
  success.
  U.S.  ARMY AVIA'L ION sysrEMS - 121
  The only officer to step up to the challenge of this guarantee was
  Lieutenant Colonel Richard Cody, an Army Aviation officer of the 10] st
  
  Air Assault Division.  Cody knew that the two air-defense centers had to
  be destroyed with "to-the-second" timing, and observed to be truly
  "dead" at the end of the attack.  Even the best strike aircraft with the
  finest targeting systems could not do this; something else was needed.
  That something was the AH-64A Apache attack helicopter.  Lieutenant
  Colonel Cody felt that the combination of the Apache's firepower,
  superior thermal-imaging sight, and ability to loiter and observe the
  results of its attacks made it the only aircraft in CENTCOM
  capable of the job.
  The results of Task Force Normandy's raid that early January morning
  showed that Cody's confidence in the Apache and the men of the 10 I st
  was not just foolhardy bravado.  As he and the other fifteen Army
  soldiers of the task force were firing their missiles, rockets, and
  cannon shells towards the Iraqis, they were making a statement to the
  world that Army Aviation had truly come of age.  No longer the bastard
  child of an ugly divorce between the post-World War 11 Army and its
  upstart fledgling, the U.S.  Air Force, it was ready to take its place
  as a combat arm for the battlefield commanders of the 1990s and beyond.
  The hostilities that led to the divorce between the Army and its Air
  Corps started after World War 1, when flying had a special attraction
  for visionaries and technological extremists.  These men dreamed of
  mighty bomber fleets that could win a war on the first day with a
  decisive strike on the enemy's economic and political centers.  Army
  generals on the other hand, by nature a conservative bunch, just wanted
  a few airplanes with obedient fliers for ground support, which meant
  strafing enemy trenches, dropping some bombs on command posts and supply
  dumps, spotting for the artillery, and snapping a few reconnaissance
  photos, while preventing enemy planes from doing the same.
  Clashes over the future role of air power culminated in the
  court-martial of General Billy Mitchell in 1925.  This and other
  traumatic struggles gave the officers of the Army Air Corps a collective
  sense of persecution and martyrdom.  Unable to secure recognition as a
  separate service (something the British Royal Air Force had achieved in
  1919 and the German Luftwaffe would attain in 1933), the Army Air Corps
  spent the whole of World War 11 working hard to prove its strategic
  importance, all the while lobbying for its own independent branch.  This
  battle it ultimately won, at the cost of thousands of aircraft and
  fliers lost in heroic daylight bombing missions of sometimes
  questionable value.  With the coming of the atomic bomb, the Army Air
  Corps had the only means to deliver it, and the birth of a separate Air
  Force was inevitable.  In 1947, President Harry Truman signed the
  National Security Act, which created the Department of Defense, and made
  the Air Force an equal branch beside the Army and Navy.  The Air Force
  packed up its planes and bases and left the Army.  All it left behind
  
  were a few spotting planes, liaison and VIP aircraft, and some wobbly
  experimental machines called helicopters (which at the time did not seem
  to have much of a future).  With that meager estate, the surviving
  members of Army Aviation made their new start.
  When Igor Sikorsky started delivering helicopters at the end of World
  War 11, they were fragile and unreliable.  That was to change in the
  Korean War, which gave them their first chance for action-as air
  ambulances.  Thousands of United Nations soldiers owed their lives to
  the noisy "whirlybirds," and a new mission for Army fliers, that of
  "medevac"-or "dust off'-was born.  Throughout the 1950s, advances in
  engine technology gradually increased the most vital clement of
  rotocraft performance: load-lifting and carrying capacity.  During this
  time, both the Army and the Marine Corps were conducting experiments to
  find out just what these flying machines could do for them.  Meanwhile,
  both the Air Force and Navy neglected helicopters, concentrating on
  nuclear-armed bombers, supersonic fighters, and air-to-air guided
  missiles.  In the late 1950s, a breakthrough in technology made the
  helicopter into a full partner in the world of airpower: the gas-turbine
  engine.  As we have seen earlier, gas turbines (selfcontained jet
  engines that deliver torque to a shaft instead of thrust through a
  tailpipe) can produce enormous torque with only a minimum of volume and
  weight.  This makes them the ideal power plant for helicopters, which
  are always trading weight for payload and performance.  The new turbines
  were such an improvement over earlier reciprocating-engine power plants
  that several designs were converted to take the new engines with only
  minimal modifications.
  With the dawn of the 1960s came the first helicopters designed from the
  start to take advantage of turbines.  The most notable of these was the
  Bell Model 204, or UH-1, which became famous as the UH-1 Iroquois, or
  "Huey."  Thousands of these versatile choppers were produced and sent to
  fight in the Vietnam War.  So durable was the UH- I design that new
  versions and derivatives were still being produced in 1993.  One of
  those offspring was the AH-1 Cobra Attack helicopter, which first saw
  combat in 1967 and continues in service with the Army and Marine Corps
  to this day.  These new helicopters allowed the Army and Marines to
  develop new tactics: For the Marines, who had lost so many thousands of
  men storming the beaches of Tarawa, lwo Jima, and other Pacific islands,
  it was the concept of vertical envelopment.@nabling a Marine landing
  force to come ashore behind the enemy without warning.  For the Army, it
  meant the resurrection of the I st Cavalry Division (which had been
  disbanded after the Korean War), and making the entire unit moveable by
  air-or "air mobile"-on a mix of different helicopter types.  The new
  troops-called 11 air cav"-were the most effective force that fought in
  Vietnam.  Able to swoop down on an enemy without warning, their mobility
  unimpaired by swamp or jungle, the air cav became a nasty surprise to
  the Communist forces.  This surprise did not come without a price to the
  
  Americans, though.  The Hueys and other helicopters of their generation
  had virtually no protection against small-arms fire or the man-portable
  SAMs that appeared in the late 1960s.  Thousands of helicopters were
  shot down in Vietnam, so many, in fact, that the Army cannot give an
  exact accounting to this day.  And then there was the human cost.  The
  early turbine choppers lacked ballistic or crash protection for the
  crews or fuel tanks, which resulted in high casualties and terrible
  burns and injuries to crash survivors.  Though
  U.S.  AL@MY AVIAI'ION SYSTEMS a 123
  fixes and new designs were on the way, they never reached units in
  Vietnam before the end of the conflict in the early 1970s.
  The end of the war in Vietnam and the re-emergence of the Soviet Union
  and the Cold War as the Army's key focus meant that Army Aviation had to
  adapt to the new roles and missions of the late 1970s and 1980s.  There
  had been plans to develop a dedicated second-generation attack
  helicopter to replace the Cobra, but the cancellation of the Lockheed
  AH-56 Cheyenne program in the early 1970s put an end to these plans. The
  Cheyenne program suffered from a number of problems, as well as from Air
  Force complaints that it violated existing agreements on what missions
  the Army was allowed to fly.  The final nail in the coffin of the
  Cheyenne may have been its very performance.  Because of its high speed,
  and the fact that it derived lift from stub wings, the AH-56 was seen by
  the Air Force as a technical violation of the Key West agreement.  (This
  agreement, a virtual "treaty" between the Army and Air Force, stated
  that only the Air Force can own armed fixed-wing aircraft.) But above
  all, Cheyenne was killed by the changing nature of the threat.  Designed
  to attack from medium altitudes in a steep dive, and protected only
  against heavy machine-gun fire, it would have fared poorly against the
  radar-controlled automatic cannon and infrared-homing missiles that the
  Soviets and their clients were fielding in growing numbers in the late
  '70s and early'80s.
  Nevertheless, like the Armor branch, Army Aviation recovered from the
  stillborn programs of the 1960s and moved on with improved ideas for the
  future.  Around 1974, they initiated a pair of new programs, the
  Advanced Attack Helicopter (AAH, which became the AH-64) and the Utility
  Tactical Transport Aircraft System (UTTAS, which became the UH-60) to
  replace the venerable but aging AH-1 and UH-1 choppers that made up the
  bulk of the Army's helicopter fleet at that time.  Systems that had been
  planned for inclusion in the AH-56 attack helicopter, notably the TOW
  missile system, were grafted onto modified versions of the AH-1, to
  provide an interim antiarmor capability while the Army waited for new
  chopper designs to reach service.  Finally, the Army began to try out
  new tactical formations and ideas to make use of its growing aviation
  assets.  These included parceling out aviation brigades to all of the
  
  Army's divisions, and not just to dedicated air cavalry formations like
  the I st Cav.  Also, the aviation community began to integrate their
  tactics and operational plans with those of the ground forces, so that
  the overall war-fighting objectives of the Army could more effectively
  be carried out.
  By the early 1980s, these initiatives were beginning to pay off.  Army
  Aviation became a separate branch within the Army in 1983.  (Previously,
  attack helicopter crews belonged to Armor, heavy transport helicopter
  crews belonged to the Transportation Corps, and scout helicopter crews
  belonged to the Artillery!) In this way, the Army was saying to its
  aviators that they were the equals of their Armor, Infantry, and
  Artillery colleagues.  While this may not seem like a big deal, to the
  aviators it was a special recognition of their combat role.  lt has also
  eliminated the kind of infighting that led the Army Air Corps to divorce
  itself from the Army in 1947.  On a more practical level, a whole new
  generation of helicopter types arrived to enhance the Army Aviation
  force.  Some, like the AH-64A Apache and the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior,
  opened up whole new capabilities for the Army, like deep-strike and
  night operations.  Others, like the UH-60A Blackhawk and the CH-47D,
  expanded existing capabilities with improved range and load-carrying
  capacity. The new helicopters were capable of dishing out awesome
  firepower and taking punishment that would have destroyed earlier
  choppers.
  Proof of this capability came in Operation Just Cause, the invasion of
  Panama.  And in Operation Desert Storm, Task Force Normandy opened the
  war, and the mass movement of the 101st Air Assault Division (the only
  division-sized helicopter unit) to the Euphrates River was one of the
  war's final acts.  So powerful had the Army Aviation units become that
  General Franks, the commander of the U.S.  VII Corps during Desert
  Storm, had over 800 helicopters under his command.  Let's take a look at
  some of the tools that have allowed them to compile such an impressive
  record in the past few years.
  The AH-64A Apache Attack Helicopter
  It's a nasty-looking beast.  I mean, just looking at it, you know you
  will never see a civilian version as a Traffic-Copter over the city
  during rush hour.  It hardly looks like an aircraft at all.  As you walk
  around it, this monster looks different from every angle.  A flying
  machine, even a helicopter, is supposed to have smooth lines to assist
  the airflow over its airframe.  Not the AH-64 Apache.  It has all the
  direct, in-your-face brutality of some predatory insect spawned on a
  faraway planet. Except that this one eats tanks, not aphids.  The AH-64
  is currently the ultimate expression of the attack helicopter.  Its
  firepower and armor make it the equivalent of a heavy tank flying about
  the
  
  An AH-64A Apache in your face.  Note tile windshield wiper on the
  gunner's front window and the deployed position ofthe nose-mounted
  sensors and optics: TADS/PNVS above, laser range finder/ designator and
  direct-view optics below.
  U.S.   ARMY AVIA'FION
  battlefield, day or night, in adverse weather, finding and killing
  targets at will, almost immune to enemy weapons.
  Like the M I Abrams, the Apache has its roots in a canceled program.  In
  the case of the AH-64, this was the Lockheed AH-56 Cheyenne.  The
  Cheyenne based its performance more on raw straight-line speed than
  agility and stealth.  Looking for all the world like an angry
  hummingbird, the AH-56 was designed on the mold of the World War 11
  Russian 11-2 Shturmovik ("storm fighter"), an armored dive-bomber built
  around tank-killing cannons.  Shturmovik's twin 23mm guns could rip
  through the roof armor of most Nazi Panzers.  Some Shturmovik aces
  racked up hundreds of tank kills.
  In addition to the main rotor, the Cheyenne was equipped with a
  tailmounted pusher propeller and stubby wings to achieve high speeds
  (for a rotocraft-over 300 mph/480 kph).  The AH-56 was designed to make
  high-speed dives on its targets, using a combination of TOW missiles (it
  was the first helicopter designed to fire the TOW system), 2.75"/70mm
  rockets, and 20mm cannon fire.  The performance of the Cheyenne was
  impressive, but behind the performance la3, some fatal problems.  For
  one thing, the cost of the AH-56 escalated during the years of
  double-digit inflation in the early 1970s.  For another, a structural
  flaw caused the loss of one of the prototypes during testing.  Worst of
  all, the high-speed diving attack of the AH-56 put it in the heart of
  the weapons envelopes of a number of Soviet-designed weapons (such as
  the SA-7 Grail and SA-8 Gecko SAMS, and ZSU-23-4 Shilka mobile
  air-defense gun).
  Thus, the stage was set for the cancellation of the Cheyenne.  When that
  happened, there were two major results.  First, the Air Force initiated
  the development of a dedicated close-air-support (CAS) aircraft called
  AttackExperimental (shortened to AX), which eventually became the A-IOA
  Thunderbolt 11.  Second, the Army was given permission to start up a
  replacement program for the AH-56.  That program was known as the
  Advanced Attack Helicopter (AAH).  And this became the AH-64 Apache
  attack helicopter.
  The AAH program was designed to provide the Army with a helicopter
  capable of day and night, adverse-weather operations against enemy armor
  and other hardened targets.  The Army selected a pair of contractors,
  Bell Helicopter-Textron of Forth Worth, Texas (the maker of the classic
  
  AH- I Cobra), with their YAH-63 design, and Hughes Helicopter of Culver
  City, California, and Mesa, Arizona, with their YAH-64, to build
  prototypes for a competitive "fly-off."  Both were excellent designs.
  The evaluation was long and arduous, and both machines were tested to
  the limits of their capabilities.  1-@i the end, the Army judged the
  Hughes Helicopters (as of mid- 1 993 McDonnell Douglas Helicopter
  Company) entry to be superior in flight performance, cockpit layout, and
  systems integration.  The Army then moved ahead to full-scale
  development of the Hughes design, now designated the AH64A Apache.  In
  1982, the Apache was deemed ready for production, and the first unit was
  fielded in 1986.  The Army has ordered 811 Apaches from McDonnell
  Douglas Helicopter, with additional units sold to Israel, Egypt, Saudi
  Arabia, the UAE, and Greece.
  The AAH specification made no compromises in the areas of sensors,
  weapons, agility, and survivability.  Unlike the AH-56, where raw speed
  was the goal, the AAH design emphasized the ability to sneak along at
  low level, survey the battlefield, sort out the targets, and launch
  weapons from long range, outside the enemy's anti-aircraft range.
  Like the Tank Automotive Command (TACOM) with its common mobility
  specification for all new vehicle designs, the Army Aviation Center at
  St.  Louis, Missouri, has mandated that all new helicopter designs meet
  certain standards of maneuverability, ballistic tolerance against enemy
  gunfire, and load-carrying.  For example, the AH-64 is invulnerable to
  7.62mm projectiles, tolerant against 12.7mm/.50-caliber projectiles, and
  survivable (able to get home if hit in the power
  plant/drivetrain/flight-control systems) against 23mm high-explosive
  projectiles.
  The airframe structure is designed to take a 20-G (twenty times the
  force of gravity) crash without killing the crew, and the fuel tanks are
  crash-resistant and self-sealing.
  New U.S.  helicopters have infrared (IR) signature suppression designed
  in from the start.  Infrared-homing missiles are a major threat to
  low-flying aircraft.  The seeker head on an enemy IR-homing missile is
  looking for the hot exhaust pipe of a gas-turbine engine.  One way to
  reduce the missile's effectiveness is to mix the hot exhaust gases with
  a large volume of cooler air, deflect them away from the aircraft, and
  insulate the exhaust pipes, so that the missile does not "see" hot
  metal.  The AH-64A Apache's "Black Hole" IR suppressors accomplish this
  very effectively.
  Helicopters also need electronic countermeasures (ECM) to survive on the
  modern battlefield.  ECM is a secretive, ever-changing field; and the
  technical perfomance specifications of particular systems are usually
  classified, but a typical "suite" of these black boxes includes:
  
  o A radar-warning receiver, to alert the crew when they are being
  tracked by an enemy radar, so they can take evasive action.
  - A radar jammer that transmits signals that drown out or confuse
  hostile radars.
  - Chaff dispensers that release a cloud of metal-coated strips that
  strongly reflect particular radar frequencies, to clutter up the enemy's
  radar screen, concealing real targets.
  - Flare dispensers that can "decoy" infrared-homing missiles.
  - An infrared jammer-typically an electrically heated "brick" on
  the tail boom of the helicopter that radiates so strongly in a partic
  ular IR wavelength that the sensitive seeker head of an incoming missile
  is saturated and confused.  The current model is the ALQ 144, nicknamed
  "disco ball" because of its distinctive shape.
  All this makes the current generation of U.S.  helicopters the most
  survivable in the world.  Not invulnerable, but very tough indeed as
  compared to their
  U.S.  ARMY AVIA'T'ION SYSTEMS - 127
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  An Army CWO shows series illustrator Laura Alpher one ofthe avionics
  bays on an AH-64A Apache attack helicopter.  JoH, D.  GRFS114V
  Vietnam-era predecessors.  As for load-carrying, the experience of the
  Southeast Asian jungles has made hot-climate operations a requirement
  for all new helicopter designs.  The magic number "4,000/95" is used as
  the measure of helicopter performance.  This number represents the
  vertical flight performance that a particular helicopter can achieve
  while carrying its standard payload in an ambient temperature of 95'
  Fahrenheit/35'Celsius at a 95% throttle setting.  This approximates the
  worst possible engine conditions (gas turbines generate their greatest
  horsepower in cold temperatures; their least in hot, humid climates)
  that might be encountered in places like the Persian Gulf and Panama.
  Considering the geography of the world's trouble spots, this
  specification makes good sense.
  As you walk around the Apache, you get the feeling that nobody actually
  designed it, but that a group of guys with blindfolds stuck together a
  bunch of components with glue and sticky tape.  The rotor blades droop,
  the fuselage sits at an almost absurd upward angle, and stuff juts out
  of the thing this way and that.  But all that is misleading; the Apache
  is one of the most impressively integrated weapons systems in the world.
  The outer skin is mostly aluminum semi-monocoque (i.e., the skin and its
  underlying ribs are formed into a single load-bearing structure); and
  much of this consists of access panels.  The engine covers are designed
  to support the weight of service personnel and be used as work
  platforms.  In addition, the entire aircraft is designed to be folded,
  packed up, and carried in a variety of Air Force transport aircraft.
  The two engines are General Electric T-700-GE-701 Cs with a rated output
  of 1,800 shaft horsepower (shp) each.  They are coupled into a common
  main transmission, with the tail rotor being driven by a long shaft
  running the length of the tail boom.  This tail rotor, like those on all
  conventional single-main-rotor helicopters, is used to counteract the
  rotational torque of the main rotor to maintain the proper flight
  attitude.  The main rotor head, which is above the transmission, carries
  a four-bladed main rotor, which is designed to be more efficient than
  the two-bladed UH- I and AH- I designs of the 1960s.  More blades
  U.S.  ARMY AVIAI'ION SySr I LMS - 129
  give you more lift and a smoother, quieter ride-provided that you have
  the engine power to drive them at sufficient speed, and the engineering
  skill to design a rotor head that keeps them balanced, controlled, and
  firmly attached to the aircraft.  Some Russian designs have as many as
  five or six blades.
  In fact, the first real sign that most folks have that a helicopter has
  four blades instead of two is when the familiar "whomp-whomp" sound of
  
  the twin rotor is replaced with an aggressive "growl."
  Most of the avionics and other "black boxes" are housed in a pair of
  fairings along the sides of the forward fuselage, and these provide
  steps to climb into the cockpit of the Apache. The cockpit itself is
  separated into forward (for the copilot/gunner) and rear (for the pilot)
  positions by a thick, bulletproof transparent plate.  All of the canopy
  windows are "flat" panels, which are specially shaped to minimize sun
  glint (reflections), which can show an enemy the position of the
  helicopter. The cockpit structure is armored to withstand a direct hit
  by high-explosive 23mm cannon shells.  Both positions in the AH-64 have
  the standard flight controls (cyclic to control forward/aft pitch, and
  collective to control power to the main rotor) and displays to pilot the
  aircraft, though each has instruments for the specific task of each
  operator.
  The most important of these are the readouts for the Martin Marietta
  Target-Acquisition Designation Sight and Pilot Night-Vision Sensor
  (TADS/PNVS) system, which is mounted in the nose of the Apache.  The
  PNVS portion of the system is located in the top turret of the system,
  and is composed of a thermal-imaging sight (similar to the technology on
  the Abrams and Bradley) whose movement is tied to the movement of the
  pilot's helmet.  The helmet is a remarkable item.  Individually fitted
  and adjusted to each crew member, it allows him or her to aim the
  aircraft's weapons and sensors with a simple turn of the head.
  This system is used whenever the Apache is operated under adverse
  weather, in heavy fog or dust, or at night.  The pilot's view is
  displayed on a small round screen attached to the helmet that snaps down
  directly in front of the pilot's right eye, above the cheek.  This
  eyepiece also displays other navigational and fire-control data so that
  the pilot always has the information needed to get around the
  battlefield.  The rest of the instruments on the control panel are
  designed so that under blackout conditions they will not impair the
  pilot's night vision.  Most of them are what are called "strip"
  indicators, meaning that they show their data as a vertical line, but
  there are also some circular dials like those you might see on an
  automobile dashboard.  When the Apache was designed, the cockpit layout
  was considered quite advanced.  Next-generation systems (such as the
  AH-64D Longbow Apache models) will replace most individual instruments
  with a pair of large multifunction computer-controlled video displays.
  The primary navigational system of the Apache is the Litton
  AttitudeHeading Reference System (AHRS), now standard on most Army
  helicopters.  This inertial reference system works with an ASN-137
  Doppler-Velocity Measuring System (a small downward-looking radar which
  senses the movement of the helicopter over the ground).  Over a period
  of several hours, the AHRS tends to "drift" from an exact positional
  
  fix, so most Apaches have a NAVSTAR GPS receiver in the front cockpit
  that lets the gunner manually punch in corrected data.  A modification
  enabling the AHRS to automatically accept GPS updates will be installed
  soon.
  In the front cockpit are the primary controls for the Apache's weapons
  systems.  While the weapons can be fired from either cockpit, it is the
  gunner in front who has the job of putting the AH-64's ordnance on
  target.  The weapons are aimed by the TADS/PNVS system, which is housed
  in the lower part of the nose-sensor turret.  It is composed of another
  FLIR sensor, a daylight television camera, a set of direct-view
  magnification optics, a laser rangefinder, and a laser designator for
  targeting of laser-guided ordnance.  Much like the pilot in the rear
  cockpit, the gunner has a helmet-mounted sight with a display eyepiece,
  which provides a targeting view as well as relevant targeting data.
  Like the pilot's PNVS, the TADS is slaved to the movement of the
  gunner's helmet, and is boresighted to what the gunner sees.  To engage
  a target, all the gunner needs to do is select an appropriate weapon,
  place the "death dot" of the helmet-mounted-sight-targeting reticule on
  the target, and pull the trigger.  The fill-control system does most of
  the work after that.
  The purpose of any weapon is to kill a target, and the AH-64 can destroy
  almost any class of target that it can detect.  In a turret under the
  chin of the Apache is an M230 30mm chain gun (built by McDonnell Douglas
  Helicopter).  This gun fires a lightweight 30mm round (rather than the
  heavy 30mm round used in the A-IO's GAU-8 cannon), based on the
  Aden/DEFA ammunition family in use since the early 1950s.  It fires a
  shell called an M789, with a tiny shaped charge warhead which can punch
  through several inches/centimeters of armor.  This means that it can
  disable a tank from the rear or top, or kill virtually any APC or
  fighting vehicle in use today (except perhaps the Bradley or the British
  Warrior).  The M789 round also has a fragmenting case, which makes it
  extremely effective against exposed ground troops.  The linkless feed
  system has a 1,200-round capacity.
  The rest of the Apache's weapons are stowed on the two stub wings along
  the sides of the fuselage.  Each wing has two underwing hardpoints for
  missile and rocket launchers.  There are also plans to add a hardpoint
  on top of the wing for a pair of small air-to-air missiles.  On some
  U.S.  Army Apaches, the Stinger missile is used for air-to-air combat.
  Though nobody had the opportunity to use them during Desert Storm, test
  dogfights using Stinger and the M230 chain gun indicate that the Apache
  is equipped to deal with any aircraft that comes within range.  This is
  not to say that AH-64 crews are expected to shoot down high-perfomance
  jets.  But they can kill other helicopters or ground support aircraft,
  like the Russian SU-25 Frogfoot.
  
  Since the first helicopters were armed, small unguided rockets have been
  part of their armament.  The AH-64 is no exception; it can carry an
  impressive load of 2.75"/70mm rockets (produced by BEI Defense Systems
  Company).  Known today by their nicknarue of Hydra-70, these carry
  everything from a
  U.S.  AIZMY AVIATION SYSTEM, o 131
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  Laser Seeker
  10-lb/4.5-kg HE (M151) warhead, to smoke (M264) and illumination (M257)
  warheads, a submunition warhead (M261), and even a flechette warhead
  (the M255, packed with small projectiles shaped like carpet nails).
  Each rocket consists of an MK66 rocket motor, a warhead, and an
  appropriate fuse (pointdetonating, delay, or airburst).  Hydra-70s are
  normally carried in nineteenround launcher pods.  The AH-64 can carry up
  to four such launchers, though during Desert Storm two were usually
  carried. During deep-strike operations, an extended-range fuel tank can
  replace one or more of the rocket pods.
  From the very beginning of the Apache's design, the need for a really
  long-range anti-armor missile was clearly understood.  The TOW missile
  is effective, but the need to trail a guidance wire limits the range to
  about 3.7 km/2.3 miles, and the firing helicopter must remain stationary
  while the subsonic TOW flies out to its target.  Thus, as part of the
  AAH program specification, a new anti-armor missile was defined as part
  of the system package.  Rockwell International and Martin Marietta
  developed and produced the missile, which is type-classified as the AGM1
  14 Hellfire.  Helifire is a larger missile than TOW, weighing in at
  something like 99.6 Ib/45.3 kg.  Unlike TOW, it is guided by the laser
  designator of the TADS/PNVS system in the nose of the Apache, which
  allows it to have a much longer range (in excess of 5 miles/8
  kilometers) and much higher speed-supersonic.  It also has a
  considerably larger warhead than TOW-2, with more than 20 Ib/9.1 kg of
  high explosive in the tandem warhead (two shaped charges, one behind the
  other) of the AGM- I 14F version.  If you are wondering just how much
  damage such a warhead can do, consider that the earlier AGM- I 14Cs,
  
  with a single-charge warhead, not only penetrated the armor of Iraqi
  T-72s, but blew them completely apart at the welds!
  A Hellfire finds its target because an optical seeker in the missile's
  nose is programmed to look for the spot of laser light "painted" on the
  target by the TADS/PVNS of the Apache, the Mast-Mounted Sight of the
  OH-58D Kiowa Warrior, the GLDS system on a FIST-V, or another laser
  designator.  Even the
  132 0 ARMORED (-AV
  A cutaway view of the AGM- I 14F Helifire anti-armor missile with its
  dual-charge warhead.
  J,,AR)4@E17IRPRISt.5,Llll.  H@L,iR,,Alplit@R LANTIRN laser-targeting pod
  on the belly of an Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle can be used to designate
  targets for the Helifire.
  Unlike a lone fighter-bomber dropping a single laser-guided bomb (LGB)
  on a single target, many Apaches might be firing many Helifires at
  different targets on the same battlefield at the same time.  Each
  Hellfire needs to "know" which spot of laser light to attack.  So
  Hellfire (as well as all other current laserguided weapons) was designed
  to home in only on a particular laser spot that is pulsing with a
  particular digital code set by the firing aircraft.  This not only
  solves the problem of keeping multiple missiles on course to the
  different targets, but it also enables one helicopter or ground observer
  to target Helifires being fired from several helicopters.
  This allows the firing helicopter to be behind a hill protected from
  enemy fire (the Helifire's autopilot can be programmed to arch over
  intervening terrain), while another with a laser designator "paints" the
  target from a completely different direction.  The OH-58D, with its
  Mast-Mounted Sight (MMS), can poke the MMS head above a tree or
  ridgeline and guide Helifires to their targets without exposing any
  other portion of the helicopter.  Another interesting capability of
  Hellfire is that an Apache can ripple-fire a salvo of missiles with a
  short interval (say five seconds) between missile launches.  If the
  Apache gunner has a platoon of three or four tanks sitting next to each
  other, he can direct the laser onto the first until the first missile
  hits, and then rapidly shift to the next tank, and the next, until he
  runs out of missiles or targets.  Helifire can even be used as an
  air-to-air missile, should the Apache be out of Stingers.  If an
  aircraft like a helicopter gets hit by a Hellfire, it is one dead bird!
  During its development, Heitfire has stayed on schedule, and pretty much
  on budget, with few technical glitches; and only a few modifications
  have been needed.  A dual-mode warhead (to overcome the effects of
  reactive armor) and a new digital autopilot (to allow the gunner to
  
  select a high parabolic or low, terrain-hugging path to the target) were
  added to the basic -A model to create the AGM- I 14F variant currently
  deployed on both the AH-64A Apache and the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior.  There
  are also plans for a millimeter-wave guided version, called Longbow
  Hellfire, for use later in this decade.  What is it like to actually use
  this technology?  I recently had the opportunity to fly in the front
  seat of an AH-64A Apache at Fort Hood, Texas, as a guest of the Ill
  Corps.  My instructor pilot was a chief warrant officer fourth class
  (CW-4) named Sandy, a lean six-tooter who spoke with the vaguely
  Southwestern drawl that a lot of aviators adopt.  From my point of view,
  the most important part of our preflight conversation was the question
  "How many hours of stick-time do you have?"
  "Oh, about five thousand total," Sandy replied, and then continued.
  "Twenty-five hund'rd in Snakes [AH-Is], and twenty-five hundred more in
  the 'Pache."
  I knew I could relax.  Not always a happy airline flyer, I do like
  helicopter flying, especially with an experienced CW-4 doing the
  driving, and Sandy
  U.S.  ARNIY AVIATIC)N SYSTEMS - 133
  would prove to be as smooth on the stick as the Texan Van Cliburn is on
  a Steinway.  Before my hop that evening, I had the opportunity to get
  some time in the Apache flight simulator; and I also spent about thirty
  minutes getting fitted for my flight suit and the helmet-mounted
  eyepiece sight.  Fitting the helmet and sight is not so much difficult
  as tedious.  As the Texas sun set in the west, Sandy and I headed out to
  our Apache; and I climbed into the gunner's position and buckled up.
  The harness is a fivepoint restraint similar to those used by race car
  drivers.  All that is needed to get locked in is to push each of the
  buckles into the central harness lock and tighten up the belts.  The
  straps are released by just twisting the buckle knob, and the belts come
  free.  The seat is extremely comfortable.  You feel like you're sitting
  inside a large, transparent greenhouse.  After I got the helmet on and
  the sight adjusted, it was just a matter of waiting for Sandy to finish
  the preflight routines and get the engines running.
  While he did all this, Sandy was kind enough to keep me fully posted on
  the intercom.  The start-up sequence proceeded smoothly, and I was able
  to nionitor it on the instruments in the front cockpit.  The only
  unpleasant nioment came when we were backing up from our parking
  position on the ramp to the taxiway.  During that time, ey-haust from
  the turbines was sucked into the air-conditioning system and fed through
  the vents into the cockpit.  Sandy had warned me about this.  It only
  smells like a cockpit fire, he told me, but it's quite harmless.  He was
  right.  It smelled like the diesel exhaust you get when you stand behind
  
  a transit bus.  As a matter of fact, the air-conditioning system is not
  really there for the comfort of the crew, it's for the onboard
  electronics and instruments.  Nevertheless, it's worth the occasional
  odors, especially when you're wearing a thick Nomexg (fire-resistant)
  flight suit.
  Taking off in a helicopter is almost exactly the same as the feeling you
  get the moment a mountain cable car lifts out of its barn-an odd
  vertical lurch followed by a lean forward.  In spite of this, you feel
  pretty safe in the Apache.  For my part, my first impression was that I
  was sitting in an armored bathtub.  There is ample protection around you
  (it's designed to stop impacts of projectiles up to 23mm cannon
  high-explosive rounds, remember).  What with that, and the five-point
  restraint system, you develop a feeling of security that the simple lap
  belt on an MD-80 just doesn't provide.  (A note to the airlines: Your
  passengers will stay calmer if they hear what the pilot up front is
  saying.) Once we had taxied into position and obtained clearance from
  the tower, we lifted off into the dusky sky, accompanied by two or three
  other Apaches and a Sikorsky UH-60L Blackhawk carrying several members
  of my research team.  We cruised through the Texas night out to the
  demonstration area at a smooth 145 knots/265 kph, with the other Apaches
  and the Blackhawk in trail.  The normal ride on a single-rotor
  helicopter is something like sitting on a chandelier during an
  earthquake.  The aircraft always seems to be vibrating around and from a
  single point over your head.  But because the Apache main rotor has four
  blades, the ride goes much easier.  Once we got to the demonstration
  area, the first item on the agenda was a demo of what the -64 can do
  acrobatically.  I have to admit that my enthusiasm for this wasn't
  exactly unqualified, but with my growing confidence in Sandy, I sucked
  it in and decided to see what my tolerance limits were.
  First we went into a hover at about 1,000 feet/305 meters above the
  countryside.  Strangely-I have no idea why-heights always seem less
  impressive in a helicopter than they do atop a tall building like the
  Empire State.  Sandy then came on the intercom and told me to stand by
  while he put his bird through its paces.  Rapidly, we transitioned to a
  series of sharp banks, dives, and climbs.  Suffice it to say that the
  AH-64 has the agility to enrage an enemy gunner on the ground.  The
  physical sensation was about like riding the Space Mountain roller
  coaster at Disney World in Florida.  In Sandy's skilled hands, the
  aircraft hovered, turned, soared up, dove down, accelerated forward and
  back, and most remarkably, did over fifty knots sidewayys.  I have to
  say that Sandy did all this in such an entertaining way that I was too
  busy being impressed to turn pale.  That agility, of course, is supposed
  to make life harder on ground gunners and SAM operators and safer for
  the Apache air crews.
  The AH-64 requires a delicate touch, not unlike that of a fighter
  
  aircraft.  But like a fighter, its sensitive flight controls reward that
  touch.  The precision with which Sandy executed the maneuvers was a
  message in and of itself.  He always told me beforehand what would
  happen, partially to warn me and partially, I think, so that I could
  appreciate the skill involved.  Having flown the simulator just that
  afternoon, I did.  The aircraft itself radiates a feeling of power and
  solidity, and an experienced pilot like Sandy only makes it better.
  Very quickly I was enthralled.
  With the preliminaries completed, Sandy headed the Apache off into the
  Texas night.  Because the gunner sits in the front seat of the -64, he
  surely has the best seat in the house.  If you can imagine the view in a
  particularly welldesigned car, then double that sensation and imagine
  yourself up in the air as well.  It's how an eagle sees the world.  If
  you have an aversion to heights, don't worry about it.  That doesn't
  seem to matter if you're sitting down and strapped in.  Suddenly you're
  at home up there.  In front of you are some of the most interesting
  tools you've ever seen.  And they're not all that hard to use.
  Soon you're no longer an eagle, but an owl.  For Apache is most of all a
  night hunter-except for you as an Apache gunner, it's not night at all.
  Outside it was clouding up with an impending thunderstorm; things were
  starting to look like the inside of a cow.  To the naked eye there was
  no moon or stars, but with the thermal-imaging sight every detail on the
  ground was clear in the green-and-white display.  You have a choice of
  your field of view.  And when you spot something interesting, you can
  zoom in on it by just clicking a button on the TADS controls.  At that
  point your fire-control systems can (at another flick of the controls)
  lock on the target, and track the target automatically if it moves. This
  greatly lightens the workload, and allows the gunner to observe and
  select other targets if desired.  The whole point of the Apache, after
  all, is to make life harder on the enemy by making it easy on the good
  guys.
  U.S.  ARMY AVIATION SYSTEMS - 135
  As we continued our flight around the Texas countryside, Sandy took the
  liberty to show me a little Air Combat Maneuvering (ACM) technique on
  the UH-60L Blackhawk chase helicopter trailing us.  As Sandy yanked the
  big attack chopper around to get onto its tail, I was quickly able to
  lock up the Blackhawk and track it through the TADS.  Sandy told me that
  a Stinger, a Hellfire, or the M230 chain gun would all have been options
  at this point had this been a shooting engagement.  All I would have
  done is keep the "death dot" on the other helicopter, and the ordnance
  of choice would have inevitably impacted it.  While there is some
  additional technique involved when the target is evading, the basics are
  quite simple to learn and rapidly mastered.
  
  As the storm gathered around us, it was time to head home.  During the
  approach into the field at Fort Hood, the crosswind gusts grew until the
  trees on the ground were shedding leaves and leaning into the prairie
  squall that would hit us later that evening.  In spite of this, the
  Apache was steady, and Sandy's control of it authoritative.  Landing in
  the Ali-64 is just a simple flare, and then you are on the ground.
  Before I even knew it, we were rolling back to the parking ramp, where
  we'd soon talk over the flight with Sandy and the ground crew.  All in
  all, a thoroughly impressive demonstration of the Apache's capabilities.
  Perhaps most impressive of all, though, was that all the things I did
  that night, I did at night.  Sandy clearly had no qualms about operating
  at night on the fringes of a thunderstorm with a civilian in the front
  seat; and that shows a tremendous confidence in the aircraft, as well as
  in his own experience and skill level.  Wherever you are when you read
  this, Sandy, thanks for the look and the ride!
  The Apache is clearly the battle tank of the Army's aerial fleet.  Its
  ability to carry a huge load of different weapons at any time, day or
  night, and in almost any weather, makes it the weapon of choice for the
  commander who absolutely, positively has to destroy something hostile.
  According to Army records, the Apaches deployed during Desert Storm
  knocked out:
  * 837 tanks and tracked vehicles
  * 501 wheeled vehicles
  * 66 bunkers and radar sites
  * 12 helicopters (on the ground)
  9AM
  Two green-screen Multifunction Displays (MFDS) dominate the pilot's
  station in the AH-64D Longbow Apache.  The displays are surrounded by
  buttons that allow the pilot to choose various options and readout
  "pages."  The small dis play above the right-hand MFDs is for the
  navigational systems.  Note the small number ofanalog backup instruments
  for use in the event of battle damage or power failure.
  tt, L),,t ,i s Iltill lIP7[R
  136 - ARMORED (.'AV
  - 10 fighter aircraft (on the ground)
  ù 120 artillery sites
  ù 42 SAM and AAA gun sites
  
  In addition to the listed kills, the Apache also assisted in capturing
  4,764 Iraqi prisoners.  And this takes us back to where we first started
  this discussion.  For while the Apache is an excellent weapons system
  today, there is a massive upgrade plan that is being implemented for the
  future.  In late 1996 a new Apache will enter production.  Like the M
  IA2 and Paladin programs, the Army plans to digitize the Apache, with
  many of the capabilities that advanced ground vehicles have received.
  Thus, the Army Aviation and Troop Command at St.  Louis, Missouri, has
  given McDonnell Douglas a contract to develop the AH-64D Longbow.   Like
  many of the other new Army systems being fielded as part of General
  Sullivan's new force, the AH-64D will be re-manufactured from existing
  AH-64A airframes.
  The plan is to strip out all of the existing electronic systems and
  replace them with new digital systems tied to a 1553 data bus.  In
  addition, all of the cockpit instrumentation will be replaced with a
  combination of multifunction displays (MFDS) to ease crew workload. This
  is an important point, because on the AH-64D model, there is going to be
  a brand-new sensor system called Longbow.  Longbow is a mushroom-shaped
  radar mounted on top of the Apache's rotor mast.  The Longbow
  millimeter-wave radar is designed to see ground and air targets in any
  weather, day or night.  The AH-64D "pops up" from behind masking terrain
  or trees, and the radar makes just a few sweeps (it can scan either 360'
  around the Apache or just small pie-shaped sectors).  Because the
  Longbow is designed for stealth, it is hard for enemy sensors to
  intercept or detect.  Once the Longbow has made its sweep, the Apache
  drops
  A prototype AH-64D Longbow banks sharply in flight testing near Mesa,
  Arizona.  Note the inast-mounted radome and the lull load of'sixteen
  AGM- 1 14 Hellfire missiles.  tf, I),,, ill I),,t i,,,IIIR
  U.S.  ARNIY AVIA'I ION SYSI-@.Ml, n 137 back down under the terrain, and
  the onboard computer goes to work.  Within seconds, the radar's computer
  processor can detect and classify up to 256 targets by the following
  five categories:
  * tracked ground vehicle
  * wheeled ground vehicle
  * air-defense vehicle
  * airborne fast fixed-wing aircraft
  * airborne helicopter
  The computer assigns each target a track ID number, and gives it a
  time/position and a speed and heading fix.  Then the data is transmitted
  
  to every other airborne AH-64D and other compatible systems tied into
  the network (like FVIS, MCS, and AFATDS).  Thus, the Longbow Apache is
  functioning as a battle-management platform (like a smaller version of
  the Air Force J-STARS radar plane or the Navy's Aegis cruisers).
  Tied to the development of Longbow has been a new version of Hellfire
  called Hellfire Longbow.  One of the guidance options for Longbow
  Helifire is a millimeter-wave seeker that can be programmed to fly to a
  point over a suspected target, where it switches itself on.  The Longbow
  Helifire seeker is called a "brilliant" seeker, because it can
  discriminate between the different types of targets described above.
  When it sees its assigned target, the missile dives into the target,
  killing it.  While an Ali-64A Apache can fire and guide only one
  Hellfire at a time, the AH-64D can share Longbow radar data and fire up
  to sixteen Longbow Hellfire in a few seconds.  As a bonus, the fire of
  many Apaches can be coordinated from a single Apache, allowing
  concentrated massing of fire.  A flight of four AH-64Ds, each carrying a
  full load of sixteen Longbow Hellfires, might destroy up to 12 8 targets
  in just a few minutes.  Even allowing for misses, it would be like
  annihilating three or four armored battalions in a few salvoes.  Such is
  the firepower envisioned by General Sullivan: A handful of helicopters
  can literally demolish a tank brigade with the flick of a switch.
  Most models ofthe Blackhawk helicopter can be fitted with the External
  Stores Support System (ESSS).  The external fuel tanks hold 230
  gallons/920 liters each. This version is the MH-60K Special Operations
  Aircraft.  which also carries an air-to-air refueling probe.  as well as
  Currently, the plan is to equip one of every three AH-64Ds with the
  Longbow radar.  Deliveries to the field begin in early 1997, with the
  first units equipped by late 1997.
  The UH-60 Blackhawk Utility Helicopter
  One of the hardest jobs in the world is trying to replace a classic. The
  HMMWV, for instance, had the tough job taking over from the Jeep, which
  it did-splendidly.  And in doing that, it showed how common-sense
  engineering and mature technologies can make a new classic.  This was
  the job Army Aviation took on when it set out to replace the ubiquitous
  helicopter of the Vietnam War, the UH- I Iroquois.  The Huey was loved
  by its crews, and appreciated by all of the military forces that have
  flown it.  Even so, the UH-1 had to be replaced.  There was an urgent
  need for an aircraft with improved ballistic protection,
  crashworthiness, load-carrying capacity, and survivability.
  To obtain this replacement, the Army initiated the Utility Tactical
  Transport Aircraft System (UTTAS) program in the early 1970s.  Three
  competitors submitted UTTAS program bids (Bell, Boeing-Vertol, and
  Sikorsky), with Boeing-Vertol and Sikorsky being selected to build
  
  prototypes for a competitive "fly off."  By 1974, both Boeing-Vertol,
  with their YUH-6] A, and Sikorsky, with the YUH-60A (called the S-70 by
  Sikorsky), were ready to go head to head for the right to build
  UTTAS-clearly the biggest post-Vietnam Army Aviation program, both in
  terms of money and units.  By 1976, the competition was completed, and
  the Sikorsky entry was judged the winner.  Christened the UH-60A
  Blackhawk by the Army, it headed into production in 1979, with Sikorsky
  and the Army entering into a series of multi-year procurement contracts
  that still continue.  To date, the Army has taken delivery, or has on
  order, over 1,500 UH-60s and their derivatives.  In addition, Sikorsky
  has delivered hundreds of UH-60 and S-70 derivatives to other branches
  of the military (the U.S. Navy tises them for antisubmarine warfare and
  surveillance as the SH-60B/F Seahawk), as well as numerous foreign
  countries such as Japan, Turkey, and Australia, to name just a few.  The
  UH-60/S-70 airframe has been a huge seller for Sikorsky, and has given
  birth to a number of different versions, ranging from the basic UH-60L
  being produced today, to the bizarre-looking MH-60K special-operations
  variant (one Sikorsky engineer described it as the "Battlestar
  Galactica") for the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment at Fort
  Campbell, Kentucky.
  The basic statistics of the UH-60 family mask the importance of the
  Blackhawk in and on Army operations.  Utilizing a pair of General
  Electric turboshaft engines, the Blackhawk has a basic weight (dry) of
  around 10,600 Ib/4,818.2 kg, and a maximum gross weight of around 22,000
  Ib./ I 0,000 kg.  The flight crew consists of a Pilot, copilot, and crew
  chief, and there are provisions for carrying eleven fully equipped
  troops, or fourteen passengers.  There are also provisions for carrying
  a pair of M60 7.62mm machine guns in mounts
  U.S.  ARMY AVIATION SYS@l'EMI, n 139
  along the sliding side doors.  Top speed is around 160 knots/292.6 kph,
  with an endurance of roughly 2.3 hours, and a maximum range on internal
  fuel of 330 miles/603.5 kilometers.  Its basic mission as a medium-lift
  helicopter is to move troops and their equipment into landing zones for
  air assaults and to haul supplies into places ground transport cannot
  reach.  In addition, the UH-60 has been used extensively as a
  medical-evacuation helicopter, though a dedicated "dust oft" version has
  yet to be procured by the Army.  The UH-60 is designed for rapid
  deployment by air, with a C-130 able to hold one Blackhawk, and a C-5
  able to hold six.
  The UH-60 can carry an External Stores Support System (ESSS), which
  consists of a pair of stub wings (on each side of the fuselage), with
  plumbing and wiring for extra fuel tanks, cargo pods, "Volcano"
  anti-armor mine dispensers, or even four-round Hellfire missile
  launchers.  While the Blackhawk cannot fire Hellfires by itself (it
  
  lacks a laser target designator), it can launch missiles at targets
  "painted" by any other system equipped with a target designator.
  The L-model of the UH-60 is quickly becoming the Army Aviation
  equivalent of the HMMNW.  It can lift the majority of the equipment
  found in light, airborne, or air assault divisions.  Thus, the UH-60L is
  regarded as a "divisional" lift asset, reducing the burden on the Army's
  limited supply of CH-47 heavy lift choppers.  As the name implies, the
  UH-60L is a follow-on to the basic UH-60A, with a number of
  modifications.  These include:
  * Improved T-701 engines, with 1,940 shp per engine.  In addition, the
  transmission has been up-rated to accommodate the additional horsepower.
  * Minor structural improvements have been made to the airframe
  and external cargo hook to accommodate slung payloads up to
  9,000 lb/4,090 kg.  This allows the UH-60L to externally carry pay loads
  up to the size of an M 1097 "Heavy Hummer" HMM@.
  * The flight-control system has been modified to be more resistant to
  electromagnetic interference (EMI) that can occur from flying around
  power lines and other types of heavy-duty electrical equip ment.
  The cockpit instrumentation layout has been redesigned to reduce crew
  workload, particularly during night operations while utilizing
  night-vision goggles (NVGs).  In particular, all of the cockpit light
  ing has been revised so that it is compatible with NVG usage.
  All of this makes the -L model Blackhawk the world's best
  medium-transport helicopter.  Only the Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey being
  readied for production for the Marines is in the same class, and it is
  years from entering service.  So what is the UH-60L like in the air?  It
  may be the easiest and most comfortable helicopter to fly in all of the
  U.S.  inventory.  As you sit down in the right seat (the pilot sits in
  the right seat, the opposite of fixed-wing aircraft, though like most
  two-seater aircraft, the Blackhawk can be flown from either position)
  and adjust the seat to a comfortable position, the first thing that
  strikes you is the logic of all the instruments.  Most of the important
  ones are of the "strip" variety, meaning that they are like electronic
  thermometers, showing their information by the rise and fall of an
  illuminated light along a scale.  In addition, the pilot and copilot
  each have a block of warning indicators, called enunciators, to show
  critical information like fire warnings, high temperatures, and
  landing-gear status.  There are the usual aircraft instruments, like an
  artificial horizon, as well as the readouts for the AHRS, TACAN, and GPS
  receiver.  Much like the AH-64, the UH-60L has a full ECM suite with an
  RWR, as well as provisions for jammers and decoy launchers.  The actual
  
  flying controls are conventional (for a helicopter) with the collective
  (essentially the engine power control) on the left and the cyclic (the
  pitch and directional controls) on a stick between your legs.  There are
  also foot pedals to help in turning the heli- copter during hovers and
  such, but I found that these are used only occasionally by Blackhawk
  crews.  Once you have strapped in and are ready to get started, the crew
  chief gets out in front of the Blackhawk (where he's tied in to the
  helicopter's intercom system by a cable) to watch for any fires or
  problems during start-up.  Engine start is just a matter of pressing a
  couple of buttons and waiting for the T-701 s to warm up.  As soon as
  all the warning enunciator lights are green (red ones are "bad," as you
  might imagine), then you unlock the parking brake, push the cyclic
  forward, pull up slightly on the collective to apply power, and taxi
  forward to your take-off spot.  Once you have called the tower for
  permission to take-off (the Blackhawk is equipped with the new SINCGARS
  jam/interception-resistant radios), you pull up gently on the
  collective, pitch the cyclic stick forward, and you're airborne.
  Almost immediately, you notice how smooth and silky the Blackhawk flies.
  Part of this comes from just how well designed and balanced the power
  plants, transmission, and rotor system are.  In fact, I was surprised to
  find that the Blackhawk does not have active vibration suppression like
  the OH-58D and some other helicopters.  The other part of what makes the
  UH-60L so smooth is the auto-stabilizaticm system that is tied to the
  flight-control system.  This system smoothes out the control inputs and
  aircraft responses, and makes the Blackhawk ride like an American luxury
  car.  It is a joy to fly, and the feeling of control, authority, and
  smoothness immediately translates to confidence in the UH-60's ability
  to react to any situation.  In fact, so easy is the Blackhawk to fly
  that commercial operators of other types of helicopters find that
  UH-60/S-70 flight crews frequently have to be retrained to fly what they
  call "real" helicopters.  Hovering is almost simple: All you have to do
  is pull back the cyclic a bit to generate a small nose-up "flare" (this
  slows the helicopter down), adjust the collective, and there you are
  hanging in the middle of open air!  It is an amazing feeling.
  All of this thrashing about in the air is fun, but low-level flying is
  what Army Aviation is all about, and the Blackhawk is well qualified for
  this kind of work.  We recently got to join a UH-60L crew of the 4th Air
  Cavalry Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry, at Fort Bliss, Texas, on a hop
  out to an exercise area.  Just
  U.S.  ARMY AVIATION 1,YS-I-EMI, - 141
  to make things interesting, the entire flight was done at night
  (actually about 3 AM), with the crew utilizing their new AN/PVS-6 NVGS.
  As we lifted off, the crew was careful to establish their reference
  points and the line of the horizon.  One of the risks in night flying is
  
  the sudden onset of vertigo, which can make aircrews trust their eyes
  and not their instruments.  To reduce this risk, the pilot and copilot
  split up the flying and instrument-monitoring tasks.  Periodically they
  like to switch, so that neither becomes fixated on what he is doing.
  As we flew out to the objective, the crew began to fly what is known as
  a "contour" flight profile.  This has the Blackhawk transiting as
  quickly as possible (doing about 150 knots/275 kph), maintaining a
  constant altitude above ground-whatever the terrain-of about 50 feet/
  15.25 meters.  Contour flying is an incredible thrill in the UH-60L, and
  the auto-stabilization system really smooths out the ride.  The vertical
  movements are rapid, though never panicked or sudden.  This makes the
  Blackhawk difficult to track for enemy gunners or SAM operators on the
  ground.  It also tends to discourage any enemy attack helicopter crews
  or fighter planes from trying to get in a "cheap shot" at the transiting
  UH-60L.  Unless your auto-stabilization system is better than the
  Blackhawk's, maneuvering into a good close firing position on its tail
  could cause your flight path to intersect the terrain, terminating your
  flying career with extreme suddenness.
  On the ride out to the landing zone (LZ), the crew demonstrated how they
  make combat insertions of A-teams (scout patrols) and special-operations
  personnel.  First came several fake insertions: The helicopter touched
  down and took off without unloading anything.  In this way, should
  someone observe the Blackhawk's maneuvers, they would not be sure of the
  team's actual LZ.  When the time for the insertion finally came, the
  crew chief told everyone to hold on, and get ready for a rapid stop. The
  pilot then applied a hard nose-up flare and dropped power, so that the
  forward motion of the Blackhawk stopped at the same time as the wheels
  touched the ground.  As soon as this happened, the crew chief threw open
  one of the sliding side doors, the landing team leaped out, and the crew
  chief rapidly passed out equipment and supplies.  Within ten to fifteen
  seconds, the team was clear, and the crew chief was slamming shut the
  side door and telling the pilot they were clear to lift off. Up in the
  cockpit, the pilot applied maximum collective power and pitched the
  cyclic stick forward to clear the LZ as quickly as possible. The flight
  crew then made several additional decoy landings before they dropped us
  off at the exercise area and returned to base.
  As the Blackhawk enters its second decade of military service, it has a
  track record of reliable performance and durability.  And Blackhawks
  continue to be delivered in a variety of different models.  In fact, the
  Sikorsky production line in Stratford, Connecticut, remains the busiest
  helicopter production line in the world today.  The UH-60L will remain
  the standard medium-utility helicopter for the U.S.  Army well into the
  21 st century.
  Scout Attack Helicopter
  
  Question: What military aircraft has won the largest number of industry
  and government awards in the past few years for engineering excellence,
  customer satisfaction, and combat performance in the field?  The AH-64
  Apache?  The F-I 17A stealth fighter?  The OH-58D Kiowa Warrior?
  Answer: The OH-58D Kiowa Warrior.
  "Huh?  The what?"  you ask (not surprisingly).  Yet even if you've never
  heard of a Kiowa Warrior, the fact remains that there is no aircraft
  program anywhere in the U.S.  military that has been more successful.
  What makes this more surprising is that not one new OH-58D airframe has
  ever been built for the U.S.  Army.  Every unit delivered for U.S.
  service has been converted from an existing airframe.  If this sounds as
  intriguing to you as it did to me when I first heard the Kiowa Warrior
  story, then read on.
  Scouting and observation are among the most important of Army Aviation's
  many missions.  In fact, the first military mission for aircraft was
  airborne spotting by the balloons of Dr.  Thadious Lowe during the
  American Civil War.  Later, during World War 1, the use of
  observation/reconnaissance aircraft led to the development of fighter
  aircraft to shoot them down.
  Like so many other weapons we have looked at, the OH-58D story begins in
  the Vietnam era.  During the Vietnam War, the Army acquired a number of
  small scout helicopters to lead air cavalry assaults and spot targets
  for attack helicopters.  Though the Army initially used the Hughes
  Helicopter OH-6 (now evolved into the McDonnell Douglas MD-500 series)
  for this mission, they eventually settled on a version of the popular
  Bell Helicopter-Textron Model 206 Jet Ranger to provide this vital
  service.  Most people are familiar with the 206 as the helicopter used
  for traffic and television news reporting.  The Army bought a number of
  these in the late 1960s and early 1970s, installed military radios and
  avionics (and little else ' it turned out), and named them OH-58 Kiowas.
  The OH-58 proved adequate for scouting in daylight with the naked eye,
  but had severe limitations in darkness, fog, or haze.  This became a
  serious problem when the OH-58s had to spot for the new anti-armor
  versions of the Cobra that were beginning to appear in the 1970s.  OH-58
  crews were able to sight "something" in the distance, but then they
  would have to call the Cobra attack helicopters (equipped with
  long-range stabilized optical systems) they were supposed to scout for
  so the Cobras could identify the targets for them!
  The shortcomings of the OH-58 were well known to the leadership in Army
  Aviation; but they had to wait until the contracts for the Apache and
  the Blackhawk had been let before they could afford to shoehorn the
  scout program into the budget.  By the late 1970s, a plan to upgrade the
  Army's aeroscouts had been formulated under the name of Army Helicopter
  
  Improvement Program (AHIP).  Under the AHIP plan, the winner of a
  competition between Bell Helicopter-Textron and Hughes Helicopter (now
  McDonnell Douglas
  U.S.  ARMY AVIAI'ION SY, rFNI',, a 143
  to make things interesting, the entire flight was done at night
  (actually about 3 AM), with the crew utilizing their new AN/PVS-6 NVGS.
  As we lifted off, the crew was careful to establish their reference
  points and the line of the horizon.  One of the risks in night flying is
  the sudden onset of vertigo, which can make aircrews trust their eyes
  and not their instruments.  To reduce this risk, the pilot and copilot
  split up the flying and instrument-monitoring tasks.  Periodically they
  like to switch, so that neither becomes fixated on what he is doing.
  As we flew out to the objective, the crew began to fly what is known as
  a "contour" flight profile.  This has the Blackhawk transiting as
  quickly as possible (doing about 150 knots/275 kph), maintaining a
  constant altitude above ground-whatever the terrain-of about 50 feet/
  15.25 meters.  Contour flying is an incredible thrill in the UH-60L, and
  the auto-stabilization system really smooths out the ride.  The vertical
  movements are rapid, though never panicked or sudden.  This makes the
  Blackhawk difficult to track for enemy gunners or SAM operators on the
  ground.  It also tends to discourage any enemy attack helicopter crews
  or fighter planes from trying to get in a "cheap shot" at the transiting
  UH-60L.  Unless your auto-stabilization system is better than the
  Blackhawk's, maneuvering into a good close firing position on its tail
  could cause your flight path to intersect the terrain, terminating your
  flying career with extreme suddenness.  On the ride out to the landing
  zone (LZ), the crew demonstrated how they make combat insertions of
  A-teams (scout patrols) and special-operations personnel.  First came
  several fake insertions: The helicopter touched down and took off
  without unloading anything.  In this way, should someone observe the
  Blackhawk's maneuvers, they would not be sure of the team's actual LZ.
  When the time for the insertion finally came, the crew chief told
  everyone to hold on, and get ready for a rapid stop.  The pilot then
  applied a hard nose-up flare and dropped power, so that the forward
  motion of the Blackhawk stopped at the same time as the wheels touched
  the ground.  As soon as this happened, the crew chief threw open one of
  the sliding side doors, the landing team leaped out, and the crew chief
  rapidly passed out equipment and supplies.  Within ten to fifteen
  seconds, the team was clear, and the crew chief was slamming shut the
  side door and telling the pilot they were clear to lift off.  Up in the
  cockpit, the pilot applied maximum collective power and pitched the
  cyclic stick forward to clear the LZ as quickly as possible.  The flight
  crew then made several additional decoy landings before they dropped us
  off at the exercise area and returned to base.
  
  As the Blackhawk enters its second decade of military service, it has a
  track record of reliable performance and durability.  And Blackhawks
  continue to be delivered in a variety of different models.  In fact, the
  Sikorsky production line in Stratford, Connecticut, remains the busiest
  helicopter production line in the world today.  The UH-60L will remain
  the standard medium-utility helicopter for the U.  S.  Army well into
  the 2 1 st century.
  Question: What military aircraft has won the largest number of industry
  and government awards in the past few years for engineering excellence,
  customer satisfaction, and combat performance in the field?  The AH-64
  Apache?  The F-17A stealth fighter?  The OH-5 8 D Kiowa Warrior'?
  Answer: The OH-58D Kiowa Warrior.
  "Huh?  The what?"  you ask (not surprisingly).  Yet even if you've never
  heard of a Kiowa Warrior, the fact remains that there is no aircraft
  program anywhere in the U.S.  military that has been more successful.
  What makes this more surprising is that not one new OH-58D airframe has
  ever been built for the U.S.  Army.  Every unit delivered for U.S.
  service has been converted from an existing airframe.  If this sounds as
  intriguing to you as it did to me when I first heard the Kiowa Warrior
  story, then read on.
  Scouting and observation are among the most important of Army Aviation's
  many missions.  In fact, the first military mission for aircraft was
  airborne spotting by the balloons of Dr.  Thadious Lowe during the
  American Civil War.  Later, during World War 1, the use of
  observation/reconnaissance aircraft led to the development of fighter
  aircraft to shoot them down.
  Like so many other weapons we have looked at, the OH-58D story begins in
  the Vietnam era.   During the Vietnam War, the Army acquired a number of
  small scout helicopters to lead air cavalry assaults and spot targets
  for attack helicopters.  Though the Army initially used the Hughes
  Helicopter OH-6 (now evolved into the McDonnell Douglas MD-500 series)
  for this mission, they eventually settled on a version of the popular
  Bell Helicopter-Textron Model 206 Jet Ranger to provide this vital
  service.  Most people are familiar with the 206 as the helicopter used
  for traffic and television news reporting.  The Army bought a number of
  these in the late 1960s and early 1970s, installed military radios and
  avionics (and little else, it turned out), and named them OH-58 Kiowas.
  The OH-58 proved adequate for scouting in daylight with the naked eye,
  but had severe limitations in darkness, fog, or haze.  This became a
  serious problem when the OH-58s had to spot for the new anti-armor
  versions of the Cobra that were beginning to appear in the 1970s.  OH-58
  crews were able to sight "something" in the distance, but then they
  would have to call the Cobra attack helicopters (equipped with
  
  long-range stabilized optical systems) they were supposed to scout for
  so the Cobras could identify the targets for them!
  The shortcomings of the OH-58 were well known tG the leadership in Army
  Aviation; but they had to wait until the contracts for the Apache and
  the Blackhawk had been let before they could afford to shoehorn the
  scout program into the budget.  By the late 1970s, a plan to upgrade the
  Army's aeroscouts had been formulated under the name of Army Helicopter
  Improvement Program (AH I P).  Under the AH I P plan, the win ner of a
  competition between Bell Helicopter-Textron and Hughes Helicopter (now
  McDonnell Douglas
  - 143
  U.S.  AL@MY AVIAI'ION ',Y, @
  Helicopter) would rebuild existing scout helicopter airframes (to keep
  down costs) with new engines, avionics, and sensors.  In 1981, Bell won
  with their proposal to rebuild the Army's fleet of OH-58 Kiowa airframes
  into the AHIP helicopters.  The key to the new helicopter's capability
  was the McDonnell Douglas Mast-Mounted Sight (MMS) equipped with a
  stabilized FLIR, a daylight television camera, and a laser rangefinder
  and designator for Hellfire and other laser-guided ordnance.  By 1985,
  the first unit of AHIP helicopters was ready to be fielded.  And by the
  time of REFORGER-87, the AHIP Kiowas had made a powerful impression; and
  commanders from all kinds of units, from field artillery brigades to
  Apache attack helicopter battalions, were scrambling to get some.
  That might have been the extent of the OH-58D story had it not been for
  those other bad boys of the Persian Gulf, the Iranians.  Towards the end
  of their eight-year war, both Iran and Iraq launched a campaign of
  attacks against the tankers carrying each other's crude oil out of the
  Persian Gulf.  As long as the two belligerents were pumping Exocet
  guided missiles and rockets into the tankers of their opponents, nobody
  but Lloyds of London cared.  But when the Iranians started attacking
  tankers servicing the oil trade of other members of the Gulf Cooperation
  Council (like Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, who at
  the time were funding Iraq's war with Iran), that was another story
  entirely.  And in 1987, the government of Kuwait requested the support
  of the United States to maintain free passage of maritime trade in the
  waters of the Persian Gulf.
  Shortly afterwards, the U.S.  Navy began a long-term operation to escort
  Kuwaiti tankers (reflagged under American ownership) in and out of the
  Gulf.  Initially, the naval planners thought that Iranian Silkworm
  missiles and fighterbombers would be the primary threat to the tankers.
  This turned out to be a misconception.  The misconception was shattered
  on the very first convoy, when the tanker Bridgeton struck a primitive,
  though highly effective, contact mine laid by the Iranians.  Within a
  
  matter of days, the Iranians were driving the American forces crazy with
  a guerrilla-style naval war fought with mines and with Iranian
  Revolutionary Guards in speedboats (called "boghammers") firing
  rocket-propelled grenades.  The U.S.  Navy of the 1980s was designed for
  openocean combat with the Russian Navy, not inshore operations against a
  low-tech, hit-and-run force that did not play by any set of known rules.
  The Navy needed help; and (would you believe?) they had to ask for it
  from the U.S.  Army.
  After the failed Iranian hostage rescue of 1980, the Army had built up
  its special-operations capabilities.  A special helicopter unit, Task
  Force (TF) 160 (now known as the 160th Aviation Regiment), was created
  at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.  TF-160 (who call themselves the
  Niglitstalkers; their motto is, "We own the night") had a number of
  modified McDonnell Douglas H-6s (designated AH-6s), equipped with
  thermal-imaging sights, machine guns, and rockets-just the thing for the
  Persian Gulf, it was thought.  And soon, operating off U.S.  Navy
  frigates and anchored barges, they became known as the "Killer Eggs."
  The AH-6s turned the tanker war around-their crowning achievement being
  the capture (and destruction) of the Iran Ajar, a landing craft that was
  caught laying mines.
  Unfortunately, because it had to carry out other urgent commitments, the
  Army recalled its tiny fleet of AH-6s (and their special-ops crews).  At
  the same time, the Army realized that an aircraft was needed to replace
  the AH-6s in the Persian Gulf, one that could be operated by regular
  Army Aviation troops.
  In a little while they concluded that an OH-58D, modified to fire
  air-tosurface weapons, would do very nicely.  In September of 1987,
  under a "black" program (the very existence of the program was secret)
  code-named PRIME CHANCE, the Joint Chiefs of Staff directed Bell
  Helicopter-Textron to convert fifteen OH-58Ds to an armed configuration.
  Completing prototyping, testing, and fabrication, the contractor
  delivered the first two aircraft to the Army less than one hundred days
  after go-ahead.  Within seven months, fifteen PRIME CHANCE aircraft were
  delivered to the I st Battalion of the 18th Aviation Brigade (assigned
  to XVIII Airborne Corps).  The modifications to the basic OH-58D
  included:
  The installation of weapons pylons capable of taking AGM- 1 14 Helifire
  missiles, air-to-air Stingers, 2.75" Hydra-70 rockets, and a .50-caliber
  machine-gun pod.  Uprating of the maximum continuous power of the
  engines and transmission from 455 to 510 shp, as well as use of a
  different lube oil to handle the high temperatures of the Persian Gulf.
  U.S.  AL@MY AVIATION SYIl@EMI, n 145
  
  * Installation of a mission equipment package consisting of an
  ARN- 1 18 TACAN navigational receiver, a video recorder for use with the
  MMS, and some new avionics (an MIL STD 1553 data bus was already
  standard on the aircraft).
  * An electronic-countermeasure suite consisting of an AN/APR 39/44 RWR,
  and AN/ALQ- 144 IR jammer.
  * Ladders for overwater crew rescue.
  * Shielding for the expected electromagnetic interference from the
  radars of the Navy ships that TF- 1 18 would operate from.
  Operated under the code name of TF-I 18, the PRIME CHANCE OH-58Ds
  rapidly swept the Persian Gulf of the Iranian forces harassing the
  tanker trade.  After only a few engagements, the Iranian boghammers and
  mining vessels apparently decided not to mix it up anymore with the TFI
  18/Navy team.  Shortly afterwards, the Iranians and Iraqis reverted to
  firing SCUD missiles on each other's cities-while negotiating an
  armistice.   In 1989, as the last convoy escorted by the U.S.  Navy left
  the Persian Gulf, the last U.S.  asset in the Gulf was an airborne PRIME
  CHANCE OH-58D watching the back door.  So effective was the performance
  of the PRIME CHANCE OH-58Ds, in early 1990 the Secretary of the Army
  ordered that all 243 of the Army's OH-58Ds be armed like the PRIME
  CHANCE aircraft, and that another eighty-one more be bought to meet the
  demand for the little helicopter with the big eye.
  The dust from the Kuwait tanker escort operation had hardly settled when
  Saddam Hussein's forces invaded Kuwait in August of 1990.  Immediately,
  the fifteen PRIME CHANCE aircraft (now assigned to the 4th Squadron of
  the 17th Cavalry, XVIII Airborne Corps), as well as the rest of the
  OH-58D population, were sent to the Persian Gulf to serve in Operations
  Desert Shield and Desert Storm.  The PRIME CHANCE birds reverted to
  their nautical haunts of the tanker war, operating off barges and Oliver
  Hazard Perry-class (FFG-7) guided-missile frigates.  Of particular note
  was the service of a pair of PRIME CHANCE OH-58s assigned to operate off
  of the USS Nicholas (FFG-47).  Starting in late January 1991, the two
  Kiowas did everything from armed reconnaissance, to destroying a
  Silkworm missile site, to sinking Iraqi patrol boats.  The record of
  their landlocked AHIP cousins was equally distinguished: scouting and
  spotting for the Apaches, "painting" laser spots on targets for
  Copperhead rounds, night scouting along the front, and
  target-spotting/handoff to fixed-wing aircraft.  Through all of their
  Persian Gulf operations, from 1988 to the end of Desert Storm, not one
  OH-58D was lost to enemy fire.  In recognition of the growing reputation
  of the armed OH-58D, it was renamed the Kiowa Warrior, to reflect its
  achievements in a short and adventurous career.
  
  What is the production OH-58D Kiowa Warrior all about?  As you walk up
  to one, your t-irst thought might well be that the sleek lines of the
  original Model 206 have been ruined by all the antennas, wire cutters,
  and that awkward ball at the top of the rotor head, the Mast-Mounted
  Sight (MMS).  But of course, all that what gives the Kiowa Warrior its
  special character.  The MMS itself sits on a special vibration-isolation
  mount above the fourbladed rotor head. Within the ball-shaped housing
  are a FLIR thermal-imaging system, a daylight television system, a laser
  rangefinder, and a laser designator. These systems are tied into the
  cockpit through a pair of multifunction displays (MFDs).  Resembling a
  miniature 6-inch/ 15-centimeter green computer screen, the MFD is
  surrounded by fourteen buttons that bring up various menus and screens
  (called "pages" in crew jargon) that control and monitor the MM S,
  navigation, and other flight systems.  Depending on the preferences of
  the users (both flight crew members have one), the MFD can be used as a
  visual/targeting display for the MMS, to display navigational waypoints,
  or monitor fuel and weapons status.  All of the controls for the weapons
  and the MMS are located on the controls (cyclic and collective grips),
  and either crew member can fly the aircraft, with the copilot operating
  the MMS and the pilot firing the weapons.  For example, the controls on
  the pilot's cyclic grip include such things as weapons select-and-fire
  buttons, MMS controls, trim controls, and MFD controls.
  The cockpit itself shows its light helicopter lineage: It is a tight
  squeeze for a big passenger.  The middle cabin of the OH-58D has been
  turned into an avionics bay, and the flight crew (pilot in the right
  seat, copilot on the left, both with controls) are seated in the front
  cabin.  The seats, while comfortable, are cramped if you are over 6
  feet/ 1.8 meters tall.  There is a small heads-up display (HUD) for the
  pilot.  To assist in mission planning and navigation, there is a data
  loader similar to that in the Apache, so that missions can be set up on
  a personal computer back at base, then transferred to the helicopter on
  a memory unit resembling a video game cartridge.  In addition, a video
  recorder has been installed to record all of the information from the
  MMS cameras and data from the display pages.
  One shortcoming of the Kiowa Warrior is that there is no way to
  completely seal the cockpit against chemical attack.  And in fact, on
  hot days, the
  U.S.  ARMY AVIATION SYSTEMS m 147
  cockpit doors are often removed.  To provide for operations under
  chemical contamination, the crew wears MOPP-IV chemical suits; and there
  is an onboard system to feed filtered air through the M-43 aviator's
  face mask.  For night operations, the crew has to use a set of AN/PVS-6
  low-light goggles, which are clipped on over their helmets.  This
  provides a limited field of view, somewhat like looking down a cardboard
  
  tube.  The cockpit instruments and displays have been designed to be
  usable by the crew when they are in goggles.
  The weapons are carried on a pair of tubular metal pylons attached
  amidships on the fuselage.  A .50-caliber machine-gun pod can be mounted
  on the left pylon only.  Each pylon can carry any of the following:
  * two AGM- 1 14 Helifire missiles
  *  two air-to-air Stinger missiles
  * one M260 seven-round 2.75"/Hydra-70 rocket-launcher pod
  Any combination of weapons can be carried, though normally the Kiowa
  Warriors operate in pairs with one aircraft carrying Hellfires (two) and
  rockets (one pod), and the other loaded with Stingers (two) and a
  machine-gun pod.  Of course, with the MMS, the Kiowa Warrior can
  designate a target for any kind of laser-guided ordnance.  In addition,
  there is an Airborne Target Handover System (ATHS) which can transmit
  the coordinates of a ground target by digital data burst, as fixed by
  the MMS sensors, to any number of aircraft such as Army AH-64s, Air
  Force A- 10 Warthogs, and Marine AV-8B Harriers.  There are also direct
  connections for the TACFIRE artillery-control system (and the AFATDS
  when it arrives).  All of these systems, as well as the crew's voice
  communications, are fed through a pair of radios (a VHF AN/ARC-186 and a
  UHF HaveQuick 11), which can be controlled through the MFDS.  There even
  is an option the Army has installed on a few aircraft for a real-time
  video downlink from the MMS to commanders on the ground.  Another option
  is something called a "night pilotage system," which would involve
  installation of a small thermal-imaging sight in a turret under the
  nose.  This would function like the PNVS system on the Apache, feeding
  data to the crew through helmet sights.  But for now, budget
  restrictions will keep these options on hold.
  Flying the Kiowa Warrior is different from the other helicopters we have
  talked about.  Where flying the Apache involves the subtle use of power,
  and the Blackhawk rides like a friendly Cadillac, the Kiowa Warrior is
  more like a little imported sports car.  Strapping in is similar to
  getting into the Apache or the Blackhawk.
  Since OH-58D crews often fly with the doors off, there is a lot of
  noise; and it is vital to have a helmet and flight suit that fit
  comfortably.  When the preflight checks are completed, the pilot just
  pulls back on the collective, and you're off.  The agility of the Kiowa
  Warrior is amazing, though it can only do about 120 knots/ 219.5 kph
  with the doors on (you lose about I 0 knots/ 18 kph flying with the
  doors off).  But unlike the Apache or the Blackhawk, high dash speeds
  are not what the OH-58D is about.  Being sneaky is the OH-58D's strong
  suit.  The Kiowa Warrior's small size and agility enable it to slip
  
  between tree lines, or down a streambed, to sneak up on an opponent.
  With only the MMS poking above a line of trees or a ridge, the scout is
  almost invisible; and the four-bladed rotor reduces the blade noise
  (outside the cockpit).  Gone are the days when a chopper like the UH- I
  would announce its presence for miles with a distinctive "whump-whump"
  from its two-bladed rotor.  As the crew surveys the scene with the MMS,
  they can report back to headquarters by voice radio, directly to other
  aircraft through the ATHS, or to artillery fire units via TACFIRE.
  Normally, the OH-58D will be the eyes for other systems that shoot.  But
  if necessary, it can be a very dangerous shooter itself.  Its
  maneuverability, particularly down low in terrain, means that very few
  weapons can track or maneuver with it.  Setting up a shot with Hellfire,
  the MMS, and the sensor controls is almost absurdly easy. As an example,
  my researcher (no pinball wizard) was able to lock on to a window on the
  top floor of a hotel some 6 miles/ 10 kilometers away with the MMS; and
  as the aircraft maneuvered he had no problem keeping the target centered
  in the sight.  Launch of an actual missile would have placed it squarely
  through that window.  And the Kiowa Warrior may be the best existing
  helicopter for dogfighting other helicopters.  While the air-to-air
  Stinger is a big part of this, maneuverability is the key.  Believe it
  or not, helicopters with four-bladed rigid rotor systems can both roll
  and loop, and the Kiowa Warrior is quite capable of aerobatics.  If
  anything, the Kiowa Warrior is overpowered and overly sensitive,
  requiring the calming hand of a thoroughbred jockey to get the most out
  of it.
  Today, as the armed OH-58Ds roll off the conversion/assembly line at
  Bell Helicopter's plant in Fort Worth, Texas, they represent one of the
  best bargains in the U.S.  arsenal.  Some fifteen have even been
  converted into a "low observable" configuration, and operated by the ]st
  Squadron of the 17th Cavalry.   These special Kiowa Warriors, simply
  known as "upgrade" birds, have redesigned noses to reduce their radar
  cross-section, as well as radar-absorbent material (RAM) on the side
  doors, the MMS, the main rotor head, and tail rotor.  There is even a
  special gold-colored windshield coating that apparently has radar
  absorption qualities.  This means that the " I st of the 17th" has
  fifteen stealthy scout/attack helicopters, capable of going
  God-knows-where to do God-knows-what.  One can only speculate.  The Army
  would like Bell to convert a total of some 507 Kiowa Warriors, though
  only about 366 have been contracted to date-which brings us to a
  financial dilemma.  A newly converted OH-58D coming off the line costs
  about five million dollars, as opposed to perhaps twelve million dollars
  for one of the new RAH-66 Comanche scout/attack helicopters soon to come
  on-line.  Which makes Kiowa Warrior look like quite a bargain.  The
  problem with such a comparison is that the OH-58D airframe has limited
  growth potential, while the RAH-66 design is at the very beginning of
  its life cycle.  What this means is that with the OH-58D you must give
  careful consideration to adding things to the old
  
  U.S.  ARMY AVIA'L ION 1,Y-,TEMS a 149
  A view ofthe RAH-66 Comanche.  Note the enclosed FANTAIL' tail rotor,
  and the recessed low-observable engine air intakes.  The 20mm gun barrel
  can pivot down and to the rear for stowage and the missiles are mounted
  on doors that retract flush with the skin ofthe aircraft.
  Bof@ll(,SIAORSAI Model 206 airframe, while the future of the new RAH-66
  is wide open.  In other words, as long as buying the OH-58D does not
  conflict with the Comanche program budget, the Army will probably
  support contracting for the 507 aircraft in the current requirement.
  But whether they do that or not, they have still managed to acquire the
  best light scout/attack helicopter in the world today.
  The RAH-66 Comanche Scout/Attack Helicopter
  Comanche is the top-priority program in the Army.  Not just Army
  Aviation, mind you, but the whole U.S.  Army.  If you have any doubt of
  this, consider that the gentleman who told me was the Army Chief of
  Staff himself.  I learned this during a briefing in General Sullivan's
  office last summer, as he outlined his plans for the Army of the 21 st
  century.  Now, when an old cavalry officer tells you that a helicopter
  program is the most important thing the Army is buying, it is worth
  taking a closer look at that program.
  Up in Stratford, Connecticut, in Philadelphia, and around the country,
  the combined efforts of Boeing Helicopter, Sikorsky Aircraft, and a team
  of other contractors have just begun assembling composite fuselage parts
  and integrating electronics for the most important advance in helicopter
  technology since the turboshaft engine, the RAH-66 Comanche scout/attack
  helicopter.  Comanche is designed to replace the Army's aging fleet of
  AH- 1, OH-6, and OH-58 helicopters with a single airframe capable of
  handling all scout/light-attack missions.  And when it gets into the
  force in 2003, it is going to change the face of combat forever.
  Why?  For one thing, the RAH-66 will be as nearly invisible to radar,
  audio, and infrared detection as modern technology can make it.  For
  another, it is being engineered to be the most capable and survivable
  sensor system in the Army.  But most important, it is designed to get
  the answer to the ground
  150 0 ARMOI@ED CAV
  commander's eternal question, "What's on the other side of that hill?"
  Recall that General Franks had to commit the whole of VII Corps to
  combat with the Republican Guards on the basis of very limited
  information obtained in bad weather by a handful of young cavalry
  officers.  Comanche is designed to cut through that "fog of battle."  It
  
  will use a combination of advanced sensors and electronics, stealth
  technology, and high maneuverability to find the enemy while itself
  remaining unseen.  Even before Desert Storm, the Army knew it needed
  such a helicopter.  The replacement program, known as Light
  Helicopter-Experimental (LHX), was designed to fill in a single airframe
  the requirement for both a new scout helicopter and a light-attack
  helicopter.  The Army Aviation Command at St.  Louis, Missouri, selected
  two "superteams" of top contractors to design "paper" aircraft to
  compete for the final full-scale development contract.  One team was led
  by McDonnell Douglas Helicopter and Bell Helicopter-Textron, while the
  other had Sikorsky and Boeing Helicopter as its principals. The
  competition was fierce, since this was clearly going to be the last big
  military helicopter contract of the 1990s, and orders for existing
  models were already dropping.
  Both designs had two-man crews and employed stealth technology.  The
  McDonnell Douglas/Bell design eliminated the tail rotor by using a
  ducted fan (called NOTAR, which stands for No TAil Rotor).  The
  Boeing'Sikorsky team used a ducted tail rotor called FANTAIL,.
  In the end, the Boeing-Sikorsky team was selected to build the
  prototypes and to take the new helicopter, designated RAH-66 Comanche,
  into production.  In 1993, the first structural components for the
  flying prototype were produced.  Current plans put the first flight of
  the Comanche sometime in 1995, with the first unit to be fielded in
  2003. The Army wants to buy some 1,300 RAH-66s to replace over 3,000
  AH-1 s, O/AH-6s, and OH-58A/C/Ds currently in service.
  So just what will this new helicopter have in the way of features? Well,
  consider the following list:
  Crew-The Comanche will carry a two-man crew in the same kind of tandem
  arrangement as the AH-64.  The cockpits will be fully integrated with an
  array of programmable MFDS, which can be rapidly reconfigured in flight
  by the crew.  In addition, the crew helmets and sights will be of a new
  lightweight design that will eliminate the bulky versions found on the
  Apache and other U.S.  helicopters.  Also, the whole compartment is
  ballistically protected and sealed with an environmental filtration/
  overpressure system, for protection against nuclear, biological, and
  chemical contamination.
  Structure-The majority of the RAH-66 will be composed of fiber, carbon,
  and plastic composites.  Metal components will be minimized, for both
  stealth and weight considerations.  In addition, the Comanche is being
  built to the same standards of
  U.S.  ARMY AVIATION SYSTEMS 151
  ballistic protection/tolerance as the AH-64 Apache and UH-60 Blackhawk.
  
  Engines-A new company, LHTEC (a joint venture by Garrett and Allison) of
  St.  Louis, Missouri, will produce the uprated T-800 engines for the
  Comanche.  The engine inlets are buried to reduce their radar signature,
  and the exhausts are cleverly concealed in the tail boom, where the hot
  gases are mixed with cooler ambient air and vented downward to reduce
  the Comanche's IR signature.  Rated at 1,380 shp each, the engines will
  probably be the standard power plants for all new U.S.  light and medium
  helicopters well into the 21 st century.
  Sensors-Comanche will carry a targeting and piloting system similar to
  the TADS/PNVS on the AH-64A.  What will make the system on the RAH-66
  different is that the thermal-imaging system will use 11
  second-generation FLIR" technology.  This means that the imaging
  elements have a much higher resolution and sensitivity than those
  currently deployed on U.S.  weapons systems.  The thermal pictures will
  be good enough for the onboard computer to positively identify a target
  (airborne or ground) solely from its thermal signature.  This means that
  the system will automatically be able to tell the difference between an
  American M IA2 and a Soviet-designed T-72.  In addition, all Comanches
  will be wired for installation of a Longbow radar on top of the rotor
  head.  As with the AH-64C/D, the Comanche will have a modem to transmit
  data to other users on the network.  About one RAH-66B (with Longbow)
  will be fielded for every three RAH-66As (without Longbow).  Comanche
  will also carry a laser target designator and a full electronic-warfare
  suite, including radarwarning (RWR) and (eventually) jammer equipment.
  Flight Avionics-The flight avionics on Comanche will be the most
  comprehensive of any helicopter flying, including the Air Force Pave Low
  special-operations birds.   Along with the nowstandard GPS receiver,
  AHRS, SINCGARS radios, and other navigational gear, there will be a
  moving map display right out of a James Bond movie to help the crew
  maintain their bearings, manage the battle, and pass along information
  to the rest of the force.  Previously, the only aircraft to get such a
  system were the F-15 E Strike Eagle and the F-17A stealth fighter.
  There will also be the same kind of auto-stabilization system as on the
  Blackhawk, though with some major improvements.  Electronics-The RAH-66
  will introduce a new type of electronics packaging to Army systems.
  Instead of the "black boxes" that have characterized military
  electronics since the 1960s, all of the computers and electronics will
  be on sealed circuit "cards," slotted into several electronics bays.
  Each type of card is identical, with its specific function determined by
  the software that controls it.  Thus, if an RAH-66 needs a computer
  upgrade, all the crew chief will need to do is install an additional
  computer "card" into the electronics bay.  As an added benefit, other
  weapons systems will (theoretically) be able to use the same types of
  cards, thus simplifying maintenance and logistics requirements.  All of
  the electronics systems on the Comanche are linked by a 1553 data bus,
  allowing one system to "talk" to another.
  
  Weapons-Pound for pound, the Comanche will be the most heavily armed
  aircraft in history.  The basic weapon is a three-barreled 20mm
  Gatling-type gun (with 500 rounds of ammunition) in a nose turret. Along
  each side of the fuselage is a weapons bay with retractable door-mounts
  for the internal weapons.  These can include Helifire missiles, 2.75"
  Hydra-70 rockets, and air-to-air Stinger missiles.  In addition a pair
  of stub wings, similar to the ESSS mounts on the UH-60 Blackhawk, can be
  installed to carry additional weapons and/or external fuel tanks.  A
  normal combat load for an RAH-66 might be the 20mm gun, five AGM- 1 14
  Helifire missiles, and two air-to-air Stinger missiles, Flight
  Controls/Maneuverability-The Comanche will be the first U.S. helicopter
  to make full use of a digital fly-by-wire control system like that of
  the F-16 Fighting Falcon.  Also, the FANTAIL' rotor system allows it to
  turn faster than any other aircraft in the world.  So versatile is the
  new system, that the FANTAIL' flying prototype (a modified Sikorsky
  S-76) achieved lateral (sideways) speeds of over 80 knots/ 130 kph!
  Maintenance-The measures taken to make the RAH-66 reliable and
  maintainable can only be described as fanatical.  A built-in
  fault-isolation system automatically tells the crew chiefs exactly what
  is wrong (or right) with all of the Comanche's onboard systems.
  Maintenance has also been simplified, with an engine change taking only
  one hour.  All field maintenance can be done with only six tools
  (carried in an onboard kit), while flight-line service requires only
  thirty-four.  Deployability-With a pair of external fuel tanks, the
  Comanche will be capable of one-way hops of over 1,260 miles/2,286
  kilometers.  This means that it could self-deploy from the U.S.  to
  anywhere in the world, albeit in a number of jumps.  But more practical
  deployment options have also been built into the design, such as the
  ability to assemble or disassemble the main rotor (a five-bladed model,
  to keep noise down and efficiency up) and load or unload it aboard any
  one of a number of cargo planes in less than twenty-two minutes.  The
  venerable C-130 Hercules, for instance, can carry one, while the C-5
  Galaxy can carry up to eight, with the RAH-66s
  U.S.  ARMY AVIA-I-ION 1,Yl;l@EMS - 153
  able to launch on niission shortly after arrival.  Ill I'@ict, the time
  required to service, refuel, and rearm a CoiTianche between i-nissions
  is only fifteen minutes.
  Putting all these pieces together will take some tinie, but when it hits
  the battlefields in the early 21st century, the Comanche will be the
  most dangerous rotorcraft in the world.  Its stealth, armament and
  sensor package.  and communications capabilities will probably make it
  the backbone of Army Aviation well into the middle of the 21 st century.
  Keep an eye out for this new bird.  I certainly will!
  
  154 AI@MO]Zr@D ('AV
  ne of the most coveted badges in the Army is a simple blue rectangle
  with an 18th-century Kentucky long rifle in silver.  Called the Combat
  Infantry Badge, it tells you that you are looking at a soldier who has
  held a rifle in his hands, seen the face of battle, and fired at the
  enemy.  A Navy can blockade an enemy, and an Air Force can demolish the
  enemy's economic and political centers, but ultimately it takes soldiers
  with their personal weapons to dig the enemy's soldiers out of their
  bunkers and trenches and send them packing.  Individual soldiers and
  their personal equipment are the point of the spear for all the high
  technology that armed forces acquire and use.
  A lot more is expected from the average soldier today than during the
  American Civil War, some 130 years ago.  Back then, it was enough to be
  able to shoot another soldier with some accuracy at a range of perhaps
  100 yards.  Today's soldier faces threats that those boys could never
  have imagined on the killing fields of Gettysburg or Shiloh.  The
  soldier on a modern battlefield (perhaps thousands of miles from home)
  may be assaulted by tanks, bombed by aircraft, or showered with toxic
  chemicals.  In addition, that soldier must be clothed, fed, and told
  where to go and how to get there.  And when he does get there, the bad
  news is that he may be asked to destroy a tank or shoot down an airplane
  or helicopter all by himself.  The good news is that the Army and
  American industry have given him some of the best tools in history to do
  the job.
  The Colt M16A2 Assault Rifle
  The Marines have a saying that goes,"This is my rifle.  There are many
  like it, but this one is mine."  In that one statement is the embodiment
  of just what a personal weapon means to a soldier.  It is their sword to
  slay their enemies-and ultimately, their reason for being.  No other
  item of personal equipment is more essential to defining an individual
  as a soldier, not even the uniform.
  The combat rifle used by modern soldiers is derived from two earlier
  weapons, the bolt-action rifle and the submachine gun.  Both were used
  during World War 11, though neither had all of the characteristics
  desired by infantry.  Towards the end of the Second World War, the
  Germans developed the first assault rifle, the MP44.  This was a fully
  automatic weapon, much like a submachine gun, but firing a more
  powerful, longer-ranged rifle-caliber bullet.  In 1949, a Russian
  engineer named Mikhail Kalashnikov adapted the German design to
  U.S.  ARMY IIERSONAL/MAN-l'ORTA[3[-F ',Y',I FM, - 155
  produce the classic AK-47.  The widespread adoption of automatic
  personal weapons, or assault rifles as they have become known, changed
  
  the nature of small-unit tactics.  Instead of long-range marksmanship to
  wear down the enemy by gradual attrition, the goat became instant
  annihilation by concentrated and intense bursts of fire, with no need to
  aim so exactly.  The vast increase in ammunition expenditure seemed
  cost-effective.  Bullets are cheaper than soldiers.
  The standard infantry weapon of the U.S.  Army and Marine Corps today is
  the M 16A2, a gas-operated 5.56mm automatic rifle that weighs almost
  nine pounds with a thirty-round magazine.  If you look closely at a
  gas-operated rifle like the M 16 or the AK-47, you notice a tube above
  the barrel that taps into the high-pressure hot gas that propels the
  bullet.  When the rifle is fired, the gas is directed against a piston
  that works through a series of levers and springs to eject the empty
  cartridge case, cock the firing pin, load the next round, and close the
  breech.  The design of the M 16 is based on the Armalite AR- 1 5,
  developed by Eugene Stoner in the 1950s.  Stoner licensed the design to
  Colt Industries of Hartford, Connecticut, which initially produced it
  (as the CAR-15) for the U.S.  Air Force Security Police in 1961.  In
  1966, the Department of Defense directed the U.  S.  Army to adopt it as
  a replacement for the 7.62mm M 14 rifle.  The M 16 was four pounds
  lighter than the M 14, and a soldier could carry three times as much
  ammunition.  Though the 5.56mm bullet was smaller and lighter than the M
  14's 7.62, it had a much higher muzzle velocity, and it tended to tumble
  when it struck flesh.  The theoretical range of the weapon is 550
  meters, but most infantry combat takes place at much closer quarters,
  making elaborate scopes and sights a useless appendage (except for
  specialized precision sniper rifles, which require intensive
  marksmanship training to use effectively).
  Made largely from stamped metal parts and plastic injection moldings,
  the M 16 is relatively cheap to mass-produce.  When it was first fielded
  in the 1960s, the troops nicknamed it "The Mattel Toy."  And early on in
  Vietnam, it gained a bad reputation for jamming and misfires, mostly
  because the Army had substituted an inferior propellant in the
  ammunition, which caused excessive fouling.  Reportedly, in one small
  Marine unit overrun by the Viet Cong near Khe Sanh in 1967, every man
  was found dead with a cleaning rod in his hand, trying to clear a stuck
  cartridge. Additionally, in the jungles of Southeast Asia, mud tended to
  get into the precision mechanism, making it difficult to close the bolt.
  To rectify these problems, a modified version, the M 16A 1, added a
  manual bolt-closure device, chromium plating on the chamber, and a
  slightly reduced rate of fire.
  Combat experience with fully automatic weapons has shown that troops
  often hold down the trigger ("target fixation"), continuing to fire long
  bursts (the troops call it "rock and roll") after a target is hit or
  suppressed.  At a rate of fire between 700 and 950 rounds per minute, a
  thirty-round magazine is emptied in less than three seconds.  In 1982,
  
  the Army introduced the M 16A2 as a solution.  A selector lever lets the
  soldier fire single shots or three-round bursts.  To fire another
  three-round burst, you have to pull the trigger again.  This burst
  limiter saves vast quantities of ammunition without reducing the
  lethality of the
  The M16 rifle can be fitted with an M203 grenade launcher, a si @gle_
  shot, breech-loaded weapon that fires 40mm explosive projectiles.  The
  grenade launcher has its own trigger and safety mechanism, and 4
  does not require any alteration ofthe M 16.  Typically, one soldier in
  each infantry squad is equipped with this "thump gun."  OFFI(14[ I;,S
  AR@ii PHoio weapon.  The M 16A2 design introduced a selectable
  cartridge-case deflector, so that left-handed shooters would not be
  showered with hot brass.  The M 16A2 can additionally be fitted with an
  M203 40mm grenade launcher under the barrel for firing tear gas, smoke,
  or HE grenades.  Usually, each infantry squad will have one M 16 fitted
  with the M203.
  A more unusual variant of the M 16 is the M231 Firing Port Weapon.  This
  is a short-barreled, fully automatic M 16 without a front sight or
  fore-grip.  The muzzle is designed to fit the firing ports of the
  Bradley Fighting Vehicle.  In urban combat or in response to an ambush,
  spraying bullets from the sides of your Bradley might make tactical
  sense, but in practice, troopers leave the M231 s stowed in the vehicle
  and carry standard M 16s when they dismount.
  Though the M 16 is now entering its fourth decade of service and still
  going strong, there are plans for a new version, the M 16A3.  Budget
  constraints, however, will probably keep the -A2 variant in service well
  into the 21 st century.  There are many other 5.56mm assault rifles made
  by Heckler & Koch (Germany), Fabrique Nationale (Belgium), and even the
  Kalashnikov AKM (Russian design and thanufacture, with copies built in
  China and many other countries).  Each has its own relative advantages
  and disadvantages over the M 16.  But many of the soldiers I have talked
  to consider the M 16 to be about the best compromise in 5.56mm combat
  rifles.  Not perfect, but the best compromise.  And in the near future,
  it will probably stay that way.
  The M9 Beretta Model 92F 9mm Pistol
  No weapon arouses more debate, or has a deeper emotional significance
  for its users, than the handgun.  Though it causes very few casualties
  in combat, no other weapon (except perhaps the bayonet and the fist) is
  so up-close and personal.   For most of this century, the standard
  handgun issued to members of the U.S.  Armed forces was the Colt
  .45-caliber semi-automatic pistol.  According to legend, this weapon was
  developed by the brilliant Utah inventor
  
  U.S.  ARMY I'ERSONAL/MAN-I'ORrABLE SYSTEMS - 157
  The M9 9mm Beretta model 92F automatic pistol, which replaces the
  classic .45 as the Army's standard pistol.
  BER@,@ I S,4 and gunsmith John Moses Browning (1855-1926), because the
  Army found that during the Philippine Insurrection ( 1900- 1903),
  charging tribesmen struck by .30-caliber rifle fire would just keep on
  coming, oblivious to mortal wounds.  The Army needed a weapon that would
  stop a berserk fanatic in his tracks.  The .45 was heavy, mechanically
  complex, and had a massive recoil that made it hard to control, but no
  one ever complained about its lethality and stopping power.  By the
  1970s, however, the Army's stock of .45s was wearing out, and most
  European armies were adopting 9mm as the standard caliber for personal
  weapons.  The 9mm bullet is lighter than the .45, but has a higher
  muzzle velocity.  So at typical point-blank ranges, it is actually more
  lethal than a .45-caliber round (purists will always give you a lively
  debate on this point).  It also has the advantage of being much more
  compact than a.45, so that a semiautomatic pistol magazine can carry
  more rounds.
  After a long and controversial competition, the Army adopted the M9
  Personal Defense Weapon, a 9mm semi-automatic pistol made by an American
  subsidiary of Italy's legendary Beretta, a family-owned firm that has
  been in the gun business for almost five hundred years.  The M9 weighs
  2.6 pounds, has a fifteen-round magazine, and has a better safety
  mechanism than the weapons it replaces.  It was designed to be equally
  effective for left-handed or right-handed shooters.  Reliability is
  awesome.  In testing, three M9s fired 30,000 rounds without a jam or
  failure.  So far, the biggest single problem with the M9 has been that
  the demand has exceeded the supply system's ability to fill the orders.
  The M9 is typically issued to soldiers who do not carry rifles, such as
  aviators and military police, though officers and special-operations
  forces are frequent- ly assigned one for personal use as well.
  Generally, it is a nice piece to shoot, though the fans of the old
  .45-caliber will never give in to the folks they call "9mm Mafia."
  The avelin Anti-Tank Guided Missile
  When portable anti-tank guided missiles (invented during the 1950s)
  first appeared in large numbers on the battlefield during the 1973
  Arab-Israeli War, some experts" predicted the imminent demise of the
  tank.  Using the wireguided Soviet AT-3 Sagger (the Russian nickname is
  Malyutka, meaning "little guy"), Egyptian and Syrian infantrymen knocked
  out hundreds of Israeli vehicles.  Saggers came in a light metal
  suitcase with two missiles, a fold-out launch rack, and a periscope
  sight with a reusable control box.  Despite its success, the Sagger had
  many flaws, as first-generation weapons frequently do.  For example, the
  
  AT-3 was so slow ( 120 meters/sec) that an alert tank crew could see it
  coming. Also, it kicked up a big smoke and dust cloud on launch, and had
  to fly out at least 300 meters before the gunner could get it under
  control with his little joystick.  This done, he had to steer it into
  the target: It might take half a minute to fly out to the maximum range
  of 1.8 miles/3 kilometers.  As a result of these shortcomings, tankers
  quickly learned to keep a 360-degree watch on the horizon, and to take
  along an escort of mechanized infantry to provide suppressive
  machine-gun fire on anyone who popped up to fire a missile.  While the
  effects of the Sagger were blunted by this change in tactics, a
  revolution in armored warfare had clearly taken place.  In the late
  1960s, under the Medium Anti-Tank Weapon (MAW) pro- gram, the U.S. Army
  set out to develop a shoulder-fired wire-guided anti-tank guided missile
  as a long-ranged, highly accurate successor to the famous WWII bazooka.
  McDonnell Douglas won the MAW competition, and the missile was rushed
  into production as the M47 Dragon.  This second-generation system was
  not a great success for several reasons.  The gunner had to sit in an
  awkward position, hold his breath during the missile's twelve-second
  flight time, and try not to blink.  The total weight of the missile,
  launcher, bipod, and control unit was over 30 Ib/ 13.8 kg, the launcher
  kicked like a mule when fired, and the awkward bipod and firing position
  made it hard to track a moving target.  Furthermore, its mighty
  back-blast made it almost impossible to fire from an enclosed space such
  as a bunker or cave.  On the positive side, as long as the gunner kept
  the target centered in the crosshairs, the missile could reach out 1,200
  yards/ 1,000 meters to accurately deliver its 5.4-lb/2.45-kg warhead
  (capable of penetrat ' ing 24 inches/610 millimeters of steel armor). On
  the whole, though, the Dragon's negatives outweighed its positives.
  Soldiers in the Army hated it, and the Marines preferred to fire their
  Dragons at enemy bunkers or buildings, which rarely move.
  With the unpleasant experience of Dragon behind them, the Army Missile
  Command at Huntsville, Alabama, went back to the drawing board for a
  third-generation anti-tank missile.  The winner of the competition for
  the new missile was the Texas Instruments/Martin Marietta Javelin.
  Javelin will be the first "fire and forget," shoulder-launched,
  anti-tank-guided missile to enter service anywhere in the world.  With
  Javelin, there are no wires to litter the battlefield.  The missile has
  an advanced "imaging infrared seeker" (an imaging computer chip similar
  to those used in video camcorders) that locks onto the target before
  firing, thus giving the gunner plenty of time to duck and cover before
  the doomed tank can fire back.  On the downside, a complete Javelin
  system is heavy: almost fifty pounds, including the missile, the
  disposable launch tube, U.S.  ARMY I'ERSONAI./MAN-PORTABLE SYSTEMS a 159
  and a reusable day/night thermal-imaging sight/telescope/control unit.
  On the upside, though, the Javelin's range is around 1.2 miles/2
  kilometers, and the gunner can select a direct flight path (at the
  
  center of the target) to hit bunkers and soft vehicles, or an arching
  "top attack" flight path to strike the thin roof armor of a tank.  The
  warhead is a "tandem shaped charge," with an initial charge to strip
  away the outer layer of reactive armor (if present) and a main charge to
  attack the primary armor behind that.  Performance figures for the
  warhead have not been released, but it is doubtful that any vehicle in
  the world can survive it.  As an added bonus, since the Javelin's "soft
  launch" rocket motor reduces the recoil and back-blast at launch, the
  gunner can fire it from a standing, kneeling, sitting, or prone
  position.  This also means that in urban or entrenched combat, Javelin
  can be fired safely from an enclosed space.  Javelin is currently doing
  well in testing, and is expected to enter service with the Army and
  Marine Corps in 1995.
  The Stinger Anti-Aircraft Missile
  Ever since the first foot soldier was strafed by an airplane (probably
  somewhere on the Western Front in Europe around 1916), foot soldiers
  have dreamed of a weapon that would even the odds.  If a plane flies low
  enough, and enough determined foot soldiers keep firing their rifles
  into the air, there is a small but finite chance that a bullet (pilots
  call them "golden BBs") will get lucky and hit a critical aircraft
  system or component, as many unlucky American aviators learned over
  Southeast Asia ( 1964- 1973).  Lucky or not, soldiers have always wanted
  a "magic" weapon that would let them reach out and sweep their aerial
  oppressors from the sky, and a man-portable SAM was just the thing. This
  idea seems to have occurred to Russian and American engineers at about
  the same time, in the 1950s, although the technology took years to
  develop.  It required advances such as very sensitive infrared heat
  detectors, compact powerful rocket motors, precise miniature mechanical
  actuators for the steering fins, and finally, rugged miniaturized
  electronics to tie it all together.
  The first man-portable SAM, the Soviet SA-7 Strela ("Arrow") missile,
  was introduced in 1966, and used (without much effect) in combat as
  early as 1967 by the Egyptians against the Israelis.  The U.S.  Army
  introduced its own man-portable SAM, the General Dynamics Redeye
  missile, in 1968.  These first-generation weapons were "tail chasers"
  (meaning they utilized a tag-pursuit-intercept logic).  The infrared
  seeker of the missile had to "see" the hot metal of the aircraft's
  engine exhaust, which usually meant that the target aircraft was already
  outbound, heading away from the missile shooter.  If the target was
  flying faster than about 500 knots/800 kph, the missile would rarely be
  able to overtake it.  Also, if the line of sight from the missile
  shooter to the target was too close to the sun, the missile might lock
  onto that very hot and quite unreachable star.   Despite their
  limitations, these early man-portable SAMs did shoot down some aircraft,
  and thus had to be considered when plan
  
  160 a ARMORED ('AV
  A Stinger missile team ofthe 82nd Airborne Division in the Saudi desert.
  The goggles and cloth over the nose and mouth are standard desert gear.
  Hi ;,,- , Illssll @ S Y@s T,-,Vts ning air operations.  Air forces
  faced with the threat of these heat-seeking missiles quickly developed
  flare dispensers and infrared jammers (like the ALQ-144 "disco ball").
  If the pilot knew there were heat-seekers on his tail, he could drop a
  few flares, which, being a greater source of infrared energy than his
  jet exhaust, would deceive the incoming missile.  But these were simple
  measures against a first-generation weapon, and the missile designers
  were already working on new "smarter" missiles like the Stinger.
  The Hughes Stinger missile is a dramatic improvement in man-portable
  anti-aircraft weaponry.  As a starter, Stinger's seeker head is cooled
  (using a compressed gas cartridge) before launch, to make it more
  sensitive to infrared radiation: It can see "hot" sections of the
  aircraft like the leading edges of the wings and glint off the canopy in
  addition to the engine exhaust.  This means that the Stinger is-an "all
  aspect" SAM, which can engage an airborne target from any direction:
  inbound, outbound, or crossing.  The newest version, the Stinger-RMP,
  can even detect the "hole" an aircraft makes against the ultraviolet
  background radiation of the sky.  Additionally, a combination of optical
  filters and computer signal processing gives it great ability to
  discriminate real targets from decoy flares.  The maximum range may be
  as much as I I miles/ 17 kilometers, depending on the speed and altitude
  of the target.
  The missile itself weighs 23 Ib/ 10 kg, and is about 60 in/ 152 cm long.
  A complete Stinger launch system weighs about 34.5 Ib/ 15.7 kg, and
  includes the missile as well as a disposable launch tube that snaps onto
  a reusable "gripstock."  The gripstock includes the aiming sight and
  launch electronics, with a socket for an expendable battery and coolant
  unit.   An odd-looking boxy anten
  U.S.  ARMY IIER-,ONAL/MAN-1101@i-ABLI.'SY,,, I EMS - 161
  na is attached to the side of the launcher and Plugged itito a portable
  "IFF interrogator."  This is basically a radio transmitter that sends
  out a series of coded digital pulses.  If the target has a "friendly"
  IFF transponder that sends back the proper coded reply, you can assume
  it's friendly.
  To use the Stinger, you start by removing a protective lens cap over the
  muzzle of the launch tube and inserting a fresh Battery/Coolant Unit
  (BCU) into the gripstock.  This powers up the missile electronics and
  cools the seeker head.  This done, you track the target through the
  
  telescopic sight.  When the missile locks onto the target, you will hear
  a distinctive tone from a built-in speaker, and an indicator light
  appears in your sight picture.  Once the seeker is locked on the target,
  you take a deep breath and pull the trigger.  A small launch motor then
  ejects the missile from the tube to a safe distance, the guidance fins
  pop out, and the main rocket motor ignites.  The missile accelerates
  rapidly up to over Mach 2 (1,300 knots/2,080 kph) and begins to
  intercept the target aircraft.  When the Stinger gets to the target, the
  6.6-lb/3-kg directional blast/fragmentation warhead (which has both
  proximity and impact fuses) detonates, spewing fragments towards the
  target.  In the unlikely event that you miss, there is an electronic
  self-destruct mechanism, so that a live missile won't come down on
  friendly heads.
  The Stinger is an excellent example of something that works and works
  well in the hands of a soldier.  In Afghanistan, with minimal training
  and under very difficult conditions, the ini@iahidili guerrillas downed
  over 270 Soviet aircraft with Stingers, scoring an astounding success
  rate of 79%.
  In addition to the shoulder-fired version used by the Army, Marines,
  Navy, and Air Force, Stinger can also be mounted on a number of
  helicopters and fighting vehicles.  The twin launcher for helicopters
  weighs about 123 Ib/55.9 kg, including the missiles, control electronics
  and coolant unit.  It provides helicopters like the AH-64, OH-58D, and
  UH-60 and other Army aircraft with the ability to engage and kill enemy
  helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft in flight.  Another Stinger carrier
  is the Avenger, developed by Boeing Aerospace and in production for the
  Army since 1990.  The Avenger is a HMMWV with a compact turret mounting
  a pair of four-round Stinger launchers, a .50-caliber machine gun, and a
  digital fire-control system with a laser rangefinder and thermal viewer.
  It has the advantage of a cueing and data-link system.  Finally, there
  is the new version of the M2 Bradley, the Bradley Stinger Vehicle, which
  is currently under test (as of spring 1994).  During much of the 1980s
  and early 1990s, the Army was almost conipletely dependent upon Stinger
  for tactical air defense of deployed ground units.  Because of the
  cancellation of the DIVAD air-defense gun system and the gradual
  phase-out of older anti-aircraft systems (such as Chaparral, a
  groundlaunched version of the famous Sidewinder air-to-air missile, and
  the 20nini M61 Vulcan cannon on an M 1 13 chassis), the Stinger has been
  "the only game in town."  With no anti-aircraft system between Stinger
  and the fixed-site Patriot missiles, it is fortunate that the U.S.  Army
  has not had to face ally enemy that presented a serious air threat.
  Until new systems designed to fill ttie gaps in the
  162 - ARMORID C:AV
  Army's air-defense umbrella come on-line in a few years, tactical air
  
  defense will depend on Stinger, the little missile that can!
  Clothing: BDUS, Helmets, Armor, and Chemical Suits
  What does the well-dressed American soldier wear into battle these days?
  Well, though you might wonder at the fit of the clothes they wear, the
  troops the U.S.  sends around the world are the best clothed in history.
  I'm not talking about the various dress or parade uniforms, but
  battlefield clothing-the stuff designed to survive in the dust of Saudi
  Arabia, the humidity of Panama, or the day-to-day grind in places like
  Germany or Korea.
  At the moment, the basic field outfit is called the Battle Dress Uniform
  or BDU. It comes in a variety of different colors and patterns, as well
  as different weights depending on the climate.  The basic varieties are:
  Forest-Used by most of the Army as their basic BDU.  These use a
  forest/olive green as the basic color, with other darker colors in a
  pattern designed to break up the shape of a human against a background
  of woods or grass.  Desert-This is the "chocolate chip" uniform made so
  famous by General Schwarzkopf during Desert Storm.  These use a tan base
  fabric with various shades of brown and gray to help personnel
  "disappear" against the scrub brush and dunes found in the deserts of
  the world.  Arctic-This is the new uniform for operations in mountain
  and cold weather environments.  It is a combination of black, white, and
  grays that is extremely effective for hiding among the rocks and dirty
  snow piles so common on winter battlefields.  It has an insulating
  lining and is somewhat heavier than the normal BDUS.
  Soldiers applying camouflage face paint.  Note the loose fit ofthe BDUs
  (Battle Dress Uniform) and the fabric cover over the "Fritz" Keviar
  helmets.  The small cuts and elastic band on the helmet cover are for
  insertion of teary twigs and branches to provide additional camouflage.
  Oily, /@l I S 4R'f) Pil"71, U.S.  ARMY I'ERSONAL/MAN-l'ORTABLE SYSTEMS
  163
  All of these uniforms come in a variety of sizes for men and women, and
  actually fit quite well, though they do tend to look rather baggy.  The
  Army wants them to be comfortable, and not so confining that a soldier
  cannot jump or climb.  In addition, all of the newest BDUs are treated
  with a waxy substance that resists absorbing chemical agents.  There are
  also specialized coveralls for branches such as Armor and Aviation. Each
  of these uses Nomex(V (a fire-resistant synthetic fiber from Dupont
  Corporation) as the primary fabric.  Army coveralls seem to have dozens
  of pockets!  And over the BDU goes the soldier's web gear, which is a
  general-purpose harness for ammunition pouches, first-aid kits,
  canteens, and the like.
  
  Boots are almost as important as food to most soldiers.  There are a
  number of different models.  Of course, aviators and paratroops have
  their specific models, but it is the boots used by infantrymen that are
  so vital to the wellbeing of an army.  Generally, the basic boot is
  comfortable and wears well enough.  But the boots designed for extreme
  environments have traditionally given American soldiers aching feet or
  worse.  Cold-weather boots have always been a particular problem, though
  the current version is adequate to the task.  The new desert boot,
  introduced just prior to Desert Storm, proved to be a winner, and is
  quite popular with the troops in the field.
  Since the human body is relatively fragile compared to bullets and shell
  fragments, the Army has developed some gear to help the exposed soldier
  survive.  Helmets have been an important feature of the American
  soldier's outfit since World War 1.  Since that time, three different
  models have been worn. The original "flat dish" model, adopted from the
  British, was used until mid-1942.  During WWII the Army adopted the
  classic "pot" shape that symbolized the GI until the early 1980s.  Then
  the military broke with tradition and switched from metal to a synthetic
  called Kevlar (made by Dupont) as the basic helmet material.  Kevlar is
  more than ten times as strong as steel by weight, and much easier to
  form into ballistically protective shapes.  In addition, the Army did
  extensive research on the most effective shape for protective helmets,
  and the shape of the old German WWII helmets was found to be the best
  for preventing head injury in combat.  Called the "Fritz" (an obvious
  reference to its German ancestry) by the troops who use it, it is the
  standard helmet issued today.  The only improvement to the basic "Fritz"
  helmet is a new type of Kevlar (called Kevlar-29 by Dupont), which
  reduces the weight of the helmet a bit.  This is important, as the
  weight of the "Fritz" can be hard on your neck muscles.  The payoff,
  though, is the best helmet in the world, as over a decade of combat
  experience has proven.
  A more recent development in protecting the American soldier has been
  the adoption of body armor-or "flak jackets," as they are known.  First
  used in Vietnam, they greatly reduce the likelihood of fatal wounds to
  the chest and torso.  Basically, this is a vest with insertable panels
  of Kevlar; and it looks very much like a down jacket.  Early models were
  heavy, stiff, and confining to the wearer, but they radically reduced
  fatalities in units where the soldiers wore them regularly.  The newer
  vests are much lighter and more flexible, though still a bit binding.
  Nevertheless, all the soldiers I know wear theirs religiously-to avoid
  what they call "unnecessary perforation 11!
  It is strange that today-almost five years after the dismantling of the
  Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War-U.S.  soldiers have probably
  never been under a greater danger of attack by chemical weapons.  Though
  the dictators of the world are doing their best to acquire nuclear
  
  weapons (the numberone status symbol among dictators), several of them
  have settled on an older, and somewhat lower-status technology-chemical
  and biological weapons-as a sort of "poor man's atomic bomb."  Because
  Saddam Hussein had actually used his chemical weapons against the
  Iranians and the Kurdish people, when American forces deployed to the
  Persian Gulf in 1990, they took the threat of attack by Iraqi chemical
  weapons extremely seriously.
  Luckily, so had the Department of Defense. In addition to the
  acquisition of the Fox vehicles from Germany, they had recently
  introduced a new chemical protective garment for use by U.S.  forces.
  Previously, the standard U.S.  chemical suit (more of a rubberized smock
  actually) was bulky, uncomfortable, and almost impossible to work in for
  anything more than an hour or two without suffering heat prostration.
  The new suit was a major improvement over the earlier model, resembling
  a quilted jumpsuit with thick i@isulation.  The outside is covered in a
  camouflage cloth similar to that of the BDU, and together with the
  layered inner protection of the suit, it is resistant to virtually all
  known chemical agents.  On the inside is a fabric shell containing an
  activated charcoal liner to absorb moisture and keep the occupant
  (relatively) dry, and consequently (relatively) cool.  In fact, soldiers
  who wore them during Desert Storm actually found them quite comfortable,
  though some of this was due to the fact that Desert Saber, the
  one-hundred-hour ground war, was fought during a period of cold and
  rain!  The downside of these new suits was that after being worn for
  something like five continuous days, the inner shell and charcoal liner
  literally peeled off onto the skin of the wearer.  The newer models have
  been designed to avoid this problem, and seem to work well.
  Soldiers on operations wear the suits whenever there is any danger of
  chemical attack.  In the event of a suspected chemical attack, each
  soldier immediately dons a protective mask and hood, as well as a set of
  booties designed to keep the soldier from fouling-or "sliming"-his boots
  with toxic agents.  The mask is an improved design with replaceable
  filters (they have an easier "draw," making it less fatiguing to
  breathe), and even a small port to take water from a standard canteen.
  The suit is by no means comfortable, but it's a vast improvement over
  past designs, and a much better alternative to becoming a chemical toxin
  casualty.
  So when will General Sullivan give every soldier a GPS receiver and a
  personal FVIS terminal?  (Remember the Space Marines in Aliens?) Well,
  don't laugh yet, because such things are on the way, and will probably
  be part of the soldier's outfit before the end of the first decade of
  the 21 st century.  For example, Trimble Navigation, of Sunnyvale,
  California, is already working on
  
  U.,.  AL@MY fli@l@SoNAL/NIAN-l'ORTABLE SYSTEMS a 165
  integrating a miniature GPS antenna and receiver into a standard "Fritz"
  helmet.  And biomedical monitoring and transponder gear will probably be
  part of a soldier's standard kit by 2010.  If this sounds far-fetched,
  stay tuned: Things like fully powered body armor with air-conditioning
  and environmental controls are already being discussed at places like
  Fort Banning, Georgia (the Army Infantry Center), and Fort Detrich,
  Maryland (where they work on habitability and sustenance technology).
  There will be Starship Troopers!
  Food: T-Rations and MREs
  "An army travels on its stomach."  -Napoleon Bonaparte
  Nothing in soldiers' lives so affects their well-being and morale as
  the quality and quantity of their field rations.  The problem with food
  is that being organic, it tends to spoil.  So ever since people first
  left their caves to make war on their distant neighbors, warriors have
  been trying to find better ways to package food and make it last.  In
  the time of Alexander the Great, goatskins and ceramic vessels provided
  the packaging for food and drink, albeit not terribly effectively.
  Napoleon awarded prizes to inventors who demonstrated the ability to
  preserve foods in glass jars.  But the basic packaging technology that
  would be the standard for the next 150 years, the tin can, was a British
  invention-with everything from canned butter to boned pheasant being
  canned and shipped to British troops around the world.  However, in
  those days it was expensive to package food in this way; and only
  delicacies and supplements like butter and condensed milk ever found
  their way to the forward troops.  The desire to keep down costs and
  maximize the efficiency of the ration system perhaps hit a low point
  during the American Civil War.  The malnutrition that resulted from the
  basic diet of salt pork (bacon), hardtack (unleavened bread), and black
  coffee may have caused as many deaths as bullets did.  Only the
  desperate intervention of citizens' organizations like the United States
  Sanitary Commission and the Red Cross avoided even more grievous losses.
  Over the next century and a half, advances in canning technology and
  reduced costs of canning (due to civilian consumption) contributed to
  better quality and longer shelf life.  And in due course, the U.S.  Army
  attempted to produce nutritious and tasty canned and packaged rations.
  The best known of these, the famous C and K rations of World War 11,
  provided individual portions of well-known foods in cans and sealed
  packages, with shelf lives measured in years.  Some, like the canned
  beef stew and spaghetti, were almost identical to civilian products from
  Armour or Campbell's.  Others, like the hideous pork patty (sausage in
  grease gravy), and the notorious fruitcake (a sort of sweet and sticky
  hockey puck), were usually passed along to captured enemy troops.
  
  Because of their mixed reception by front-line combat troops, the Army
  felt obliged to supplement or replace the field rations with fresh food
  as often as possible.  This policy-admirable in principle-could
  nevertheless be taken to silly excesses, as in Vietnam, when jungle
  patrols might have chilled cases of beer airdropped to them, and remote
  firebases greeted returning patrols with full-course steak dinners and
  well-stocked bars. Clearly, in the attempt to make field rations as
  palatable as possible, the Army supply system had gone berserk and
  needed to be fixed. Luckily, a new packaging technology had come on the
  scene to help the military with this problem.
  The coming of the space age and man's early ventures into orbit and to
  the moon meant that he had to take food and drink with him.  At first
  this took the form of pureed foods in toothpaste tubes and crumbly
  crackers and cookies.  But the astronauts' distaste for such stuff, and
  the high public visibility of the space program, forced NASA to research
  and develop better food products to keep flight crews happy an-d
  healthy.  At first, they tried freeze-dried foodsquick-frozen and then
  placed in a vacuum to remove all the moisture.  But this did not work
  well with meats and baked goods.  And by the end of the Apollo
  moon-landing program, NASA was allowing common grocery items Iii(e bread
  slices, canned meats, and peanut butter and jellies on lunar missions.
  The real breakthrough came with the development of the "wet pack," a
  sealed plastic bag with dehydrated foods such as meat slices, stews, or
  vegetables, sterilized to prevent spoilage (usually by steam heating or
  radiation bombardment), and then rehydrated for use by the crews.  The
  same techniques were applied to other types of prepared foods (lasagna,
  chicken and rice, etc.) for larger institutional-sized containers.  And
  thus the technology behind the T-ration and the MRE was born.
  The current U.S.  Army strategy of feeding soldiers in the field is
  based around the following three types of rations:
  A-Rations-These are fresh foods, procured locally from around the
  operational area, and prepared by standard Army field kitchens.  This is
  the cheapest and most preferred type of ration (by both the soldiers and
  the Army), though local vendors and supplies may limit availability.
  T-Rations-These are prepared foods, from vendors like Stouffers and
  Swanson, packaged in large aluminum trays, matched into meal sets for
  groups of twelve soldiers, and then heated in buffettype heaters with
  boiling water.  They usually do not require refrigeration, though some
  special meals (like the famous 1990 Thanksgiving dinner during Desert
  Shield) may require cold storage in transit.
  Meals Ready to Eat (MREs)-This is the standard field/combat ration of
  the American military.  An MRE is a series of wet, dry, and freeze-dried
  food packs, with an accessory package (spices, a spoon, fork, napkins,
  
  etc.) seated inside a rugged (some say too rugged!) brown plastic bag.
  There are twelve basic varieties, with one of each variety being packed
  in a case of MRES.  Each MRE contains about 3,000 usable calories of
  food, and each
  U.S.  ARMY PERSONAL/ MAN-PORTABLE SYSI'EM-, - 167
  The contents of a Meal Ready to Eat (MRE).  This particular one has
  pouches ofchicken with rice, cheese spread, crackers, drink mix, coffee,
  and a cookie bar.  kw
  Note the small bottle of Tabasco sauce, a favorite of the troops.
  Jt)ilN D, GRL,@H4tf soldier in the field is allocated four per day under
  the current Army supply scheme.
  The T-rations have been a godsend to the Army in terms of cost and
  portability.  When you open up a T-ration box, you usually find three
  aluminum trays of food-a meat entree, a starch dish, and a vegetable
  dish.  Also in the T-ration box is that most prized of Army foodstuffs,
  an oversized bottle of Mcilhenny Co.  Tabasco sauce!  In all deference
  to the Army and their contractors, the foodstuffs supplied to the troops
  can be a bit on the bland side, especially to some ethnic groups that
  have found a career in the Army so attractive.  So the addition of spicy
  condiments has become an essential part of the T-ration specification.
  Overall, the T-ration program has been a success, though everyone has
  his own preferences.  For example, one young cavalry officer that we
  spoke to had nothing good to say about the chicken breasts in honey
  glaze sauce over rice.  But a senior supply officer of a cavalry
  regiment declared the dish "delicious," and said that he could eat it
  every day!   Like the population that makes it up, the Army is a mixture
  of tastes.
  Because ofthe Gulf War, MREs got a very bad rep.  Called at times "Meals
  Rejected by the Enemy," they garnered many negative comments during the
  Gulf crisis.  Part ofthe reason for this was the limited variety
  available to the troops during the early days of Desert Shield.  During
  the dark days of August 1990, before the Army logistics and support
  services caught up with them, the first troops deployed to the Persian
  Gulf (mainly the 82nd Airborne and 101 st Air Assault Divisions) had
  nothing to eat but MRES.  At that time, there were only four varieties
  of MRE (as opposed to the dozen of today), a choice that was made worse
  by the dietary requirements of our Saudi Arabian allies.  Prior to
  Desert Shield, the Saudi National Guard was primarily a security force
  charged with the protection of mosques around Mecca and other holy
  places.  They were not a field army, and so lacked the support structure
  to maintain themselves in the desert of northern Saudi
  168 - ARMOIZFD CAV Arabia.  The Saudis did not have a stockpile of
  ready-to-eat field rations for their ground troops, and lacked field
  
  kitchens to cook food for them.  So the Saudis asked ifthey might buy
  several million MREs as interim field rations, pending delivery of their
  own field kitchens.  This was cheerfully done.  After the MREs were
  delivered, though, someone (nobody seems to know whether it was Saudi or
  American) realized that two ofthe four MRE types contained pork (ham in
  one, roasted pork in the other), and thus were forbidden for Muslims.
  To avoid embarrassing us, the Saudis kept the two varieties that did not
  have pork in them, and graciously donated the rest to the troops of the
  XVIII Airborne Corps already on the line up on the Iraqi border.  Thus
  it came to pass that the soldiers ofthe XVIII Airborne Corps wound up
  eating ham and egg omelet and pork patty MREs for some weeks.  They were
  positively sick of them!  Nevertheless, everyone did eat, and they got
  on with the business at hand, the winning back of Kuwait.
  From this slight dietary debacle came the initiative to greatly expand
  the variety and quality ofthe MRE program.  The first move was to
  develop and package a number of new types of MRE.  The next step, which
  is still going on, was to look beyond the traditional foods that have
  been packaged into field rations and produce MREs that better reflect
  the eating habits and tastes ofthe young Americans that make up the raw
  material ofthe U.S.  Army.  More about the new MRE technology later, but
  first let's look at the existing variety of MREs available for use by
  the American soldier.
  If you were to open a case of MREs-and there is only one kind of MRE
  package in late 1993-you would find one ofeach kind of MRE inside.  This
  was done so that nobody could complain that the Army and its contractors
  were trying to force MREs of one kind or another onto the troops.   So,
  in what is probably the first rule of MRE consumption etiquette, when
  the troops are issued their MRES, they randomly reach into the box, and
  just pull one out.  In this way, no individual can claim he was"gypped."
  The second rule is that it's OK to "trade" for another MRE (like "brown
  bag" rules in grammar school).  Once you've got your MRE, opening the
  package (each weighs about 2 Ib/ I kg) takes persistence; the brown
  plastic of the bags is so tough it's almost bulletproof.  As a result,
  the soldiers tell me that a Swiss Army knife (with a built-in scissors)
  is considered an essential tool for the MRE gourmet.  Now, in case you
  wonder just what is inside these little brown plastic packages, consider
  some ofthe following menus: Menu No.  2-Corned beef hash, freeze-dried
  pears, crackers, apple jelly, oatmeal cookie bar, beverage base powder
  (fruit drink), cocoa beverage powder, Accessory Package "C" (Taster's
  Choice coffee, creamer, sugar, salt, pepper, gum, matches, hand cleaner,
  and toilet tissue), and a spoon.  Menu No.  4-Omelet with ham, potatoes
  au gratin, crackers, cheese spread, oatmeal cookie bar, beverage base
  powder (fruit drink), Accessory Package "C" (Taster's Choice coffee,
  creanier, LJ.',.  AL@MY 1'1;.I@',ONAI /fIAN-l'Ol@ I Alil 1: ,Y,,, I
  il%i,@, - 169
  
  sugar, salt, pepper, gum, matches, hand cleaner, and toilet tissue),
  Tabasco sauce, and a spoon.
  * Menu No.  7-Beef stew, crackers, peanut butter, cherry nut cake,
  Accessory Package "A:' (Taster's Choice coffee, creamer, sugar, salt,
  pepper, gum, matches, hand cleaner, and toilet tissue), Tabasco sauce,
  and a spoon.
  * Menu No.  8-Ham slice with natural juices, potatoes au gratin,
  crackers, apple jelly, chocolate-covered brownie, beverage base powder
  (fruit drink), cocoa beverage powder, Accessory Package
  "A" (Taster's Choice coffee, creamer, sugar, salt, pepper, gum,
  matches, hand cleaner, and toilet tissue), Tabasco sauce, and a spoon.
  * Menu No.  I I-Chicken and rice, crackers, cheese spread, choco
  late-covered cookie bar, beverage base powder (fruit drink), Starburst
  candies, Accessory Package "N' (Taster's Choice coffee, creamer, sugar,
  salt, pepper, gum, matches, hand cleaner, and toi let tissue), Tabasco
  sauce, and a spoon.
  Once the package is opened, you collect your beverage (usually water,
  heated for coffee or chilled for the drink powder, or boxed milk).  Then
  it is a matter of organizing what you have found in the bag.   Should
  you desire to heat your entree package, you can boil it in water (if
  available).  But true MRE gourmets tell me there is a much preferred
  method.  Step one is to find a friendly HET driver and drop the MRE
  entree package down the exhaust stack while the engine idles.  You wait
  for ten minutes (timing here is essential), then have the driver gun the
  engine.  The MRE package blows right up out of the stack, perfectly
  heated through!  Another option, though one shunned by many troops, is
  the use of a little Army issued gadget, the U.S.  1992 MRE Heater.  This
  is a catalytic mitt, which, when activated with water, produces enough
  heat to make an MRE entree pack warm enough to enjoy. These are also
  used a lot in Arctic regions just to thaw frozen MRE packs.  The
  downside is that the heaters produce hydrogen (an explosive gas) as a
  by-product of the catalytic reaction (this means no smoking or open
  flames around them), and the other by-products of the reaction are
  somewhat toxic and have to be disposed of carefully.
  So, you might ask, what are they like to eat?  Not bad actually.  You
  have to eat the entrees out of the wet packs, which tends to be a bit
  messy (a tip-slit the bags the long way to reduce the mess), though
  quite practical.
  In general, MREs are tough for the supply system to handle.  Their
  contents are hydrated with so much water, they are relatively heavy and
  bulky.  And of course, they make a lot of waste.  In view of all the
  garbage generated by the MREs (the Army calls it "wet" trash or
  
  garbage), it is a good idea to use the brown plastic MRE bag to stuff
  all the waste in.  This wet waste is a major problem in using MRES, as
  the current environmental policy of the Army is to treat the lands that
  our forces enter at least as well as our own domestic exercise areas.
  This means that trash must be packed out or buried in an approved waste
  site.  Yet for all their problems, until the Army figures a way to make
  water out of thin air in the desert, MREs will remain the best
  compromise available.  Because they require very little water to
  supplement the meal, the MRE is going to be field ration of choice for
  U.S.  military forces when they operate away from home.
  Which brings us to our discussion of future MRE developments.  One of
  the main goals of the Army is to make fleld rations that are both
  attractive to the soldiers and nutritious.   That second goal has been
  achieved quite well with the current MRES.  Well balanced nutritionally,
  particularly in mineral content (which is vital in areas where soldiers
  sweat a lot), each MRE delivers about 3,000 usable calories (if fully
  eaten), with four MR]Es being allocated for each soldier each day.
  Surprisingly, because of the high caloric content in each meal, troops
  in the field actually have the tendency to gain weight (which is almost
  unheard of in military history), despite the heavy workloads placed upon
  them in field operations.  But this does not solve the problem of
  variety and taste.  In addition, with the growing diversity of personnel
  in the Army (Muslims are the fastest-growing ethnic group in America,
  and in the Army), it is becoming necessary to produce field rations that
  meet the strict dietetic requirements of groups like vegetarians and
  Muslims.  In late 1993, a new series of MREs-with entrees based around
  vegetable products like lentils and potatoes-was produced and airdropped
  as relief supplies for the Muslims in Bosnia.  As for more common
  American tastes, there are some promising efforts to package "fast"
  foods like hamburgers, as well as Mexican and Chinese entrees.  But the
  crown jewel of these efforts is (yes, you guessed it!) an MRE with a
  slice of pizza in it.  A specially shaped thermal mitt heats the slice
  in its wet pack and melts the cheese.  These new "fast food" MREs will
  probably be getting to the troops in the field in the next few years,
  and should be quite a hit.  Nevertheless, one old cavalry sergeant that
  we ate with at Fort Bliss was heard to say that the pizza MRF- would not
  be complete until the contractor found a way to put a self-chilling can
  of beer inside!  One thing that is cer- tain, though.  The Army is
  spending a lot of money to make sure that the U.S.  Army is the best fed
  in the world.  Bon app@tit!
  Radios: The SINCGARS Family
  In May of 1940, when the Nazi Panzer divisions invaded France, most of
  their tanks were inferior in firepower and protection to the French and
  British tanks opposing them.  But everj, German tank had a radio, while
  only special Allied command vehicles were so equipped.  In maneuver
  
  warfare, every combat unit must be able to do three things: move, shoot,
  and communicate.  The German Army gained tremendous tactical and
  operational advantages in flexibility and in command and control from
  those fragile, short-ranged vacuum-tube sets.  Other armies paid careful
  attention to this lesson.  They still do.
  U.S.  ARMY PERSONAL/MAN-PORTABLE SYSTEMS a 171
  The backpack version ofthe SINCGARS jam-resistant frequency-hopping
  radio.  Dismounted cavalry scouts might carry this type of radio.
  Otti(i,,i t S.  ARM@ PHOIO
  Revolutionary advances in electronics during the 1970s and '80s left the
  U.S.  Army with a collection of obsolete radio sets that were heavy, and
  hard to maintain, drew too much power, and put out too much heat.  They
  were often incompatible with frequency bands and transmission modes used
  by the Navy and Air Force.  Even worse, they were vulnerable to enemy
  interception and jamming.  The Russians, with decades of experience in
  jamming Western radio broadcasts (Voice of America, Radio Free Europe,
  etc.), had made "radio-electronic combat" a key feature of their
  tactical doctrine.  In the early 1980s the U.S.  Army specified the
  design for a new SINgleChannel Ground and Airborne Radio System
  (SINCGARS).  SINCGARS (which entered service in 1988) is a family of
  compact, lightweight, reliable, and secure FM radios that can use any of
  2,320 different frequencies between 30 and 87.975 MHz in the VHF band.
  The Army plans to procure 150,000 SINCGARS radios from General Dynamics
  (San Diego, California) and ITT Aerospace (Fort Wayne, Indiana), with
  additional orders from the Marine Corps and various government agencies.
  The system resists jamming by using "frequency hopping": The transmitter
  and receiver are synchronized to jump between widely spaced frequencies
  at very short intervals.  To defeat the system, the enemy would have to
  radiate a tremendous amount of energy spread across a large slice of the
  electromagnetic spectrum.  There are eight basic models:
  - AN/ PRC- I 19-This is a backpack model, capable of being carried
  by a man.
  - AN/VRC-87-A vehicle-mounted, short-range model. * AN/VRC-88-A
  vehicle-mounted, short-range model that can be dismounted if desired by
  the crew.
  * AN/VRC-89-A vehicle-mounted, long- and short-range transceiver model.
  * AN/VRC-90-A vehicle-mounted, tong-range transceiver model.
  * AN/VRC-91-A vehicle-mounted, long-range model that has the option of
  being a dismountable short-range transceiver.
  
  * AN/VRC-92-A vehicle-mounted, dual-channel (essentially two radios
  together), long-range model with retransmission (over separate radio
  net) capabilities.
  * AN/ARC-201-The standard helicopter/aircraft transceiver model.
  The AN/PRC-119 backpack portable model weighs about 22 Ib/ 10 kg.  The
  short-range models have a power output of about 5 watts, and a maximum
  range of between 2.5 to 5 miles/4 to 8 km.  Long-range models have a
  power output up to 50 watts, and a maximum range of 5 to 22 miles/8 to
  35 km.  These relatively low-power output levels make it harder for an
  enemy to detect and locate the transmitter.  All of the SINCGARS systems
  can handle voice, text, digital, and data communications (just hook up
  the desired transmission device), and even fax transmissions with the
  appropriate attachments.  The latest models also have built-in
  cryptographic (scrambling) units for added security.  During Desert
  Shield and Desert Storm, SINCGARS stood up to heat, dust, sandstorms,
  and bad weather with exceptional reliability.  They should be the
  standard Army communication package well into the 21st century.
  The NAVSTAR GPS System
  To wage a successful war of maneuver, a commander must constantly know
  the answer to two questions:
  Where the hell is the enemy?
  Where the hell am I?
  Military history is filled with defeats that resulted after bold,
  aggressive flanking columns got lost in the woods, or stouthearted
  defenders dug in on the wrong hill.  Ever since reasonably accurate
  terrain maps were first drawn up (around the beginning of the 18th
  century), armies have tried to teach junior officers the art of map
  reading and navigation.  The results have often been disappointing.  The
  advent of modern electronics has provided some limited advances with
  gyrocompasses and inertial navigation systems, though their high cost
  limited their usage.  Early satellite navigation systems also had
  promise, though their cost, and the cost and size of receiver sets, made
  them unusable by most of the military.  Something new was needed to
  provide exact position accuracy.  That something was the NAVSTAR GPS
  system.
  Li.S.  AI@NIY ['ERSONAL/MAN-l'Ol@ IABLF SYI,'L FM'-, - 173
  The NAVSTAR Global Positioning System (GPS) is a draniatic advance in
  navigation.  It starts with an array of twenty-four satellites (called a
  constellation) 10,900 miles/ 17,600 kilometers up in an orbit inclined
  
  at an angle of 55 ' to the equator.  At this altitude, it takes a
  satellite twelve hours to circle the earth.  When all twenty-one primary
  satellites (plus three spares) have been launched, at least four will
  always be visible to a receiver virtually anywhere in the world.  Each
  satellite carries a super-accurate "atomic clock" and a low-powered
  transmitter that broadcasts specially coded time signals and status
  messages on radio frequencies of 1227.6 and 1575.42 MHz.  By correlating
  the signals from at least four satellites, and doing some fancy
  trigonometry, the computer in a small portable receiver can determine
  your location, altitude, speed, and time with great precision.
  Relatively inexpensive civilian GPS receivers are typically accurate to
  within '@15 meters/82 feet of 3-D positional accuracy.  And military
  receivers, which can decode a more accurate encrypted part of the GPS
  signal, called the P(Y) code, get much better performance.  The original
  GPS specification demanded accuracy with a P(Y)-code receiver to 16
  meters/52.5 feet, though positional accuracies of around 5 meters/ 16.4
  feet are considered typical by military GPS users.  As an aside, by
  linking several GPS receivers and a radio transmitter at a known (i.e.,
  surveyed) geographic point, surveyors can determine positional accuracy
  down to plus or minus one centimeter/.4 inch!  As an added bonus, since
  every GPS receiver automatically synchronizes itself to the
  super-accurate clocks on the satellites, combat units can now precisely
  coordinate their actions in time as well as space.  Handheld military
  GPS receivers as small as 14 oz/397 grams are already available, with
  the ability to display information (in six languages!) about the exact
  position of the sun and phase of the moon on any given day.  Now you
  might ask, since GPS receivers are commercially available from many
  American, European, and Asian electronics firms, what prevents an enemy
  from buying and using off-the-shelf units to gain the same kinds of
  tactical advantages?  The GPS system was designed to provide 11
  selective availability" during a crisis or conflict.  When the GPS
  satellites receive a special encoded command from Air Force ground
  controllers, they can start broadcasting less accurate data.  Then,
  unless you have a military P(Y)-code receiver, and the proper
  cryptographic key for the day, you
  The Sniall Lightweight GPS Receiver, which enabled the Army to navigate
  the deserts of Iraq.  The square bulge on the top of the case is the
  antenna, which can detect transmissions froni five NAVSTAR satellites
  simultaneously.  To receive the highly accurate P (Y) code, the device
  niust be loaded with a "crypto key."  The c ommand "Zeroize ('ryptokeys"
  erases this secret inforniation.  18/,IHII will only be able to
  determine your position within about 100 meters, rather than 25 meters.
  In fact, it is possible for the controllers to selectively degrade (say,
  to only a 1,000-meter/.61-mile accuracy) the non-P(Y) accuracy of the
  system on a local basis, such as over the Middle East during a time of
  conflict, if that is desired.
  
  So how does one make use of this amazing little bit of technology?
  Well, consider the following.  The AN/PSN-10 (V) TRIMpack GPS receiver
  is the best-selling military GPS receiver in service today.  Literally
  thousands of them were used in the Persian Gulf during Desert Shield and
  Desert Storm, with more than 18,000 units in service worldwide since
  then.  A civilian version, called the Scout-M, is available for anyone
  who cares to use one for their 4WD or bass boat.  Made by Trimble
  Navigation, the Centurion, the newest P(Y)-capable version, weighs 3.1
  Ib/ 1.4 kg, and is about the same size as a good pair of binoculars. The
  flat antenna is built into a nearly indestructible green plastic case.
  It has a removable power pack with NiCad rechargeable batteries
  (non-rechargeable Lithium batteries were used in earlier units).  On the
  front panel there is a backlighted (suitable for use with the new
  AN/PVS-7 low-light goggles) four-line LCD display panel, a rotary
  selector switch for different operating modes, and two toggle switches
  for changing the various options on the display.
  The unit also has a serial data port that allows it to communicate with
  any compatible computer, digital system on a vehicle or aircraft, or
  even other GPS receivers.  During Desert Shield the Army acquired 8,000
  of these Small Lightweight GPS Receivers (SLGR-the troops call them
  "sluggers" for short) for about $3,600 each under an emergency
  procurement.  The SLGR can be programmed with the locations of up to
  1,089 "waypoints"; and by simply flipping the knob to R+A (Range and
  Azimuth), you can read out your current range and bearing from any three
  waypoints (such as an enemy position, a friendly base, or a logistics
  base).  During Desert Shield, SLGRs were initially so scarce, and so
  vitally needed in the trackless desert, that many personnel tried to buy
  them directly from the manufacturer, using their own credit cards.
  Special Forces teams that operated deep inside Iraq, and a few pilots
  shot down in enemy territory, credited their survival to the precision
  of their GPS receivers, which enabled them to link up with friendly
  helicopters in exactly the right place at exactly the right time.
  Using the SLGR is simple in the extreme (please note that I was using a
  non-P(Y)-code SLGR for the following) so much so that during Desert
  Shield, soldiers who got them just ripped open the packing containers,
  and were using them within half an hour.  You start by turning the
  selector kriob from the OFF position to Status and Setup ( STS As soon
  as the startup screen clears, the STS readout screen indicates the
  following data:
  T acking 0 SVs
  GPS n/a
  U.S.   ARMY I'ERSONAL/MAN-l'Of@IABLE SYI,'I-EMS - 175
  Battery used: 0:00
  
  INT antenna <more>
  This means that the SLGR is not yet tracking any satellite vehicles
  (SVs).  Thus, there is not a GPS position yet available, as shown by the
  GPS n/a indicator.  The Battery used indicator tells us how much time
  has been logged since the last charging; and the INT antenna indicator
  shows that we are making use of the internal antenna, as opposed to an
  externally mounted one.  After a minute or two you will begin to see the
  SVs counter begin to change.  Once it reads:
  Tracking 4 SVs GPS OK
  Battery used: 0:03 INT antenna <more>
  you have a three-dimensional fix (two-dimensional fixes are possible
  with just three satellites) and can start to work.  One of the first
  things that you might want to do is set up your preferences for using
  the SLGR.  By clicking the horizontal L / R toggle switch, the <more>
  indicator will begin to blink.  Now, by clicking the vertical INC/ DEC
  toggle switch down twice, you get to the settings screen.  You will
  probably see something like this:
  Datum: WGS-84
  Time: TJTC
  Units: Metric/DEGS
  Mode: DMS/Tr <more>
  The Da t um: WGS - 8 4 indicator tells you that the SLGR is currently
  using the WGS-84 Merchich mathematical model of the earth to figure its
  coordinate readouts. Different maps use different earth models as their
  point of reference.  Suppose that we wanted to take a walking tour of
  Washington, D.C.  If we acquire a 1:50,000 tactical map (Sheet 5561 1,
  Series V734, Edition I-DMA, Alexandria) of the area from the Defense
  Mapping Agency (they are available through the National Geological
  Survey and NOAA), and we look at the legend of the map, we find that it
  conforms to the 1927 North American Datum.  So, we click the L / R
  switch once, and the Da t um indicator begins to blink.  Now, using the
  vertical switch, we scroll through until we get to NAD - 2 7 , CONUS.
  Clicking the L/R switch twice now, we get to the Time : setting.  This
  allows you to select either UTC (Universal Time Code-Greenwich Mean
  Time) or Local (your current time zone) as your clock readout.  Leave
  them
  T' at TT(-' for the moment.  Clicking the I @ P switch again, we can
  select the readout units, in this case L@IIGLI SH I DE(@,@', (English
  
  and degree units).  This done, we again use the f, / R switch to set the
  Mode indicator to Degrees-MinutesSeconds (other options include UTr@l
  and the military grid reference system MGRS, as well) and True North, so
  that it reads DMS, /T .  This done, you call now usethe L/R and INC/DEC
  switches toget back tothe basic TS screen.  The settings that you have
  just made will now be the defaults for the system until you again change
  them.
  Now, if you turn the rotary switch to POS, the receiver will display a
  time and position.  A fix on the front steps of Union Station ( I love
  to travel on trains!) on a Saturday afternoon (EST) might show as
  follows:
  SAT UTC16:00:00
  lit 38'53,56.7"N
  Ion 77'00,23.6,,w alt + 260ft +300
  A quick review of the map shows that to be right in front of the
  station, just south of the Metro station.  If we were to go back to the
  STS setting and reset to the Military Grid Reference System (MCR)
  setting, then go back to the P S setting with the selector knob, then
  the readout would look something like this:
  SAT UTC16:00:00
  MGRS 18S
  iii 25988 07562
  Alt + 260ft +300
  If you had one of the maps drawn to this system, specifically sheet 18S,
  you would be able to see down to the square meter where the unit was
  telling you your position was.   But let us assume that we want to use
  the GPS receiver to set up a tour for others to follow.  You now select
  the aypo i r.@ ('v@PT) setting for the selector knob, and you will see
  the following display:
  SAT UTC16:00:00
  I a @ 3 8 3 6 .  /", @j lon 77'00'23.6"
  alt + 260ft <fix>
  By clicking the L / switch to the left, you can make the x-- indicator
  blink.  Once you have done this, a downward click of the I @,J('
  ')E(switcl) will automatically insert this position into the waypoint
  array of the SLGR as waypoint ;,A (the first of 1,089 possibles) like
  
  this:
  U.S.  ARMY 1'1-.[Z,',ONAI /MAN-I'OIZIABI 1
  WPT A f 1 6 0 0 0 0
  laL 38c53,56.7',N
  Ion 77100'23.6'W
  alt + 260ft <fix>
  This done, we walk southwest across Constitution Avenue to the north
  steps of the National Air and Space Museum (one of my favorite places on
  earth!) on the north side of Independence Avenue.  Taking another fix,
  we find the POS readout to be:
  SAT UTC16:30:00
  lat 38053'25.0"N
  Ion 77001'06.2"W
  alt + 90ft ñ300
  Another check of the map shows the receiver to be generating good fixes.
  We add the new position to the waypoint array, and the readout shows:
  WPT AB @ 1 6 3 0 0 0 lat 38053'25.0"N Ion 77001'06.2"W alt + 90ft <fix>
  Our next waypoint fix point is the west steps of the Capitol building
  WPT AC t 164500 lat 38'53'19.1"N Ion 77'00'47.6"W alt + 9ft <fix>
  Note the sudden drop in altitude, though it still is within the accuracy
  tolerances ( 100 meters/328 feet).  We move on and add waypoint fixes
  for the Washington Monument (east parking lot):
  WPT AD t 171500 lat 38053'25.0"N Ion 77001'06.2"W alt + soft <fix>
  Moving west again, we walk up the reflecting pool, past the Vietnam
  Veterans Memorial (be sure to stop and see the black wall), and up to
  the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to get our next fix: Continuing west
  again, we walk across the Memorial Bridge over the Potomac River to the
  entrance to Arlington Cemetery and our final waypoint:
  WPT AF f 1 8 1 5 0 0
  lat 38153'03.4"N
  Ion 77103'57.2'W
  
  alt + 238ft <fix>
  With the six waypoints now stored, it is possible to use the stored
  positions to get actual guidance information for our return walk to
  Union Station.  For example, if we switch to the R + A setting, and use
  the L / P, and INC/ DEC settings to display the data for waypoints AA
  (Union Station), AB (the Air and Space Museum), and AC (The U.S.
  Capitol), it should look something like this:
  R+A: AA AB AC
  azm 0840 0880 078OTr rng 3.5 2.4 2.9 Mi vrt 22 -148 -220 Ft
  This shows us that we are 3.5 miles from our starting point (based on a
  great circle navigation plot-essentially as the crow flies) at a heading
  of 84' true (as opposed to magnetic).  Now suppose that you want to use
  the SLGR to dynamically navigate you back to Union Station, on-the-fly
  as it were.  To do this, turn the knob to the NAV mode setting.   You
  should see the following:
  TO: AA ttg vel OMPH 0840 Tr rng 3.5Mi azmO84OTr vrt 22Ft <more>
  This tells us that to navigate to waypoint AA (Union Station) we need to
  move along a heading of 084' true (roughly east along the mall).  The
  velocity (vel) readout of OMPH tells us that we are not moving yet, and
  the time to go (ttg) readout of * means that we have not yet started our
  trip home to the train
  U.S.  ARMY PERSONAL/MAN-PORTABLE sys-rFm,, - 179
  station.  As soon as we begin to walk (most humans walk at about 5
  mph/8.2 kph), the SLGR will begin to calculate vel and @ t-g numbers for
  the readout (anything over 3 mph/5 kph will give the SLGR the necessary
  Doppler to begin calculating these readings).  Almost immediately, the
  following readout should appear:
  TO: AA ttg 42:00:00 vel 5MPH 084' Tr mg 3.5Mi.  azmO840 Tr vrt 22Ft
  <more>
  This tells us that if we maintain a straight line to the train station
  (unlikely in Washington traffic, but what the hell), and walk at our
  current speed all the way, we can get back in forty-two minutes.  Now,
  the SLGR will continuously update these figures, and if we stop and look
  at something else, will continue to guide us home.  Later, if we want to
  add other known places for waypoints, we can insert them via the toggle
  switches on the front panel of the SLGR.  In addition, we can connect
  our SLGR to another, and dump the waypoints to anyone else with one of
  these clever little devices.
  
  You might ask, what does all this have to do with tactical operations in
  the field?  More than you might think actually.  Consider the following
  story.  Prior to the beginning of Desert Storm, special forces teams
  from the United States, Great Britain, and other Coalition Allies went
  into Kuwait and Iraq armed with their usual array of weapons, as well as
  some of the little SLGRs doing exactly what we have been doing, taking
  readings and fixing waypoints.  These found their way to the SLGRs of
  the cavalry officers in 2nd and 3rd ACRs, so that they could program
  their own SLGRs to guide them to the phase lines and road junctions that
  even the Bedouin nomads couldn't find.  One story has it that an Air
  Force officer, operating under diplomatic passport while it was still
  possible, flew to Baghdad in late August 1990 with nothing more than a
  briefcase containing an SLGR.  Once there, he was driven to the U.S.
  Embassy, and went to the courtyard to sit on a particular bench to wait
  for the GPS constellation to fly overhead (there were only si,
  satellites up at that time) and take a single fix.  Once this had been
  done, he got up, went back to the airport, and flew home with that one
  waypoint in the memory of his SLGR.  From that one firm geographic fix
  came all of the targeting coordinates for the Tomahawk cruise missile
  and F-17 Stealth Fighter targets that were hit early in the war.
  Later on, so important was GPS to the conduct of the war that the famous
  "Hail Mary" sweep into Iraq could not have taken place without it.
  Now that the system has been pretty much completed, the Army and the
  other services are rushing to put GPS receivers onto virtually
  everything that moves.  Tanks, helicopters, fighters, guided missiles,
  and even trucks are all being equipped with the new navigational tools.
  In late 1993, the largest
  180 - AL@MORED CAV
  GPS receiver procurement program running is the Portable, Lightweight
  GPS Receiver (PLGR-called a "plugger" by the troops) being procured from
  Rockwell International.  These handheld receivers look like oversized
  portable calculators, with LCD displays and keyboards, and will be
  issued to infantry units, scout and special forces teams, and other
  units requiring GPS navigational capabilities.  In addition, there are
  many other GPS-based programs being developed, all of which will be more
  accurate than the systems that they will replace.  And maybe most
  important of all, the GPS system is being made available for all kinds
  of civil uses.  Everything from civil surveying to blind
  airliner-landing systems are being tested.  By the end of 1994, it is
  probable that GPS receivers tied to moving map displays (remember the
  one in James Bond's Aston-Martin?) will be available as optional
  equipment on civilian automobiles.  GPS may be the most exciting
  technology that the military has introduced in years.  What makes it
  even more interesting is that it is something we all can use.  Those who
  
  conceived it so many years ago deserve our thanks for this new kind of
  public utility, which finally tells us where we are, and how to get
  where we want to go.
  U.',.  ARMY I'FRSONAL/MAN-I'Ol@TABI-E'.,YS] EMS
  310 AP,MO ZI:D CAVALnY
  COLONEL ROBERT M.  YOUNG
  IS AUTH03UZED TO RMSE A UNIT REGUDAJnmi@w
  F03t ME
  30 CAVALRY REGIMENT, Now formed on the Mexican Border at 31 Bliss in Cl
  Paso, 6exas.  Men enlisting/reenlisting uith me Are guaranieed an
  assignment wits the Regiment for a period of 12 mont6s.  limited
  vacancies remaining, act now.  See your Army Recruiter or CAreer
  Counselor today.
  3rd ACR recruiting poster.
  f ou drive west from Fort Worth Tex n Interstate 20 ast Abilene, Odessa,
  and the junction with Interstate 10, you come upon some of the most
  godforsaken country in America-West Texas.  But then, as you drive up
  the Valley of the Rio Grande River, signs of life begin to reappear. And
  before long you are in the city of El Paso.
  Just as El Paso is a crossroads between Mexico and the United States, it
  is also a crossroads between the past and the future in American
  history.  Across the Rio Grande is the Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez,
  where Pancho Villa once crossed to raid American settlements.  To the
  north are the old towns of Las Cruces and Alamogordo, New Mexico, which
  service one of America's spaceports at White Sands Missile Range.
  Nearby, Holloman Air Force Base is home for the F-17A Stealth
  Fighters of the 49th Fighter Wing.  And nestled in between the past and
  future, on the north side of El Paso, is the old cavalry post of Fort
  Bliss.
  Fort Bliss is the home of the Ilth Air Defense Brigade, the soldiers who
  operated the Patriot air-defense system during the 1991 Persian Gulf
  War.  But tucked over on the east side of the base is the home of
  America's last heavy armored cavalry regiment, the 3rd Armored Cavalry
  Regiment (3rd ACR).  The 3rd ACR, assigned as the corps reconnaissance
  unit for the U.S.  Ill Corps (based at Fort Hood, Texas), is one of the
  most powerful units for its size in the world.  With lots of armored
  "teeth" and minimal administrative "tail," the 3rd ACR is a uniquely
  flexible and balanced combat unit-the smallest independent armored unit
  in the U.S.  Army that might be deployed overseas to fight on its own.
  
  Rapid deployment is critical to the American military.  It took
  something like twenty-six shiploads to move General Barry McCaffrey's
  24th Mechanized Infantry Division to Southwest Asia.  With only eight of
  the high-speed (30+ knots/55 kph) SL-7 fast sealift ships in the
  Military Sealift Command's inventory, the 3rd ACR is the only heavy
  armor unit in the U.S.  Army that can be lifted overseas on a single
  sortie by the SL-7 fleet.  Such power and flexibility demand that the
  regiment's soldiers be among the best in the Army.  When you meet them,
  that turns out to be the case. Let's take a look inside the 3rd
  ACR-first at its splendid history, and then as it stands in the summer
  of 1994.
  A (,UIDED'FOUR OF TtiE 3RD ARMORED CAVALRY REGIMENT m 183
  The insignia of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, the "Brave Rifles."
  J,(A R@A, E,TERPRISES, L TI)., Bi L,tz4 Al pifpR
  The 3rd ACR - A Short History
  The 3rd ACR is the second oldest continuously established unit in the
  U.S.  Army.  Only the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment-Light (ACR-L) has a
  longer lineage.  Created by an act of Congress on May 19th, 1846, the
  unit was officially assigned to securing a line of forts from Missouri
  to Oregon and maintaining order in the Western territories that were
  just starting to be settled.  But the probable deeper reason for
  creating the regiment-to fight the Mexicanswas apparent from its
  equipment and size.  Unlike traditional cavalry regiments equipped with
  carbines, sabers, and pistols, it was to be a regiment of mounted
  riflemen, a highly mobile fighting force with the punch of an infantry
  regiment.  In addition, it was big.  Organized just prior to the Mexican
  War, with billets for around 800 troopers, it increased the size of the
  active Army by fully 15%.  The unit was officially organized as the
  Regiment of Mounted Riflemen on October 12th, 1846, at Jefferson
  Barracks, Missouri.
  But before they could take up their stations on the Oregon Trail, the
  Mounted Riflemen were called to action in Mexico.  The regiment fought
  in six separate campaigns during the Mexican War, including Vera Cruz,
  Contreras, Churbusco, and Chapultepec.  During that action, on September
  14th, 1847, they led the final assault that captured the Mexican
  National Palace, and thus earned the nickname they carry to this day,
  the "Brave Rifles."  They returned to Missouri in 1848 to take up their
  duties on the frontier.  Their first exercise was an epic six-month
  march to establish their presence in Oregon, arriving in November 1849.
  They returned to Missouri in 1851, and then moved on to Texas to
  suppress Indian uprisings and stop cross-border bandit raids from
  Mexico.  At this time the regiment got its first look at its future
  
  home, Fort Bliss.  Throughout the 1850s, the regiment was spread out in
  small bands from Texas to Arizona, and north to Colorado.  It was tough,
  dangerous duty, dirtier and less romantic than portrayed by John Ford in
  a score of movies about the cavalry in the Old West.  The coming of the
  American Civil War in 1861 brought new challenges for the Brave Rifles.
  For starters, many of the officers and men joined the Confederacy.  In
  spite of the leadership vacuum caused by the departure of the
  Southerners, the remaining officers concentrated the unit in New Mexico,
  where it was redesignated the 3rd U.S.  Cavalry in August of 1861.  The
  regiment remained in New Mexico until September 1862, when it returned
  to Jefferson Barracks, Missouri.  During this time, it fought in both of
  the major battles of the war in the West.  Moving on to Memphis,
  Tennessee, in December 1862, the 3rd did patrol and support duties until
  the following year, when it joined General Sherman's army during the
  drive on Atlanta.  Following this, the Brave Rifles led the famous
  "March to the Sea" and the final drive into the Carolinas.  Following
  the war, the regiment returned to the Western frontier, where it spent
  the next thirty years suppressing Indian uprisings and guarding the
  Mexican border.  Of note was the Battle of Rosebud Creek (Montana) on
  June 17, 1876, the largest single engagement ever between the forces of
  the United States and Native Americans (1,400 troopers and friendly
  Indians against 4,000 to 6,000 Sioux and Northern Cheyenne), which was
  fought to a draw just a few weeks before the 7th Cavalry's debacle at
  Little Big Horn.
  With the outbreak of war with Spain in 1898, the Brave Rifles deployed
  to Cuba, where they took part in the attack on San Juan Hill.  Less than
  a year later, they again embarked to help suppress the Philippine
  Insurrection of 1899.  The regiment spent the next couple of years
  fighting the rebels on Luzon, and eventually returned to Texas to fight
  border bandits in 1905.  In 1917, the United States entered World War 1.
  Sent to France, the 3rd did not see combat, but operated remount depots
  for U.S., British, and French horsedrawn units, returning to the United
  States in 1919.  The Brave Rifles spent the next nineteen years based
  along the East Coast (mainly at Fort Meade, Maryland, and Fort Ethan
  Allen, Vermont), performing ceremonial honor guard duties in the
  Washington, D.C., area.  At the outbreak of World War 11, the regiment
  was still a horse cavalry unit.  But a few months later it was
  re-equipped with scout cars and light tanks and redesignated the 3rd
  Armored Regiment, and after that the 3rd Cavalry Group.  Deployed to
  Europe in 1944, the 3rd led General George Patton's drive across France,
  fought in the Battle of the Bulge, and joined the final drive into
  Germany.
  Returning to Fort Meade following the war, it took on its present name,
  the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, in 1948.  lt stayed in the U.S.  until
  1955, when it rotated to Europe, replacing the 2nd ACR until 1958, when
  it returned to Fort Meade.  The Brave Rifles returned to Europe in 1961
  
  during the Berlin Crisis, and stayed until 1968, when it again returned
  to the U.S., this time to Fort Lewis, Washington.  Designated as a
  REFORGER unit, the 3rd ACR stayed at Fort Lewis until 1972, when it
  moved to its present home at Fort Bliss, Texas.  The next eighteen years
  were spent in the routine but vital chores of a Cold War REFORGER unit.
  The fall of the Berlin Wall and the death of Communism in Eastern Europe
  in the late 1980s might have meant the end of the line for the 3rd ACR.
  Like so many other proud Army formations, it was looking at having its
  colors cased and retired for good, until Saddam Hussein decided to
  invade Kuwait in August of 1990.  On August 10th, 1990, the 3rd ACR was
  alerted to prepare for transport to Saudi Arabia to provide an armored
  reconnaissance element for XVIII Airborne Corps.  By September of 1990,
  advance elements of the 3rd ACR began to arrive in Saudi Arabia to join
  Operation Desert Shield.  Initially, their mission was to deter any
  further moves into Saudi Arabia by the Iraqis.  But by early November,
  they knew that they were to be part of an army that would either force
  Iraq to vacate Kuwait, or evict it by force.  As the first elements of
  the U.S.  VII Corps began to arrive in December, the XVIII Airborne
  Corps started their move to the west as the flank covering force for the
  "Hail Mary" movement around the left side of the Iraqi line.  On
  February 22, 1991, 3rd ACR led the rest of XVIII Airborne Corps through
  the berms into Iraq on their drive to the Euphrates River.  During the
  four-day drive to the north, working closely with the 24th Mechanized
  Infantry Division, they covered some 183 miles/300 kilometers before
  they turned east towards Basra and the Rumaylah Oilfields.  Their Desert
  Storm mission completed, they returned to Fort Bliss by April 5, 1991,
  to continue their cycle of training and modernization.  As they head
  towards their 150th consecutive year of active service, they are likely
  to stay at Fort Bliss.
  The 3rd ACR - Organization and Equipment
  Since their return from Southwest Asia in 1991, the regiment has
  undergone a massive change in equipment and mission.  Previously, the
  3rd ACR was considered a reinforcing unit, with a minimal set of
  training equipment at home and their fighting equipment stockpiled at
  depots in Germany.  Early in 1992, as part of the Army's reorganization
  for greater mobility, the 3rd ACR was redesignated as part of Force
  Package-I.  Force Package-I, which includes units of Ill Corps and XVIII
  Airborne Corps, has been trained to the highest level of preparedness,
  and has the highest priority in equipment modernization.  Suddenly, the
  Brave Rifles had to assimilate many new systems simultaneously.
  Everything from OH-58D Kiowa Warrior scout/attack helicopters to the new
  SINCGARS family of radios appeared on 3rd ACR's Table of Organization
  and Equipment (TO&E)-all in about twenty-four months.  This is a
  challenge that will test every member of the regiment to the limit.  But
  when the current modernization cycle is completed around 1996, the 3rd
  ACR will be the most powerful ground unit for its size in the world.
  
  Let's take a look at the people and their tools.
  Before we get started, though, a quick note about unit designations. The
  cavalry has always been a community unto itself, and this tradition of
  doing things its own way continues even today.  Thus, while the basic
  Army building block, the platoon, remains the same for the cavalry and
  armor communities, the next level up the chain is different.  What an
  armor officer would call a company (usually between three and five
  platoons), the cavalry officer calls a troop.  Sii-nilarly, what an
  armor officer calls a battalion (four to six companies), a cavalry
  officer would call a squadron.  Thus, the terms "Company" and "troop"
  are equivalent, as are "battalion" and "squadron."  With that detail
  clarified, let's look at the 3rd ACR.
  Headquarters Troop
  The Regimental Headquarters and Headquarters Troop (RHHT) includes the
  regimental commander, a colonel, and his immediate staff and some
  command and support vehicles.  These include:
  A pair of M3A2 Bradley cavalry vehicles configured as "command tracks."
  Usually equipped with two or more radios, these are otherwise standard
  Bradleys.
  Eleven to fifteen M577 Command APCS, organized into groups of four or
  five.  These will be replaced by the new XM4 command vehicle when it
  comes on-line later in the 1990s.
  A number of HMMWVs and trucks to provide general transportation and
  support.
  The command sergeant major (the senior NCO of the regiment) and the
  regimental chaplain, as well as some clerks and support troops, complete
  this compact headquarters.
  In late 1993, the regimental commander was Colonel Robert Young.  A 1969
  graduate of Texas Christian University, he is a career cavalry officer,
  with numerous tours in the 2nd ACR while they were still based in
  Germany.  In addition, he has an extensive background in Middle East
  relations, holding a masters degree in the subject.  Thus, when he has
  not been leading cavalry troops, he has been supervising operations like
  the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon (as a UN observer), and
  acting as the U.S.  representative to the UN relief effort for the Kurds
  in northern Iraq (Operation Provide Comfort).  He must have done a good
  job there, for when he left Iraq at the end of 1992, Saddam Hussein had
  a bounty of $ 100,000 on his head.  lt is my understanding that the
  bounty still stood in late 1993.  Colonel Young took command of the 3rd
  ACR in May of 1993, and will remain in this post until sometime in
  mid-1995.  Working directly with Colonel Young is the regimental command
  
  sergeant major (RCSM), Dennis E.  Webster.  CSM Webster joined the Army
  in 1972 and is a career armor and cavalrY NCO.  He has been with the 3rd
  ACR since 1990, as command sergeant major (CSM) for the regiment's
  Support Squadron, 3rd Squadron, and now as the 12th RCSM of the
  regiment.  The RCSM is the senior enlisted soldier in the regiment, and
  provides a direct link from the enlisted personnel to the regimental
  commander.  The regimental executive officer (RXO) is Lieutenant Colonel
  Luke Barnett, and he supervises the headquarters staff.  There is a
  small regimental staff consisting most notably of the regimental
  operations officer (S-3) and staff, who are responsible for planning and
  directing the way the regiment operates and fights.
  A (;UIDED I OUI@ OF'l IIE 3RD ARMORED C'AVAI.RY RE(',IMENT - 187
  I st "Tiger" Cavalry Squadron
  Headquarters& Headquarters Troop (HHT)
  "A" Cavalry Troop
  "B" Cavalry Troop
  "C" Cavalry Troop
  "D" Tank Company "D" Artillery Battery
  The basic organization and equipment ofthe 3rd Armored Cavalry
  Regiment's I st Cavalry Squadron ("Tiger" Squadron) commanded by
  Lieutenant Colonel Toby Martinez, USA.  The 2nd and 3rd Cavalry
  Squadrons have the same basic layout.  The M 109A6 Paladin
  self-propelled howitzers are planned to replace the older M 109A2s
  currently fielded by the Brave Rifles.
  J,(A R@,@ E@TfRpRtsfs, Lii,, B@ I,,t R., Ai]'H[,R
  lst, 2nd, and 3rd Cavalry Squadrons
  The cutting edge of the regiment is the three armored cavalry squadrons
  numbered I st, 2nd, and 3rd.  On paper, an armored cavalry squadron
  resembles a reinforced tank battalion, with a strength of 53 officers,
  339 NCOS, and 499 enlisted troopers, for a total of 891 billets.  Each
  squadron is commanded by an armor lieutenant colonel, with a command
  sergeant major and a small staff to help run things.  In late 1993 the
  leaders of the three squadrons were:
  - I st Squadron-Lieutenant Colonel Toby W.  Martinez (Murray
  State University, 1975) is the commander; and the senior NCO is CSM Roy
  Thomas.
  
  - 2nd Squadron-Lieutenant Colonel Norman Greczyn (West
  Point, 1972) commands, with CSM Alton B.  Eckert as the com mand
  sergeant major.
  188 - ARMORED (-AV
  Cavalry Troop
  Ist Scout Platoon
  Headquarters Platoon
  3rd Scout Platoon
  2nd Tank Platoon
  4th Tank Platoon
  The equipment and organization of a cavalry troop.  The 3rd Armored
  Cavalry Regiment has a total of nine such troops in its table
  oforganization and equipment (TO&E).
  3rd Squadron-Lieutenant Colonel Karl J.  Gunzelman (West Point, 1975)
  commands, with CSM Conrad C.  Bilodeau as the ranking NCO.
  Each squadron is a self-contained combined-arms team consisting of-.
  Headquarters and Headquarters Troop-Two M3A2 Bradley command tracks, six
  M577 command vehicles, some HMMVNS, and various recovery vehicles,
  trucks, trailers, and fueters for all types of combat servi@e support.
  Three Armored Cavalry Troops-These make up the cutting edge of the
  squadron.  Each troop consists of an HQ section (one MIAI Abrams tank,
  one M3A2 Bradley, and one M577 command post), two scout platoons (six
  M3A2 Bradley cavalry fighting vehicles per), two tank platoons (four MI
  AI Abrams tanks per), a mortar section (two M 106 4.2"-mortar carriers),
  and twelve supporting tracked and wheeled vehicles. Tank Company-Each
  squadron has a pure tank company (never referred to as a "troop") to
  provide an armored reserve for the squadron commander.  It consists of
  an HQ section (two M IA I tanks) and three tank platoons (four M IA I
  tanks each).  Howitzer Battery-To give the squadron its own organic
  artillery support, it is assigned a battery of eight M 109A2
  self-propelled howitzers (SPHs), with eight FAASVs in support.
  Mortar Section
  A (;Ull)f.'I) JOUI@ OF lilt; 3R[) ARMOI@FL) C'AVALI@Y [@FGIMENT - 189
  The commander of an armored cavalry squadron leads forty-one M I Abrams
  tanks, forty-one M3 cavalry vehicles, eight M 109 SPHs (with eight
  
  FAASVs), and six M 106 4.2"-mortar carriers.  This is a lot of firepower
  at one leader's fingertips!  Remember that just one armored cavalry
  squadron wrecked an Iraqi Republican Guards brigade (three to four times
  the size of the American force) at the Battle of 73 Easting during
  Desert Storm.   And in the next few years, the squadrons will enhance
  their combat power with the new M IA2 Abrams, the M 109A6 Paladin SPH,
  the IVIS version of the M3A2 cavalry vehicle, and the new 120mm-mortar
  carrier.  Within the regiment, each troop (which corresponds to a
  company-sized unit) is commanded by a captain and designated by a letter
  of the alphabet.  The First Squadron includes A, B, and C Troops, and D
  Company; the Second Squadron has E, F, and G Troops, and H Company, etc.
  By tradition, each troop adopts a name based on its identifying letter.
  For example, E Troop is "Eagle," and I Troop is "Ironhawk."  Overall,
  the current cavalry squadron structure provides massive gun and missile
  firepower and built-in supporting arms.  If it has a weakness, though,
  it is the lack of dismountable infantry (each M3A2 has only two dismount
  scouts per vehicle; these are not infantry soldiers), which limits its
  ability to hold and clear terrain.  On the other hand, the cavalry can
  cover ground and dish out punishment like no other unit of equivalent
  size in the world.  We'll look at some typical armored cavalry
  operations in the next chapter.
  4th Air Cavalry Squadron
  The 4th Air Cavalry Squadron is commanded by an aviation lieutenant
  colonel and has 36 officers, 110 warrant officers and NCOS, and 355
  enlisted troopers, for a total strength of 501.  In late 1993, the
  commander was Lieutenant Colonel Gratton Sealock (Eastern Washington
  State College, 1974), with I st Sergeant Timothy D.  Paul as the CSM.
  The unit includes:
  * Headquarters and Headquarters Troop-The HHT includes three
  UH-60L Blackhawks, three EH-60 "Quick Fix" electronic-warfare
  helicopters, and one OH-58C Kiowa scout helicopter.  The support element
  is similar to its ground squadron counterpart.
  * Three Air Cavalry Troops-Each of these troops consists of six scout
  helicopters (currently OH-58Cs) and four attack helicopters
  (currently AH- I Fs).
  * Two Attack Helicopter Troops-Each of these troops consists of four
  scout helicopters (currently OH-58Cs) and seven attack heli copters
  (currently AH- I Fs).
  - One Transport Helicopter Troop-This troop consists of fifteen of the
  newest-model UH-60L Blackhawk helicopters.
  
  - Maintenance Troop-This is a ground-based troop that supplies
  maintenance and support to the rest of the 4th Squadron.
  In total, the 4th Squadron operates seventy-four helicopters (twenty-six
  attack, twenty-seven scout, eighteen transport, and three electronic
  warfare helicopters).  As it is currently equipped, the air squadron has
  both some of the newest and oldest equipment in the Army.  On the
  positive side, the UH-60L Blackhawks and EH-60 "Quick Fix" birds are
  state-of-the-art, and capable of any mission that might be assigned to
  them.  A particular asset is that the Blackhawks are equipped with the
  new ESSS stores system, for carrying extra fuel, and even Helifire
  missiles (which require another unit to laser-designate targets for
  them.)
  The 4th Squadron's big problem is that the current force of OH-58C Kiowa
  scout helicopters and AH- IF Cobra attack helicopters is obsolete. These
  are incapable of dedicated night operations, laser designation,
  automatic handoff of targets, or long-range stand-off missile fire (the
  AH- I is only equipped with TOW missiles).  This is a serious
  shortcoming in a unit so likely to be deployed in response to a
  fast-breaking crisis.  So weak is the firepower in the old squadron
  structure, that when 2nd and 3rd ACR deployed to the Persian Gulf during
  Desert Shield, both had a battalion of AH-64A Apache and OH-58D Kiowa
  Warriors attached to make up for the limitations of the unit's
  equipment.
  Like the tankers and gunners in I st, 2nd, and 3rd squadrons, with their
  dreams of M I A2s and M 109A6s, the aviators of the 4th Squadron look
  forward to Apaches and Kiowa Warriors to replace their old birds.  When
  this will happen is uncertain, mainly because the production run for new
  AH-64s has been terminated, and the OH-58D is being produced
  year-to-year at the discretion of Congress-and the strength of the Texas
  congressional delegation.  Because the Army prefers to put money into
  the Comanche program, it has not
  4th Air Cavalry Squadron
  Headquarters & Headquarters Troop
  "M" Aero Scout Troop "O" Aero Scc)ut Trocip
  "N" Aero Scout Trc)(ip
  "I"' Attick Helicopter Troop
  The organization ofthe 4th (Air ('avittry) Squadron as it will appear
  when it finishes its modernization Program.  The 3rd Armored Cavalry
  Reginient attack and aero scout troops are currently equipped with
  
  relatively obsolete AH-1 F ('obr@i attack lielicopters and OH-58A/C
  Kiowa scout helicopters.
  .1 @, @ Ri @ , I,, Ti Ri,H,,i , I il,@ H) I @, H@ 4i L@IIIR "Q" Attack
  Helicopter Troop
  R" Transport Helicopter Troc)p
  A GUII)ED rouiz OF TtiE 3RD ARMORED C'AVAL-RY REGIMENT - 191 3rd Armored
  Cavalry Regiment
  MIA2 UH-60L M3A2
  M109A6 OH-58D Mortar Carrier
  AH-64
  The types and numbers of different weapons systems that the 3rd Armored
  Cavalry Regiment should be equipped with when it completes its current
  modernization cycle.  j,,x R),,, E,ifRPRI,i, I ii, 8) L,@ RI 1111@)IIR
  asked for any new OH-58Ds.  The 4th Squadron will be modernized
  eventually, though when and how remain a mystery.
  Support Squadron
  The Support Squadron is commanded by a lieutenant colonel and has a
  total strength of 802 personnel.  The current commander is Lieutenant
  Colonel Thomas M.  Hill (University of South Dakota, 1972), and his
  command sergeant major is CSM Halford M.  Dudley.  Lieutenant Colonel
  Hill has a delightful sense of humor.  This is a great asset, for he
  faces a daunting task: supplying everything needed to keep the 3rd ACR
  moving, fighting, and living.  This means everything from food to floppy
  disks, dental care to bulldozer repair.  If it is in the regiment, then
  Lieutenant Colonel Hill and his soldiers will keep it going.  Though not
  much larger than a cavalry squadron in numbers, the Support Squadron has
  the most diverse assets in the regiment.  lt includes:
  * Headquarters and Headquarters Troop-This is the nerve center of the
  squadron, with a heavy base of data-processing personnel, a few trucks,
  and HMMWVS.
  * Medical Troop-Equipped with sixteen ambulances (eight
  HMMWV-based, eight M 1 13 APC-based), the medical troop is staffed to
  set up aid stations to process casualties to divisional/corps-level
  MASH-type hospitals.
  * Maintenance Troop-The automotive maintenance troop is tasked with
  providing direct-support recovery and maintenance for the A 3rd ACR M88
  
  tank recovery vehicle in the Fort Bliss tank park.  These vehicles are
  used to tow or recover damaged or disabled armored vehicles.  J,,ii, i,
  GRI Sill If regiment.  Equipped with a variety of trucks (twenty-two
  five-ton tractors and twelve five-ton trucks) and recovery vehicles
  (five
  M88, four 5-ton wreckers, and three M 113 maintenance trucks), it can
  service any vehicle in the regiment.  It repairs equipment that
  mechanics at the troop and squadron level do not repair.
  0 Supply and Transportation Troop-The supply troop is just what it
  sounds like, a combination of warehouse and trucking company.  Equipped
  with eighty-seven heavy trucks (thirty-three 5-ton trac tors, twenty-six
  5-ton trucks, twenty-two 5,000-gallon/ 18,868-liter
  HEMTT tankers, and six HETS), it moves something over 559
  short tons/508 metric tons of cargo and water a day for delivery to the
  front-line units of the regiment.
  It is difficult to explain just how much it takes to run an ACR in the
  field for a day.  The numbers just begin to numb you after a while.  For
  example, the support squadron is equipped to purify and distribute
  139,750 galIons/527,358.5 liters of water a day.  Based upon the
  squadron having to service 5,000 personnel at a time, that's about 9.6
  gallons/36.2 liters a day for every soldier in the regiment (for
  washing, drinking, food preparation, personal hygiene, etc.).  Then
  there is food.  The standard five-day field-ration issue (part of what
  is called a Unit Basic Load or UBL) for the regiment is 75,000 MREs
  (about 15,000 per day), in 6,250 cardboard cases, strapped onto
  ninety-eight pallets, weighing just over 75 short tons/68 metric tons.
  That is just food for five days in the field.  And then there is fuel
  (200,000 gallons/754,716 liters of diesel fuel, 50,000 gallons/ 188,679
  liters of JP-5 jet fuel), clothing (275 items), spare parts (2,793
  different types for the ground equipment, 3,361 for the aviation
  equipment), and everything else that keeps this movable equivalent of a
  small town working.
  It is a huge job.  That it is done is a masterpiece of organization,
  data processing, communications technology, and a lot of hard work by
  soldiers who rarely get medals for their efforts.  Their efficiency
  would amaze most taxpayers, whose image of the Quartermaster (supply)
  Corps is based on the stereotype of the wheeling-dealing supply
  sergeant.  There may still be a few of those guys around, but the Army
  is moving into a new era of "just in time" maintenance planning and "as
  you need it" supply deliveries. Previously, for example, each tank
  platoon kept a pair of spare generators for the M I tank in its platoon
  stocks.  Now they do not have any on hand at all.  When they need one,
  the troop supply clerk types a request on a laptop computer, and in a
  
  few hours, the part is delivered from a centralized stock at the
  regimental level.  Meanwhile, the regimental supply system will have
  automatically ordered another generator over the world-wide Army supply
  computer network, so that by the time the generator is being installed
  on the tank back at the platoon, the replacement generator for the
  regimental stores is probably being packaged for shipment by Federal
  Express (yes, they even go to combat zones!) for immediate delivery. In
  this way, the overall Army-wide stock for an item can be reduced, and
  the taxpayer saves money.  It also makes the ACR a leaner (not having to
  carry so much of a "tail"), meaner (more space for fuel and ammunition)
  unit.
  During Desert Shield/Desert Storm Lieutenant General "Gus" Pagonis
  managed the logistical effort for CENTCOM in the Persian Gulf.  When he
  later wrote a book on the subject, he titled it Moving Mountains.  Never
  has a book carried a more apt title, for what the people of the Army
  Quartermaster Corps and the soldiers of the 3rd ACR supply squadron do
  is just that, move mountains.
  43rd Combat Engineer Company
  The 43rd Combat Engineer Company is commanded by an engineer captain,
  and has a strength of 220 soldiers.  It has its own maintenance platoon,
  an assault and barrier (A&B) platoon, and three identical combat
  engineer pla- toons.  Its TO&E includes:
  * Twelve M 1 13 armored personnel carriers
  * Six M9 armored combat earthmovers * Three armored vehicle-launched
  bridges (an M60 tank chassis with a folding scissors-bridge for crossing
  small streams and big ditches)
  * Three combat engineer vehicles (an M-60 tank chassis with a dozer
  blade and a short-barreled 165mm "demolition gun")
  * Six 5-ton dump trucks
  * One scoop loader
  * Assorted other specialized excavating and entrenching vehicles
  The mission of combat engineers is to clear away obstacles that impede
  friendly movement and to create obstacles to impede enemy movement.
  Engineers are trained for demolition, construction of field
  fortifications, and repair of roads and bridges.  They are particularly
  vital for combat in urban areas.
  194 - AL@MOI@UD (-AV 66th Military Intelligence Company
  
  The Military Intelligence (MI) company is commanded by a military
  intelligence major and has a strength of 152 personnel.  lt operates a
  variety of electronic jamming and surveillance systems.
  89th Chemical Company
  The chemical company is commanded by a Chemical Corps captain, and has a
  strength of 78 troopers.  Although all civilized nations have signed
  treaties renouncing the use of chemical weapons, the Army's chemical
  troops have an important protective mission (not all our potential
  enemies are civilized).  The Chemical Corps also has a traditional
  mission of laying smoke screens.  The company's TO&E includes:
  0 Six Fox NBC reconnaissance vehicles
  0 Seven M 1059 smoke generators (based on M 1 13 chassis)
  0 One M 12A I decontamination apparatus
  * Assorted other specialized detection and decontamination
  equipment
  In operations under a chemical threat, the 89th assigns its Fox
  vehicles, usually two per cavalry squadron, so that there is a highly
  mobile chemicaldetection-and-survey capability up front at all times.
  Should an area of contamination be encountered, the Fox can quickly find
  a bypass route, keeping the squadrons moving and uncontaminated.  This
  prevents other units from getting 11 slimed" by running through a
  contaminated area.  Normally a corps decontamination platoon will be
  added to the 89th, so it can handle the job of equipment and personnel
  decontamination.
  Air Defense Section
  The 3rd ACR has an air defense section attached to the Regimental
  Headquarters and Headquarters Troop.  The section consists of six
  Avenger airdefense vehicles.  These are Hummers mounting compact turrets
  that combine a .50-caliber machine gun, eight Stinger missiles in a pair
  of canister launchers, and a digital fire-control system with a laser
  rangefinder, a thermal sight, and a FAADS early warning terminal.
  Avenger will be replaced in a few years when the Bradley Stinger vehicle
  is fielded.  The section may also be able to deploy shoulder-fired
  Stinger teams with their own HMMWVS.
  U.S.  Ill Corps-Attachments and Contributions
  As we mentioned earlier, the 3rd ACR is one of a number of units
  attached to the U.  S.  I I I Corps at Fort Hood, Texas.  I I I Corps
  includes:
  
  A (;UIDEI) I OUIZ OF I IIF 31ZI) AL@MOIZEI) (-AVAI RY IZE(;IMFN F 0 195
  * I st Cavalry Division (actually an armored division)
  * 2nd Armored Division
  * I st Mechanized Infantry Division
  * 4th Mechanized Infantry Division
  * 3rd ACR
  * Attached field artillery, air defense, engineer, military police, and
  support units
  It is the single most powerful ground force in the world today.
  Commanded in late 1993 by Lieutenant General Paul Funk (who commanded
  the Third Armored Division during Desert Storm), Ill Corps would decide
  how to employ 3rd ACR for a particular mission, and how it would be
  augmented with appropriate support units.  One of the things that makes
  an ACR such an attractive unit to send overseas is the ability to custom
  tailor it for diverse mission requirements.  For example, consider the
  situation faced by Colonel (now Brigadier General) Don Holder, who
  commanded the 2nd ACR during Desert Storm.  The 2nd ACR was organized
  exactly as the 3rd is today.  To support his mission, a
  movement-to-contact with several Iraqi Republican Guard armored
  divisions, the VII Corps commander, then-Lieutenant General Fred Franks,
  added a number of different units to beef up the combat power of the
  regiment.  These attachments included:
  210th Field Artillery Brigade (M 109s and MLRS)
  0 2nd Battalion/ I st Aviation Regiment (OH-58Ds and AH-64As)
  0 82nd Combat Engineering Battalion
  * 214th Military Police Company
  0 177th Personnel Services Company
  With all these additions, 2nd ACR resembled a small armored division,
  and not the lean cavalry regiment that had come ashore at Al Jubail. But
  these were things that the corps commander felt they might need, and the
  open structure of the cavalry regiment allowed this to be done easily.
  So, what might Lieutenant General Funk provide to Colonel Young if he
  had to go off to combat in a distant land, where the situation was
  uncertain, and the goals still being kicked around the White House
  Situation Room?  A helicopter squadron such as the 4th Squadron of the
  
  6th Cavalry Brigade at Fort Hood, Texas, would be a good start. Equipped
  with Apaches and Kiowa Warriors, it would give Colonel Young the
  night-surveillance capability and tong-range missile punch he currently
  lacks.  Another candidate would be additional artillery, perhaps a
  battalion of MLRS launchers from the Ill Corps Artillery at Fort Sill,
  Oklahoma.  Add the I st Military Police Company (from Fort Riley,
  Kansas), to help with rear-area security, POW processing, and traffic
  management.  Add all of this up, and a potential foe might decide not to
  even try to make trouble.  Battles you prevent can be victories even
  sweeter than the battles you win.
  -yn many cultures, during much of history, soldiers were seen as the
  dregs of society, and were recruited from the gutters.  An ancient
  Chinese saying, 11"Good iron is not used for nails, and good men are not
  used for soldiers," sums up this traditional attitude of emperors,
  kings, and perhaps even a few presidents.  But not so in the American
  military tradition, which is based upon the volunteer citizen soldier
  and unquestioned civilian control over the Armed Forces, exercised by
  the people's elected representatives.  In our tradition soldiers most
  decidedly do not come from the dregs of society.
  Though for long periods of American history, the professional officer
  corps has been a small, inbred, inward-looking aristocracy, in times of
  war, Americans have usually managed to field a people's Army, led by
  popular generals such as Omar Bradley and Ulysses S.  Grant.  The simple
  truth is that America's greatest field forces-from Washington's Army at
  Yorktown to George Patton's Third Army in Europe-have always been made
  up of trained citizen soldiers, motivated by American ideals.  It is the
  American style of war.
  So what does America's Army look like today?  Well, very much like
  America itself.  It is increasingly an African-American, Hispanic,
  AsianAmerican, and Southern Army, because those are the growing
  demographic sectors of our population.  But the Army also recently
  commissioned its first Islamic chaplain, because there is a growing
  segment of Muslims in America (and at this writing, the Army is still
  looking for its first Buddhist chaplain).  It is also an Army where
  women are increasingly visible in non-traditional and leadership
  positions, because we are a society where women have struggled for over
  a century to win greater opportunities.  Women are now being admitted
  into combat arms, such as Aviation and Artillery, without an.@,
  gender-based restrictions.
  In many ways, our Army struggles with the same problems of stress,
  family breakdown and separation, and alcohol abuse as every other
  community.  But remarkably, it is an Army that is virtually drug-free,
  thanks to a rigorous program of random testing.  Perhaps equally
  remarkable (but maybe not, when you think about it), in a period when
  
  traditional religions are losing believers, we have perhaps the most
  religious Army since Robert E.  Lee led the Army of Northern Virginia in
  prayer before battle.  In a period of high unemployment and declining
  numbers of entry level jobs, it is also a shrinking Army.  This is a
  real challenge for the Army's recruiters, its advertising agencies, and
  its publicrelations staff.  By 1996, the Army will have reduced-in-force
  (prematurely
  HON I NG THE RAZOIZ'S 1- 1)(;L n 197
  retired, involuntarily separated, laid off, or whatever you want to call
  it) a number of soldiers equal to the number it sent to fight in the
  Persian Gulf War of 1991.  How do you convince the best and brightest
  young people in our society that there are great opportunities in a
  downsizing organization with oldfashioned values and the risk of sudden,
  violent death?
  Why do people join the Army?  I've asked this question as I traveled
  around the country researching this book.  Some of the answers include:
  * Educational, travel, and training opportunities
  * Recruiting/re-enlistment bonus money
  * Family or community traditions
  * A sense of adventure or patriotism
  * A sense of belonging
  For some, the Army is a path up from the gangs and violence of the inner
  city or the despair of poverty.  For many it is an opportunity to make
  their own way in the world.  All of these are reasons for young men or
  women to consider the Army as a place to start their adult lives or make
  a career.  That has been the attraction of the Army for many men and
  women of all races, religions, and backgrounds.  It is an organization
  that looks like the country that it protects, serves, and frequently
  represents to the rest of the world.  It therefore is no surprise that
  when Americans are asked who they respect and trust most, several
  well-known ex-Army officers are at the top of the list.
  The Enlisted Troops
  To ma ' intain its projected active-duty strength of around 500,000
  personnel, the Army still needs over 100,000 new enlisted recruits per
  year.
  Suppose that you've just graduated from high school (you have to be at
  least seventeen years old to enlist), and you drop in to see your local
  Army recruiter.  (If you have a drug problem, or a police record for
  
  anything more serious than minor infractions, forget it.) The recruiter
  will ask what kind of training and career specialty you want to pursue
  in the Army, and describe all of the options available.  There are a lot
  of them, and this may take some time if you have not thought out exactly
  what you want.  If you check out okay, you will be asked to sign some
  papers, similar to a contract, in which you agree to enlist for a
  certain term of years (this varies with the chosen specialty-check out
  the current rules).  Then you will be given a medical exam and processed
  for induction.  There is a small ceremony in which you take an oath to
  "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States
  against all enemies, foreign and domestic."
  After induction, new recruits report for Basic Training, which lasts
  twelve weeks.  Basic Training centers include Fort Knox in Kentucky,
  Fort Jackson in South Carolina, Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri, Fort Lee
  in Virginia, Fort Banning in Georgia, and a number of other posts.  From
  Hollywood movies, most people get the impression that Basic Training
  (better known as "Boot Camp") is a cross between a prison chain gang and
  a Nazi concentration camp.  But in practice, the Army has learned that
  harassment and brutality simply don't work, especially with intelligent
  and motivated recruits.  All the same, Basic Training is designed to be
  physically demanding and psychologically stressful, yet it is also
  designed to build small-unit cohesion, fitness, and self-esteem, along
  with some of the skills of soldiering.
  The Army's approach to training is centered around three principles:
  Task, Conditions, and Standards.  Soldiers learn their jobs as a series
  of tasks, with conditions to be met, to a certain standard of
  performance.  Thus, a typical training Task might be stated as:
  'After completing this lesson, soldier will be able to put on a
  NuclearBiological-Chemical (NBC) protective mask.  11
  The Conditions of the task might be:
  'He will be given an M49 mask in its carrying case, in the presence of
  simulated chemical agent (yellow smoke or in some cases, CS tear gas).,
  The Standard might be:
  "to don the mask within 5 seconds, and without any detectable gaps or
  leaks in f it .  11
  The Army devotes tremendous effort to designing, developing, testing,
  and evaluating its training methods and materials.  Soldiers want
  realistic hands-on training, and when this is not possible for reasons
  of cost or safety, it is often possible to provide simulators, mock-ups,
  and similar training devices.  Standards are intentionally set high
  because for all the excitement and adventure of military service, it is
  a dangerous profession, where people can get hurt using equipment
  
  improperly.  Army instructors are taught that if the student fails to
  learn, it is because the instructor failed to teach properly.
  After graduating from Basic Training (if you fail the first time, you
  can cycle through it one more time), soldiers are assigned to Advanced
  Individual Training (AIT) in a particular branch or specialty.  The
  branches of the Army fall into three main groups:
  e Combat-Infantry, Armor, Artillery.
  Combat Support-Aviation, Air Defense, Artillery, Engineers, Military
  Police, Military Intelligence, Signal, etc.
  Combat Service Support-Quartermaster, Transportation, Finance, Data
  Processing, etc.
  HONING I'lli@'RAZOR", FD(-,E 0 199
  At the completion of AIT, which typically takes from six to twenty-four
  weeks, the soldier receives his Military Occupational Specialty (MOS)
  Code.  If you want to be an Armored Cavalry Scout, the MOS is 19D
  (pronounced Nineteen-Delta), and you would attend the Armor School at
  Fort Knox, Kentucky.  If you want to be an Apache Helicopter Mechanic,
  the MOS is 67R (Sixty-Seven-Romeo in the vernacular of the trade), and
  you would attend the Aviation Maintenance school at Fort Rucker,
  Alabama.  When soldiers graduate from AIT, they are given their first
  assignment and sent off to their first unit.
  Enlisted soldiers advance through a series of nine grades of rank,
  start- ing with E-I (private) through E-9 (sergeant major).  Senior
  enlisted personnel are highly respected in the Army; it is not unusual
  for a wise officer to ask the senior NCO's advice on tactical
  situations, or how to deal with a problem soldier.  Such personnel are
  frequently college-educated, and you often find sergeants major (yes,
  that's the proper plural form) with graduate degrees.
  From the time of his first assignment, the life of an enlisted person
  can be summed up in just a few words: do your job, go to school, and
  prepare yourself for the next rank up the chain.  Because of the Army's
  force drawdown, the life is becoming more competitive.  In a time of
  declining force levels, only those showing skill and promise are going
  to be retained.
  On the other hand, there are jobs for Army enlisted troops that are
  simply not available in any other branch of the military.  For example,
  if you want to fly as a pilot in the U.S.  Air Force, you have to be an
  officer.  Not so in the Army.  There is a tradition of "flying
  sergeants" going back decades; and when the Army decided to maintain an
  aviation arm after the Army-Air Force split in 1947, they decided to
  
  continue the tradition as a series of ranks for warrant officers (WOs).
  Warrant officers are former sergeants, with their own separate career
  path for jobs of high responsibility-such as the care and operation of a
  ten-million-dollar helicopter!  The Army trusts enlisted soldiers with
  jobs just as important, responsibilities just as great, and objectives
  just as vital as those given to officers.  In fact, the only thing an
  officer can do that an enlisted soldier can't is command.
  The Officer Corps
  They range from cabinet-level officials in the government to second
  lieutenants commanding platoons, and yet they all have one thing in
  common: the trust of a nation to use their bestjudgment to fulfill their
  duty.  That is a big responsibility, as the last few years have shown.
  The Army expects a lot from its officers.
  Just before the 1991 Persian Gulf War, it was top Army officers in
  Washington D.C., particularly General Colin Powell, the Chairman of the
  Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General Carl Vuono, the Chief of Staff of the
  Army, who briefed the Bush administration on how a war against Iraq to
  liberate Kuwait could be fought and won with acceptable risks and
  casualties.
  Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, some of the Army's most
  junior officers were preparing to lead their soldiers into combat.  It
  was, in fact, three young Army officers, Dan Miller, H.  R.  McMaster,
  and Joe Sartiano, each leading a troop from the 2nd Squadron of the 2nd
  ACR, who made first contact with the security elements of Iraq's
  Republican Guard, fighting the decisive ground action of the Gulf War.
  Three captains, not one of them more than twenty-eight years of age,
  made on-the-spot judgments that determined where the rest of General
  Franks' VII Corps would fight.  What does General Franks think about the
  quality of their initiative today?  The three young officers "did
  exactly what I would have done," he says.
  What a difference from a quarter century ago, when Army junior officers
  were regarded as the least professional officers in the U.S.
  military-and some were "fragged" (shot in the back by their own troops)!
  That difference is due to the intellectual and professional growth of
  the commissioned officer corps of the Army.  Note that word
  commissioned.  A soldier is enli,@ted in the Army for a certain term of
  years, and may be offered the opportunity to re-enlist (much like a
  contract).  But an officer is commissioned.   The commission of an Army
  officer asks many things of the person accepting it.  These might best
  be summed up by the motto of West Point: "Duty, honor, country."
  Depending on performance and the needs of the service, an officer may
  hold that commission until the age of retirement.  But let's look at the
  start of the journey.  An Army officer's career usually begins after
  
  high school, when a young person decides to join up.  Then comes
  college, an experience which is of great interest to the Army.  And the
  interest is not passive either.  For it can help a teenager afford a
  college education in a number of ways.  These include:
  Appointment to the U.S.  Military Academy at West Point, New York.
  Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) scholarship programs at major
  colleges and universities.
  From these programs, as well as from Officer Candidate Schools (for
  young enlisted soldiers who already have college degrees), come second
  lieutenants (also known as "butter bars" from the golden color of their
  insignia of rank), the raw material of the Army officer corps.  From the
  start of his or her career, the officer has one goal-move up or move
  out.  Officers can only be passed over for promotion two times before
  they are forced out of the Army.  And currently, lieutenants trying for
  promotion to captain only get one try.  Like their enlisted
  counterparts, they face the problem of a declining force size in the
  Army.
  Since being qualified to do a lot is the best way to stay in, the
  postVietnam generation of Army officers is the best-educated officer
  corps that America has ever put into the field.  It is expected that in
  the course of a twentyyear-plus career, an officer will obtain a
  graduate degree and constantly seek
  HONING I'liE RAZOIZ", EDGI-'O 201
  out professional educational opportunities.  Some of the more
  interesting of these are:
  * The Army War College at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C.
  * The Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
  * The School of Advanced Military Studies, the graduates of which are
  known as "Jedi Knights."
  * Specialized training schools, duty as exchange officers, and advanced
  degrees from civilian universities.
  The result of all this training is that as a group, the officers in the
  U.  S.  Army today are the most professional in the country's history.
  Many are also, of course, veterans of combat in the Persian Gulf,
  Panama, Somalia, and other places.  Combat experience tests the
  war-fighting skills and effectiveness of a military force.  Other things
  help, but the victorious combat experience of those young captains and
  majors will help maintain the Army's war-fighting skills for another
  generation. And that will be good for everyone they command.  Command is
  
  the ultimate goal of a professional officer.  Luckily, the Army's
  organization allows a large percentage of the officer corps to gain
  early command experience as platoon and company/troop leaders.  It also
  gives the Army an opportunity to evaluate them: Based upon their
  performance as commanders of small units, it selects those best
  qualified for command of larger units.  This does not necessarily
  guarantee that the best officers always rise to the top, but it does
  tend to push the ones with talent and potential into positions of
  responsibility, where their management skills, initiative, and
  leadership under stress can be fairly evaluated.
  The Road to the National Training Center
  The goal of any Army combat unit is to be ready to deploy and, if
  necessary, be ready for combat.  How does a commander like Colonel Young
  of the 3rd ACR take the newly schooled soldiers sent to him by the
  Recruiting Command, mix them with the equipment and soldiers he already
  has, and make them combatready?  The Army has a habit of rotating and
  promoting people in such a way that maintaining readiness is a constant
  challenge.  Colonel Young's responsibility as the regimental commander
  is to maintain the fine instrument left to him by the previous
  commander, Colonel (now Brigadier General) Robert R.  lvany.  Luckily,
  the Army has a whole series of training opportunities and exercises
  designed to help their unit commander do just that.  This training cycle
  is set up so that at the end of it-the "final exam"-the whole regiment
  gets to find out just how well it has done.  This final exam is called
  the National Training Center (NTC).
  202 - ARMOIZED C-AV
  The National Training Center Concept
  NTC was created because of the generally poor performance of .  U. S.
  Army units in Vietnam.  It is designed to be a force-on-force training
  environment where units up to regiment and brigade size can maneuver and
  fight in a simulated war zone for a period of weeks.  Located at Fort
  Irwin, California, in the Mojave Desert (near Barstow, California, south
  of Death Valley), NTC gives Army units the chance to do their fighting
  in a controlled environment.  The concept for NTC came from a study of
  early combat experience that indicated that soldiers and units in action
  for the first time suffered the worst casualties.  For example, the Navy
  found that if a pilot survived his first ten missions over North
  Vietnam's formidable air defenses, he was much more likely to survive
  the next ninety.  The studies indicated that the stresses of combat and
  the confusion of battle tended to make young pilots almost inept for a
  time, until they learned to create the "mental filters" that allow a
  combat veteran to distinguish what is critical to survival from what can
  safely be ignored.  Pilots call it "situational awareness," and it is
  
  the characteristic that separates an ace from a corpse.  The Navy's
  answer to this problem was the creation of the famous Top Gun fighter
  weapons school, and later the Strike University at NAS Fallon in Nevada.
  So successful was the Top Gun program that the Air Force opened a
  similar schoolhouse for warriors at Nellis AFB, Nevada, under the name
  Red Flag.
  The Army also realized the benefits of such a program; and at the same
  time it wanted to create a training center to teach the art of the new
  maneuverstyle warfare that was emerging as its standard doctrine.  The
  wide Mojave Desert in California was an obvious location, and Fort
  Irwin, outside Barstow, California, became available in the early 1980s.
  Fort Irwin was a vast, decrepit old post, almost unused since General
  Patton trained armored units there in the 1940s.  It took years of work
  and lots of taxpayer money to build up the facilities; and even now
  construction (particularly of base housing) continues.  What makes Fort
  Irwin such a perfect place for practicing maneuver warfare is summed up
  in one word: space.  The NTC complex at Fort Irwin covers about 1,000
  square miles/3,050 square kilometers (about the size of Rhode Island),
  all completely open and government-owned.  Another advantage is that no
  one cares much about the place.  It is as barren a desert as America has
  to offer, and operations there are unlikely to disrupt civilian
  activities.  Nor are there natural features that outsiders care
  about-except for the world's largest desert tortoise hatchery and a rare
  species of brine shrimp inhabiting the seasonal dry lakes of the region
  (and the Army i,5 concerned about protecting these).  Otherwise, it is a
  really big and dusty playing field.  Though temperatures in the summer
  are extreme, rising to over I IO'F/44'C regularly, still, all that room
  makes it the perfect sandbox to practice the art of war.  Resident at
  the NTC is a simulated Soviet-style motor-rifle regiment staffed by Army
  soldiers called the Opposing Force (OPFOR).  And the entire NTC facility
  is instrumented, to allow recording and playback of entire battles.  A
  unit and its commanders can therefore learn exactly what they did wrong
  (and right) in battle against the OPFOR.
  IIONING'FliE RAZOR", EI)GE a 203
  Units deploy to Fort Irwin for three-to-five-week "rotations," which are
  designed to test basic combat skills of gunnery and maneuver, plus
  supporting skills, such as logistics, combat medicine, and maintenance.
  All of this is designed to be a pure twenty-four-hours-a-day learning
  experience that encourages participants to do new things and be
  innovative, as well as teaching officers and troops to maneuver in a
  realistic environment. All of this is obviously very expensive: yet the
  experience gained teaches lessons that cannot be simulated on a
  computer, or played out at a unit's home base.  More important, the
  experience pays incredible dividends in terms of lives saved and
  victories won when units go into combat for real.  (According to many
  
  returning Desert Storm veterans, combat in the Iraqi and Kuwaiti desert
  was just like it was at NTC, except that the Iraqis weren't as good sas
  OPFOR!) To put all this another way, failure in any area of the
  operational art will result in a failure of the unit in real combat, and
  so it is at the NTC.
  Let's look at how Colonel Young and his troopers got ready for their
  1993 NTC rotation.
  Getting Ready
  The 3rd ACR began to get ready for Fort Irwin in the late spring of
  1993.  The previous year, the regiment had sent only its I st and 3rd
  Armored Cavalry Squadrons to NTC.  Now Colonel Young would take the rest
  of the regiment to Fort Irwin, while 3rd Squadron deployed for an
  exercise in Kuwait (Operation Intrinsic Action 94-1 ).  In order that
  the rest of the regiment would be better prepared for the coming NTC
  rotation, 3rd Squadron was used as an OPFOR unit for it to practice
  against.  Since Fort Bliss butts up against the White Sands missile test
  range, the 3rd ACR enjoys the advantage of an enormous "backyard" for
  maneuver and practice.  In fact, the 3rd ACR has more room to maneuver
  than the whole Ill Corps facility at Fort Hood, Texas.
  Meanwhile, since many of the Gulf War veterans had rotated out to other
  positions and most of the soldiers needed to requalify with their
  weapons, a program of live-fire gunnery "tables" was set up on a desert
  range north of Fort Bliss in June and July of 1993 (they are called
  "tables" because the scoring sheet is set up in rows and columns, with
  boxes for the evaluator to check off).  Each table tests a different set
  of gunnery skills for a particular type of vehicle. It usually requires
  maneuvering up to firing positions, followed by a series of live-fire
  engagements with "pop-up" targets.   Each vehicle crew must complete all
  twelve tables to be considered "qualified" in gunnery.  The
  qualification process was long and dusty, with almost 200 3rd ACR crews
  requiring certification.  When it was over, all the crews of Ist
  Squadron (Lieutenant Colonel Toby W.  Martinez) and 2nd Squadron
  (Lieutenant Colonel Norman Greczyn) were fully qualified.  These two
  units, along with the rest ofthe regiment (except for 3rd Squadron under
  Lieutenant Colonel Karl J.  Gunzelman), were scheduled to move out prior
  to Labor Day weekend 1993 for the NTC rotation to Fort Irwin.
  204 - ARMORFD CAV
  Even before the requalification, the two cavalry squadron commanders had
  begun teaching their units how to maneuver and fire as a group.  First
  at the platoon, then at the troop level, Colonel Martinez and Colonel
  Greczyn worked their small units into teams that could maneuver at
  squadron level.  This would be required of them at the NTC.  It should
  be noted that this is not something special being done just for the NTC
  
  deployment, but the actual process that the regiment would go through if
  they were given a combat deploy- ment order to go overseas.  In fact,
  the entire regiment was involved in doing the same jobs they would have
  just before a combat deployment, from the support squadron getting
  equipment and supplies ready to ship, to the legal and medical sections
  updating wills and immunization shots.
  After the requalification, squadron-level exercises were run (one
  squadron at a time) against an opposing unit made up of Colonel
  Gunzelman's 3rd Squadron, Plus some Marines invited from the TwentyNine
  Palms desert training center.  The unit would defend an objective on the
  range north of El Paso, with the troopers from either I st or 2nd
  Squadron trying to dislodge them.
  TO keep score, there was a set of electronic gear called the Multiple
  Integrated Laser Exercise System (MILES).  MILES provides a "no-shoot"
  way for units to practice ground combat (and some limited air combat),
  while scoring and recording their actions.  MILES uses eye-safe lasers
  to simulate firing weapons; and MILES gear is available to simulate most
  weapons in the Army inventory, plus a few Soviet systems.   Everything
  from main tank guns to assault rifles can be simulated with the right
  MILES transmitter.
  In addition, small pyrotechnic charges (big, safe firecrackers) called
  Hoffman Devices are set off by the MILES electronics to simulate the
  noise and smoke when a gun or missile fires.  Whenever a target is "hit"
  by the laser beam of a firing unit, a sensor on the target vehicle
  detects the laser "hit" and
  A U.S.  Army soldier with a full set of infantry MILES gear.  The
  "buttons" on his web harness and helmet sense laser "hits" from enemy
  weapons, while his M 16 assault rifle is equipped with a laser generator
  ofits own.
  Ofil@ I,l I .@ 4R'f)
  HONING TliE RAZOR'S EDGE - 205 scores it either as a near miss or a
  simulated "kill."  If a target vehicle is "killed," a yellow strobe
  light on top of the vehicle begins to blink, so everyone knows that it
  is out of action.  To prevent arguments like "We shot you first," when a
  vehicle is "killed," the MILES system immediately disarms all of its
  lasers.
  There are MILES systems for dismounted soldiers also, and they fit over
  the helmets and web gear of the users to score simulated personnel
  casualties.  When a soldier in a MILES ensemble is "hit," the sensor
  harness lets out an unpleasant beeping sound for a "near miss" and a
  shrill continuous whine for a "kill," until the soldier disables it (and
  his weapon) with a small yellow key.  In addition to "kills" scored by
  
  enemy vehicles, the "Observer/Controller" (O/C) referees (if present)
  can also simulate a kill with a small laser transmitter called a "God
  Gun" by the troops.
  The fights begin with a night road march to what is called the "line of
  departure," the point where the attack actually kicks off.  Along the
  line of march, "phase lines" are overlaid on the command maps.  These
  imagi- nary lines, perpendicular to the line of advance, are usually
  given code names for clarity over the radio channels.  First Squadron
  likes to designate phase lines by women's names, such as Debbie, Ginger,
  Zelda, etc.  As each unit crosses a particular phase line, it radios a
  report to the squadron commander.  This tells the commander if the
  attack is running on schedule, as well as who is doing what.
  Frequently, the exercise director will throw in difficulties, such as
  simulated chemical and artillery attacks.  For example, if a unit moves
  through a zone contaminated with persistent chemical agents (a referee
  would notify them of this), it must immediately don MOPP-IV
  chemical-protection suits, use its Fox NBC vehicles to survey the
  contaminated zone, report the results to squadron HQ, conduct
  decontamination if necessary, and then continue on to the objective.
  In the event, these early, full-sized squadron exercises showed us the
  reason why soldiers train.  A lot of things didn't go right.  For
  example, right
  A 3rd ACR M IA I H(' tank kicks up dust during exercises at Fort Bliss,
  Texas.
  after the 4th of July break, we watched an exercise involving Colonel
  Martinez's I st Squadron.  The objective was a hilltop in the eastern
  part of the Fort Bliss range overlooking I st Squadron's approach from
  the southwest.  To make things harder, 3rd Squadron and the Marines had
  been given several days to dig in on the objective and along the
  approach route.
  During the pre-exercise briefing the day before, we tried to motivate
  the colonel and his officers by promising "donuts and coffee" at the
  objective-but our good intentions didn't help them much.  I st Squadron
  became a victim of what Clausewitz (the great German philosopher of war,
  1780- 1831) called "friction": One little thing after another conspires
  to keep you from achieving your objective.  "Everything is very simple
  in war," Clausewitz wrote, "but the simplest thing is difficult.  These
  difficulties accumulate and produce a friction which no man can imagine
  who has not seen war."
  In this case, dust and the cover of darkness caused a few platoons to
  lose their way and become separated (even with GPS, this sometimes still
  happens).  Meanwhile, some Marine OPFOR teams slipped into I st
  
  Squadron's rear assembly areas and caused additional confusion.  By the
  time Ist Squadron sorted itself out for the attack on the hill, it was
  being chopped up by 3rd Squadron's dug-in tanks and Bradleys.
  Now, you might ask:
  Q: What is the point of an attack exercise that fails?
  A: You learn from your mistakes.
  A formal Army review process makes sure that participants learn well.
  This "After-Action Review" (AAR) is a post-exercise meeting, with all
  leaders from both sides describing what they saw.  The referees go over
  every detail of the exercise in excruciating detail.  And it is expected
  that the commander of each unit will stand up and give a candid
  self-criticism of just what happened.  If he is unsure of what went
  wrong, the O/Cs may ask the opposing commander to explain what happened.
  To further clarify all this, MILES data is displayed to show the
  movements and lines of fire.  When it is all over, "lessons learned"
  The staff ofthe OPFOR at a premission brief.  The author and series
  artist Laura AII)her are sitting in the front row of seats.
  HONING TIFE [@AZOR",,' EDGE - 207
  are written down for later distribution to the participants.  No
  Catholic confessional could ever be so uncomfortable and candid as a
  properly run AfterAction Review.
  By the way, we gave the troopers of the Tiger Squadron the donuts
  anyway!
  The Move to the NTC
  When the squadron exercises were completed, the regiment was ready for
  the move to Fort Irwin.  Several weeks before, Colonel Young and his
  officers visited the NTC to be briefed in great detail on rules of
  engagement (ROE), range safety procedures, logistics instructions, and
  other procedures.  No effort is spared to ensure that the deployment is
  a successful learning experience.  It was to be a learning experience
  for me as well; I spent several days observing the 3rd ACR's NTC
  exercises.
  In order to save wear and tear on its equipment, when a unit goes to
  NTC, it usually draws most of its vehicles and equipment from a storage
  depot at Fort Irwin.  Consequently, only a few 3rd ACR command vehicles
  had to be shipped there.
  Just prior to Labor Day weekend, most of the soldiers were trucked and
  
  bused to Fort Irwin (about 10% went by air) to draw their equipment and
  head out to the range assembly area called "the dust bowl." At the same
  time, 4th Squadron flew their helicopters directly to the Fort Irwin
  airfield, and then moved out to a field base where they would operate
  during the exercise.  The regiment now split into two parts for the
  duration of the exercise.  For the first half of the exercise, 2nd
  Squadron (Lieutenant Colonel Greczyn) went up to the live-fire range.
  The rest of the regiment headed out to the maneuver area in the southern
  part of Fort Irwin for their series of "fights" with the toughest unit
  to never serve in the Soviet Army, the OPFOR.
  The National Training Center Facilities/Staff
  When you drive east on Interstate 10 from Los Angeles, you cross
  Interstate 15, which heads north towards Las Vegas, Nevada.  About
  halfway to "Sin City" on 1-15 lies the desert town of Barstow, gateway
  to the National Training Center, which lies a further thirty-seven miles
  north.  The first thing you notice as you drive to the base are numerous
  white crosses-memorials to drivers killed along the road to NTC over the
  last dozen or so years.  They are a grim reminder that life at NTC is
  dangerous enough without reckless or drunken driving.  A more intriguing
  monument is the colorful pile of painted rocks decorating the base
  entrance.  Each bears the crest of a unit that has rotated through.
  Fort Irwin is desolate and treeless-just lots of rocks, dust, small
  brush, and open space for maneuvering and shooting.  And yet, amazingly
  enough, the Army feels confined in its roughly 1,000 square niiies/2,687
  square kilometers.
  So it plans to acquire another parcel of land to enlarge the facility by
  50%.  Currently limited to battalion/squadron-sized actions, the range,
  when expanded, will be able to host brigade/regimental-sized fights.
  Though thousands of troops and their families live and work here, with
  more arriving all the time, only one combat unit, the 177th Armored
  (OPFOR) Brigade, is stationed on post.  The post itself is not an
  elegant place.  Most of the buildings were built in the no-frills style
  of government cinderblock architecture after NTC opened in 1981.  Before
  then, the main activity at Fort Irwin was NASA:s Goldstone Deep Space
  Tracking Facility, a huge dish antenna for communicating with space
  probes.  As for the training facility, that is very elegant indeed.  The
  entire range complex is instrumented with a huge MILESbased tracking and
  scoring system, and there is equipment meant to simulate combat with the
  highest possible fidelity.  During our visit in late 1993, Brigadier
  General Robert S.  Coffey, a career infantry officer, commanded the NTC
  and the following units:
  Fort Irwin Base Garrison-The permanent force assigned to Fort Irwin runs
  everything from the Post Exchange to the base housing facilities.  It
  
  provides maintenance and upkeep for the store of equipment used by units
  rotating through NTC.
  The NTC Operations Group-These soldiers take care of the MILES sensors,
  laser weapons, and target arrays.  They also run the "Star Wars"
  building where NTC exercises are monitored and AARs are conducted.  They
  supervise combat exercises on the range and also act as coaches,
  trainers, referees, range safety officers, data collectors, and target
  array operators.  177th Armored Brigade/60th Guards Motorized Rifle
  DivisionThis is the maneuver element of the OPFOR.  Based on Soviet
  organization and doctrine, they simulate enemy forces for the other
  units training at NTC.  They operate old M551 Sheridan light tanks and
  HMM@s with sheet-metal add-on kits ("visual modifications" or VISMODS)
  that make them look like Sovietdesigned vehicles.  With the apparent end
  of the Soviet threat, the OPFOR is keeping up-to-date on the tactics and
  organization of opponents America might face in the Balkans, the Middle
  East, East Asia, and other trouble spots.
  These groups work together to make the NTC the most comprehensive combat
  training facility in the world.  Virtually everything that a combat unit
  can encounter in a field deployment is simulated at the NTC, and units
  often find that a trip to Fort Irwin is tougher than actual combat.
  Force-on-Force Fi ht-Wednesday, September 8th, 1993
  9
  When Colonel Young, Lieutenant Colonel Martinez, and Lieutenant Colonel
  Sealock arrived at the NTC, their first task was to get both I st and
  4th
  IIONIN(; IIIF RAZOR", 17D(-,f@ - 209
  A UH-1 helicopter assigned to the OPFOR at the NTC banks after a
  simulated firing run on troops ofthe 3rd ACR.  The VISMOD on this
  helicopter allows it to simulate a Soviet/Russian HIND-D attack
  helicopter.
  J,@ii, D (;R@stt,,f
  Squadrons and the regimental HQ settled in and ready for action in the
  series of force-on-force exercises scheduled for the first ten days of
  the three-week rotation.  These simulated battles put the squadrons
  through a series of engagements with the OPFOR.  Every other day for
  eight days, over 5,000 soldiers would meet in battle up on the range.
  The scenarios are devised by the O/C group, and their aim is to confront
  participants with a variety of operational challenges.  These can take
  several forms.  Sometimes the two forces are moving simultaneously, and
  wind up fighting over some piece of desert, wherever their patrols
  
  collide.  Other times the OPFOR attacks the unit (called the Blue Force)
  to break through to seize a set objective.  Or the reverse: Blue Force
  might attack the OPFOR, in order to try to seize an objective.
  Whatever the situation, both sides plan their actions so that the
  training experience for the Blue Force will be maximized.  Now, from the
  viewpoint of the OPFOR, maximizing the training experience means doing
  everything possible to beat a visiting Blue Force, up to and including
  simulated weapons of mass destruction.  And in fact, the OPFOR wins
  something like 80% of the battles against Blue Force opponents.  For the
  odds are intentionally stacked in the OPFOR's favor, making every battle
  a desperate fight for life by the Blue Force.  Thus any fight that Blue
  "wins" requires perfect execution of their own battle plan, and usually
  some mistakes by the OPFOR.  Anything less than perfection means
  annihilating defeat for the Blue Force, and an AAR with enough humbling
  self-criticism to fuel a lifetime memory-and a lifetime lesson.  Some
  factors that account for the OPFOR's track record include:
  Scenario Force Ratios-The force ratios for each scenario (depending on
  Blue Force maintenance and readiness) are determined by the Operations
  Group, so that the fights are as tough as possible.  Since U.S.  units
  are expected to fight and win against enemy forces of larger size, the
  OPFOR units are up to twice as large as their Blue Force opponents,
  whether the OPFOR is attacking or defending.
  210 - AIZMOI@L@D ( AV
  Col.  Bob Young (front) and the command staffofthe 3rd ACR's 4th (Air
  Cavalry) Squadron plan an NTC force-on-force engagement on a
  "sand-table" model of the NTC range.  J,,H, D, GRf @114 @f
  Weapons-The NTC makes no differentiation between the effectiveness of
  American weapons (simulated by the MILES gear) and those of the
  "Soviet-equipped" OPFOR unit.  This means that OPFOR tanks and fighting
  vehicles get the same performance from their guns and missiles as the
  U.S.  units.  Home Field Advantage-During any six-week period, the OPFOR
  fights between eight and ten battles on the same terrain, frequently in
  the same tactical situations.  This means that they "fight" more often
  than any unit in the Army.  Like an inner-city high school basketball
  team playing on its own court, they know every loose floorboard and
  rough spot by name.  Frequently, their Blue Force opponents are seeing
  the NTC for the first time-which means they pay dearly while adapting to
  unfamiliar ground.  OPFOR units use terrain so skillfully that
  first-time NTC visitors joke about the "OPFOR Tunnel," as if the OPFOR
  could "pop up" out of the ground anywhere it chooses.  OPFOR
  Experience-Every member of the OPFOR is an experienced armor officer or
  enlisted soldier.  They all participate in the OPFOR mission constantly,
  and that means that they are good at theirjobs.  As in life, so in the
  
  combat arena, practice makes perfect.
  For several reasons, the situation for 3rd ACR was even tougher on this
  rotation.  For starters, because cavalry troopers consider themselves to
  be an elite, the OPFOR seems to have a special place in its heart for
  the cavalry.  Therefore, whenever the 2nd ACR-L or the 3rd ACR come to
  the NTC, the OPFOR likes to knock them down a couple of pegs by devising
  extra-tough scenarios and taking longer risks to win.  In the event, the
  first few days of force-on-force battle did not go well for the 3rd ACR.
  Though they got close to winning once, they were beaten particularly
  badly on several occasions.  So, when the warning order came in on the
  morning of September 7th for a movement-to-contact the next day
  IIONIN(@ I IIE l@AZOI@',,, - 211
  quadron - 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment Force-On-Force Fight
  The Situation: B-@n's Pam - Wed., S.pt.  ath, 1993
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  The 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment's fight with the NTC OPFOR forces in
  Brown's Pass on September gth, 1993.  As the fight developed, ( I ) the
  helicopters of 4th Squadron scouted the north wall ofthe pass with only
  limited success.  Then (2) l st Squadron destroyed the OPFOR security
  force in the southern entrance ofthe pass, then moved up to the OPFOR
  positions along the north wall.  Here (3), they suffer from OPFOR
  missile fire.  The I st Squadron's tank company also is hit heavily, and
  the survivors are destroyed (5) when they run into the main OPFOR force.
  J4(A R)4 @ E@T[RPRI@@f S, /@71), B@ L,t x4 AtpiitR (everything down to
  the operations orders are handled as if they were actual combat
  
  situations), Lieutenant Colonel Martinez knew that it was the last
  chance for a successful fight with the OPFOR.  Following this exercise,
  they would move north to the Drinkwater Lake Live-Fire Range for their
  turn at the NTC's shooting gallery.
  September 7th was spent repairing equipment (armored vehicles wear out
  at a vicious pace in the desert) and planning the coming battle.
  Meanwhile, at the I st and 4th Squadron HQs, the commanders drew battle
  plans on large sand-table models of Fort Irwin.  The objective was to
  push through Brown's Pass on the northern end of the range.  The staff
  of the 3rd ACR expected to find the OPFOR dug in on the far side of the
  pass, though exactly where depended on the pre-battle reconnaissance
  scheduled for that evening.  If they could just find the OPFOR, they
  would blow them right out of Brown's Pass and back to the Goldstone
  tracking center.
  At a "lager" (an encampment of combat vehicles, typically in a circle
  facing outward-think of covered wagons) near Goldstone, the leaders of
  the OPFOR were also planning for tomorrow's battle.  After several hours
  of work by the operations (S-3) staff, it was decided that the battle
  would begin with aggressive counter-reconnaissance against the 3rd ACR
  to the east (whoever wins the reconnaissance battle usually wins the
  fight).  Vehicles of the 60th Guards Motorized Rifle Division would dig
  in on hills north of the pass.  Anti
  Lieutenant Colonel Toby Martinez, the commanderofthe 3rd ACR's Ist
  "Tiger" Squadron, after the defeat in Brown's Pass.  He had "jumped"
  from four vehicles that had been "hit" during the force-on-force
  engagement.  JIIH, D.  GRFSIII It
  Tank Guided Missile (ATGM) teams would hide among the rocks at the mouth
  of the pass.  When the Ist Squadron came through the next morning, they
  would enter an ambush with interlocking fields of fire.
  As both sides moved up to their initial positions that night, a series
  of little actions began that would have a decisive impact on the
  following day's battle.  Along the line of hills and ridges north of the
  pass, the reconnaissance teams that 3rd ACR landed from 4th Squadron's
  Blackhawk helicopters were quickly snatched up by counter-reconnaissance
  teams from the 60th Guards.  At dawn the next morning, as 3rd ACR's I st
  Squadron moved west up into the pass, they were relatively blind.
  Their only reconnaissance came from 4th Squadron's aero scouts, who
  reported an enemy security outpost in the pass itself, and enemy armored
  vehicles in fighting positions to the west of the pass.  But they could
  not get close enough to see more, due to the threat of simulated SAM and
  anti-aircraft fire from OPFOR positions.
  At dawn the next morning, Ist Squadron blasted right through the pass,
  
  losing only a few vehicles to the OPFOR troops there.  They then made a
  long bounding movement to the northwest towards the dug-in armored
  vehicles reported by the aero scouts.  Lieutenant Colonel Martinez rode
  into battle in his M3 Bradley.  Just behind came Colonel Young's
  regimental command section, a pair of Bradleys.
  During the bound towards the northwest, M 1059s (M 11 3 APCs with smoke
  generators) ran along the flanks of the lead vehicles laying down smoke,
  and all seemed to be going well.  But suddenly all hell broke loose, as
  the hills to the north of the pass erupted in a hail of simulated ATGMS.
  A number of Abrams tanks and Bradleys were "killed" in this first
  barrage, and the plain to
  IIONING I'flE RAZOR", FDGF - 213
  the west of the pass became littered with unmoving vehicles topped by
  blinking yellow strobe lights.  Worst of all, the command tracks of
  Colonel Young and Lieutenant Colonel Martinez were knocked out in the
  missile barrage.
  Toby Martinez is not a soldier who gives up easily.   As soon as his
  command track was hit, he "jumped" to another vehicle to keep the
  momentum of the attack rolling.  He would do this three more times
  before the day's bat- tie ended.  Back on the command radio net, he
  ordered the survivors of A, B, and C Troops to attack and clear out the
  OPFOR missile teams from the rocks in the hills.  While they were doing
  this, he sent D Company, the reserve of fourteen tanks, to continue the
  attack towards the dug-in armored vehicles to the west.
  Unfortunately for Lieutenant Colonel Martinez and the troopers of lst
  Squadron, the failed reconnaissance of the previous evening returned to
  haunt them.  When the tanks of D Company reached the line of dug-in T-72
  tanks and BMP fighting vehicles, they found not the expected
  company-sized unit, but almost a whole battalion of OPFOR fighting
  vehicles.  Split into two widely separate groups, the squadron's units
  were defeated in detail before they realized what had happened.  The
  ATGM teams had pulled the cavalry troops in like flypaper, and the iron
  fist of OPFOR crushed them against the rock walls of the pass.  Less
  than four hours after I st Squadron left the line of departure, it had
  been decimated.  Around the western mouth of the pass, the blinking
  "killed" lights of 3rd ACR vehicles bore mute testimony to the prowess
  of the OPFOR.
  Nobody in the regiment had a tougher break that day than Toby Martinez.
  Not only did he have to "jump" four times from vehicles that were shot
  out from under him (he was looking for a fifth when orders terminating
  the battle came in over the radio net); but while he was jumping down
  from the fourth vehicle, an Abrams tank, he pulled muscles in his side
  and back and injured his right knee.  This mishap would leave him in
  
  severe pain for daysstill commanding his squadron.  For now, though, he
  and Colonel Young rushed back to the After-Action Review (AAR) at the
  "Star Wars" building to take their knocks.
  The lessons learned at this particular AAR included suggestions on:
  * Improving the regiment's reconnaissance and counter-reconnais sance
  plan.
  * Better use of artillery and close air-support missions, which had
  almost no effect on the action in the pass.
  * Better use of the terrain in the pass to avoid exposure to ATGMs
  during long transits in the open.
  With this fight over, their fourth in just a week, I st Squadron made
  preparations to switch with Norm Greczyn's 2nd Squadron up at Drinkwater
  Lake.  This would involve a 30-mile/50-kilometer road march by all of
  the squadron's vehicles to the other end of Fort Irwin.  During this
  time, Colonel Young and The author with General Coffey (left) and series
  illustrator Laura Alpher (center) at a field meeting of NTC
  observer-controllers after an exercise.  J,)H.,D GRf.5H,lf the
  regimental tactical operations center (RTOC) team would stay behind to
  work with 2nd Squadron for another ten days of force-on-force battles.
  It had been a tough week for the troopers of the I st Squadron, and they
  were already tired, dusty, and dirty.  The previous few days had been
  extremely hot and it would get hotter as they moved east to the
  live-fire range.  Temperatures topped 115'F/46' C.  But inside a tank or
  Bradley, the temperature can get up to 20'F / I I'C hotter!  For myself,
  I must confess that the heat was devastating. I was still getting into
  the "groove" of the hydration cycle, and more than once I wished I had
  stayed back in the air-conditioned luxury of the VIP quarters at Fort
  Irwin.  As we flew back to the main base in a UH- I helicopter for a
  "dining-in" that evening, I kept thinking about the young 3rd ACR
  troopers who would not have a fresh meal, a shower, or an
  air-conditioned room to sleep in.  At the same time, I found myself
  wishing better luck to Toby and his squadron in their first live-fire at
  Drinkwater Lake on Sunday morning.
  Daytime Live-Fire, Sunday, September 12th, 1993
  If Lieutenant Colonel Martinez had hoped for better luck following the I
  st Squadron's force-on-force phase of the NTC deployment, then he had
  some cruel surprises coming his way.  His injuries from the fall on the
  8th were still hurting badly, and he was getting only a couple of hours
  sleep a night.  Sleep deprivation is a serious matter when You are
  making life-and-death decisions, and the pain in his side did not help.
  Worse yet was the news about the availability of tanks and Bradleys.  By
  Sunday morning, due to shortages of spare parts at Fort Irwin, only 60%
  
  of his tanks and 55% of his Bradley fighting vehicles were operable.
  This meant that engineer support and indirect artillery fire
  liONING,riiL RAZOR'S EI)GE n 215
  would play a much larger role than usual.  It would be the deciding
  factor in the success or failure of the squadron.
  What the squadron faced that Sunday morning is the mother of all
  shooting galleries: Drinkwater Lake Live-Fire Range.  Nestled in a
  valley in the northeast corner of Fort Irwin, it runs east to west, with
  hills on the north side and rugged mountains to the south.  At the
  eastern end of the valley, at the bottom of a long slope, is Drinkwater
  Dry Lake, a seasonal lake dried smooth and white by the vicious summer
  heat.  On the floor of the valley are a series of 1,500
  computer-controlled "pop-up" targets that simulate visually the advance
  of an MRR down the valley towards the positions of the Blue Force.
  The targets are controlled by the O/C team at the range control center
  perched atop a hill on the western end of the valley.  When a target is
  hit by one of the training-practice (TP) rounds fired from a tank or
  fighting vehicle, it is scored as a "kill" and does not appear again in
  the line of "pop-ups."  To win, the Blue Force has to destroy three full
  battalions of targets, or about 160 simulated enemy vehicles.  The
  conditions at Drinkwater Lake are as real as range safety regulations
  will allow.  Live artillery is allowed (as we would see later), and even
  chemical warfare is simulated, with the use of tear gas grenades
  requiring the troopers to fight in MOPP-IV suits.
  The day prior to the live-fire exercise, Lieutenant Colonel Martinez,
  his commanders, the S2, the S3, the fire support officer, the direct
  support field artillery battalion commander, and the engineer company
  commander walked the battlefield and decided on the engagement area
  where they intended to kill the enemy.  After the leaders'
  reconnaissance of the terrain, the squadron commander directed the
  positioning of the vehicles, identified the limits of the engagement
  area, and divided it into three separate kill zones.  The first zone,
  out of range of direct-fire weapons, was dominated by the artillery and
  the close air support (CAS) F-16s.  The intent was to mass on the enemy
  the indirect fires of the regiment's field artillery battalion
  (consisting of three artillery batteries) and the squadron's own
  howitzer battery (thirty M 109 tubes total).  Lieutenant Colonel
  Martinez made it clear he wanted all artillery batteries massed on enemy
  formations using "linear sheafs"I for maximum destruction.  If the enemy
  was allowed to enter within the range of direct-fire weapons unharmed,
  there would be too many targets for the tanks and Bradleys to kill and
  the enemy would roll over the positions.  The fire support officer,
  Captain Joe Feistritzer, positioned the fire support teams (FISTS) on
  the high ground to the flanks of the engagement area, to ensure
  
  long-range and overlapping fields of observation.  Artillery targets
  were identified and surveyed, and trigger points were marked on the
  ground.  The second kill zone was dominated by the MI Abrams and TOW
  missiles from the M3 Bradleys, based upon the maximum range of these
  weapons.  The priority targets for this kill zone were the enemy tanks.
  The intent was to destroy the enemy tanks before they could close within
  their effective fire range.  Artillery and mortars would continue to
  provide suppressive fire and smoke.  The squadron commander expected to
  destroy the remaining enemy within the third kill zone.  This is where
  the majority
  216 a AL@MORED CAV
  I 3rd ACR M I A I HC tanks (the one on the left is equipped with a mine
  plow) after a force-onforce engagement in Brown's Pass.  illit' 1)
  (;RL'Ill't
  (2) 3rd ACR troopers in chemical-warfare suits work around their M 109
  self-propelled howitzers.
  J,,ti, D (;Rf Sli, 11
  (3) A 3rd ACR M IA] HC tank dug in on the Drinkwater like Live-Fire
  Range at the NTC.
  JI'll' /) CRI'll, tt of the obstacles were emplaced, and where all
  weapons systems could reach the enemy.  The squadron commander knew that
  if the artillery could kill at least 20% of the targets at long range,
  and if the engineer obstacle plan could keep the enemy in the engagement
  area for at least ten extra minutes, the troopers manning the tanks and
  Bradleys would finish the destruction of the enemy.
  Once the plan was set, all components of the squadron were put in motion
  toward the same objective-preparing the battlefield to destroy the
  enemy.  Late that night ' Lieutenant Colonel Martinez met with his
  commanders-the artillery battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Twohig;
  the Tiger Squadron operations officer (S3), Major Brossart; the fire
  support officer, Captain Feistritzer; and the squadron intelligence
  officer (S2), Captain Whatmough-and one more time went over in detail
  the engagement area, fire control, engagement priorities, every
  artillery target trigger point, and the synchronization matrix.
  Following the meeting, he met with his squadron executive officer, Major
  Sandridge, to get the latest combat power report; and then he boarded
  his M3 Command Track with his fire support officer and moved to his
  position for the morning's fight.  The following morning at "Stand To"
  (the designated time in which all weapon systems and personnel must be
  ready to fight), he received status reports from all commanders, and an
  intelligence update from the S2.  At this point, Lieutenant Colonel
  Martinez realized there was nothing else he could do to prepare the
  
  Tiger Squadron for battle.  He tried to relax and waited for the enemy.
  IIONIN(, 'S l@1)( l@ 217
  1 1 lif- RAZ(-)I@ ist Squadron - 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment Live-Fire
  Fight Th@ Sit..ti..: Di.k@.t@, L.k@ Rng@ - S.n., S@pt.  12th, 1993
  Drinkwa ter Dry Lake
  0 @M- -F'
  M3 8,@dl@y MI Ab..@
  TG,LBMP T.,g@tT-72
  T Z. The 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment's fight with the NTC's live-fire
  target array on September 12th, 1993.  The fight developed ( I ) with
  the first wave oftwo simulated motor rifle battalions (MRBS) being hit
  by well-planned and directed artillery fire.   Then (2) 1 st Squadron
  destroyed the rest ofthe two MRBs with fire from positions on the north
  side ofthe valley and Sabot Ridge.  The last assault (3) came from the
  reserve MRB along the south side of Drinkwater Lake.  Due to a stop in
  the artillery fire for safety reasons, a few (about 25 out of 160)
  simulated vehicles got through.  J4(A R)4, E,TfRIRISt..5.  L7D Hi
  l@,tR,Ailiff@R
  With less than 60% of his direct-fire wea ons available that morning,
  the
  p squadron would have to come up with something special to just break
  even in this battle.  As we chatted on the flight out, General Taylor
  (himself a former NTC commander) told me that with their vehicle
  availability problems, he had little hope of I st Squadron doing very
  well that day, and that he was looking forward to seeing "how much
  character Toby and his troopers have."  All of us were going to get an
  education on just how much they did have.
  By 0700 (7:00 AM), we had landed and were having coffee with the OIC
  team at an observation area overlooking the valley.  The OIC team's plan
  for defeating the crippled I st Squadron was brutal and simple.  The
  target con- trollers would run one battalion of targets along each side
  ofthe lake from east to west.  And they would commit their "reserve
  battalion" to whichever thrust got the farthest. This is consistent with
  the Soviet-style doctrine of reinforcing success with combat reserves.
  As the first line of targets "popped up" on the saddle ofthe pass
  leading into the western end ofthe valley (called the "S-Band" of
  targets), the O/Cs were confident that they would blow I st Squadron
  right out ofthe valley.
  
  With the positions of the defending Blue Force vehicles fixed (due to
  range safety requirements), they could not retreat or shift firing
  positions during the battle.  This made the setup of Colonel Martinez's
  already depleted force even more critical.  The main line of defense ran
  from the base ofthe
  218 - AL@MORED CAV Dug in to a shallow fighting position at the s ra ey
  prepares for battle with the OPFOR.  Note the TOW launcher in its
  ready-tofire position, and the blinker lamp mounted beside the comman
  der's hatch.
  Offl(141 I @S, ARif) PHOTO
  mountain on the southern side ofthe valley, along a raised piece of
  ground called Sabot Ridge, and then in a long crescent along the north
  side ofthe valley.  The setup was designed to provide maximum
  interlocking fire against the widest corridor in the valley along the
  north side of the dry lake bed.  Because the brine shrimp larvae that
  hibernate beneath the surface are an endangered species (no, I am not
  kidding), one ofthe rules ofthe live-fire range is that nobody can
  intrude upon the dry lake, and no heavy vehicle traffic or artillery is
  allowed.
  Meanwhile, the O/Cs had us don flak jackets and helmets for protection
  in case a stray round should fall nearby.  And at 0800 (8:00 AM), we sat
  down to watch the battle.  It was like a slow pageant, with the first
  line of targets appearing and advancing silently.  Occasionally, the
  O/Cs would have a target 11 pop" a smoke generator to simulate the dust
  of vehicles moving across the desert floor.  Just then, the first
  ranging shots from I st Squadron's artillery batteries began to strike
  around the advancing line of targets.  Immediately, the artillery began
  to "kill" large numbers of targets, and the northern target line began
  to crumble.  The noise ofthe artillery was like distant thunder, with
  the black smoke and dust ofthe HE shells temporarily obscuring our view.
  Then, the first of the F-16s from Nellis AFB (near Las Vegas, Nevada)
  came in, hitting even more of the northern targets.  To the south, the
  same thing was happening, with the artillery chewing up the advancing
  target line along the southern edge of Drinkwater Lake.
  Lieutenant Colonel Martinez's artillery and CAS plan worked so well that
  we almost forgot about the depleted force of tanks and Bradleys in the
  valley waiting for "leakers" that got through the barrage.  Suddenly,
  the first tank opened up with a "crack" from its 120mm main gun.  Almost
  immediately, several others fired; and we heard the "whoosh 11 of TOW
  missiles heading out across the lake bed to hit targets trying to move
  around to the south.  As the simulated enemy advance reached the line of
  obstacles emplaced by the engineers, the last weapons to engage were the
  25mm chain guns on the Bradleys.  The fire discipline was perfect, with
  
  crews firing single ranging shots followed
  HONING TIIL RAZOI@", F.D(;I@ - 219 The commander of Ill Corps, General
  "Pete" Taylor, talks with Lieutenant Colonel Toby Martinez, t e
  commander ofthe 3rd ACR's I st "Tiger" Squadron, after their NTC
  live-fire fight at Drinkwater Lake.
  Jo)i, D GRFS1144f by three-round bursts when they found the range. Over
  the O/C radio net, we could hear the count of targets destroyed, and
  were surprised when the controllers announced that the first two
  battalions had been annihilated, and that they were going to commit the
  reserve battalion of targets to the southern corridor around the lake
  bed.
  There was a temporary lull as the O/Cs moved up the last of the
  battalion target arrays and the artillery crews got ready to re-engage
  with their big guns.  When the M 109s started firing again, they
  repeated for a time the success of the previous barrage.  Even the
  dropping of some tear gas grenades around the defense line (causing them
  to don their MOPP-IV suits) and the liberal use of "God Guns" to "kill"
  random tanks and fighting vehicles did not slow down the I st Squadron
  fire.
  Then the inevitable "friction" of war came into play.  Several 155mm HE
  rounds from an M 109 battery impacted at the wrong location, throwing up
  a shower of salt and brown earth.  NTC safety rules require the O/Cs to
  issue a "Cease Fire" order to all batteries when this happens, so the
  artillery chain of command can sort out who is shooting at what.  It
  only took ten minutes or so to sort it out and get the guns back firing.
  But in that time, the target array had moved around the lake and into
  the eastern end of the valley.  In the end, when the order arrived
  terminating the battle, a handful of "leakers" had reached the defense
  line along Sabot Ridge.  As the guns stopped firing and the "All clear"
  signals came in over the net, you could hear the usually calm and
  objective OIC team's excitement over how well I st Squadron had done.
  Clearly, we had witnessed something special at the NTC: A unit had
  snatched "victory" from a seemingly hopeless situation.  When the final
  tally came in, Toby and his troopers had "killed" 135 out of 160
  simulated enemy tanks.  Although they had suffered some twenty-five
  "leakers" at the end, they had racked up one for the NTC record book.
  Doffing our body armor and hopping into a couple of HMMWVS, Generals
  Taylor, Coffey, and my team headed up the hill to the Ist Squadron
  command team to meet with Lieutenant Colonel Martinez and find out what
  he
  Medical personnel ofthe 3rd ACR's support squadron treat simulated
  medical casualties after an NTC livefire exercise at Drinkwater Lake.
  
  Jolt v D.  GRF.5H,4 @f had seen.  As we drove up to the pair of M3
  command tracks at the top of a ridge, Toby Martinez was pulling himself
  out of the small rear hatch to greet us. You could clearly see that he
  was in pain just standing there breathing.  But through the pain you
  could also see a profound exaltation at what his troopers had done.  As
  he briefed General Taylor on how the fight had gone, he assured Pete
  that he would not only get more vehicles back on-line for that evening's
  live-fire shoot, but that they would "kill every damned one of those
  targets tonight, sir!"
  Clearly excited themselves, Generals Taylor and Coffey made sure that
  Toby and his TOC staff knewjust how well they had done that morning.  In
  just two hours (it seemed like about twenty minutes with things
  happening so fast), the squadron's attitude had been turned around by
  the amazing performance of Lieutenant Colonel Martinez's preplanned
  artillery fire.  Now NTC "winners," they could look forward to other
  engagements with the knowledge of their "good fight."  It was a rare
  privilege to watch Pete Taylor, a veteran of shooting wars with three
  stars, put his arm around the young lieutenant colonel and tell him,
  "Someday you'll have a regiment of your own, son."
  Aftermath
  Happy as Toby was over the outcome of the battle, he and the squadron
  had things to do before they could grab a few hours of sleep.  The
  squadron had to refine the artillery observer positions and artillery
  targets, artillery batteries needed to reposition, barriers had to be
  reseeded, simulated casualties had to be evacuated properly, and
  repaired vehicles had to be brought forward from the Unit Maintenance
  Collection Point (UMCP, the slapg term is "Bone Yard").  Failure to do
  all that would cause the O/C team to downgrade the squadron's
  performance, and so undo their success.  At the same time, ammunition
  and food had to be brought forward and vehicles reloaded, and if
  necessary (or possible) repaired.
  The early performance had been amazing.  But it got better when the sun
  set later that day.  Getting a few more tanks and Bradleys out of the
  repair yard
  tiONIN(, I IIF l@AZOIZ", ED(-,E - 221
  The commander oflil Corps, General "Pete" Taylor.  talks with Colonel
  Bob Young, the commander ofthe 3rd ACR, after a force-on-force
  engagement at the NTC.  J,)it@ 0 GRLsti,,t and shifting more forces
  toward Sabot Ridge in the eastern end of the valley, they killed even
  more targets that evening, demonstrating the spirit of the 3rd ACR
  troopers under adversity.  In that moment of victory on Sabot Fidge on
  Sunday morning, they reaffirmed the regimental motto, "Brave Rifles!"
  and its response, "Blood and Steel."
  
  Back over in the force-on-force area, though, 2nd Squadron was having
  their own troubles with the OPFOR.  The previous day, fresh from several
  excellent live-fire performances of their own, they had also suffered
  heavily up near Brown's Pass.  In an engagement with a superior OPFOR
  force, the scouting broke down again, Colonel Young had difficulties
  getting information over the radio nets to decide when and where to
  commit the squadron's reserve company of tanks.  The OPFOR blasted
  through the northern part of their over-extended line; and in just
  seventeen minutes, OPFOR tanks overran the regimental supply and trains
  area.  lt was a tough learning experience for the new regimental
  commander, who was going through his first NTC rotation.  But learning
  is what NTC is all about, and Bob Young took his knocks like a
  professional.
  The regiment had another week of simulated combat, producing a
  smattering of successes, as well as the inevitable losses to the OPFOR.
  As they finished up the rotation in the third week of September, they
  turned in their bor- rowed vehicles and equipment, and boarded the
  charter buses back to El Paso.  A couple of weeks later, the NTC staff
  shipped them the payoff for all the efforts-the 1,300-page "take-home"
  package.  This is a catalog of every move and shot by the regiment
  during their entire rotation.  This package provides guidance on what
  the regiment needs to work on until they come back for their next NTC
  rotation in the summer of 1994.
  While most of the regiment was at the NTC rotation, back home at Fort
  Bliss, Lieutenant Colonel Gunzelman and his 3rd Squadron were getting
  222 - AIZNIOI@EI) (-AV
  ready for deployment to Kuwait later in the fall.  At the end of 1993,
  3rd Squadron finished up Intrinsic Action 94-1 and came home for the
  holidays.  The regiment was together for only a short time, however,
  before the next set of training rotations.
  Because of all this hard work and dedication, the 3rd ACR will remain
  one of the units that the Army can count upon to be "ready" in case of
  an emergency or crisis.  And the troopers of the Brave Rifles will
  continue their almost 150-year tradition of service to the United States
  of America.
  IIONIN(I- llil,.  l@A/.oi@'.,, Fi)(;i; 223
  n previous chapters, we have explored the equipment and institutions
  that allow the U.S.  Army to train and equip soldiers and make them into
  a working part of a cavalry or armored unit.  But what about the human
  part of all this?  Just what does it feel like to join the Army and
  dedicate your professional life to it?   Our talk with General Franks
  
  provides some telling insights, of course, but what does the Army life
  mean for someone younger, less senior?  How does a young man or woman
  just starting out see it, in those early years of young adulthood when
  the world is just opening up and all of life is a new adventure?
  To get a feel for how it is for a young person to live in today's Army,
  let's get to know one of the service's brightest and most successful
  young officers.  Herbert Raymond McMaster, Jr.-H.R.  to his friends-was
  born on July 24th, 1962, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  A West Point
  graduate in 1984, H.R.  has gone on to a rewarding career in the Army.
  As commander of Eagle Troop of the 2nd Squadron of the 2nd Armored
  Cavalry Regiment during Operation Desert Storm, he led a highly
  successful attack on a brigade of a Republican Guard Division.  This
  attack-in what has come to be called the Battle of 73 Easting (a
  reference to a map grid position in Iraq)-is generally considered to be
  a textbook example of small-unit operational art and command initiative.
  Not despite this impressive accomplishment, but because of it, H.R.  is
  representative of the new generation of soldier that has joined the Army
  in the last twelve to fifteen years.  Smart, fit, attractive, and
  committed to the ideals that made him join the service.  Let's meet him.
  Tom Clancy: Please explain what your childhood was like, and in
  particular, what was it that made you decide to go into
  the military?
  H.  R.  McMaster: My father served as an infantryman during the Korean
  War and joined the reserves as a first sergeant in his
  early twenties.  He was awarded a direct commission from first sergeant
  to captain during the Vietnam War.
  He later went on active duty and secured assignments in the greater
  Philadelphia area.  I have one sister, Letitia, who is two years younger
  than I am.  She is a graduate of
  Villanova University, and now works for a computer
  A CAVALRY OFFICLR'S LIFE - 225
  firm and is pursuing her MBA.  My mom is a recently retired school
  teacher of thirty-seven years or so.  She began teaching fourth grade
  and then focused on kindergarten.  She earned an MED degree and became a
  school administrator.  I consider her to be a brilliant educator.  In
  retrospect, I think that the professional satisfaction she gained from
  having a positive effect on people lives, as well as my father's Army
  experience, made service in the military appealing to me.  I attended
  
  high school at Valley Forge Military Academy, which is about ten miles
  from my home in the Roxborough section of Philadelphia.  It was a great
  experience in terms of learning about leadership at a very young age. In
  both grade school and high school, I participated avidly in team sports,
  football and baseball in particular.  I think that what one learns from
  playing team sports, particularly about how to work with others toward a
  common goal, carries over directly to what is required to serve
  successfully in the military.
  Tom Clancy: Tell us about your college decision.
  H.  R.   MeMaster: During my senior year at Valley Forge, I applied both
  for
  an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point and
  an ROTC scholarship at the University of Notre Dame.  I had a very
  difficult decision to make between these two fine institutions.  I based
  my decision, in part, on the belief that West Point would pre pare me
  best for a military career.  The unique challenges of West Point also
  intrigued me.  So, in July of 1980, 1
  entered as a new cadet.  The transformation from civilian to cadet is
  accomplished quite rapidly.  In fact, by the end
  of the first day, the new cadets put on a parade for the parents, who
  watch from the reviewing stands.  During this review, the entering class
  takes the oath of service to the United States.
  Tom Clancy: So, in other words, by the end of your first day at West
  Point, you were already being recognized as a member of the United
  States Armed Forces.
  ti.  R.  McMaster: Yes.
  Since the early 1800s, Americans have sent their sons-and more recently,
  their daughters-tojoin the "long gray line" of West Point's Corps of
  Cadets.
  226 - ARMOI@ED CAV
  Tom Clancy:
  H.  R.  MeMaster:
  Tom Clancy:
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  Through the post gates overlooking the Hudson River have passed some of
  
  the greatest officers in military history.  Names like Lee and Grant.
  MacArthur and Eisenhower.  Bradley and Patton.  Schwarzkopf and Franks.
  The Academy positively oozes history and tradition, and H.R.'s early
  memories of the post tell us a great deal about such things.
  What did you think of your first summer at West Point?
  West Point is imposing architecturally.  And the campus exudes tradition
  and military professionalism.  A new cadet is filled with excitement and
  pride at becoming part of the tradition-a member of "the long gray
  line."  You learn rather quickly that the key to success in "Beast
  Barracks" [the slang term for the pressure of barracks life during the
  first summer] is teamwork and selflessness.  The pressure that
  upperclassmen put on new cadets drives home the point that all must work
  together to get through this initial, intense period.  This is an
  important lesson for the aspiring officer.  New cadets are assigned
  innumerable tasks to accomplish in an inadequate amount of time.  And
  one quickly learns how to prioritize tasks and accomplish the most
  important ones first.  Because no one cadet can accomplish all of this,
  he or she can expect a certain amount of negative attention. As you can
  imagine, it's important to keep one's sense of humor!
  What were the barracks like, and who were the people you lived with?
  I was first assigned to a three-man barracks room.  There I met Dan
  Miller, and we quickly became great friends. By coincidence, we also
  ended up in the same company at West Point after the shuffling that
  followed plebe [or freshman] year.  And we met again six years after
  graduation in the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment [2nd ACR], where he
  commanded Iron Troop in the 3rd Squadron and I commanded Eagle Troop in
  the 2nd Squadron.  My other roommate had a difficult time adjusting to
  West Point.  Dan and I tried to help him through, but he just couldn't
  cope with the pressure.  One day, as Dan and I were leaving for
  training, he told us that he was quitting.  When we returned, he was
  gone.  He decided that the military was not the right profession for
  him, and he withdrew from the Academy.
  A CAVALRY OFFICER'S I-IFE - 227
  'rom Clancy:
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  Tom Clancy:
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  Tom Clancy:
  
  How do you feel about your roommate's decision?  Do you respect him for
  it?
  I respect his decision without qualification.  He and many other good
  friends departed the Academy at various points during my four years
  there.  In fact, if you asked my own tactical officer, he probably would
  tell you that I also came precariously close to leaving-not of my own
  volition.  Of course, at this relatively young age, everyone is at a
  different level of maturity.  And people decide to accept the
  appointment to West Point for various reasons-the quality education, to
  please their parents, and so on.  If they base the decision on a desire
  to serve the country, and they enjoy working with people, then I think
  that the experience will most likely be compatible with their goals.
  Because one is constantly learning more about the military profession
  during the four years there, the reasons for entering West Point are
  often much different from the motivation for staying.  When asked why he
  came to West Point, a friend of mine replied, "Just to check it out." He
  served with distinction and was a great officer.  How was the West Point
  curriculum overall?
  The broad-based education was very beneficial.  The curriculum includes
  a solid grounding in math, sciences, and engineering, as well as
  English, history, and the social sciences.  It also includes military
  science courses that familiarize cadets with the Army organization,
  historical tradition, administrative procedures, and tactics.  The wide
  range of courses in the core curriculum allows cadets to identify the
  discipline in which they have the greatest aptitude and interest.
  Because my interests and aptitude are not as great in math, science, and
  engineering as in other areas, these courses were a source of
  considerable consternation for me.  My most formidable academic
  challenge came during the second [yearling] year.  We took something
  like twenty-four credit hours, including Saturday classes.  Electrical
  engineering, chemistry, and physics-all at the same time!  I depended
  heavily on my classmates and learned how to study in a disciplined,
  organized, and efficient manner.
  How has the curriculum evolved since you graduated'?
  228 AIZMORED CAV
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  When I went to West Point, cadets "concentrated" in a particular
  discipline.  Mine was international relations, and I took complementary
  electives in history and Spanish.  I was quite interested in Latin
  American studies and had the opportunity to visit Peru as an exchange
  cadet.  The number of credits, however, fell short of that required to
  
  qualify as a "major."  The current curriculum has preserved the
  broad-based curriculum, but also permits cadets to major in a field of
  their choice.
  How was the quality of the instructors and curriculum?
  The instructors held graduate degrees from the nation's top
  universities, and were extremely dedicated and enthusiastic teachers.
  The largest classes had only twelve to fifteen students.  And the
  instructors were willing to meet with cadets anytime during the day to
  assist them individually.  The preponderance of the professors are Army
  officers, although some faculty members are civilian professors or
  officers from the other services [Navy, Air Force, etc.].  Because the
  instructors have an interest in each cadet as a future Army officer,
  they put an extraordinary amount of effort and energy into his or her
  intellectual and professional development.
  What else can you tell us about your experience at West Point?
  First of all, one makes friends for life....  As for enjoyment, I had
  the most fun playing on the Army rugby team.  Our head coach, Major
  J.D.A.  Baker [a British officer], was an outstanding example of what a
  military officer should be.  We [the team] were a very close-knit group
  and the team provided a welcome respite from daily cadet life.  We had a
  great time together and competed very successfully.  And while playing
  rugby with the team in the fall of 1983, 1 met my wife, Katie [Trotter].
  Life at West Point is more than just academics and military discipline.
  On the contrary, it is also filled with comradeship and adventures.
  Following each school year, the cadets are given the opportunity to
  spend time with Army field units, or to study abroad.  And no
  description of life at West Point would be complete without stories of
  athletics.  H.R.'s experiences were no different, as he became a member
  of the Academy rugby team:
  Tom Clancy:
  H.  R.  MeMaster:
  Tom Clancy:
  A CAVALRY OFFI('FR'S LIFE - 229
  Tom Clancy:
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  Will you tell us how that happened?
  In 1983, the Army-Navy game was held out in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena,
  
  California.  The rugby team went out early to play some matches with
  West Coast clubs. I met Katie through a teammate who had become
  acquainted with her best friend.  Katie is a graduate of the University
  of San Diego, and had been teaching high school.  At the time, she was
  rather skeptical about meeting a cadet.  Despite her predisposition, and
  an injury I had sustained in our game against California State
  University, Long Beach, we had an enjoyable time and established an
  immediate rapport.  Afterward, we carried on a long-distance
  relationship and were able to see each other every month or two.  We
  were married in July of 1985-about a year after I graduated from West
  Point.
  During the cadets' four years at West Point, they are exposed to a
  variety of military experiences designed to assist them with making the
  vital decision of what branch of the Army (Armor, Infantry,
  Intelligence, etc.) they will join and specialize in during their
  career.  Almost everyone who follows this path seems to have a story
  about how he wound up where he did, and H.R.  is no exception:
  Tom Clancy:
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  At what point did you decide what branch of the Army you wanted to go
  into?
  Cadets decide on their branch during the senior ["Firstie"] year.  When
  I entered West Point, there was no doubt in my mind that I would pursue
  a commission in the infantry.  The summer between my sophomore
  ["yearling"] and junior ["cow"] year reinforced this desire: I went to
  Fort Carson, Colorado, to the I st Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment
  [usually abbreviated as the " I st of the 8th"].  For a five-week period
  I was assigned as a mechanized infantry platoon leader.  During Cadet
  Troop Leader Training (CTLT), a cadet usually "shadows" a platoon leader
  as an intern.  I was very fortunate that the I st of the 8th was short a
  platoon leader, and the battalion commander gave me full responsibility
  for running the platoon.  It was a great opportunity for me to
  experience the relationship between a new officer and the soldiers of a
  platoon, particularly in establishing a rapport and earning the respect
  of the men.  I also went with the platoon to the newly opened National
  Training Center [NTC] at
  Tom Clancy:
  H.  R.  MeMaster:
  Tom Clancy:
  Fort Irwin, California.  And thanks to the platoon's noncommissioned
  
  officers [NCOS, i.e., sergeants] and the other officers in the company,
  I learned a great deal about small-unit leadership and operations.
  During my senior year, Army Aviation became an independent branch.  I
  became interested in flight school then, and decided to choose Aviation
  as my branch.  I had read about air cavalry operations in Vietnam, and
  wanted to become an aero scout.  After graduation I attended the
  Airborne School at Fort Banning, Georgia, and the Armor Officer Basic
  Course [AOBC] at Fort Knox, Kentucky, on the way to flight school.  At
  AOBC, a flight physical revealed a previously undetected astigmatism in
  my eye that disqualified me from Flight School.  As a result, I was
  immediately transferred to Armor Branch.  To prepare myself better for
  leadership of a ground combat unit, I enrolled in pre-Ranger training
  and competed for an assignment to Ranger School.  Before departing Fort
  Knox, I met with an assignment officer to discuss my request for an
  assignment in Germany.  The officer, a captain, recommended that I go to
  Fort Hood, Texas, because the 2nd Armored Division was the only fully
  modernized division in the U.S.  Army.  The "Hell on Wheels" Division
  [the 2nd Armored's nickname] had recently received the M I Abrams heavy
  tank and the M2/3 Bradley fighting vehicle.  I took the officer's
  advice.
  How long was the AOBC at Fort Knox, and what did you learn?
  I entered in July and finished in November.  AOBC focuses primarily on
  ensuring that new lieutenants are able to employ a tank platoon [a unit
  of four tanks and sixteen men] effectively in various tactical
  situations.  The Armor School ensures that tank officers are technically
  competent on the tank's systems, its weapons, and its communications
  equipment.  Students also become familiar with Army administration,
  supply, and maintenance procedures.  The capstone exercise is a
  week-long "war," during which the new lieutenants, organized into tank
  platoons, battle each other under the scrutiny of the School's
  instructors.
  You mentioned that you had applied to Ranger School.  Please tell us
  what that was like.
  A C'AVAI-RY OFFICEI@"., I.IFF - 231
  H. R.  McMaster: Ranger School is primarily a leadership school.   The
  course puts students under intense physical and mental strain, and
  evaluates how they operate as leaders
  of teams while exhausted and under pressure.  Students also learn
  tactics-specifically how to plan and lead dismounted patrolling
  operations.  And they quickly discover that a well-conditioned human
  body can take a surprising amount of punishment.  They are exposed to
  the elements for extended periods and operate in a
  
  variety of difficult environments-such as mountains, deserts, and
  jungles [swamps].  Ranger candidates receive only two meals a day and
  lose a great deal of bodyweight.
  Ranger School is invaluable.  It reinforces the preem inent importance
  of teamwork-no "individual" students graduate.  Your "buddies" help you
  when you need it, and you return the favor when you can.  And if the
  teams of students don't operate well together, the Ranger instruc tors
  make it harder on everyone.
  Tom Clancy: What did you do after graduation from Ranger School [in
  March 19851?
  H.  R.  MeMaster: I drove from Fort Banning, Georgia, to Fort Hood,
  Texas, and reported for duty to the I st Battalion of the 66th
  Armored Regiment, 2nd Armored Division, in the Headquarters Company. My
  first assignment was
  support platoon leader [supply and transportation].
  After eight months I was transferred to B Company as an
  MI tank platoon leader.
  When it first arrived in the U.S.  Army inventory in 198 1, the MI
  Abrams was a whole new world to the young crews who had to learn to use
  its complex
  systems.  Let's look at H.R.'s perspective on this.
  Tom Clancy:
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  Explain the difference between the M I Abrams tank and the older M6OA3
  Patton.
  The M I was a tremendous leap forward in maneuverability, accuracy, and
  protection.  It fires on the move with no problem, and the suspension
  system provides an exceptionally smooth ride.  The fire-control system
  automatically computes the lead for engaging moving targets.  The
  thermal-imaging system turns night into day.  And the 1,500-horsepower
  engine is powerful and responsive.
  The fire-on-the-move capability is a vast improvement over the M60.
  Tom Clancy: Could you please try and tell us about the tank platoon that
  
  you commanded (in the I st Battalion of the 66th Armored Regiment, 2nd
  Armored Division) during this time?
  H.  R.  McMaster: A U.S.  tank platoon consists of four tanks, and is
  manned by one officer [a second lieutenant] and fifteen non-commissioned
  officers and soldiers.  Sergeants com mand the tanks, except for the
  platoon leader's tank.  A
  platoon is capable of operating in two sections of two
  tanks each, one commanded by the lieutenant and the other by the
  platoon sergeant, usually a sergeant first class.  The platoon leader
  focuses primarily on the tacti cal employment of the unit; and the
  platoon sergeant ensures that the platoon is well supplied and prepared
  for operations.  These responsibilities, however, are not clearly
  demarcated.  A good relationship between the
  platoon leader and the platoon sergeant, born of mutual respect and
  shared goals, is the key to building a cohe sive, effective team.
  Generally thirty-five to forty years of age, the platoon sergeant is
  considered a technical expert on his vehicles, but he also must have the
  ability to train, care for, and motivate soldiers.  If you have a sharp
  platoon sergeant, you can just about guarantee an
  excellent platoon.
  Tom Clancy: Explain the crew positions inside the MI Abrams tank itself.
  For example, because it's the easiest job, do you always give the
  loader's job to the least experienced person?
  H.  R.   McMaster: No, the loader is not necessarily the easiest job.
  Each posi tion on the tank is crucial.  Loader is probably the best
  position from which to learn about how to maintain and
  operate the tank.  The normal career progression is from loader, to
  driver, to gunner, and then to tank commander.
  So a loader has the opportunity to really be an apprentice.
  For example, he learns the automotive side of a tank from the driver.
  When the driver works on the hull or automo tive and suspension part of
  the tank, the loader works
  with him.  From the loader's position inside the turret, he gains
  expertise from the gunner and tank commander
  A CAVALRY OFFICEI@".; LIFE a 233
  
  while he is doing his own job.  He is really in the best position to
  gain familiarity with all aspects of the tank.  The driver focuses
  primarily on ensuring that the tank is in proper running condition.  The
  gunner maintains the 120mm main gun, 7.62mm coaxial machine gun, and the
  tank's fire-control system. The tank commander is responsible for the
  .50-caliber machine gun and supervises the efforts of his fellow crew
  members.  I've oversimplified this description.  None of the duties are
  set in stone, and the whole crew works together to get the job done.
  Tom Clancy: Tell us about the thermal-imaging sights on an M IA I
  tank like the one you used in Desert Storm.
  H.  R.   McMaster: Just one thermal sight; the gunner controls it.  He
  can switch between thermal [heat signature] and daylight [visi ble
  light] sights.  But the tank commander has what is called a Gunner's
  Primary Site Extension [GPSE], through which
  he sees exactly what the gunner sees.  And the tank com mander can
  direct the gun and the sight from his position
  by using an override handle.  The driver has a series of periscopes or
  vision blocks that he looks through.  He can mount a night-vision device
  that amplifies ambient light onto a green field of view, so that he can
  also see at night.
  By the end of 1987, H.R.  had come a long way in the Army, and was
  beginning to think about how he might gain command of a small unit in
  Europe.   After a year as a tank company executive officer, he was
  assigned as the battalion scout platoon leader.  This was a significant
  move, for it headed him onto a path to his goal, command of a cavalry
  troop in Germany.
  Tom Clancy:
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  What happened to you going into the spring and summer of 1987?
  I was still a tank company executive officer, learning more about the M
  I tank and deepening my experience in small-unit operations.  About this
  time, though, I had decided that I really wanted to be a scout platoon
  leader.  I heard that the position was coming open, and I asked my
  battalion commander to consider me for the job.  I couldn't have asked
  for a more fulfilling and rewarding experience.  A scout platoon leader
  is responsible for six M3 Bradley scout vehicles.  Five soldiers are
  assigned to each Bradley; the driver, the gunner, the Bradley commander
  [who is also a squad leader], and in the back, two
  
  Tom Clancy:
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  Tom Clancy:
  H.  R.  MeMaster:
  Tom Clancy:
  scouts/observers.  The general mission of the scout platoon is to
  perform reconnaissance and security for the battalion.  The platoon
  focuses on finding or detecting the enemy early, to give the battalion
  commander time and information to help gain the most advantageous
  position over the enemy.
  How many soldiers and vehicles are in a scout platoon?
  Thirty troopers all together.  The leadership consists of a platoon
  leader [a first lieutenant] and a platoon sergeant.  The platoon is
  organized into three sections.  The head- quarters section typically has
  the Bradley platoon leader and platoon sergeant in it.  The other two
  sections are led by staff sergeants, who each control a pair of M3s. The
  platoon can also operate as two sections of three Bradleys each, with
  the platoon leader and sergeant splitting up and each controlling a
  section.  It's a very flexible organization.  In my own platoon, and
  later in Eagle Troop, we operated with the platoon leader and platoon
  sergeant split up, regardless of what formation we were using, to spread
  the platoon leadership out across the area of operation.
  Since the M3 Bradley Cavalry Fighting Vehicle is quite different from a
  tank, please describe it and its armament.
  The M3 Cavalry Fighting Vehicle (CFV) is powered by a turbocharged
  diesel engine.  The main armament on the vehicle is a 25mm automatic
  cannon called a "chain gun" or "bushmaster" [after the snake]. It fires
  two types of ammunition.  One type of round is an armor-piercing bullet.
  The other is a high-explosive incendiary tracer round that explodes on
  contact with the target.  The Bradley is also equipped with a 7.62mm
  coaxial machine gun, meaning the gun is mounted and moves together with
  the 25mm chain gun. A two-round TOW missile launcher gives the Bradley
  an anti-tank capability.  To fire TOW missiles, the Bradley must halt on
  fairly level ground.  The gunner acquires targets through either a
  daylight sight or a thermal-imaging sight similar to the M IA I tank's.
  In addition to the Bradley's mounted weapons, what other weapons would
  you normally carry?
  A CAVALRY OFFICER'-, LIFE - 235
  
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  Tom Clancy:
  Everyone carries his personal M 16A2 assault rifle, and the dismounted
  scouts crew an M60 machine gun.  The Bradley also carries AT4s [the U.S.
  Army replacement for the venerable M72 LAWS rocket], which are light,
  shoulder-fired, anti-tank weapons.  The AT4 is quite accurate, and gives
  dismounted scouts a close-in antiarmor capability.
  When you moved over to the scouts, did you feel that you had finally
  found out where you were supposed to be going in the Army?
  I really did.  I enjoyed it thoroughly, and I couldn't have asked for a
  better team of soldiers to work with. Serving with that scout platoon
  was a great experience, and the training particularly at the National
  Training Center gave me a solid grounding in small unit reconnaissance
  and security operations.
  As part of his growing experience, H.R.  was given, in 1987, the
  opportunity to take his scout platoon to Exercise REFORGER.  This gave
  him an appreciation of relatively independent operations, and increased
  his enthusiasm for gaining a troop-level command in Europe.
  Tom Clancy:
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  Tom Clancy:
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  Going into late 1987, what was happening to you at that time?
  In late 1987, 1 got the opportunity to go to Europe during Operation
  REFORGER with the 2nd Squadron, I st Cavalry Regiment, which was the
  division cavalry for the 2nd Armored Division.  We went as a fourth
  scout platoon in one of the ground troops.  At that time, division
  cavalry squadrons [the ones assigned directly to armored and mechanized
  divisions] were normally organized with only three scout platoons.
  Colonel Tom Dials, who later became chief of cavalry tactics at Fort
  Knox, was the squadron commander.  He was a great leader and tactician
  and I learned a great deal from him.  His squadron was top-notch, and it
  was an honor to serve with them.
  What exactly is Operation REFORGER?
  
  It stands for "Return of Forces to Germany."  During the Cold War, there
  were forces designated to reinforce units
  Tom Clancy:
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  already stationed in Germany.  REFORGER provided an opportunity to
  rehearse deployment and large-scale operations.  During REFORGER, we
  conducted operations across wide frontages and in great depth-operations
  that one doesn't get the opportunity to practice in the United States.
  We also got to see a lot of North Germany.
  During REFORGER, units trained in a variety of places with the forces of
  many nations.  And the missions that they trained for were not all
  defensive.  The new U.S.  Army maneuver doctrine-first spelled out in
  the 1982 edition of the Army field manual FM 100-5-emphasized that even
  missions that are primarily defensive involve offensive operations. This
  was a shift in conceptualnation for Army units. And units of all sizes
  quickly changed their focus to offensive operations.  REFORGER-87
  allowed H.R.  and his scout platoon to participate in corps-sized
  offensive maneuvers:
  What kinds of things did you do during REFORGER?
  Well, we received one mission from Colonel Dials, to conduct
  reconnaissance deep behind enemy lines in order to find a landing zone
  [LZI for a corps air-assault [helicopter] operation.  We found the area
  heavily defended and warned the infantry brigade that was scheduled to
  be inserted.  Other operations included screening forward of a large
  armored formation, to destroy enemy security forces and locate the
  enemy's main defensive positions.
  What did you learn from the operation of larger units during REFORGER?
  One of the most important lessons is that information one could easily
  overlook might be extremely valuable to the main body of the attack
  formation.  It is vital for large armored units, such as brigades and
  divisions, to have detailed information about the zone through which
  they are moving, so they can keep the forward momentum during an
  offensive operation.
  During REFORGER, how did you get this information to other units in the
  division?
  We reported the information to Squadron Headquarters, but also used what
  we call "connecting files"-i.e., when the unit behind a cavalry element
  [such as a tank or mech
  
  Tom Clancy:
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  Tom Clancy:
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  A CAVAI-I@Y OFFICEI@'S LIFE - 237
  Tom Clancy:
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  Tom Clancy:
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  anized infantry battalion] pushes forward its own reconnaissance element
  [usually a scout platoon] to connect with reconnaissance units forward
  of them.  It is the fastest and most efficient way to pass on the
  information that you have gathered.  Cavalry units can also provide
  guides to meet following units on the ground, to give them more detailed
  information.  Communication between the attacking force and the cavalry
  forward of them is vital, and the units monitor each others' radio
  frequencies.
  What type of communications equipment did you have at your disposal?
  Each scout track [M3 Bradley] had two FM radios.  Scout squad leaders
  had responsibility for monitoring an adjacent unit or a unit to the
  rear. The radios are outfitted with speech security equipment that uses
  an encryption code to scramble transmissions in such a way that only
  other radios that have that particular code can receive them.  This
  prevents the enemy from eavesdropping.  Our platoon also had three
  additional radios mounted in the back of the Bradley capable of sending
  text messages [no use of one's voice is required] by typing the message
  in on a keypad.  It takes very little time to transmit [called a "burst"
  transmission], so the enemy cannot jam or direction-find the
  transmission. Each Bradley also had man-pack portable radios to
  communicate with dismounted scouts.
  With REFORGER as your first taste of Europe, what were your expectations
  if you had been forced to fight in a major war?
  As a junior officer, you focus on ensuring that your unit is prepared
  for combat.  I was very confident that we were ready.  Preparing for
  battle was the focus of the entire Army.  I knew that I was part of an
  organization committed to excellence.  The Soviets had a large and
  powerful military, but we knew that we had a qualitative edge in people,
  
  organization, equipment, and training.
  By the end of 1987, it was time for H.R.  to begin moving up to the
  "Middle management" of the U.S.  Army.  To this end, he attended the
  Advanced Armor School at Fort Knox, Kentucky, and prepared to move to
  his first European assignment with the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment in
  Germany:
  After REFORGER, what did you do next?
  In early 1988, 1 attended the Armor Officer Advanced Course at Fort
  Knox, Kentucky.  It was the first time in quite a while that I knew that
  I was going to have weekends off and have more time to spend with my
  family [H.R.'s and Katie's first daughter, Katharine, had been born in
  September of 1986]!  As for the course itself, it was a seminar-type
  environment in which the students focused on planning large scale
  [regimental/brigadesized] operations and worked their way down to
  company-level operations.  In the curriculum, we took a look at possible
  scenarios in Korea and some portions of North Africa, because of the
  varied terrain and political volatility of the regions.  In the Armor
  course, one learns a lot from his colleagues, by comparing experiences
  and ideas.
  What did you do after you completed the Advanced Armor course?
  I had been spoiled by my experience as a scout platoon leader, and I was
  anxious to stay in the cavalry community [there were three regiments at
  the time, the 2nd, 3rd, and I I th 1.  Back in 19 8 7, Colonel Dials
  recommended that I seek an assignment to the 2nd Armored Cavalry
  Regiment.  And that is what I got; my assignment was to the regimental
  staff of the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment [2nd ACR], which was based in
  Bavaria [in southern Germany].  The Regimental Headquarters was in
  Nuremberg, with the I st Squadron in Bindlach, which is about a
  forty-five-minute drive [northeast, toward the border] from the
  Headquarters.  The 2nd Squadron was based in Bamberg, and the 3rd
  Squadron in Amberg, while the 4th Squadron [the air cavalry squadron]
  was closer to Nuremberg, in Feucht.
  What, at that time, was the mission of the 2nd ACR?
  The 2nd ACR was the cavalry regiment of the VII Corps, which was
  prepared to assist in the defense of Central Europe.  Each corps has a
  cavalry regiment, which acts as the "eyes and ears" of the corps
  commander.  The 2nd ACR was prepared to execute what is called an
  "economy of force" mission.  The regiment prepared to defend a wide
  sector, so the corps commander could concentrate the
  A CAVALRY OFFICEI@'@ LII;E - 239
  
  preponderance of his force where he expected the enemy's main effort.
  The regiment was reinforced with an infantry battalion task force [with
  M2 Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles] and a tank battalion task force.
  The regiment was a busy outfit; and, while preparing for combat, also
  patrolled a portion of the West German/East German and West
  German/Czechoslovakian border.  With the end of the Cold War in the late
  1980s, the 2nd ACR de-emphasized border surveillance and control, and
  focused more exclusively on training hard to be ready for combat.  We
  could still maneuver extensively in the German country- side, and
  accomplished some invaluable training.
  In early 1990, H.R.  finally had the opportunity to command his own
  maneuver unit, Eagle Troop of the 2nd ACR.  He and Katie also had the
  excitement of the birth of their second daughter, Colleen, in February
  1990.  Nine months after he took over Eagle Troop, his unit was alerted
  for what would become a combat mission, Operation Desert Shield.  Even
  before the alert orders came down, he had a feeling of impending action,
  and began to "work up" the personnel of Eagle Troop to get them ready
  for combat.  1990 arrives, and what are you doing?
  I remained on the 2nd ACR staff until January, 1990, as the chief
  REFORGER planner for the regiment.  In the plans office, which included
  myself, another captain, a staff sergeant, and two specialists, I
  drafted the REFORGER plans [the exercise is run yearly] and coordinated
  with the VII Corps staff.  I learned a great deal from our Regimental
  Commander, Colonel L.D.  Holder, a military historian and coauthor of FM
  100-5.  After REFORGER, I left that job and began the process of taking
  command of Eagle Troop in the 2nd Squadron at Bamberg.  Also my second
  daughter, Colleen, was born in February 1990; and one month later we
  moved to Bamberg.
  How was the lifestyle for you and your family in Bamberg?
  We enjoyed living in a small German community and made some close
  friends.   Although I was gone much of the time, my family and I got to
  see a lot of Europe.  My wife, Katie, taught BSEP, which is an adult
  education program for soldiers.
  What were you and Eagle Troop doing when Iraq invaded Kuwait in August
  of I 990?
  We were in the field for gunnery and maneuver training.  I was pressing
  the troops pretty hard to fine-tune our ability to move and shoot as a
  team.  We had completed a very successful exercise at the Combat Arms
  Maneuver Training Center [the European equivalent of NTC] in May, but
  had some new personnel in key positions.  As we came back from the
  gunnery exercise and started getting ready for a tactical operation, the
  news came in that Iraq had just invaded Kuwait.  I spoke to the troop
  about the possible consequences of this event and told them to maximize
  
  the training opportunity because the next order they received might be
  in the desert of Saudi Arabia.  As it happened, the first troops to go
  into Saudi Arabia [the 82nd Airborne and 101 st Air Assault Divisions]
  came from the U.S.-based Rapid Deployment Force [RDF] instead of the
  European-based VII Corps.
  What was the mission of the 2nd ACR going to be during this deployment?
  2nd ACR was deployed as part of the forces [VII Corps] designed to give
  General Schwarzkopf [the Central Command commander] the offensive punch
  to eject the Iraqis out of Kuwait.  Initially the regiment was to
  provide security for the rest of VII Corps, which was moving down from
  Germany.  In addition to the 2nd ACR, VII Corps eventually included the
  Ist and 3rd Armored F)ivisions, the Ist Infantry Division (Mechanized),
  and the British I st Armoured Division.
  Prior to the alert order in November of 1990, had there been any
  contingency planning for the 2nd ACR to deploy to Saudi Arabia?
  There had been quite a bit of rumor and speculation.  We discussed the
  likelihood of deployment and the general nature of offensive operations
  in the Iraqi desert, but did no deliberate planning at the squadron
  level until we were notified.
  Could you describe what happened when the alert order came?
  A CAVALRY OFFICER'S LIFE n 241
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  Tom Clancy:
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  Tom Clancy:
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  As we move into the Persian Gulf with Captain McMaster, it is useful to
  get to know something about the people and equipment that he took to
  war.  In the story that follows you can see in microcosm what all of the
  troops of Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm went through as they
  counted down the time to G-Day (February 24th), the start of the ground
  war.
  Our unit [2nd Squadron, of which Eagle Troop was a Tom Clancy: part] was
  the first unit of the 2nd ACR to go [to Saudi Arabia].  Though we had
  about twenty-four-hours' notice before we had to get all the equipment
  packed up and H.  R.  McMaster: ready for shipment [to the embarkation
  ports], we were prepared, because our mission in Germany was to deploy
  
  Tom Clancy: locally with minimal notice.  The vehicles were pretty much
  in top shape, and went out on a train for transship- H.  R. McMaster:
  ment to the port of Bremerhaven.
  Once your vehicles were gone, did you concentrate your energies on
  helping the other squadrons in 2nd ACR prepare their equipment?
  Not really.  We actually concentrated our efforts on getting our own
  troops ready for the move.  We also focused Tom Clancy: on training in a
  number of areas, from basic survival techniques and chemical defense to
  desert navigation and vehicle maintenance.  In addition, we attended and
  gave H.  R.  McMaster: briefings on the Iraqi Army and enemy situation
  in the Kuwaiti Theater of Operations.  And we prepared a manual prior to
  deployment called "FM 100-Eagle" [a reference to the U.S.  Army's FM
  100-5 field manual].  It went to all Eagle Troop leaders, an ' d focused
  on information such as desert survival, first aid, prevention of heat
  injuries, driving techniques, Iraqi Army tactics, and so on.  I had the
  opportunity to talk to all of the troop's soldiers in small groups about
  the nature of armored combat in the desert, drawing heavily on the World
  War 11 experience in North Africa and the Arab-Israeli Wars.  We also
  talked about how we intended to modify our tacticsdrills and
  formations-for use in the desert.
  What kind of special threats were you expecting from the Iraqis if they
  had attacked you in Saudi Arabia?
  Nerve gas.  We knew that this is what they had the most of.  Though we
  thought the likelihood of being hit with it was small, we were well
  prepared to defend against it.
  Were you able to take all of your personnel from Eagle Troop with you?
  Yes, no one was left behind.
  Can you tell us about your first sergeant in Eagle Troop?
  I had an exceptionally talented and effective first sergeant in William
  Virrill.  First Sergeant Virrill set high standards for himself and the
  unit, and was able to establish a close yet professional rapport with
  the young soldiers.  The first sergeant and I were in general agreement
  about the unit's goals and priorities and had a close working
  relationship.  We were, in effect, partners.
  Could you describe the different platoons in Eagle Troop, what they were
  equipped with, and their leadership?
  We had two scout platoons, with six M3A2 Bradley fighting vehicles each,
  and two tank platoons, each equipped with four M IA I Abrams "heavy"
  tanks with the new [depleted-uranium] armor.  The troop executive
  
  officer was Lieutenant John Gifford [West Point, 1987], and he operated
  out of the troop command post [an M5771.  The Ist Scout Platoon [six
  M3A2s] was commanded by Lieutenant Mike Petschek, a Georgetown
  University graduate.  The I st Scout Platoon sergeant was Staff Sergeant
  Robert Patterson.  The 2nd Tank Platoon [four M ]Alsj was commanded by
  Lieutenant Mike Hamilton, from Norwich University; and his platoon
  sergeant was Sergeant First Class Eddie Wallace.  The 3rd Scout Platoon
  [six M3A2s] leader was Lieutenant Tim Gauthier, who left the 2nd Platoon
  to become 3rd Platoon leader.  He was a graduate of Arizona State
  University.  His platoon sergeant was Staff Sergeant David Caudill.  The
  4th Tank Platoon [four M I A I s] was lead by Lieutenant Jeff DeStefano,
  a West Point graduate.  His platoon sergeant was Staff Sergeant Henry
  Foy.  I had a great deal of respect for the leadership of the troop.
  The officers and NCOs were exceptionally talented and dedicated leaders
  who genuinely cared for the soldiers in their charge.  We seemed to
  complement each other in temperament and style.  I consider them to be
  among my closest friends.
  A CAVALRY OFFICER'S LIFE - 243
  Tom Clancy:
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  Captain H.  R.  Mcmaster (center) with his Eagle Troop platoon leaders.
  (Left to right) Ist Lt.  Jeffery DeStefano, Ist Lt.  Timmothy Gauthier,
  2nd Lt.  Michael Hamilton, and Ist Lt.  Michael Petschek.  if R it@
  IF,,IIR
  How was the Eagle Troop's Headquarters Platoon organized and equipped?
  The Headquarters Platoon included the mortar section [two M 106
  4.2-inch-mortar carriers] and the troop's maintenance, communications,
  and supply functions.  Personnel in the Headquarters Platoon included
  about twelve mechanics, eleven mortarmen, and approximate- ly twenty
  other communication specialists, supply personnel, medics, and support
  soldiers.  The vehicles in the maintenance section included an M88
  recovery vehicle, an M 11 3 armored personnel carrier, and a pair of
  M35A2 2-1/2-ton trucks.  One of these was configured as a tool truck,
  and the other stored the repair parts typically carried with a cavalry
  troop.  In addition to the eight tanks in the platoons, I had an M IA I
  tank [call sign Eagle-66, nicknamed "Mad Max"].  The first sergeant had
  another M 1 13 assigned to him.  The troop commander and first sergeant
  also had HMMWVS, which we converted into ambulances.  The troop command
  post had an M577 mobile command post [based on an M 1 13 chassis] and a
  5-ton truck for carrying supplies.  We had an additional HMM@ assigned
  to the troop executive officer.  So, when ixe deployed, we had the
  following equipment in the troop: nine [ MI AI Abrams] tanks, thirteen
  Bradleys, two mortar tracks [M 1 13 APCs with 106mm mortars], one M88
  
  recovery vehicle, two organic M113 APCs configured as ambulances, an
  M577 mobile command post, four HMMWVS, a 5-ton truck, and two 2-1/2-ton
  trucks.  Later, we received a FIST-V fire-support vehicle [an M 113 APC
  configured to call for and adjust artillery fire], with an excellent
  fire-support team led by Lieutenant Daniel Davis.  Our radio equipment
  was pretty standard.  We did have one of the new NAVSTAR Positioning
  System [GPS] units that we used in the lead scout platoon on Mike
  Petschek's track.
  Were there any last-minute changes before departing for Saudi Arabia?
  Not really.  When we arrived, the timing was perfect.  Our vehicles and
  equipment got there the day after we did.
  What was it like saying good-bye to your family?
  Of course I would miss Katie and the girls tremendously.  But we did not
  have a particularly dramatic emotional moment. Both Katie and I believe
  that it is best to keep a positive outlook.  That meant that I did not
  want my children-my oldest daughter, Katharine, was only four and a half
  years old-to know we were going into combat.  So Katie and I told them I
  was going to the field as usual.  And we didn't take them to the
  going-away ceremonies.  We thought that the sight of other families
  saying goodbye-with the waving of flags, and crying-might disturb our
  young daughters.
  What was it like to see others departing from their families?
  I think it was more difficult for the families than for the soldiers.
  The troops knew there was a mission to accomplish and were leaving as
  members of a close-knit team.  The wives and children had to cope with
  the uncertainty surrounding the deployment.  Yet the wives supported one
  another, and I think that the soldiers' confidence was reassuring to
  them.  So then you went directly to Saudi Arabia?
  Right.  We took commercial flights out of snow-covered Nuremberg, flew
  into Dhahran, and bused in to the port facility at Al Jubail.
  When he reached Saudi Arabia in early December 1990, H.R.'s first job
  was to get Eagle Troop's equipment off the ships at Al Jubail, and get
  them to
  Tom Clancy:
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  Tom Clancy:
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  
  Tom Clancy:
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  Tom Clancy:
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  A CAVALRY OFFICER'S LIFF - 245
  their first assembly area along the Saudi/Iraq border.  After that, his
  early days were spent keeping his troops healthy, fit, and fed, keeping
  the troop's equipment ready for action, and getting his personnel
  trained and positioned for the coming assault into Iraq.
  Tom Clancy: How was the weather when you got there?
  H.  R.  McMaster: When we landed on December 4, 1990, it was very hot,
  in the mid-90s [Fahrenheit].  Although it wasn't nearly as hot as it had
  been in the late summer, it was a drastic
  change from cold, snowy Germany.
  Tom Clancy: At the port of Al Jubail, what was necessary on your part to
  get your vehicles off-loaded and ready to move?
  H.  R.  McMaster: We drove them off the ships, marshaled them in the
  port area, and then road-marched to the staging area.  After
  that, we spent several days getting our equipment togeth er and
  painting the combat vehicles sand tan.  We then loaded the vehicles onto
  commercial heavy equipment transports [HETs-"low-boy" tractor-trailer
  rigs] and
  moved to our tactical staging area, where we would remain until after
  the air campaign began.
  Tom Clancy: Where was your first setup area and what other units were
  around you?
  H.  R.  McMaster: East of the Wadi ai-Batin and north of the Tapline
  Road.
  Generally, it was northeast of the huge military complex at King Kalid
  Military City [called KKMC for short].  At
  first, no other units were near us-we were west of the
  Marines and the 3rd ACR.  Our first assembly area was in an absolutely
  flat, featureless, and uninhabited portion of
  
  the desert.
  Tom Clancy: When did the entire regiment get into Saudi Arabia, and
  what did you do at that time?
  H.  R.  McMaster: The rest of the regiment had arrived by mid-December.
  The 2nd Squadron S-3 [operations officer], Major [now Lieutenant
  Colonel] Douglas MacGregor, developed a training plan during which we
  focused sequentially on individual, crew, platoon, and troop-level
  tasks.  We then
  maneuvered the entire squadron of three troops, a tank company, a
  headquarters company, and a howitzer battery as a single unit.  The
  squadron exercises were challenging and emphasized night operations.  We
  also rehearsed our march formations and battle drills, to prepare for
  leading the Vil Corps into Iraq.  Because 2nd Squadron was the first
  complete unit of the 2nd ACR to get into Saudi Arabia, we were able to
  gain a lot of desertmaneuver experience in a short time.
  One of the most important late additions to the equipment of Eagle
  Troop, and all of the Coalition forces in the Persian Gulf, was a number
  of the new NAVSTAR GPS terminals, which greatly aided in desert
  navigation.  Though the U.S.  Army had about a thousand of these units
  prior to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, this number grew to several
  thousand as an emergency procurement of the car-stereo-sized units were
  bought and sent to field units.  In addition, thousands of commercial
  GPS units were bought by individuals for use in everything from
  tractor-trailer trucks to helicopters:
  Tom Clancy: When did you get the additional GPS terminals that you used
  during the ground war, and what were they like?
  H.  R.  MeMaster: In late December 1990, the regiment received a number
  of additional Trimble TRIMPACK GPS terminals, which could be powered
  off a battery or the power supply of a vehicle.  They looked like
  portable car stereo units, and we mounted them on the top of the tank
  with velcro and
  foam rubber.  They can be programmed to give position
  readouts using the military grid reference system [divid- ed into
  one-kilometer/.61-mile squares], and are accurate to within just a few
  meters of ground truth.  You can also program them with a series of
  "waypoints," to guide you
  as you move across the desert.  We had four of these units in the
  
  troop, with one assigned to each of the command
  M3s of the I st and 3rd Scout Platoons, one with my tank, and the other
  with Dan Davis'fire-support vehicle [FIST V].  GPS gave us tremendous
  advantages, and we couldn't
  have operated as well as we did without them.
  Unfortunately there were only six satellites in the constel lation at
  the time [a total of twenty-four are eventually
  planned], so we didn't have around-the-clock satellite coverage.  We
  called the periods in which we couldn't
  receive signals [and thus lost the use of the GPS system] GPS "sad
  times."  Whenever this occurred, we had to revert back to other systems,
  such as LORAN or dead reckoning.  Because of the lack of terrain
  features in the desert, dead reckoning entailed dismounting crew mem
  A CAVALRY OFFICER"; LIFE n 247
  bers with a compass to line the vehicle up on a magnetic azimuth.  Once
  the vehicle was in line, the gunner put the weapons system into
  stabilized mode, and the driver kept in line with the gun tube.  Drivers
  measured distance using the vehicle odometer.
  Tom Clancy: How long were the GPS sad times?
  H.  R.  McMaster: About a maximum of 40 minutes.  It happened to us once
  when we were repositioning between two other units in a
  sandstorm.  Needless to say, it was a bad time for this to happen.  But
  I st Platoon scouts did a great job getting us to where we needed to go.
  Along the way, H.R.  had to deal with all of the things that U.S.
  military commanders have dealt with since George Washington at Valley
  Forge.  Keeping people fed, Christmas away from home, keeping morale up.
  There was even an occasional encounter with friendly Bedouin tribesmen.
  What was an average day like for Eagle Troop?
  First we established circular perimeters for 360' security.  We
  conducted physical training [PTI at crew-level every morning-push-ups,
  sit-ups, and sprints.  It's vitally important that soldiers remain fit,
  limber, and energetic.  It reinforced cohesiveness at crew level.
  Breakfast was normally a T-ration type.  For those who do not know, an
  A-ration is fresh food, procured locally, and supplemented with
  Brations, which are in cans.  A T-ration is a cafeteria-style meal,
  packaged in rectangular trays and heated in boiling water.  We also ate
  commercially supplied Top Shelf and Beefaroni-type meals [from emergency
  
  Army procurements]. Because of their limited supply, we were saving the
  Meals Ready to Eat [MRE] field rations for the ground war.  As far as
  personal hygiene, we had crudely fashioned but functional latrines and
  gravity-fed showers. At the end of the day, latrine refuse would be
  mixed with diesel fuel and burned.  When we moved, these facilities did
  not go with us.  And when we moved to the VII Corps staging area, we
  left our tents behind and lived on our armored vehicles.  The mail kept
  up with us, though; and we received lots of much-appreciated support
  from people at home. Schools and businesses were particularly good about
  sending "any soldier" packages and letters.  The mail really boosted
  morale.
  The crew of Eagle-66 (left to right) Captain
  H.  R.  McMaster (commander), staff
  Sergeant Craig Koch (gunner), Specialist
  Christopher Hedenskog (driver), Private
  I st Class Jeffrey Taylor (loader), 11, R, @ll(,IfIS7f@R How was morale
  in general?
  Our spirits were very high the entire time.  We kept busy training and
  were extremely confident.  The troop really bonded as a unit and took on
  an almost familial character.
  What was Christmas 1990 like for your men?
  Eagle Troop was given the mission to guard Logistics Base Alpha.  When
  we came into the base in battle formation, many of the soldiers there
  had never even seen a tank before and greeted us enthusiastically.
  On Christmas Day, the platoons rotated off duty for the Christmas meal,
  so each had a special dinner with turkey and all the trimmings.  The
  troop wives back in Germany had individually wrapped two presents per
  soldier, including personal-hygiene items, stationery, and candy.  We
  even had a little Christmas tree that lit up.  The first sergeant and I
  put the tree on the front of the HMMYN and drove the troop perimeter to
  deliver the presents.  We also spent some time with each of the
  soldiers.  And our chaplain held several separate services so every
  soldier could attend.
  How did you react to-or interact with-the local Bedouin people?
  We were briefed on their local customs and traditions and respected
  them.  But our contacts with the indigenous population were very limited
  until later, when we helped secure southern Iraq after the cease-fire.
  
  A CAVALI@Y OFFICER'S LIFE - 249
  Tom Clancy: Did you listen to the radio a lot?
  H.  R.  McMaster: Yes, we listened to the Baghdad station, which was the
  soldiers' favorite-with "Baghdad Betty."  The Iraqi propa ganda from
  there was unsophisticated, ridiculous, and pretty funny.  They did,
  however, play decent music.  On the downside, it seemed that every time
  we moved, we
  would be just outside the reach of Armed Forces Radio.
  BBC World Service radio was a good source of timely news.  We didn't
  have CNN, though!
  On January 16th, 1991, Operation Desert Storm kicked off with a massive
  aerial bombardment of Iraqi targets and forces.  As they watched the
  explosive storm to their north, and suffered an early scare, they
  continued to prepare for the coming assault upon the Iraqi forces in
  Iraq and Kuwait.
  Tom Clancy: When the air war started, what signs of war did you see?
  H.  R.  McMaster: There were a lot of aircraft overhead; and through our
  night-vision goggles, we could see the northern horizon glowing.  To
  celebrate the event, I awakened the cooks early that morning and asked
  them to serve pancakes and
  eggs cooked to order for breakfast.  After that, I talked to the troop
  and sketched out the concept of the air cam paign and reinforced some of
  the main aspects of the plan for the ground offensive.  On the same day,
  we react ed to a false report of an Iraqi attack across the border.  We
  were into our vehicles in seconds, cranked up and headed north to our
  covering-force area.  Later, we were actually thankful that the false
  alarm happened, because
  it brought home to all the troops that this was no longer a
  deployment exercise, but an actual war.
  Shortly after the air war started, 2nd ACR, along with the rest of the
  VII Corps and XVIII Airborne Corps, began a long movement several
  hundred miles to the west to support the "Hail Mary play" that was to be
  the centerpiece of General Norman Schwarzkopf's plan for the ground war
  phase (called Desert Saber) of Operation Desert Storm. Done in almost
  complete secrecy from the Iraqis (who had their intelligence collection
  limited to pirating signals off the CNN satellite feeds by this time),
  it was designed to allow the Coalition forces to cut off any possible
  escape routes from Kuwait into Iraq, and in particular, to allow VII
  
  Corps, with its heavy armored divisions, to destroy the five Republican
  Guard divisions that were standing by on the old Iraqi/Kuwaiti border to
  attack the Arab and Marine Corps units that were to liberate Kuwait
  itself.  These divisions, oversized and equipped with the best equipment
  in the
  Iraqi Army, were felt to be the primary threat to the forces attempting
  to liberate Kuwait.  Assigned to VII Corps as their organic
  reconnaissance element, 2nd ACR was going to lead the way to the
  Republican Guard; then the rest of the corps was going to destroy it.
  Tom Clancy: When did the move west to support the "Hail Mary" start?
  H.  R.  MeMaster: A few days after the air war started in late January
  1991.
  After about two weeks, we moved north to secure the area just south of
  the Iraqi-Saudi Arabian border.  And then during the week prior to the
  start of the ground war, we heard many rumors of late-breaking peaceful
  resolu tions.  It was important at this stage, however, that the sol
  diers remain focused on combat.  I deliberately assured them that we
  would go into battle.  Although we would have welcomed peace, it would,
  in some ways, have been a disappointment not to attack.  We were ready,
  confi dent, and anxious to do our job.
  Tom Clancy: What was the layout of VII Corps when you lined up to
  jump off on G-Day (February 24th, 1991)?
  H.  R.  McMaster: The regiment moved forward of the corps, conducting
  what we call an offensive covering-force operation.  The
  I st and 3rd Armored Divisions were just behind us to our left [west]
  and right [east] respectively.  In addition, the
  British Ist Armoured Division and the U.S.  Ist Infantry Division
  (Mechanized) were getting ready to make their own push into Iraq and
  Kuwait to the east of us.  The corps was to destroy the Republican
  Guards divisions that were occupying or defending Kuwait.  The regiment
  was to
  move in advance of the corps, destroy enemy recon and security forces,
  locate the Republican Guard main defens es, and facilitate the passage
  of the heavy divisions
  through us to complete the destruction of the enemy.  We expected to
  first encounter the Republican Guard just
  north and east of what we called Phase Line Smash.
  
  The 2nd ACR attacked initially with two squadrons forward [2nd and
  3rd], and one [ Ist Squadron] in reserve.  The air cavalry [4th
  Squadron] screened forward of the ground squadrons.  The regiment had
  been rein forced with a number of supporting units to increase its
  combat power.  These included a battalion of AH-64A Apache and OH-58D
  Kiowa helicopters from the Ist
  Armored Division, the 82nd Engineer Battalion, two
  A CAVALRY OFFICEI@'-, LIFE a 251
  Tom Clancy:
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  155mm howitzer battalions, an MLRS [Multiple Launch Rocket System]
  battery, and a company of military police to assist with the processing
  of Iraqi prisoners.  We attacked into Iraq on G-Day minus-one, the
  afternoon of 23 February 1991.
  When Colonel Leonard D.  "Don" Holder, the 2nd ACR's commander, led his
  regiment over the border berms (long mounds of earth) into Iraq, he
  commanded a unit greatly enlarged from its normal peacetime
  organization.  In fact, by G-Day, he commanded a unit that was more like
  a small armored division, with all the cross-attachments assigned.  The
  more specialized of these units, such as engineering and
  combat-intelligence units, would play a vital role in the initial
  assault against the Iraqis:
  How did you prepare for the movement into Iraq on G-Day?
  Prior to moving into Iraq, the troop was reinforced with an engineer
  platoon that included an Armored Combat Earth Mover [called an ACE].
  The ACE would cut a lane through the dirt berms that had been built by
  the Iraqis to demarcate the frontier with Saudi Arabia.  The berms were
  not a formidable obstacle, but could impede the movement of large
  armored formations.  One of the regiment's tasks was to make numerous
  cuts to ease the movement of the divisions behind us.  I had the
  engineers construct several simulated berms to allow us to practice the
  breaching operation.  When we executed the plan, the Ist Scout Platoon
  rushed forward with the engineers to secure and breach the obstacle.
  Once the breach was effected, my tank led the other tanks through in
  column.  On the far side, the tanks deployed into a wedge formation.
  The 3rd Scout Platoon followed the tanks and established flank security
  to the west. Ultimately, I st Platoon crossed and raced to resume the
  lead of the formation.
  How good was your intelligence about what was on the other side of the
  
  berms in Iraq?
  Although an artillery prep was fired, we didn't expect any contact.  The
  3rd ACR [assigned to XVIII Airborne Corps to the west of VII Corps] had
  punched holes in the berm the day before; and Major MacGregor [the 2nd
  Squadron S-3] and I drove over to their area with our HMMWVS.  After
  coordinating with them, we drove through their berm breaches and had a
  look at our squadron's crossing
  Tom Clancy:
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  areas.  We did not see evidence of any enemy activity.  A week earlier,
  a 3rd Platoon dismounted patrol had checked the crossing areas at night
  and swept for mines.
  On the night of February 23rd/24th, 1991, H.R.  led Eagle Troop through
  the berms and into Iraq.  Over the next couple of days, while the rest
  of VII Corps came through the berms and sorted themselves out, the 2nd
  ACR moved forward slowly.  The weather was less than pleasant.
  How did the actual breaching operation itself go?
  Lieutenant Ed Ketchum's engineers did a great job.  They reduced the
  obstacle in less than a minute, and my tank went through seconds later.
  We wanted to be the first troop across, and made it with time to spare.
  lt was actually a relief to be in Iraq.  We were finally getting to do
  the job we had come to do.  We test-fired our weapons on the move; and
  after a few minutes, the Cobras and OH-58s from the 4th Squadron took
  the lead, and Captain Tom Sprawls' Fox Troop took the point on the
  ground.
  The weather conditions during the Ground War were bad, weren't they? Why
  don't you say a little bit about that?
  The first night, it poured rain.  I slept in the tank commander's seat
  [in his MI, named "Mad Max"], hunched over with my helmet on the sight
  extension.  On the 24th, though, the weather was generally good.  But
  the night before our major fight, the 25th, the driving rains returned.
  The morning of the 26th, we encountered heavy ground fog, and later in
  the day the fog gave way to high wind and blowing sand that grounded
  aircraft and limited visibility.
  A CAVALRY OFFICER'S LIFE - 253
  One of the keys to the success of the ground phase of Desert Storm was
  the synchronization of every unit on the battlefield.  This was
  necessary to help plan and execute air and logistics support operations,
  
  direct Coalition units to their desired targets (the Iraqi ground
  units), and to help avoid incidents of "friendly fire" or "fratricide."
  Tom Clancy:
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  Tom Clancy:
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  Tom Clancy:
  Can you explain the movement scheme, particularly the concept of phase
  lines?
  Phase lines are graphic references laid out every few kilometers that
  are designed to keep track of forward progress during an offensive
  operation.  Units report movement across a phase line to higher
  headquarters.
  Tom Clancy: Tell us about the first two days of moving into Iraq.
  H.  R.  McMaster: During the first two days of the campaign we covered
  short distances very rapidly, then hatted for extended periods of time.
  Enemy resistance was very light and ineffective.  Fox
  Troop made first contact with the enemy on the 24th.
  After a brief firelight, they captured large numbers of the enemy.
  Later that night we [Eagle Troop] detected a series of trench lines
  comprising an enemy infantry position.  The
  Bradleys from I st Platoon and my tank hit the position
  hard with 25mm fire, and TOW and tank HEAT rounds
  fired into the bunkers.  The scouts also adjusted fire from the mortar
  section onto the area.  The attack by fire drove the survivors toward
  Fox and Ghost Troops, who, after similar actions, took hundreds of the
  enemy prisoner.  The
  next morning, as we moved further north, we encountered large numbers
  of surrendering enemy.  We didn't have time to stop.  So we ensured that
  they were unarmed and left them for units to the rear....  Many soldiers
  threw them
  food and water from the Bradleys, though.
  
  Joe Sartiano's Ghost Troop had the only notable
  action in the squadron on the 25th.  Ghost destroyed sev eral MTLBS,
  captured several more, and drove them to the squadron command post.
  When we arrived for a meeting, the other troop commanders and I got to
  take them for a test drive.  We knew that we had hit the securi ty zone
  of the Republican Guard.  The soldiers wore the Republican Guard
  insignia, and the unit had been well supplied and had new weapons and
  equipment.  I told the troop not to assume that all the Iraqi units were
  as weak as those we encountered initially.  I didn't want us to let
  our guard down.
  February 26th, 1991, was the day for which the U.S.  Army and H.R.  had
  prepared themselves for over a decade: head-to-head armored combat with
  the best that the Iraqis had to offer, the Tawakaina Division of the
  Republican Guard.  Of all the Republican Guards divisions that were
  encountered during Desert Storm, this was the only one which maneuvered
  with any real aggressiveness.
  This was the way things were supposed to go: With Eagle Troop on the
  point, 2nd ACR was to locate the enemy, hold them at arm's length, and
  then
  Eagle Troop March Formation Afternoon, Feb ary 26th, 1991
  2nd Squadron - Ghost Troop Eagle Troop Northern Boundary (05 Northing
  Line)
  .................  ................
  Lt.  Davis (FIST-V)
  m SSG Magee
  ow Tank Platoon SFC W,,Ilace
  Maj.  MacGregor (S-31) capt.  McMaster Lt.  Petschek Eagle Troop (Eagle
  66) @-o@ -Lt.  Hamilton (XTrack Lt.  DeStefano Advance
  0 - Lt.  m Gifford) 2nd Sqdn.  TAC CP OW Mortar Carriers Platoon
  SSG Foy
  atoon
  3rd Scout Platoon
  ill Lt. Gauthie SSG McReynolds SSG Pa erson
  
  m m = =
  ...................................................  ......
  ..............  .......................................................
  m
  ..........
  3rd Squadron - iron Troop Eagle Troop Southem Boundary (00 Northing
  Line)
  I
  = M3 Scout Vehicle Ml Tank M113CarrierBasedVehicle
  The formation of Eagle Troop, 2nd Cavalry Squadron, 2nd Armored Cavalry
  Regiment, on the afternoon of February 26th, 1991.  The Ist Scout
  Platoon is out in front with Captain H.  R.  McMaster (Eagle-66) leading
  the wedge of MI AI tanks.  JACK RYANEvTERPRIsEs, LTD., BYLAURA ALPHER
  pass the heavy armor of the I st and 3rd Armored Divisions through to
  destroy the Iraqis.  That was the plan.  But the reality simply did not
  work out that way.  High winds and blowing sand kept the helicopters on
  the ground, and it was left to the cavalry troopers on the ground to
  find the enemy, much like their mounted forefathers of the previous
  century.
  When did you first encounter the first elements of Tawakaina Division of
  the Republican Guard?
  Eagle Troop first encountered reconnaissance elements of the Republican
  Guard on the morning of February 26th- Ghost Troop had destroyed two
  Iraqi armored personnel carriers, and a third BMP was taking evasive
  action.  Staff Sergeant Patterson directed my tank onto the BMP, and my
  gunner, Sergeant Craig Koch, destroyed it with a HEAT round at long
  range-2,620 meters.  As a result of this small action, I believe that
  the Iraqi scouts did not have the opportunity to warn their
  A CAVALRY OFFICER'S LIFE m 255
  Tom Clancy:
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  headquarters of our presence in the area.  We remained in generally the
  sanie area throughout the morning of the 26th, and were disappointed
  when we received word that we would hold in position and assist the
  forward passage of the divisions that were closing to our rear.  We were
  confident in our ability to fight and did not want to miss the
  
  opportunity to meet the enemy on the battlefield.
  On the late afternoon of the 26th, as the regiment continued to move to
  contact with the Tawakalna Division, Eagle Troop encountered a small
  village astride the demarcation line, with 3rd Squadron to the south
  (below the 00 Northing or centerline of the VII Corps advance).  After
  taking fire from machine guns and a dug-in ZU-23 anti-aircraft mount (a
  twin 23mm gun), the tanks and Bradleys of Eagle Troop responded in a
  much bigger way and silenced the enemy fire.
  Tom Clancy: At what point did you come into contact with the village
  that gave you a problem?
  H.  R.  McMaster: The regiment was controlling the operation very
  tightly.
  Our squadron, due to the narrowness of our zone, moved
  in a box formation, with Ghost and Eagle Troops forward
  and Fox Troop and the Tank Company in reserve.  Eagle
  The openingmovesofthe Battle of73 Easting, CaptainMcMaster and thetanks
  ofthe2nd and 4th Tank Platoons return the fire from the Iraqi village
  after taking several prisoners.
  J,(A R@,, E, TIRPRISf.@.  Lii,., Ri L,i R@ AI PIIFR
  Battle of 73 Easting - Opening Moves (4:10 PM.  February 26th, 1991)
  2ndSq.,,d,..  Gh,,stTr..p E@g]@ T,..p N.Oh@@ B ...  d@ (05N..hi.gLi@@)
  SFC
  Li.@ f Ad
  (Xl I I
  4,h )'I,l
  3,d 1'1,,, [,,qi ill,,, E.gl@ T ..  p S..th@,n B,,..d@@y (W N.@hi.g
  Li.@)
  3,d Sq.,d,,),, lr( 1,,),,p
  Troop was positioned south of Ghost Troop and connected with Iron Troop
  [commanded by H.R.'s "Beast Barracks" roommate Dan Miller] of 3rd
  Squadron. Visibility remained limited, as morning fog had given way to
  high winds and blowing sand.  The poor conditions grounded aircraft.  At
  approximately 4:00 PM the regiment gave permission to move to the 67
  
  Easting line.  Staff Sergeant Reynolds' scout section encountered an
  Iraqi dismounted outpost; and as the scouts disarmed four Iraqi
  soldiers, the section came under enemy machine-gun and 23mm fire from a
  village about 1,200 meters further east.  The scouts returned fire, and
  I ordered the troop's tanks to fire HEAT rounds into the buildings from
  which the Iraqis were firing.  The tank fire blew large holes in the
  walls of the cinderblock buildings, collapsed roofs, and started fires.
  Almost immediately after suppressing the village, we received permission
  to advance three more kilometers to the 70 Easting line.  It was at this
  moment that all hell began to break loose ahead of Eagle Troop.  Reports
  of enemy tanks (from Lieutenant Michael Petschek of the I st Scout
  Platoon) ahead in the blowing dust and sand forced H.R.  to make a
  decision: Did he stay where he was (as the accepted U.S.  Army armored
  cavalry doctrine of the day suggested) and try to hold them there while
  the armor from the heavy divisions came up?  Or should he assault the
  enemy armor?
  When H.R.  observed that after shooting three tanks in the early moments
  of the fight (in under ten seconds!) the enemy tanks were not returning
  effective fire, he made his decision.  Realizing he had surprised and
  gained an advantage over the Iraqis, he ordered the troop forward to
  assault the enemy positions.  Maneuvering and fighting with Eagle Troop
  at this time was Major MacGregor, the 2nd Squadron S-3 (operations)
  officer in an M IA 1, and the 2nd Squadron Tactical Command Post (TAC
  CP) in an M2 Bradley:
  Totn Clancy: What did you do then?
  H.  R.  McMaster: I called up Red-l' [Lieutenant Petschek]-the Ist Scout
  Platoon leader's call sign -and told him to continue the attack to the
  70 Easting line.  He hesitated because, unknown to me, Staff Sergeant
  Cowart Magee's M3 crew
  had spotted an enemy tank [a T-72] and were about to engage it with a
  TOW missile.  I ordered the troop's tanks to "follow my move," and took
  the lead of the formation in this uncertain situation.  As Staff
  Sergeant Magee's gunner, Sergeant Moody, engaged the T-72, my tank
  crested an almost imperceptible rise in the terrain.  1
  A CAVALRY OFF]CFI@", LIFF - 257
  Battle of 73 Easting - Contact zvitli the Taivakalna Division
  (4:22 PM, February 26th, 1991)
  (@h,,,t Ilp E.gl@ T,..p N.@h@- B..@d.,y 105 N..hi.9 Li.@)
  
  E@g]@ T,..p S.pp.0 T@.i., i I 1',,,chk
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  @,@qi Vill,,g, L
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  Moving past the Iraqi village, the lead elements of Eagle Troop
  encounter a line of eight Iraqi T-72 tanks from the Tawakaina Division
  of the Iraqi Republican Guard.  Captain McMaster in Eagle-66 and the
  Bradley fighting vehicles of the I st Scout Platoon engage the enemy
  tank line, with the tanks of the 2nd and 4th Tank Platoons moving up to
  finish off the rest.  Eagle Troop then moves forward to assault an Iraqi
  position behind the line of destroyed Iraqi T-72s.  JACK RyAv
  EvTERPRisFs, LTD., By LAURA ALPHER
  immediately spotted eight enemy tanks in a defensive position oriented
  west (in our direction).  The sandstorm had died down, and visibility
  had improved enough to see them with the naked eye.
  Tom Clancy: What action did you take at this point?
  H.  R.  McMaster: I reported "contact" to the troop and exhorted the two
  tank platoons [Green and White] to join me forward of the enemy
  position.  At the same time, I gave my crew the,
  command to fire, and my gunner, Staff Sergeant Craig
  Koch, destroyed three of the enemy tanks in under ten
  seconds.  As we fired our third round, the tank platoons and Major
  MacGregor's tank joined in the fight.  The fire distribution was
  perfect, and our nine tanks took out a large chunk of the enemy in the
  initial volley.  I thought at
  the time that they were T-55 [an older model] tanks, because we were
  destroying them so quickly.  The enemy return fire was also ineffective.
  
  Several T-72 tank rounds fell short, and their machine-gun fire had no
  effect on the armored vehicles.
  258 AIZMOR@.D CAV
  Battle of 73 Easting - General Engaginent
  (4:30 PM, February 26th, 1991)
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  E@gl@ T,..p N.@h@@ B-.@d., tg5 Li@@)
  11 lllq, 1 72
  Li-f Ad@..,@ 2.11
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  ow@ "I
  aq 'M E.gl@ T,..p S..Ih@,.  B ...  d., (M N.,Ihi.g Li.@)@
  3,d Sq.@d,,).  1")@ T,."P
  Mll'C@llil, B@,,d V,,hil,, 1 72
  Eagle Troop moves into a general assault on an Iraqi Brigade assembly
  area of the Tawakalna Division.  The tank wedge of Captain McMaster,
  Major MacGregor (the 2nd Squadron S-3), as well as the tanks of the 2nd
  and 4th Tank Platoons, moves east to engage, followed by the rest of the
  troop, The advance terminates at the 73.8 Easting line.   JACK RYAN
  EvTERPRisEs, LTD., By LAI RA ALPHER
  As quickly as the line of tanks was destroyed, Captain McMaster sighted
  additional Iraqi armored vehicles beyond them and behind the village.
  This concentration of Iraqi armor was a defensive sector for a brigade
  of the Tawakalna Division.  H.R.  quickly ordered Eagle Troop to advance
  and engage the numerically superior enemy force which they had
  surprised.
  What happened next?
  The Bradleys of the I st Platoon tucked in behind the tank
  wedge to cover the rear, and 3rd Platoon was arrayed in
  depth to protect our open southern flank.  The tanks
  focused on destroying enemy vehicles, and the Bradleys
  
  fired primarily at enemy dismounted infantry.  As we pen etrated the
  first line of enemy defenses, we began to
  engage additional enemy vehicles in depth further to the
  east and south.  The enemy's main defense was centered
  on the 70 Easting line-our limit of advance.  When John
  Gifford [the executive officer] reminded me that 70 was
  our limit of advance, I told him that we could not stop in
  the middle of the enemy position and would halt on the
  far side.  In Germany, our regimental commander, Colonel [now Major
  General] L.  D.  Holder, had made it
  Tom Clancy:
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  A CAVALRY OFFICER'S LIFE - 259
  Tom Clancy:
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  Tom Clancy:
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  Tom Clancy:
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  A burned-out Iraqi T-72
  'e.  on the 73 Easting battle field.  I.Iii If,",17 Cl)[(INEI
  TIBI V,4RTIII.Z clear to us that junior officers were free to make
  decisions and take initiative based on the situation.  We crested
  another ridge at approximately the 73 Easting line and entered the
  assembly area for the enemy's tank reserve.  We destroyed the majority
  of the eighteen T-72s at close range, as they were trying to deploy
  against us.  We halted just east of the reserve position.  As your
  attack slowed down, the battle was developing on your left and right, as
  Ghost and Iron Troops moved up and engaged the flank elements of the
  force you had been attacking.  What happened?  Ghost Troop [Captain
  Joseph Sartiano] engaged and destroyed the enemy forces to their front
  just as we halted at the 74 Easting line.  Later, Captain Dan Miller's
  
  Iron Troop fought their way forward to narrow the gap between the two
  squadrons.  We held in place, and later that night assisted the forward
  passage of the Ist Infantry Division (Mechanized).  How many vehicles
  did Eagle Troop destroy?  Approximately thirty tanks, sixteen BMP
  infantry fighting vehicles, and thirty-nine trucks.  The outcome of the
  battle I am most grateful for, however, is that Eagle Troop suffered no
  casualties.  I thank God for that.
  How long did the fight last?
  Approximately twenty-three minutes from when we were taken under fire
  from the village until we halted at the 74 Easting line.
  Though they did not realize it at the time, the men of Eagle Troop had
  just fought the main action in what has become one of the most studied
  battles of modern times, the Battle of 73 Easting.  The Army and General
  Fred Franks (the commander of VII Corps) were so impressed with the
  results of the fight that a team of analysts from the U.S.  Army's
  Institute for Defense Analysis came out to study every aspect of the
  battle in order to reconstruct it for future training and use back in
  the United States.  From this has come a computer model of the entire
  battle, which is considered on a par with textbook operations such as
  Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain's defense of Little Round Top at Gettysburg
  and Major John Howard's capture and defense of Pegasus Bridge on D-Day.
  But before the history books could be written, there was another day of
  war to finish.  For Eagle Troop, though, it was actually fairly quiet.
  Tom Clancy:
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  Tom Clancy:
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  Tom Clancy:
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  General Franks with Captain H.  R.  McMaster inspecting the battlefield
  at 73 Easting.
  /Ifl I/,,,l
  What happened the next day, February 27th, the last day of the ground
  war?
  We had taken some prisoners the previous night-initially forty-two, and
  then many more sporadically into the next day.  We also moved closer to
  Kuwait.
  
  When did you find out about the cease-fire?
  The next day.
  In summary, what were your impressions of the battle you fought?
  The Iraqis were unprepared for the American Army.  The Republican Guard
  proved to be a spirited but inept adversary.  Our units were much better
  trained and equipped.  I think that the real difference in the fight,
  however, was the American soldier.  Because our soldiers were confi
  A CAVALRY OFFICER'S LIFE 261
  dent and aggressive, our troop was able to act immediately and as a
  team.  Armored battles in the open desert are decided ver.1, quickly. We
  surprised the enemy and were able to take advantage of it.  We hit the
  enemy so hard in the opening moments of the battle, and penetrated his
  positions so rapidly, that he was unable to recover.
  A few weeks after the end of the war, Eagle Troop and the rest of the
  2nd ACR packed up and headed back to Germany to resume their normal
  duties.  Sadly, with the end of the Cold War and the success of the U.S.
  Army in the Persian Gulf, the perceived need for units like the 2nd ACR
  had decreased to the point where a decision was made to deactivate this
  distinguished and tong-serving unit.
  What did Eagle Troop do after the cease-fire?
  We moved into Kuwait for several days, and later secured a portion of
  southern Iraq.  There we rendered humanitarian assistance to the
  predominantly Shi'ite Muslim PoPulation, and we captured or accepted the
  surrender of thousands more Iraqi soldiers.  Our unit then moved back to
  KKMC and began to prepare our vehicles for departure back to Al Jubail
  and eventually Germany.  General Franks promised that since we were the
  first VII Corps unit in, we would be first out.  We returned to Bamberg
  at the end of May.
  Later on in 1991, you had to hand over Eagle Troop. What did you do
  after?
  It was difficult to leave command.  We were notified that the 2nd ACR
  would be deactivated [in Europei and reestablished in the United States.
  When Major MacGregor was promoted and left to take command of a..
  cavalry squadron, I became the S-3 [operations officer].
  The 2nd ACR moved to Fort Lewis, Washington, and later Fort Polk,
  Louisiana, reconfigured as a light cavalry regiment.  After a few months
  as S-3, I went to the Combined Armed Services Staff School at Fort
  Leavenworth, Kansas, after which I began my graduate study at the
  
  University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.  In the summer of 1994, 1
  will begin teaching history at West Point.
  What are your thoughts about your career, after all these experiences?
  Tom Clancy:
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  Tom Clancy:
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  Tom Clancy:
  H.  R.  McMaster:
  My professional life has been more sitisfying and rewarding than I ever
  imagined.  I would recommend the Army as a career to anyone who has the
  desire to serve.
  Captain H.  R.  McMaster trained for over a decade to be ready for the
  relatively short period (probably less than an hour) that he was in
  intense combat.  Yet it is doubtful that he or the taxpayers of the
  United States would question the bargain they got for their money and
  efforts.  And for all of us, the good news is that H.R.  is not all that
  unique.  As the Army Chief of Staff, General Gordon Sullivan, pointed
  out recently, the U.S.  Army is full of fine young soldiers like Captain
  McMaster.
  At the time this book was being completed, H.R.  and Katie McMaster got
  two more examples of how rewarding the life they've chosen can be. Their
  third daughter, Caragh Elizabeth, was born, and H.R.  was selected for
  promotion.  It is good to know that the daughters of H.  R. McMaster
  will know a better world-one that was forged by people like their dad.
  A A@A1,1@Y 263
  A t the end of the Cold War, it was difficult to imagine a crisis large
  ou h to require the Army to deploy a whole division, or even a
  regiA:entg In fact, since Vietnam, no U.S.  Army unit bigger than a
  brigade had fought as a unit.  Certainly there had been corps-sized
  exercises, but no situation had actually demonstrated that the Army
  really needed large-scale units.  Some analysts even suggested that the
  Army should downsize itself to a few brigade-sized task forces.
  Desert Storm shattered this theory.  The United States fielded and
  maneuvered three full corps of troops (two Army, one Marine) to action
  against Iraq.  Continuing threats from Iran, Iraq, and North Korea,
  instability in the Balkans and the former Soviet Union, and the need for
  
  large-scale humanitarian and peacekeeping missions, as in Somalia,
  suggest that the United States needs to be prepared to use the
  exceptional combat and staying power of ground forces to achieve
  national objectives.
  This said, just how might an armored cavalry regiment be used in the
  next few years?  Let's look at two scenarios that explore the range of
  options that might be presented to the United States.  The first of the
  scenarios that follow explores the uses of conventional armored cavalry,
  represented by the current 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment based at Fort
  Bliss, Texas.  The second scenario looks at a new formation, the Armored
  Cavalry Regiment-Light, converted from the old 2nd Armored Cavalry
  Regiment when it returned from its NATO mission.  It is a new and
  untried organization, with many details left to be worked out.
  Nevertheless, it will probably become a major player in the action to
  come for the Army's mobile "fire brigades"-the armored cavalry
  regiments.
  Operation Robust Screen:
  The Second Korean War, January 1997
  How they had lasted over fifty years was a mystery.  The Democratic
  People's Republic of Korea was an anachronism-a hermit kingdom from
  which little information ever escaped, and little of that made sense.
  But one thing was clear.  The North Koreans wanted to control all of
  Korea.  They had fought one war in the early 1950s in a fruitless
  attempt to gain that goal, and few doubted that they would attack the
  South again if the opportunity arose.  Even though repeated peace
  overtures from the Republic of Korea (ROK, South Korea) had met with
  superficial cordiality, they had repeatedly led nowhere.  Meanwhile,
  ROI@ES ANT) MISSIONS: I flE A('R IN Tlil--, RFAI.  WOI@LD - 265
  the spectacular economic development of the South had made the North
  increasingly irrelevant.  Politicians worldwide had adopted the
  convenient belief that ignoring Kim 11-Sung and his erratic son and
  designated successor, Kim Jong-11, would make them disappear.  It was a
  dangerous assumption.
  As the third generation of North Koreans grew to maturity, knowing
  nothing but the two Kims'bizarre blend of militarism, Confucian
  morality, and Communist dogma, pressures built up within the party and
  the military elite for a final and forcible reunification of the divided
  peninsula.  For almost fifty years the Inmun Gun (Korean People's Army),
  a brutally disciplined, lavishly equipped force of over a million, had
  trained, planned, and prepared for one mission: the "liberation" of the
  South.  Since the end of the first Korean War in 19 5 3, hundreds of
  thousands of patiently toiling laborers had burrowed into the hard
  granite mountains of Korea to build underground aircraft hangars, arms
  
  factories, command centers, even hardened radar stations with pop-up
  anten- nas, protected by massive steel doors.  About two dozen of those
  hundreds of burrows were particularly precious to the Great Leader. They
  were silos for the home-grown Nodong' missiles, with home-grown nuclear
  warheads.
  Even after the death of the elder Kim in 1994, the "Dear Leader" (as Kim
  Jong 11 required others to address him) still believed in self-reliance.
  Like his father before him, the junior Kim wanted to complete the great
  work of Korean unification as a legacy to the world, before he went to
  join the other great Communist saints, Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and his
  father.
  In Korean cosmology, separate seasons and divinities are assigned to
  each of the four directions.  Since north is associated with winter and
  the Divine Warriors, the Dear Leader thought it fitting that the
  invasion of the South would begin in January, in the dead of winter-and
  as luck would have it, just as the American imperialists were
  inaugurating a corrupt new President.  Kim was inspired to compose a
  poem on the subject, for limited circulation within the
  ever-appreciative circle of the Central Committee, to celebrate the
  coming "liberation" of the South.  As might be imagined, it was well
  received.
  Sunday, January 25th, 1997,0300 Hours'
  To ensure strategic and tactical surprise, the People's Army attacked.,
  without advance preparation (having been on winter maneuvers), on less
  than an hour's notice, under total radio silence, relying on sealed
  orders.  The first wave of invaders included some twenty-two commando
  brigades composed of over 70,000 elite special forces troops.  They
  swarmed through tunnels under the Demilitarized Zone, parachuted from
  antique An-2 Colt transport biplanes (quite stealthy because of their
  wooden construction), or swam ashore from midget submarines.  A small
  team disguised as Japanese businessmen hijacked a Korean Air Lines
  Boeing 747 in flight, and briefly seized control of Seoul's Kimp'o
  International Airport, the control tower and terminal complex being
  thoroughly wrecked when the ROK elite Capital Division stormed it the
  next day. One of the most successful of the North Korean special forces
  brigades
  crash-landed inside the U.S.Embassy compound, using a number of
  American- made MD-500 helicopters illegally acquired from a German arms
  dealer back in the early 1980s.  The Marine guards were wiped out, and
  the handful of Embassy staff then on night duty were slaughtered.  When
  a hastily assembled relief force of U.S.  Army Military Police and
  combat engineers arrived to retake the building, it was in flames, with
  its vital electronic communications and monitoring gear destroyed.  A
  
  similar raid on U.S.  Eighth Army' headquarters in the suburb of Yongsan
  was detected in time and decimated by the Stinger missiles of an alert
  Avenger air defense battery.
  Sunday, January 25th, 1997 1200 Hours
  Most of the North Korean commandos were wiped out quickly, but the
  confusion and disruption they spread helped to open the way for the main
  attack.  The rugged topography of Korea allows for only a few invasion
  routes, and these tend to channel the flow of any military movements.
  The narrow road down the east coast barely provided maneuver room for a
  single North Korean division of the 806 Mechanized Corps, which seemed
  to pay for every yard with a knocked-out tank.  Five specialized
  river-crossing regiments and several divisions of infantry forced the
  wide lmjin River along the west coast, but the bridgeheads were
  contained and gradually eliminated by the ROK divisions holding the
  line.  The main axis of advance was the highways east of Seoul.  There
  were 2,000 T-72, T-62, and improved T-55 tanks, supported by more than a
  dozen tube-artillery regiments and some sixty-plus rocket-artillery
  battalions, massed along a front of less than 50 miles/82 kilometers in
  width.  The U.S.  Army's 2nd Infantry Division, supported by Republic of
  Korea (ROK) units on either flank, fell back toward Seoul taking heavy
  losses, but inflicting three or four times as much damage as it was
  suffering.  The People's Army knew that street fighting always favors
  the defender, and the Dear Leader wanted to take the historic, economic,
  and cultural center of the nation relatively intact.  The invasion
  pushed south and east, away from the heavily urbanized capital area and
  down the Han River Valley.  The North Korean objective was to bypass
  Seoul, then hook suddenly westward to capture the ancient walled town of
  Suwon. The capital with its ten million residents would be cut off,
  besieged, and starved into surrender.  What the Dear Leader's generals
  did not know was that this was exactly what the the Eighth Army wanted
  them to trY.  The North Korean army took the bait.
  Despite the chaos of the war's opening hours, the situation was quickly
  assessed by the National Military Command Center in the Pentagon, and
  the Pacific Command (PACOM)' headquarters in Hawaii.  North Korean
  frogmen had cut the telephone and fiber-optic cables that crossed the
  Tsushima Strait to Japan, and relentless rocket and artillery attacks
  forced the surviving headquarters units in South Korea to move
  constantly, making it difficult to maintain communications even via
  satellite link.  But real-time imagery pouring in from reconnaissance
  satellites in low earth orbit made it abundantly clear that
  ROLES AND MISSIONS: TIJE ACR IN l'IfE REAI- WORLD n 267
  the Second Korean War had begun.  The new President, who had taken
  office just a few days before, was informed by a call from the Chairman
  
  of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, an Air Force general.  The President
  immediately convened a meeting of the National Security Council, and
  asked the Speaker of the House to arrange an emergency joint session of
  Congress.  Meanwhile, as Commander in Chief, he ordered the acting
  Secretary of Defense to execute the existing plans for the reinforcement
  of Korea.  Less than one hour later, the officer on duty in the
  communications cell of the U.S.  Ill Corps headquarters at Fort Hood,
  Texas, received an urgent phone call.
  Monday, January 26th, 1997, 1000 Hours
  The first reinforcement unit to arrive in Korea was the Alert Brigade
  from 82nd Airborne Division.  Airlifted directly from Fort Bragg, North
  Carolina, to Taejon, Korea (a 7,000-mile flight that took almost twenty
  hours with refueling stops), they deployed the next day into the hills
  north and west of the city to secure the air base and the strategic
  bridges over the Kum River.  With the airfields around Seoul under
  continuous SCUD and tong-range artillery bombardment, Taejon was chosen
  as the forward headquarters of the U.S.  LX Corps, based in Japan, which
  would control most of the units being sent to reinforce the Eighth krmy.
  At the same time, six Maritime Prepositioning Ships (MPS)' steamed out
  of Agana Harbor, Guam, bound for Pusan with supplies and equipment for a
  Marine brigade.  Except for one quick-reaction battalion aboard several
  amphibious transports at Okinawa, the troops would fly in from Camp
  Pendleton, California.  Thus, the initial mission of the Ist Marine
  Expeditionary Force was to secure the ports of Pusan and Ulsan and keep
  them open.  Once this was certain, the leathernecks would move up to the
  line wherever the North Korean threat was greatest, and dig in.
  At the same time a second MPS squadron left Guam with equipment for a
  brigade of the 10th Mountain Division (Fort Drum, New York).  The troops
  would be airlifted into Taejon by the end of the week and rushed north
  to relieve the battered 2nd Infantry Division, which would be pulled
  back into the Seoul pocket for reorganization and a bit of rest.  As the
  C-5 Galaxy, C-17 Globemaster 111, and Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF)
  transports returned from delivering the first wave of reinforcements,
  the alert brigade from the 101st Air Assault Division (Fort Campbell,
  Kentucky) would be airlifted to Taejon to form an airmobile reserve with
  enough helicopters to move the entire brigade in a single lift.
  The linchpin of the reinforcement plan was the 3rd Armored Cavalry
  Regiment (3rd ACR) at Fort Bliss, Texas.  With 123 M IA2 Abrams tanks,
  127 M3A2 Bradley Fighting Vehicles, seventy-four helicopters of various
  types, and hundreds of wheeled vehicles, the regiment was impractical to
  airlift, especially with the extra engineer, artillery, military police,
  and support battalions attached from the Ill Corps at Fort Hood' Even if
  there had been enough
  
  transport aircraft (and cutbacks in the procurement of the C-17 during
  the 1990s meant there weren't), the few remaining operable airfields in
  Korea were overwhelmed with arriving supplies, reinforcements, and
  casualty evacuation.  During the next few weeks, runways and terminals
  were also under sporadic attack from rockets and mortars carried by
  North Korean infiltrators.  Despite the claims of airpower enthusiasts,
  you don't just airmail an armored unit the way you would an overnight
  letter.  The 3rd ACR would have to go by boat.  But first, it had to get
  to the boats, and that was a trick in itself.
  Wednesday, January 28th, 1997
  You need specially reinforced rail cars to transport 70-ton tanks like
  the M IA2.  Yet thanks to tireless staff work by planners and
  dispatchers at the Military Transportation Command in St.  Louis,
  Missouri, it took just over two days to gather the rolling stock from
  across the country and assemble complete trains on the rail sidings at
  Fort Bliss and Fort Hood.  Meanwhile, the Military Sealift Command sent
  six SL-7 roll-on/roll-off cargo vessels to Long Beach, California, and
  the two additional SL-7s (there are only eight of them) to Beaumont,
  Texas.
  The SL-7s are vessels with a remarkable history.  Built in the early
  1970s by German and Dutch shipyards as very large high-speed container
  ships, they were too expensive to operate and maintain commercially. But
  the combination of speeds of 30+ knots and immense capacity was
  irresistible to a Sealift Command that had seen its WWII-era cargo ships
  decay into obsolete hulks while the U.S.  Merchant Marine withered away.
  Displacing about 30,000 tons empty and 55,000 tons at full load, an SL-7
  can hold 180 heavy tanks, or 600 HMMWVS.  Each SL-7 has a pair of 50-ton
  cranes, as well as roll-on/roll-off ramps port and starboard.  The ships
  were named for eight navigational stars long special to mariners: Algol,
  Bellatriv, Denebola, Pollux, Altair, Regiilits, Capella, and Antares.'
  Following plans that had been carefully worked out in countless
  exercises and simulations, the 3rd ACR was loaded at Fort Bliss, two
  trains a day, while the Ill Corps loaded one train every two days at
  Fort Hood.  As each element of the regiment arrived in Long Beach,
  California, it was loaded onto its designated SL-7.  The same process
  was repeated at the port of Beaumont, Texas, for the Ill Corps artillery
  and other attached units.
  The transportation plan was based on the concept of "combat loading."
  This means that every vehicle would be fully fueled and armed when it
  rolled off onto the docks in Pusan.  This made the ships more vulnerable
  to fire and explosion if they were hit, but it reduced the time required
  for the 3rd ACR to prepare for battle upon arrival.  Critical regimental
  assets were carefully divided up among different ships, so that the loss
  
  of a single vessel would not cripple the regiment.  The Abrams tanks
  were driven onboard the ships already loaded on Heavy Equipment
  Transporters (HETs).  This took up more space, but ensured that the
  armor could rush to the front at high
  ROLFS AND MISSIONS: TtiE ACR IN @I'liF REAI, WOI@F-D - 269
  speed over the excellent South Korean highway net, without wear and tear
  on tracks or suspensions.
  Monday, February 9th, 1997
  The SL-7s from Long Beach took six days to cross the Pacific.  The ships
  from Beaumont had to pass through the Panama Canal, adding about three
  days to the trip.  Meticulous work by intelligence and Special
  Operations troops attached to U.S.  Army Southern Command Headquarters
  at Fort Clayton, Panama, identified and "terminated" a North Korean
  sabotage team traveling on fake Chinese passports that had been
  dispatched to sink a rusty old Panamanian-flagged cargo ship in the
  canal's narrowest section, the Gailiard Cut.  For February, the weather
  was unusually mild in the stormy North Pacific, and knowing the urgency
  of the situation, the civilian (but mostly ex-Navy) crews of the big
  ships extracted every bit of performance from their temperamental
  boilers and steam turbines.   Thus the little convoy averaged a bit more
  than the specified thirty knots.
  As they rounded the southern tip of the Japanese home islands and
  entered the Korea Strait, the convoy was met by an escort of four O.H.
  Perryclass frigates.  Hastily mobilized from the Navy Reserve Force,
  they were the only available ships with medium-frequency sonars suitable
  for detecting enemy submarines in those shallow waters.  This proved to
  be a wise precaution; as the convoy approached Pusan, a wolfpack of
  obsolescent North Korean Romeo-class submarines, lurking off Tsushima
  Island, was detected and annihilated by torpedoes dropped from the
  frigates' helicopters before the subs could close to attack range.
  Tuesday, February 10th, 1997
  When the ships docked at Pusan's magnificent north harbor, the first
  units to off-load were the 27 MLRS launchers of the 6th Battalion of the
  27th Field Artillery Brigade.  Back at Fort Hood, each vehicle had been
  loaded with a pair of ATACMS, a chubby guided missile with a 60-to-90
  mile/ 100-to- 150 kilometer range.  The drivers and gunners, who had
  flown in the previous night, were already waiting on the docks to take
  delivery.  The launchers drove off the pier and onto rail cars headed
  north.  Next to disembark were the fifty-two attack and scout
  helicopters of the 3rd ACR's 4th Squadron.  They were immediately flown
  to Pyongtaek airfield, forty miles south of Seoul, where advance teams
  had set up a Forward Arming and Refueling Point (FARP).
  
  Wednesday, February llth, 1997,0700 Hours
  The next morning, pairs of AH-64A Apache and OH-58D Kiowa Warrior
  helicopters fanned out across the hills, east and west of the broad Nam
  Han River Valley, where the main enemy thrust southward was developing.
  The Kiowas, with their mast-mounted laser designators and thermal
  sights, could
  270 - Al@MOI@[@D CAV
  peek over the ridgelines, spot a target, and call in a supersonic
  Hellfire missile launched from an Apache flying miles away, concealed
  beyond the next line of hills.  The air cav gunners concentrated on
  anti-aircraft systems, particularly the old but deadly S-60 towed 57mm
  guns and the new armored scout vehicles carrying twelve-round SA-] 8
  missile launchers.
  As the regiment's three other cavalry squadrons unloaded and rushed
  north along the Seoul-Pusan expressway, the 3rd ACR was assigned a "fire
  brigade" role, to plug gaps in the line and stop any enemy spearheads
  that broke through the ROK's determined defense.
  Highway 327 crosses the Han River near the village of Punwon-ni; ROK
  engineers had blown the bridge as soon as enemy recon units approached
  the north bank.  The fresh North Korean 820th Armored Corps and 815th
  Mechanized Corps, backed by a division of artillery, were ordered to
  cross the river in this sector and secure a bridgehead on the south
  bank.  Though they were traveling only at night-without lights and using
  superb camouflage discipline to hide out from satellite reconnaissance
  during daylight-the enemy movement was still observed and tracked by the
  aero scouts of the 3rd ACR and reported to the forward command post of
  Colonel Rodriguez (the 3rd ACR commander) near Suwon.
  The river line was held by a division of ROK reservists that had been
  badly chewed up in the withdrawal from the DMZ two weeks earlier, losing
  most of their vehicles and heavy weapons.  But they still had their
  entrenching tools, M 16s, and a dwindling supply of TOW and Javelin
  anti-tank weapons. The colonel commanding the ROKs (both of the generals
  had been killed in action) knew his country had no more space to trade
  for time, and his men were determined to hold the riverbank or die in
  place.  They were under constant bombardment by whole brigades of rocket
  launchers, heavy mortars, and field guns.
  Meanwhile, in the low hills northwest of the crossing point, the enemy
  was assembling a river-crossing force, including engineers with mobile
  pontoon bridging equipment, a regiment of light amphibious tanks, and a
  brigade of commandos with inflatable assault boats.  This far south
  there were hardly any ice floes in the river.  The NK corps commander
  
  had trained these men for years under far worse conditions.  He might
  drown half of them in the frigid waters of the Han, but he would get a
  foothold on the south bank.  Then he would push his reserve division
  across, surrounding the ROK puppets of the U.S.  imperialist aggressors
  and opening the road to liberate Suwon.  After that, he could wheel
  south and drive the rest of the Americans and their Korean lackeys into
  the sea.  He imagined his T-72 command tank would be the first unit to
  make a triumphal entry into Pusan.
  Thursday, February 12th, 1997, 0100 Hours
  Colonel Rodriguez paged down through the weather forecasts on the
  high-resolution color LCD screen of the Silicon Graphics BattleSpace
  ROLES AND MISSIONS: THE ACR IN TIIE REAI.  WORI-D n 271
  Workstation in his M4 command track.  The next morning would be foggy in
  the lower Han Valley, and the fog would not lift until midday.  He
  smiled as his fingers danced across the keyboard, instantly transmitting
  orders over the secure satellite data link to his squadron commanders
  and attached combatsupport units.  He could have dictated the words to
  one of the three enlisted console operators, but everyone knew he was
  the fastest computer jock in the regiment, a holdover from his days at
  West Point.
  Back at the 4th Squadron FARP, CW-3 (Chief Warrant Officer Third Class)
  Jennifer Grayson worked her way through the short preflight checklist
  for her OH-58D helicopter.  She had been through this drill 376 times,
  but she never took shortcuts or skipped a step.  There were still some
  Neanderthals in the Army who thought that a woman shouldn't be a combat
  helicopter pilot; thus she had always striven for "zero defects."  Her
  copilot, WO-1 (Warrant Officer First Class) Greg Olshanski, loomed up
  out of the predawn darkness carrying the DTD (Data Transfer Device), a
  little gadget resembling a video game cartridge.  He inserted it into a
  socket on the crowded instrument panel, automatically loading the
  mission's assigned radio frequencies, navigational waypoints, and IFF
  mode codes.  The DTD would remain in its socket recording critical
  flight data from the Kiowa's control system, for after-action review.  A
  blank videotape was already loaded in the helicopter's onboard video
  cassette recorder to capture a permanent record of every target
  engagement.  "Our call sign tonight is Nomad Two-Seven," said Oishanski.
  "Nomad Two-Seven," CW-3 Grayson grunted in acknowledgment.  The
  immediate threat to the river line was enemy armor, so the Yiowa was
  loaded for tank-busting, with four Helifire missiles on the weapons
  pylons.  Grayson missed having the .50-caliber machine-gun pod-Hellfires
  were too easy-and she liked to shoot up trucks and soft targets with the
  .50.  That took some skill, and a light touch on the controls.  She had
  both.
  
  Thursday, February 12th, 1997, 0400 Hours
  The imaging infrared camera on a stealth recon drone sent out during the
  night by the IX Corps intelligence battalion had spotted an enemy armor
  battalion of thirty-one tanks moving down Highway 327.  With the
  approach of..  daylight, they had pulled off the road and dispersed into
  a narrow canyon.  Grayson pulled up the thermal view on her
  multi-function display.  The tank engines would still be warm by the
  time the OH-58D came into range.  The North Koreans were good at
  camouflaging their tanks with netting, tree branches, and shrubbery; but
  the rear decks of those T-72s would stick out like sore thumbs to the
  thermal viewer in the mast-mounted sight.
  Grayson and Oishanski carefully timed their arrival at each waypoint.
  There was a lot of traffic in the air this morning, and most of it was
  flying without navigation lights or search radar to give away its
  position.  Some of the traffic consisted of artillery shells, blindly
  obeying the laws of physics.  Air cav planning staffs devoted a lot of
  effort to "deconfliction"
  Korea - Battle of Piiitzt@oti-iii
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  ............
  yello. S..
  R,idg, ....  ......  The battle of Punwon-ni.  Helicopters from the 4th
  (Air Cavalry) Squadron of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment blunt an
  attempted river crossing of the Han River by the North Koreans.
  JA(K RY,4.v EvTFRPRISEs, LTD., BI LAt RA Al PIIFR with their field
  artillery counterparts, making very, very sure that friendly helicopters
  and friendly projectiles never tried to share the same airspace at the
  same instant.
  
  Grayson steered the agile chopper up behind the crest of a mountain
  spur.  The enemy tanks lay just across the ridge, their crews already
  bedded down, except for a few sentries nervously scanning the skyline.
  With a delicate nudge of the cyclic and a gentle adjustment of the
  collective, she rose a few feet, so that the spherical head of the
  mast-mounted sight, like the face of a grotesque three-eyed robot,
  peered over the rocky lip of the valley.  She flicked the arming
  switches on the Helifire control panel, aimed, and fired.  Reflexively,
  she closed her eyes for a second, so that her night vision would not be
  dazzled by the flash of the rocket motor as it came off the rail, rose
  in a graceful arc, and dropped directly onto a tank 2,000 yards away.
  Before the first round struck, the next was on the way.  Then another.
  Within a few seconds three tanks had exploded, the lethal mixture of
  diesel fuel and ammunition blowing the turrets completely off the
  vehicles.  Within a few more seconds, the startled North Korean crews of
  a dozen tanks had recovered and were directing bright tracer streams of
  14.5mm machine-gun fire at the hilltop.  But the helicopter was already
  hidden behind the ridgeline, calling over the Automated Target Handoff
  System (ATHS) for other helicopters to join in the carnage.  With three
  missiles expended, the OH-58D was four hundred pounds lighter and would
  have tended to rise into full view of the alerted enemy.  But as Grayson
  swiftly and instinctively compensated for the weight change, the chopper
  swooped down and to the left, evading the return fire.
  ROLES AND MISSIONS: I IIE A(-R IN -I'IIE I@EAL, WOI@1,D - 273
  A voice crackled over the radio headset, "Nomad Two-Seven, this is
  Outlaw Four-Six, I'm about two clicks behind you with sixteen rounds.
  What have you got for me?  Over."
  "Roger that, Outlaw Four-Six, this is Nomad Two-Seven. We have two dozen
  Tango Seven-Twos at our ten o'clock, approximately two clicks out.
  They're pretty stirred up right now.  We can start designating targets
  for you in thirty seconds.  Go to Mission Package Alpha Seven, over."
  Outlaw Four-Six was an AH-64A Apache, with a full load of missiles and a
  30mm automatic cannon.  The two crews set all the necessary switches for
  an automatic handoff from the ATHS.  The OH-58D would play hide-and-seek
  around the rim of valley, designating targets with its laser while the
  AH-64 stood off at a safe distance firing missiles.  The first missile
  was already in flight toward an unlucky T-72 when the voice of
  Lieutenant Colonel Martin, 4th Squadron commander, broke in on the
  squadron command net.  All units of Outlaw and Nomad troops were ordered
  to abort their current missions and close as rapidly as possible on a
  new set of target coordinates some miles to the west.  An ROK scout
  platoon had spotted the enemy river-crossing task force moving toward
  the northern bank of the Han.
  
  "This is going to be hairy.  I wish we had the .50-cal," said Olshanski.
  "This is what we get paid for," Grayson replied grimly, punching the new
  coordinates into the navigation system.  To reach the assembly area
  where the North Koreans were preparing to force a river crossing, the
  air cav squadron had to run a gauntlet of small-arms fire and
  shoulder-launched SA-18 missiles.  (Actually they were North Korean
  copies of the Chinese copy of the Russian SA-18.  They weren't very
  reliable, but there were lots of them in the air.) Flying low and
  dodging constantly, Grayson reached the target area and saw long columns
  of boxy shapes waddling down toward the riverbank through the MMS FLIR
  system.  There were PMP pontoon bridge sections, GSP tracked
  self-propelled ferries, and PTS-M tracked amphibious transporters.  The
  North Koreans had acquired (at bargain-basement prices) some of the vast
  menagerie of river-crossing equipment the Soviets had designed to cross
  the Elbe, the Rhine, the Moselle, and the Meuse (see Red Storm Rising to
  recap this Cold War scenario).  Rugged and cleverly engineered, these
  vehicles had come a long way to cross this river.  Grayson intended to
  make sure their journey had been in vain.
  There was a low ridge a hundred yards back from the south bank of the
  river.  Grayson and a few other OH-58Ds swung in behind the ridge and
  began popping up to designate targets for the Apaches, which found safe
  firing positions a mile or two further back.  The North Koreans had dug
  in a few batteries of ZU-23 twin 23mm anti-aircraft guns to cover the
  crossing site.  These were first-priority targets for the Hellfire
  missiles.  Then the columns of bridging equipment and truckloads of
  assault boats were raked with missiles, creating a huge smoking, burning
  traffic jam for almost a mile back from the river.  The Apaches now
  closed in to complete the destruction with salvoes of unguided
  2.75"/70mm rockets and bursts of 30mm cannon fire.
  Off to her left, Grayson saw a flash @iiid a pu iT of dark smoke.  A
  North Korean SA-18 struck Outlaw Four-Three squarely oii the tail boom,
  shredding the tail rotor.  The Apache spun out of control toward the
  frozen ground on the enemy side of the river.  Fortunately, the
  helicopter Nvas flying low enough that the crash looked survivable.
  Grayson clicked the radio transmitter to the Squadron net frequency.
  "This is Nomad Two-Seven.  Cover me, I'm going in to pick them up,
  over," she said.
  A live American helicopter crew was a prize worth taking risks for.
  Senior Sergeant Kim Cho-buk was a twice-decorated Hero of Socialist
  Struggle, a First Class Heavy Machine Gun Marksman, and acting commander
  of an armored reconnaissance platoon (after the Lieutenant's BRDM scout
  vehicle had taken a Hellfire missile through the roof that morning). The
  gunsight of his one-man turret was crude; but at this range, it took
  little marksmanship to pour a stream of bullets into the falling Apache
  
  as it slammed into the riverbank.  Kim kicked his driver between the
  shoulder blades and screamed at him to close in.  The other BRDM in the
  platoon followed a hundred meters behind; and some infantry squads
  nearby rose from their foxholes and started running toward the downed
  aircraft (probably hoping the Americans had some MRFs on board).
  Jennifer saw two enemy scout vehicles and some running dismounts break
  out of cover and head toward the crash site.  She saw a stream of
  tracers as the lead scout vehicle fired.  She barely noticed as
  Olshanski nailed the BRDM with their last Hellfire.  She was
  concentrating on keeping a low stable hover as close as possible to the
  wreck, where two dazed and bleeding aviators were struggling out of
  their harnesses.
  Outlaw Four-One, another Apache, rolled in a few hundred meters behind
  Grayson.  As it opened up with the 30mn-i cannon, the ragged line of
  North Korean infantry fell back, and the scout veh icle popped smoke
  grenades and slammed into reverse gear.
  The crash survivors staggered over to the h(>vering OH-58D and hooked
  their harnesses onto the landing skids.  lt looked crazy but it was a
  standard operating procedure for combat rescue.  As she lifted off with
  two windblown but very grateful warrant officers dangling securely from
  the skids, Jennifer still wished she had a .50-cal on board.
  The Punwon-ni sector of the river line hel(j, but that night the North
  Koreans secured a bridgehead further downstream, got a mechanized corps
  across, and pushed south to cut the expressway at Pangyo-ri, between
  Scoul and Suwon.  If they could take Suwon and drive th rough to the
  west coast, the Seoul-Inchon metropolitan area would be cut off, with
  40% of the nation's people and most of its economic might.
  Friday, February 13th, 1997,0630 Hours
  Aero scouts and ground-based recon units carefully pinpointed the North
  Korean artillery positions and coi-nmand posts of the enemy divisions
  l@01 I;S ANI) %IISIION,: I 111@ A( [@ IN I fir L@FAI WORI 1) - 275
  converging on Suwon.  Just before dawn, three battalions of MLRS
  deployed back in Taejon fired a salvo of ATACMS.  As the warheads
  detonated high above the battlefield, they rained cluster munitions over
  an area of several square miles.  Virtually the only survivors were
  inside armored vehicles or dug in underground.  The morning fog still
  lingered in patches over the frozen rice paddies, when 2nd and 3rd
  Squadrons of the 3rd ACR broke out of the foothills and tore into the
  flank of the North Korean 678th Mechanized Rifle Division.  The M2A2
  Bradley cavalry vehicles found good hull-down firing positions behind
  the earth embankments that separated the fields.  As they picked off
  enemy command vehicles (conspicuous because of their extra antennas)
  with long-range TOW missile shots, the tanks swept forward at high
  
  speed, firing on the move at anything that fired back.  Anti-tank rounds
  from dug-in 122mm guns glanced off the M IA2 turrets and front plates as
  if they had been fired by peashooters.
  A few North Korean anti-tank teams popped out of concealed foxholes to
  fire after the tanks passed, disabling several MI A2s with wire-guided
  missile shots into the thinly armored rear engine compartment.  Before
  they could get off a second shot, most of the missile teams were spotted
  and cut down by machine-gun fire from the Bradleys.  Meanwhile, one tank
  in each platoon had been fitted with a hastily improvised dozer blade to
  slice through the rice paddy embankments (the original supply having
  been lost in a freak SCUD hit back at Pusan).  A welder in the
  regiment's 43rd Engineer Company had seen pictures of the "hedgerow
  cutters" fitted to M4 Sherman tanks in Normandy during 1944, and had
  thought he could improve on the idea.  His captain had taken the idea to
  Colonel Rodriguez, who had immediately approved it.  Welders don't
  usually get medals, but this one would.  The tankers appreciated the
  immediate improvement in their cross-country mobility.  There's an old
  saying that "speed is armor."  Now they had both.
  Sunday, March Ist, 1997
  The battle at Pangyo-ri proved to be the high-water mark of the North
  Korean invasion.  Over the next three weeks the front stabilized along a
  track running from Sokcho on the east coast, through the rubble of
  Ch'unch'on, and down the northern Han River line to the outskirts of
  Seoul.
  After suffering 50% loss rates in furious air-to-air battles during the
  war's first week, the North Korean Air Force kept its surviving MiGs in
  their rock tunnel shelters, conceding air superiority to the Americans.
  U.S.  Air Force BI s by day, and F-17As (and even a handful of B-2s)
  by night, kept up a steady offensive against enemy supply lines, command
  centers, and artillery positions.  Occasional SCUD missiles caused
  damage and civilian casualties in the South Korean cities, but they
  could not stem the constant flow of fresh units and supplies.  More
  important, the balance of terror held-the Dear Leader was not crazy
  enough to unleash the nuclear, chemical, and biological holocaust that
  slept silently in his deepest underground bunkers.
  Battle of Siiii@oiz - Koreti
  Ko
  Mecha
  IIL Division of dapa@,.'
  
  W 3rd ACR
  ye
  ...........
  11 T@,,k IIMP 1 -2
  The battle of Suwon.  Supported by ATACMS missile strikes.  the 3rd
  Armored Cavalry Regiment conducts a spoiling attack to stop the North
  Korean drive to the Yellow Sea.
  J,, A R) , EITIRIRIII IB) l@lt R,,411,11LR
  The U.S.  Ist Cavalry Division (the First Team), from Fort Hood, Texas,
  and the I st Mechanized Infantry Division (the Big Red One), from Fort
  Riley, Kansas, began disembarking in Pusan during the first week of
  March to provide Eighth Army with an offensive option.
  Meanwhile, the Dear Leader had contemptuously ignored so many UN
  resolutions that on March 13 the DPRK became the first nation ever
  expelled by the General Assembly.
  The cherry blossoms were already blooming on hillsides that had not been
  ravaged by shell fire when Eighth Army struck back.  The entire U.S.  I
  st Marine Expeditionary Force', quietly joined by a British Royal Marine
  battalion and a brigade-sized task force of French light armor, had
  boarded amphibious assault ships and steamed into the Yellow Sea,
  escorted by a battle group built around the carriers Constellation and
  Theodore Roo.5evelt, threatening the long west coast of the peninsula.
  In consequence, the North Koreans had to tie down a dozen infantry
  divisions in static coastal-defense missions.  They expected a replay of
  Douglas MacArthur's surprise 1950 Inchon landing somewhere along their
  long and vulnerable coastline.  They were fooled.
  Tuesday, March 31th, 1997,0530 Hours
  3rd ACR, heavily reinforced with artillery, engineer, and reconnaissance
  units, led the IX Corps assault north and west out of Chonpyongchon,
  with the armor-heavy U.S.  Ist Cavalry Division close behind. Critically
  short of fuel to maneuver, the North Koreans could do little but dig in
  and wait to be
  ROI,I-I, ANI) MIS,',IONS: I IIF A('1@ IN I IIE IZFAI@ WOi@ii) a 277
  bombarded, cut off, surrounded, and bypassed.  On the first day, the
  cavalry squadrons advanced over twenty miles, while the air cav squadron
  ranged forty or fifty miles deeper to shoot up supply trucks and
  rear-area headquarters units.  On April Fool's Day, the old 2nd Infantry
  Division base at Tongduchon (Camp Casey) was recaptured in bitter
  
  fighting; and elements of twelve enemy divisions were trapped in a
  pocket around Uijongbu.  As the enemy's air-defense missile and
  ammunition supply ran out, the Marines were brought ashore by relays of
  helicopters, in deep "vertical envelopments."  Units began to
  surrender-instead of fighting to the death-by squads and platoons on the
  second day, by companies and battalions on the fourth.  Less than a week
  after the start of the counteroffensive, the advance of the cavalry
  squadrons reached the DMZ, brushed aside weak resistance at Panmunjom,
  and took the town of Kaesong inside North Korea.
  Wednesday, April 15th, 1997,1200 Hours
  The North Korean situation clearly was hopeless.  It was no surprise
  when the noon broadcast from Pyongyang Radio announced that the Dear
  Leader, and the top leaders of the Workers' Party had been taken into
  custody, and the provisional military government was requesting a
  cease-fire and immediate negotiations for reunification of Korea.  It
  was April 15th, but the taxpaying citizen soldiers of the Eighth Army
  felt that this time, they had gotten their money's worth.
  Operation Rapid Saber:
  Uganda, June 1999
  The 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment (2nd ACR, The Dragoons) had been
  reconfigured in the early 1990s as an Armored Cavalry Regiment-Light
  (ACR-L), an easily transportable armored unit to provide mobile armored
  firepower to the troops of the XVIII Airborne Corps, typically the first
  American soldiers to deploy when an emergency is too far from the shore
  for the United States Marines.  The Army fought long and hard to have
  this unique unit equipped with the latest technology.  Designating it an
  experimental unit helped (for Pentagon accounting purposes), though its
  performance in maneuvers was the best justification for the expense. The
  M I Abrams tanks had been replaced one-for-one with the new M8 Armored
  Gun System (AGS).  In addition, all of the Bradleys had been replaced
  with M 1071 "Heavy Hummers"-HMMWVs protected by advanced composite
  armor.  Every vehicle was "wired" into the IVIS command and control
  network.  Some were equipped with .50-caliber machine guns, others
  carried Mk19 40mm grenade launchers and lightweight TOW launchers. About
  one out of every five carried a new weapons system, the Non-Line of
  Sight (N-LOS) missile, with eight missile rounds in a vertical launcher.
  Every 2nd ACR-L dismounted trooper had the new Virtual Battlefield
  helmet, with a built-in
  GPS receiver, helmet sight, and data link onto the IVIS network.  They
  called themselves "Starship Troopers."
  As part of the XVIII Airborne Corps stand-alert force, one of the
  regiment's three armored cavalry squadrons was always kept on alert, and
  
  a wing of Transport Command (TRANSCOM) airlifters was similarly kept
  "hot" to transport the squadron.  It was mere coincidence that when the
  Uganda Crisis broke, the 2nd Squadron of the 2nd ACR-L had "the duty,"
  along with the 512th Military Airlift Wing, a reserve outfit at Dover,
  Delaware, which would be the first off the flight line to Fort Polk,
  Louisiana.
  Uganda, June 1999
  Nobody ever expected Idi Amin to reappear on the world stage.  Since he
  was thought to be terminally ill from venereal disease (or already long
  dead), his return to Uganda was as unexpected as the Israeli rescue
  mission to Entebbe in July of 1976.  With the help of Sudanese and
  Libyan agents, he escaped from his maximum security (but luxurious)
  house arrest in Saudi Arabia.  Then, with the help of Sudanese
  "volunteers," he scattered a handful of demoralized border guards and
  swept into Kampala, the capital city of Uganda.  The self-proclaimed
  "Field Marshal" and "President for Life" and his armed followers quickly
  took control of the airport, the TV and radio station, the central bank,
  and as many of the country's fourteen million emaciated citizens as they
  could abuse and bully.  Though ravaged by disease and chronic anarchy,
  the tragically unlucky nation in the Central African Highlands had
  nevertheless begun to recover in the late 1990s.  There had been enough
  security and order to allow the return of the UN AIDS Task Force.  The
  international team of 200 physicians and nurses had been in-country for
  a mere five weeks, with some promising new treatments for the lethal
  virus that had infected over half the Ugandan population.  Amin's first
  official act was to seize the medical personnel and demand, as a
  condition of their release, international recognition of his return to
  power.  The murder of the mission leader, a French physician from
  Pasteur Institute whose resistance to Amin's thugs had been just a
  little too courageous, immediately crystallized the nature of the
  crisis.  As the bloody pictures appeared on televisions worldwide,
  phones were picked up, and pre-set contingency orders activated.  It was
  the French President who uttered the words that set things in action,
  though his choice of words jolted the American chief executive:
  "No peace with Bonaparte."
  For the French Republic, the killing of a French citizen was a matter of
  honor, and the Force Reaction Rapide (FRR) began to form up.  But the
  French light-infantry force was indeed light, with little more than
  machine guns and a 30mm automatic cannon on their lightly armored scout
  cars and some shoulder-fired anti-tank missiles.  Talking heads all over
  the world noted this, and pointed to aging but quite real Russian T-72
  tanks, Mi-24
  ROLES AND MISSIONS: TIIE ACR IN I'IIE REAI.  WORLD n 279
  
  Hind helicopters, and MiG-29 fighters visible on the Russian real-time
  satellite reconnaissance photographs of Kampala and Entebbe now
  available to CNN and other news media.  Crewed mainly by Libyan and
  Sudanese "volunteers," and reinforced by loyal survivors of the old
  Ugandan Army (recruited mainly from Amin's own small Kakwa tribe), the
  force was organized into three ragtag brigades and an air wing.  Amin
  recruited enough Egyptian and Pakistani renegade mercenary technicians
  to keep the engines tuned and the radars calibrated.  To prove his
  sincerity as a champion of militant Muslim fundamentalism, Amin began
  the systematic massacre of Ugandan Christians.  That played well in
  Khartoum and Benghazi, and kept the money and ammunition flowing.
  No match for a Western division-indeed, no match for the armor-heavy 3rd
  ACR-Amin's army was enough to outgun the French FRR and render a rescue
  of the international medical team impossible-so agreed the talking heads
  on news-analysis shows worldwide.  None of the talking heads, however,
  had ever met General du Brigade Jean-Jacques Beaufre or Lieutenant
  Colonel Mike O'Connor, a Legionnaire and a cavalryman, both veterans of
  Desert Storm.  Professional soldiers hate doing things on short notice.
  When human life is at stake, careful planning is the minimum
  requirement, but the danger to civilian lives in this crisis precluded
  normal concern for the lives of soldiers.  That was part of the job,
  too.
  The multi-national action group for the operation was as curious as the
  mission planners.  Intelligence came from overhead imagery developed
  commercially from Russian recon satellites under contract to Agence
  FrancePresse.  The French would be first on the ground and needed the
  data the most.  There was an agreeably flat spot fifty kilometers west
  of the objective.  It was-had to be-close enough, because the Ugandan
  Army still remembered what had happened when the Israelis made their
  unexpected visit to Entebbe.  All three runways at Entebbe, and the
  connecting taxiways, were solidly blocked by lines of parked trucks,
  tanks, and armored vehicles.  To discourage helicopter assault, 23mm
  anti-aircraft guns and surface-to-air missiles were dug in all around
  the airport perimeter.  Weather information came from NOAA, and looked
  good during the probable operations time 11 window."  The mild climate
  of Uganda presented few problems, but the clouds of mosquitoes that rose
  from the lakeside marshes every evening made malaria precautions
  essential.
  The U.S.  Defense Mapping Agency has the best cartographic information
  in the world, and gigabytes of it started flowing over a satellite data
  link to Paris.  All the while, secure phone lines burned between two
  frantic operations staffs, laboring to do the impossible in two
  languages at once.  With more than a little screaming and profanity
  (thankfully not fully understood by either side), an operational concept
  
  was rapidly hammered out, just as the American forces assigned to the
  operation boarded their C-17 and C-5 transports for the long hop to
  Africa.  While the world watched replays of the French physician's death
  on CNN, and the talking heads worried about the
  280 - ARMORED (-AV Uganda - Operation RAPID SABER
  1',,Ik, I A
  Uganda
  Muband
  inia
  + I 11 611 M8T@@k -M 1,@qiT72 T,-p M., Maps of the approach by Allied
  forces on Uganda.  C-17s from Fort Polk, Louisiana, arrive with elements
  of the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment-Light, as well as French
  special-forces personnel.
  J@(KR)ANE17ERPRISEs, LTD, akL,,tg@AIPHLR
  expected negotiation process, Operation Rapid Saber, the first-ever
  airborne armored cavalry mission, got under way.
  The discussion of the plan at the Elysee Palace was brief.  General
  Beaufre's force included an elite volunteer hostage-rescue team,
  detailed from the Direction General de Securite, wearing Foreign Legion
  paratroop uniforms and carrying fake identity papers.  Though they were
  a critical national asset that the Minister of Defense was reluctant to
  risk, the president told him the honor of France was at stake.  When the
  Minister of Defense was about to raise an elegantly worded, logical, and
  tactful objection, the French president slammed down his bottle of
  Perrier on the antique, polished, inlaid surface of the cabinet table
  and told him to shut up and have the men at the airfield in two hours.
  June 23, 1999, 0400 Hours'
  The hardest mission fell to the tanker aircraft, decidedly unglamorous
  birds, mainly flown by Air Force Reserve crews-most of them plucked from
  their airline jobs-so rapidly called into service that FAA rules for
  crew rest time on domestic airlines were quietly violated for the next
  several weeks.  One by one, the cargo transports linked up with the
  aging KC,- 135Rs and newer KCIOAS, topping off their fuel tanks.
  Distance, time, and tanker assets dictated a direct great-circle course
  that overflew several African countries.  Fortunately, most of these
  were former French colonies, and through a combination of quiet
  diplomacy and well-placed French nationals in the various
  air-traffic-control centers, the 300-mile-long stream of American
  
  aircraft flew the width of Africa as uneventfully as a red-eye flight
  from LAX to JFK.
  ROI-ES AND MISSIONS: THE ACR IN rHE REAL WOI@LD - 281 June 23, 1999,
  1930 Hours
  The French paratroopers arrived first, just eighty minutes before the
  American aircraft.  Two battalions landed just after sunset, worried
  that the sun was glinting off the contrails of the transports-but it was
  too late for that.  On hitting the ground, the squads assembled and
  formed up into platoons that raced outward to secure a perimeter. Crisp,
  short, radio transmissions reported negative contact with hostile
  forces.  A few bewildered civilians were located and held.  Three
  telephone lines were found and cut, along with every electrical power
  line shown on the satellite photos.  The landing zone instantly became a
  black hole of information.  Anyone unlucky enough to wander in was
  quickly captured and held in a detention area for later release.
  Satisfied that the landing zone (LZ) was secure, the senior French
  officer got on his radio and called in the approaching transports even
  before his troopers deployed the lines of chemical landing lights on the
  hard red dirt of Central Africa.  First in was the French command group.
  General Beaufre quickly set up his CP at a pre-arranged point, while the
  other transport aircraft shuttled in and out.  Not even taking the time
  to stop their engines, they lifted off quickly to refuel at Bambari in
  the Central African Republic.  Beaufre now had just under a thousand
  elite paratroopers on the ground, but armed with only light weapons and
  a few Renault jeeps.  Their commanding general grumbled about his
  country's meager airlift capacity, a mere four squadrons with some
  seventy aging C-160 Transalls.  Well, maybe they'd listen to him next
  year....
  June 23, 1999, 2050 Hours
  Lieutenant Colonel Mike O'Connor, sitting in the jump seat of the lead
  C-17 transport, was thinking the s@me thing.  Watching the approach
  through night-vision goggles, he caught the glow of the chem lights,
  while a twenty-nineyear-old Air Force captain named Tish Weaver flared
  her aircraft in for a soft landing.  The pilot's acute senses felt the
  impact and pronounced it good.  The ground here was firm enough for the
  rest of the first "stick" of transports to land safely, and probably
  even for the older C-5s, known derisively as Freds [F**king Ridiculous
  Expensive Disasters] to the drivers of the newer C-17s.  First off was
  Lieutenant Colonel O'Connor in his command HMMNW.  While his driver
  negotiated his way to the CP, two radio operators rigged their antennas,
  and a traffic-control officer formed up with his French counterparts.
  When O'Connor reached the CP, salutes were exc4langed, and the two unit
  commanders sized each other up face-to-face, instead of via picture
  
  phone and radio.  Together they huddled over maps during the two hours
  it took for the long line of jet transports to land and rig their
  loading ramps.  They had one more hour to assemble, give final
  briefings, and move out.  Every soldier for miles around cringed from
  the roar of fan-jet engines.  Nobody could believe that the mission was
  still covert.  If the MiG jets and Hind-D attack choppers at Kampala got
  into the air, the landing zone would become a death trap.
  June 23, 1999, 2400 Hours
  The motorized reconnaissance elements arrived.  Everything was on a
  shoestring.  In this case, a total of eight "Hummers" covered a frontage
  of 12 kilometers, alternately darting forward from one high point to
  another.  Reaching one, they would stop for a few minutes to look,
  comparing their positions with maps and satellite photos-the former not
  always agreeing with the latter-and updating their tactical overlays on
  their IVIS terminals.  Along the way, every telephone line encountered
  was cut-necessarily some were cut more than once-and villages were
  bypassed.  The ground-recon element was halfway to the objective before
  the first OH58D scout/attack chopper appeared overhead.  Such was the
  urgency of the mission.
  From the pilot's seat of the lead Kiowa Warrior, CWO-4 Jennifer Grayson
  looked out across moonlit rolling hills dotted with scraggly cotton and
  cornfields, a few scrawny cattle, and the thatched rooftops of
  halfdeserted villages.  It was a far cry from the amber waves of grain
  that covered her native county back in Kansas.  Twenty years of civil
  war, and the horrendous mortality rates of "slim disease" (the ironic
  African term for AIDS), had devastated this beautiful country.  It had
  taken two 4th Squadron mechanics and a crew chief less than seven
  minutes to roll the OH-58D down the ramp of the C-17, bolt on the
  mast-mounted sight, unfold the rotor blades, and prepare the machine for
  takeoff.  Grayson had offered to helpshe knew every centimeter of the
  graceful little helicopter intimately-but the ground crew had practiced
  this intricate drill so well that an extra pair of hands would only get
  in the way.  Besides, it was their bird after all.
  Tonight's mission was to take out the MiGs and Hind-Ds based at Kampala.
  When his force stormed Entebbe Airport, Colonel O'Connor didn't want any
  interference from Amin's air force.  On the long flight from Fort Polk,
  Grayson had studied the satellite photos.  They were oblique shots, at
  about 10-centimeter/4-inch resolution, with good lighting and careful
  image processing to emphasize the details of the revetments and aircraft
  shelters.  Those Russian birds took some nice snaps, she thought.
  June 24,1999, 0100 Hours
  The M8 Buford Armored Guns clattered down the ramps of the C-17s and
  rattled off into the African night, leaving only a whiff of diesel
  
  exhaust behind.  When the first production units had been delivered the
  year before, the Army had named them to honor John Buford, the Union
  cavalry general who had used the repeating rifles of his few dismounted
  troopers to delay the advance of a Confederate corps on the first day at
  Gettysburg.  It was an eternal lesson every cavalry trooper knew
  instinctively: Volume of fire carries more weight than superior numbers.
  ROLES AND NIISSIONS: THE ACR IN'I'flE REAL WORLDO 283
  I Toanda - Entebbe Airport Action
  ze
  Paco &
  Smitty
  d Terminal
  ew Hangar
  Terminal.
  Control Tower and Rover
  Patrol
  AGS
  At
  Forces Friendly Forces Troop Movements
  The assault and rescue by Allied personnel of the hostages at Entebbe
  Airport, Uganda.  While the French special-forces personnel rescue the
  hostages at the old terminal building, M-8 armored-gun systems and
  HMMWVs with N-LOS missiles attack the airport security forces.They then
  stop an attack by an enemy brigade to prevent the evacuation effort. Jl(
  A R@, @ E, [ERPRISES, I.TD n) R, AtPatp
  It -t
  Enem Brigale
  Counter Attacks
  June 24, 1999, 0130 Hours
  Sergeant Abu-Bakr Elmahdi cursed in colorful Arabic, Dinka, and English,
  as the greenish image in his night-vision goggles faded, flickered, and
  went black.  You could walk into any sporting goods store in Europe and
  
  pick up a set of the bulky but reliable ex-Soviet goggles for a hundred
  U.S.  dollars.  The second-generation image-intensifiers amplified any
  available light, so that you could make out a man-sized target at a
  hundred meters by starlight on the blackest night.  The Russian
  engineers had used standard Japanese Ni-Cad camcorder batteries, knowing
  that the invincible armies of Socialism could procure them anywhere in
  the world.  Unfortunately, a supply clerk back in Khartoum had slyly
  substituted old, worn-out batteries for the new ones that came with the
  brigade's equipment.  He had sold them in the bazaar for a month's
  salary apiece.  It was outright theft, and it would cost him a hand when
  it was discovered.  But meanwhile, Sergeant Elmahdi and the other
  sentries along the Entebbe Airport perimeter had only the light of a
  quarter moon to patrol by.
  une 24, 1999, 0200 Hours
  Nicole had not been so afraid since the nuns had caught Jean-Jacques
  hiding in the closet of her dorm room.  She never heard from him after
  that, and only later had learned that his parents had banished him to
  some military school in the south of France.  She smiled thinly as she
  wondered which of them had suffered more for their sinful behavior. This
  was worse, though.  The Ugandans had herded all of the hostages into the
  departure lounge of the decrepit old terminal, which still showed bullet
  scars from the 1976 Israeli rescue mission.  There will be no rescue
  this time, she thought bitterly.  The world does not care about a
  handful of idealistic medical fools who could not turn away from the
  horror and suffering here.  Mercifully, the water taps and the toilets
  still worked.  And twice a day their captors brought baskets of bananas
  and tubs of cornmeal mush to feed the hostages.  But all of their
  medical supplies and equipment had been looted or destroyed. Some of the
  male doctors and lab technicians had been badly beaten, though the women
  had not been molested-yet.  Nicole struggled to maintain her composure,
  to set a good example for the younger girls.  Silently and calmly, she
  recited the Rosary, just as the Sisters had taught her, so many years
  ago
  Holy Mar,, Mother qfgod, prql,,for iis sinner,5, noti,, and at the hour
  ofoitr death.
  Amen.  June 24, 1999, 0225 Hours
  Smitty eased the HM MWV up just below the crest of a low hill.  Paco
  checked the GPS receiver and confirmed they were in the right place. Off
  to
  ROLES AND MISSIONS: TifE ACR IN'l@tiE REAL WOI@I.D n 285
  the south, the vast expanse of Lake Victoria reflected the moonlight,
  but the town of Entebbe and the airport were blacked out.  The airport's
  
  diesel generators had been shut down to conserve fuel and deny IR-homing
  missiles an easy target.  Paco thumbed a button and the HMMNW's
  multi-sensor unit extended on its articulated arm to peer over the top
  of the hill.  He slowly panned the thermal viewer across the airport
  perimeter.  "Bunker ...  three tanks ...  two APCs ...  bunker ...  some
  kind of SAM launcher ...  six trucks ...  another bunker," he said,
  carefully enumerating the possible targets, zooming up the magnification
  to confirm a few doubtful items.  Paco looked over at the glowing amber
  symbols on the IVIS display.  Captain Martin, in his command HMMWV two
  miles back, had sketched out a rough diagram of the airport and
  designated targets for each unit of the heavy weapon platoon.  The 120mm
  mortars would take out the trucks and lay down smoke.  Martin's own
  HMMWV would take out the airport tower with two N-LOS rounds, to make
  certain that the commanding four-story building was thoroughly
  demolished. Smitty and Paco would fire their first N-LOS missile at the
  second bunker.  At the bottom of the screen the captain had written "TOT
  2330 Zulu" and underlined it with three bold strokes.  All the platoon's
  weapons were to strike their targets simultaneously at 2330 hours (
  11:30 PM Greenwich Mean Time, 2:30 AM local time).  According to the
  digital clock on the HMM@'s dashboard, that would be in five minutes. At
  this range the missile's time of flight would be-Smitty punched a few
  buttons on the armament control panel-thirty six seconds.
  June 24, 1999, 0230 Hours
  Ekwanza and Hubutse had drawn patrol duty tonight.  The Sudanese
  lieutenant had screamed at them in broken Swahili, telling them that the
  countryside was full of American and French spies, and if they let one
  slip through, they would both die horribly.  With its lights off, the
  Land Rover was to slowly circle the outer perimeter road.  Ekwanza had
  an RPG-7, and Hubutse carried an AKM assault rifle.  There was a box of
  grenades, some signal flares, and a light machine gun in the back of the
  Rover.  They were to be especially vigilant along the lake shore, where
  the Americans would undoubtedly try to infiltrate Navy SEALS.  The
  lieutenant had been on the cleanup detail a year ago, after the SEALs
  had paid a nocturnal visit to Port Sudan.  He still had nightmares about
  dark forms rising out of the water...
  The gunner of the M8 Buford saw the Rover come around the corner a
  second or two before Ekwanza and Hubutse saw the AGS looming out of the
  darkness.  Ekwanza was trying to aim his RPG when a 105mm high-explosive
  (HEAT) round passed through the dead center of the grille and struck the
  engine block.  Land Rovers have a legendary reputation for toughness and
  relia- bility in East Africa, but were never meant for that kind of
  abuse.
  "The quarterback is toast!"  said the gunner over the intercom
  exultantly.
  
  "Calm down!  Next time use the machine gun on soft targets," the tank
  commander said.  "We've only got twenty rounds of that stuff left now."
  286 - ARMORED (-AV
  The explosion alerted the entire Entebbe garrison.  Colonel Alakbar
  jerked out of bed and knew in an instant what was happening.  "The
  Americans are attacking!  Kill all the prisoners at once!"  he screamed.
  The executive officer of the brigade on duty at the command bunker that
  night was alert and efficient.  He was on the field telephone
  immediately to relay the colonel's order to the company of the 6th
  Islamic Legion guarding the prisoners.  But before he could get the
  words out, Smitty and Paco's first N-LOS missile came through the
  sandbagged door of the bunker and detonated against the back wall.  The
  bunker, the colonel, the brigade exec, three sleepy corporals, the field
  telephone, and the footlocker containing next week's payroll all ceased
  to exist within a few milliseconds.
  June 24, 1999, 0231 Hours
  Paco's steady hand guided the second N-LOS missile to a direct hit on a
  battalion ammo bunker.  The secondary explosion was heard in Kampala,
  twenty-two miles away.  "He shoots, he scores!"  said Smitty gleefully.
  Nicole and all the other hostages woke up when the ammunition bunker
  exploded 300 yards away.
  Though their 150 Sudanese guards had grown up in a traditional warrior
  society, where killing was part of being a man, and had been brutalized
  by years of guerrilla warfare in the southern Sudan, where atrocities
  against civilians had become a routine part of a day's work, they were
  not evil men.  Without orders, they felt uneasy about killing the
  infidel white doctors.  Many of them had an uncle, a cousin, a son, or a
  grandfather whose life had been saved by people like these.  Still, they
  knew they would probably be ordered to kill the prisoners eventually. If
  so, it was Allah's will.  But without orders, they hesitated.  The delay
  would be fatal for them.  That short hesitation was all the French paras
  and commandos needed.  The heavy weapons of the Eagle Troop had cleared
  a path for them right up to the old terminal.  Their thin-skinned
  armored cars and personnel carriers converged on the building at high
  speed from several directions, in a shower of smoke canisters to confuse
  the defenders and prevent them from getting clear shots.  Every man had
  the new-generation thermal viewer goggles, to see through the smoke and
  darkness.  The hostage-rescue team had brought bullhorns, and over the
  din of battle they told the hostages to stay down and not move, in
  French, English, and Arabic.  With automatic weapons at point-blank
  range, it was over quickly.  Only a few of the hostages were grazed by
  stray rounds.  No prisoners were taken, and the paras methodically
  
  inspected and videotaped with a small camcorder every Sudanese body,
  putting one round through the head of any that still lived.  This done,
  they turned their attention back to the hostages.
  June 24, 1999, 0245 Hours
  The Ugandan infantry brigade in the town of Entebbe included a mixed
  rabble of urban street gangs, guerrilla fighters from the northern
  tribes, and
  ROLES AND MISSIONS: THE ACR IN TIIE REAL WORLD o 287
  June 24, 1999, 0445 Hours
  Colonel O'Connor expected that the enemy would dispatch a relief column
  from Kampala before morning, despite the radio blackout and deception
  plan.  He had positioned a platoon of Bufords in a good ambush location,
  with a few helicopters on call to support them with Hellfire missiles.
  The first salvo of missiles took out the lead tanks, to block the road,
  and also took out General Bashir's command track, which deprived the
  brigade of effective leadership.  Most of the tanks were knocked out
  before they could return fire, but the Ugandan veterans of the 2nd
  Mechanized Battalion, following a few hundred yards behind, piled out of
  their Chinese APCs and dispersed into the fields along the roadside to
  bring their hand-held anti-tank weapons to bear on the flank of the
  ambush force.  They knocked out one Buford, but were routed by coaxial
  machine-gun fire and some.50-cal bursts from the OH-58Ds.  Some soldiers
  kept running until they reached the Sudanese border.   A few diehards
  were cut down as they made a last stand around the presidential limo.
  O'Connor landed on the road in his HQ Blackhawk, which had finished
  evacuating the medical team from Entebbe.  He yanked open the door of
  the limo, and was startled for a moment as recognition took hold in his
  mind.  Then, the professionalism of almost two decades in the Army took
  hold as he grabbed Amin and dragged him out of the car.  Almost as if he
  did this every day of his life, he said, "You are under arrest in the
  name of the United Nations for crimes against humanity.  You have the
  right to remain silent......
  The victors and their captive boarded the Blackhawk for the long trip
  back to Dover, Delaware, and eventually, a jail cell in the new UN
  maximumsecurity prison complex outside Geneva.
  June 24,1999,0500 Hours
  General du Brigade Jean-Jacques Beaufre personally supervised the
  loading of the transports that would carry the rescued medical team to
  the safety of a French air base in Djibouti.  He wanted to make sure
  that his guests were comfortable; and though his rough paras were
  generally rude to civilians, tonight he would not tolerate that.  Then
  
  he noticed one of the doctors who was changing the dressing on the head
  wound of one of the American tankers.  The years had etched a few lines
  in her face and there were strands of gray in her dark hair, but the
  eyes were unforgettable.  She looked up and noticed his insignia of
  rank.  "Jean-Jacques, I see you did well in military school," Nicole
  said as she smiled.
  y cavary?  In every age the answer has been and will be the same:
  Commanders need mobile warriors who can scout, screen, engage, V V and
  pursue their foes.  Whether they ride horses, motor vehicles, flying
  machines, or devices we cannot yet imagine, as long as there is
  conflict, there will be a need for cavalry.
  Who are the cavalry?  Men and women who are drawn to the profession of
  arms, and who seek out membership in a small, proud, cohesive community
  of soldiers.  The U.S.  Army's cavalry is a community that draws
  strength from tradition, but seems to welcome the best people,
  innovative ideas, and new technologies from every other combat
  branch-Infantry, Armor, Aviation, or Artillery.  Everyone who has ever
  seen a classic John Ford Western movie knows who the cavalry are.  They
  are the ones who hold the line on the lawless frontier.  They are the
  soldiers who come to the rescue.  Even though some threats have
  disappeared in the last few years, we still live in a world where there
  is no shortage of lawless frontiers and people to be rescued.
  Professional soldiers and self-appointed experts are always debating
  what kind of Army we should build.  They're always asking questions
  like: What is the right mix of "light" forces for rapid deployment to
  low- intensity conflict vs.  "heavy" forces like General Franks' VII
  Corps, which smashed Saddam's Republican Guard?  Such questions have
  been debated for years, and they will continue to preoccupy those who
  search for (or dream of finding) solutions to the problems of force
  structure and balance.
  But there is a new factor to add to the debate, and it may be decisive
  in determining what kind of Army will be built in the next ten to twenty
  years.  That force is high technology.
  Technology has always been a factor in deciding how to equip and
  organize armed forces.  Ever since the first man chose to pick up a rock
  or stick to gain advantage over other men, there has been a race to find
  better rocks and sticks.  And when these couldn't be found, men designed
  and built new and improved rocks and sticks.
  Once upon a time, it took ten years or more to get a weapons system from
  the drawing board to the battlefield.  No longer.  Today, the
  bewildering pace of technological change makes it hard to decide what
  kind of rocks and sticks to build.
  
  What has suddenly changed is the availability of programmable digital
  systems.  The revolutionary aspect of these digital weapons systems is
  that
  TOMORROW'S TROOPERS - 291
  much of their performance is based upon lines of programming code.  They
  have a built-in growth potential.  Rewrite a few software modules, and
  change out some hardware packages on the data bus, and your old system
  becomes a new weapon with vastly improved capabilities.  One only need
  look at the M I A2 Abrams and the AH-64D Longbow Apache to see the truth
  of this.  But to make all this technology work, you need soldiers with
  the mental fitness and agility to adapt to constant change.  You need
  cavalry troopers.  lt is said that an Army always prepares for the last
  war.  Thanks to Saddam Hussein, today our Army has plenty of experience,
  equipment, and training for desert fighting.  So, given the reality of
  Murphy's Law, we can probably expect our next war to be in wooded
  mountains or urban jungles. Again: You need cavalry troopers.
  The personnel of the 2nd ACR-L and the 3rd ACR are going to be the
  vanguard of a new generation of cavalry troopers.  They will be armed
  with an array of high-technology equipment that offers tactical options
  their predecessors in the Gulf War could only have read about in science
  fiction novels.  Individual troopers will become a part of large-scale
  computer networks like the FVIS system.  Stealth systems, like tanks and
  fighting vehicles made of composite plastics, will make their presence
  known in ways that we cannot imagine.  The commander's task will be to
  sort through a flood of data to find the nuggets of tactical opportunity
  that are presented.  That is the challenge that the cavalry leaders of
  the 21 st century are going to face.
  Some of the brightest people in America's Army have been rethinking the
  "roles and missions" that this world will require of them over the next
  few decades.  It will be a world where religious extremism and ethnic
  hatred have increasing access to weapons of mass destruction.  It will
  be a world challenged by threats of ecological terrorism, bioengineered
  plagues, and widespread social and economic breakdown.   And
  increasingly, all of America's armed forces will be called on to take
  part in operations other than war.  Some of these include:
  * Disaster relief and reconstruction (floods, earthquakes, fires,
  famines, etc.)
  * Counter-narcotics operations (intervention in drug-producing regions,
  and support of law enforcement on our own borders)
  * Peacekeeping and peace enforcement (under United Nations authority, or
  in our own cities)
  
  All of these operations require land and air mobility for rapid
  deployment, as well as massive firepower to deter armed thugs and
  maintain or restore order.  If use of armed force becomes necessary, the
  ability to make quick decisions, improvise, and solve problems at the
  level of squad and platoon leadership will be vital.  These are defining
  characteristics of the cavalry, and show why preserving it as an
  American military institution is so vital.  As we have seen in Somalia,
  even a humanitarian relief mission can turn
  suddenly into an armed conflict.  As we have seen in Bosnia, the lack of
  peacekeepers with overwhelming firepower and advanced technology can
  leave the most well-meaning intervention powerless to prevent genocide.
  A recurrent cycle in American history has been victory in war followed
  by such heedless and rapid disarmament that the next war has caught us
  unprepared.  In the late 1940s, the army that helped crush Hitler's
  Wehrmacht and was prepared to invade Japan against last-ditch kamika.,e
  resistance was gutted in the mistaken belief that it would not ever
  again be needed.  Only five years later, American troops (the ill-fated
  Task Force Smith') were routed by the forces of a fourth-rate
  power-North Korea.  Fortunately, we have always kept a few cavalry
  regiments on hand.  Having met some of today's cavalry troopers and seen
  what they can do, you may agree that our national investment in
  tomorrow's troopers is a wise investment indeed.  Armed forces are
  expensive.  Superbly trained and equipped armed forces like the 3rd ACR
  are verj@ expensive.  But the only thing more costly to a nation is not
  having them when you need them.
  TOMORROW'S I-ROOPEI@- - 293
  AAR After-Action Review.  A critical evaluation of participant per
  formance in an exercise or simulation.
  AH-1 Huey Cobra, U.S.  attack helicopter.
  AH-56 Cheyenne, cancelled U.S.  attack helicopter.  The predecessor of
  the Apache.
  AH-64 Apache, U.S.  attack helicopter.
  AHRS Attitude-Heading Reference System.  The primary navigation al
  system of the Apache attack helicopter.
  APC Armored Personnel Carrier.
  APFSDS Armor-Piercing, Fin-Stabilized, Discarding-Sabot round.  See
  Long-Rod Penetrator.
  
  AOBC Armor Officer Basic Course.  Located at Fort Knox, Kentucky.
  AT-# NATO designation system usually used to identify Soviet ATGMs.
  Unfortunately, some NATO weapons are also start ing to use this
  designation, which leads to great confusion.
  ATACMS Army Tactical Missile System.
  ATGM  Anti-Tank Guided Missile.
  BCS Battery Control System.
  BDU Battle Dress Uniform.  The new term for camouflage uniforms.
  Bill A Swedish heavyweight anti-tank missile that uses an angled
  shaped-charge warhead to attack a tank's top.  The name is
  derived from a medieval hooked-pole weapon, not the nick name for
  "William."
  Blazer The name given to Israeli first-generation explosive reactive
  armor.
  BMP-3 A Russian Infantry Fighting Vehicle.
  GLOSSARY a 295
  C31 Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence.
  Pronounced "See-Three-Eye."
  CENTCOM Central Command.  The unified command that was in charge of
  Operations Desert Shield/Storm/Saber.
  Ceramic Tank armor that incorporates a ceramic and composite layer
  Laminates or layers to improve the armor's resistance to shaped-charge
  rounds.
  Challenger I A 1980s-era British main battle tank.  First British tank
  to use the special Chobham armor.
  Challenger 11 The latest variant of the British Challenger series.
  Improvements include new armor, second-generation
  Chobham, a 120mm gun, and more sophisticated vehicle electronics.
  Chobham Armor A revolutionary type of armor, developed by the British
  Army research facility at Chobham, England, that uses standard
  
  RHA steel sections and a special ceramic composite layer in between.
  Chobham armor is very resistant to penetration by shaped-charge jets.
  CID Commander's Integrated Display.
  CINC Commander In Chief.
  CITV Commander's Independent Thermal Viewer.
  Combination The Soviet/Russian term for armor that uses layers of rolled
  Armor homogeneous steel and ceramic laminates.
  Comanche A new U.S.  scout/attack helicopter in development, the
  RAH-66.
  Copperhead Designed for use against tanks and point targets, the
  Copperhead is the artillery equivalent of a laser-guided bomb.
  CP Command Post.
  cs Tear Gas.
  DID The Driver's Integrated Display on the M IA2.
  Dragon An optically tracked, man-portable anti-tank missile.
  DU Depleted Uranium.  Natural uranium that has had most of the
  uranium-235 isotope removed.  Almost pure uranium-238.
  ECM Electronic CounterMeasures.
  EFP Explosively Formed Plate.  The EFP or flying plate uses, like
  the shaped charge, a high explosive to deform a metallic liner into a
  projectile.  Shaped-charge warheads use a conical shaped liner, whereas
  the EFP uses a shallow hemispherical dish.  When the explosive
  detonates, it deforms the dish into a solid slug.  The slug is propelled
  at speeds up to Mach 5.
  ERA Explosive Reactive Armor, An add-on armor system that
  uses high explosive sandwiched in between steel plates.  The explosive
  detonates upon impact from a shaped-charge jet or tong-rod penetrator.
  First-generation ERA was designed to reduce the effectiveness of a
  shaped- charge jet by breaking it up. Second-generation ERA provides
  improved performance against shaped-charge jets, but can also break
  long-rod pene trators. Once used, the ERA tile has to be replaced.
  
  FAADS Forward-Area Air-Defense System.  A Bradley variant that
  replaces the TOW launcher with four Stinger SAMS.
  FASCAM Field Artillery Containerized Anti-Tank Mine.
  FCEU Fire-Control Electronics Unit.
  FLIR Forward-Looking InfraRed.
  Fratricide Casualties caused by "friendly fire" or friendly units firing
  on each other.
  FV-432 Warrior A British Army infantry fighting vehicle.
  GCDP The Gunner's Control and Display Panel on the M IA2.
  GPS Global Positioning System.  A series of satellites that can
  accurately provide a unit's location (within several hundred feet of its
  true location).
  HE High Explosive.
  HEAT High-Explosive Anti-Tank.  See Shaped-Charge Warhead.
  Hellfire A U.S.  long-range, laser-guided anti-tank missile that is the
  main armament of many Western attack helicopters (AGM 114).
  Hellfire 11 The next-generation Hellfire missile which uses a millimeter
  wavelength radar seeker.  The Hellfire 11 is a "brilliant"
  weapon, because it can discriminate between the different
  types of targets with its advanced seeker.
  HETS Heavy-Equipment Transporter System.  A big tractor-trailer that can
  haul large vehicles including M I series tanks.
  HEU Hull Electronics Unit.
  GLOSSARY- 297
  HE-VT High-Explosive, Variable-Time fuse.
  HMMWV High-Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle.  The "Jeep" of the
  1980s/90s.
  HUD Heads-Up Display.
  IFV Infantry Fighting Vehicle.
  
  iViS Inter-Vehicular Information System.  The new computer net work that
  is installed in M IA2 MBTS.
  Javelin The first "fire and forget," shoulder-launched anti-tank guid ed
  missile to enter service anywhere in the world.  With
  Javelin, there are no wires since the missile has an advanced imaging
  infrared seeker which is locked on to the target before firing.
  J-STARS A reconnaissance aircraft, based on the Boeing 707 airframe
  (called an E-8), carrying a synthetic aperture radar to view ground
  targets from ranges of hundreds of miles.  Able to trans mit the
  information to divisional and corps ground stations.
  JTF Joint Task Force.
  Kiowa Warrior OH-58D scout attack helicopter.
  Leopardl A 1970s-era German main battle tank.
  Leopardll A 1980s-era German main battle tank.  Has the same offen sive
  capability of the M I series, but has a poorer armor pack age that
  doesn't use Chobham armor.
  Longhow A millimeter-wave radar, designed to see ground and air tar gets
  in any type of weather, day or night.  To be fitted on D model of the
  AH-64 Apache attack helicopter.
  Long-Rod The modern kinetic-energy round which resembles a
  1.5-to-2Penetrator foot (.46-to-.61-meter)-iong, 10-Ib (4.54-kg) metal
  dart.  These darts can achieve speeds up to Mach 4 when shot from a
  large-caliber tank gun.  The long-rod penetrator defeats a tank's armor
  by application of brute force to a very small area
  of the armor's surface.
  LZ Landing Zone.  An area designated for landing airborne
  (parachute) or airmobile (helicopter) troops.
  MI Abrams A 1980s-era U.S.  main battle tank.  Follow-on to the M60.
  First U.S.  tank to use the special Chobham armor.
  MlAl Improved M I tank with a better armor package and the incor
  poration of the Rheinmetall 120mm gun.
  298 0 ARMORED ('AV
  MlAl HA The Heavy Armor variant of the MI series.  This tank
  
  includes depleted uranium in the armor package to help
  improve the armor's effectiveness against long-rod kinetic energy
  penetrators.
  MIA2 The latest version of the M I series.  Includes all the improve
  ments in the M IA I HA plus new sensors and a more sophis ticated
  internal computer system.
  M2/M3 Bradley A 1980s-era U.S.  Infantry Fighting Vqhicle.
  M4 Sherman A 1940s-era U.S.  tank that saw considerable action in World
  War 11.  While it was not the technological equal of most
  German designs, it was a decent tank that won battles
  because the U.S.  could make a lot of them in comparison to the more
  complex German tanks.
  M26 Pershing A 1940s-era U.S.  tank.  Follow-on to the M4 Sherman.
  M48 Patton A 1950s-era U.S.   main battle tank.  First post-World War 11
  U.S.  heavy tank.
  M60 A 1960s-era U.S.  main battle tank.  Follow-on to the M48.
  M106 A mobile 81 mm mortar carried on an M 1 13 chassis.
  M109A6 Paladin 155mm Self-Propelled Howitzer.
  M113 A 1960s-era U.S.  armored personnel carrier.
  M125 A mobile 106mm mortar carried on an M 1 13 chassis.
  M270 The combined MLRS carrier/launcher vehicle.
  M577 A mobile command post based on an M 11 3 chassis with a
  raised roof and sides, and additional generators to power the numerous
  radios that are stored in racks inside the rear com partment.
  M901 M 1 13 chassis with an erectable two-round launcher and opti cal
  sight for TOW anti-tank missiles.
  M993 The chassis that carries the MLRS rocket packs.
  Maverick An air-launched U.S.  laser or infrared-guided, air-to-surface
  missile that can be used in an anti-tank role (AGM-65).
  
  MBT Main Battle Tank.
  MREs Meals Ready to Eat.  The C-rations of the 1980/90s.
  Sometimes humorously referred to as Meals Rejected by the
  Enemy/Everyone/ Ethiopia.
  Merkava A 1980s-era Israeli main battle tank.
  GLOSSARY.  299
  MFDs Multi-Function Displays.
  MILES Multiple Integrated Laser Exercise System.  MILES provides a
  "no-shoot" method to practice ground combat (and some air combat), while
  scoring and recording results.  MILES uses eye-safe lasers to simulate
  the firing of weapons and laser detectors to record "hits."
  MLRS Multiple-Launch Rocket System.  A stretched M2 Bradley
  hull with two six-cell rocket packs.
  mms Mast-Mounted Sight.  An optical sensor package on OH-58D
  Kiowa Warrior helicopters that includes a stabilized FLIR, a daylight
  television camera, as well as a laser range finder and designator.
  mos Military Occupational Specialty.  A designation system that
  identifies a soldier's specialized training.
  NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
  NBC Nuclear, Biological, Chemical.
  NCO Non-Commissioned Officer.
  NOTAR No-TAil Rotor.  A helicopter design that uses a forced air sys tem
  to counteract the torque placed on the helicopter from the main rotor.
  NTC National Training Center.  Located at Fort Irwin, California.
  NVG Night-Vision Goggles.
  OPFOR Opposing Forces.  The "bad guys" in a training exercise.
  Pave Low MH-53J Air Force special-operations helicopters for commu
  nications, navigational, and rescue support.
  PNVS Pilot Night-Vision Sensor.
  
  POW Prisoner Of War.
  RAM Radar-Absorbent Material.  One of the components of
  "stealth technology."  RAM absorbs and dissipates radar
  waves, rather than reflecting them back toward a detector.
  RCS Radar Cross-Section.  A measurement of how much radar
  energy an object reflects in a particular direction.
  RDF Radio Direction-Finding.
  REFORGER REturn of FORces to GERmany.  The annual NATO exer cise to test
  rapid Allied reinforcement of forces in Europe
  in anticipation of an all-out attack of Soviet forces into
  West Germany.
  Republican The elite Iraqi Army force, originally Saddam Hussein's Guard
  personal guard, later grew to over 100,000 troops.  These units were the
  best armed of the Iraqi Army and were consid ered to be the most
  dangerous by Coalition forces.
  RHA Rolled Homogeneous Armor.  A family of high-quality steel alloys,
  rolled to provide a uniform thickness as well as the best combination of
  strength and penetration resistance.  The
  material is uniformly hard throughout and it is the standard by which
  other armor types are evaluated.
  RIU Radio Interface Unit.
  ROE Rules Of Engagement.  Specific listed conditions under which U.S.
  military forces may fire on a hostile unit.
  RPG Rocket-Propelled Grenade.  A series of Soviet/Russian light weight,
  disposable anti-tank weapons.
  RPV Remotely Piloted Vehicles.  These are small, unmanned, remotely
  controlled reconnaissance drones.
  RWR Radar Warning Receiver.
  SA-# NATO designation system usually used to identify Soviet
  SAMS.
  
  SADARM Sense-And-Destroy Armor.  A special munition which can sense the
  presence of an armored vehicle or artillery piece and then attack it
  with EFP warheads.
  SAM Surface-to-Air Missile.
  SCUD A NATO nickname for an early-generation, unguided tactical
  ballistic missile.
  Shaped-Charge A shaped-charge warhead is a high-explosive charge packed
  Warhead around a cone-shaped metallic liner.  When detonated, the
  explosive charge causes the metal liner to collapse rapidly towards the
  center of the round.  The metal liner is heated and compressed by the
  energy of the explosion
  to form a jet with velocities as high as Mach 25.  The metal remains
  solid but behaves like a fluid because of the tremendous pressure.
  Virtually all ATGMs have a shaped-charge warhead.
  SINCGARS Slngle-Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System.  A fami ly of
  frequency-hopping FM radios that can use any of 2,320
  GLOSSARY n 301
  different frequencies between 30 and 87.975 MHz in the
  VHF band.
  Spall Parts or fragments of the tank's armor that are broken off and
  blasted into the interior by a hit from an anti-tank or artillery round.
  Spalling can occur even when the armor is not fully penetrated.
  SPH Self-Propelled Howitzer.
  ssm Surface-to-Surface Missile.
  Stinger A man-portable, infrared-guided surface-to-air missile.
  Stingers can also be fired from land vehicles or helicopters
  with modified launchers.
  T-64 A 1970s-era Soviet main battle tank that incorporated the first
  combination/ceramic laminate armor.  Follow-on to the more conventional
  T-62.
  T-72 A 1970s-era Soviet main battle tank that was designed to be a
  simpler version of the T-64 so that it could be mass-pro duced. Widely
  exported to the former Warsaw Pact and
  
  Soviet client states.
  T-80 A 1980s-era Soviet/Russian main battle tank.   This is the best
  tank in the Russian inventory today and is not far below the
  MIAI in performance.
  TACAN Tactical Navigational System.
  TACFIRE Tactical Fire-Direction Computer.  An Army artillery fire-con
  trol coordination system being replaced by the Advanced
  Field Artillery Tactical Data System.
  TACOM Tank and Automotive Command.  Located in Warren, Michigan.
  TADS Target-Acquisition Designation Sight.
  TCP Tactical Command Post.
  TGW Terminally Guided Warhead.  A new-generation smart muni tion which
  is expected to be ready for low-rate production by
  1996.  The TGW is a large anti-armor munition which uses a
  "smart" millimeter-wave radar seeker to search out tanks and other
  priority targets.
  TIS Thermal-Imaging Sight.
  TOC Tactical Operations Center.
  TOW Tube-launched, Optically tracked, Wire-guided missile.  A
  U.S.  heavyweight anti-tank missile which can be fired from either land
  or airborne platforms.  The latest version, TOW 2B, is a top-attack
  weapon with two angled warheads.  TRADOC U.S.  Army's Training and
  Doctrine Command, headquar tered at Fort Monroe, Virginia.
  UH-1 Huey, U.S.  utility/transport helicopter.
  UH-60A Blackhawk, U.S.  utility/transport helicopter.
  WP White Phosphorous.  A type of incendiary artillery shell.
  XM4 New U.S.  Mobile Command Post tracked vehicle.
  Replacement for the old M577 mobile command post.
  XM5 New U.S.  Electronic Fighting Vehicle.  This vehicle is designed to
  
  scan for enemy radios or radars, determine the bearing and possibly the
  location of the transmitter, and jam them if necessary.
  XM8 Armored Gun System.   A new lightweight tank, armed with a
  105mm gun, specifically designed for quick-reaction, light forces.
  ZSU-23-4 Soviet Shilka mobile air-defense gun.  Four radar-controlled
  23mm cannons on an armored chassis designed to provide close air defense
  to Soviet troop formations.
  ZU-23 Soviet twin 23mm automatic cannon on ground mount with optical
  sight.  Belt-fed, it can fire over 800 rounds per minute from each
  barrel out to an effective range of 2,500 meters.
  GI,OSSARY 303
  Introduction
  I Purists will refer to the 3rd ACR as the 3rd U.S.  Cavalry, probably
  harking back to the Civil War, when states raised regiments identified
  with their home juris dictions ( ]st Michigan, etc.).  Thus "U.S.
  Cavalry" denotes the Regular Army.  2 Since deactivated.
  There and Back Again: An Interview with General Fred Franks
  I Some people thought that was a bad idea, but a small group of
  visionaries kept the idea alive long enough to bring it to combat in
  1965.
  ù The Division-86 study, initiated by General Donn Starry in 1978 and
  imple mented during the 1980s, reorganized the Army's "heavy" armored
  and mechanized infantry divisions.  Armored divisions would have six
  tank and four infantry battalions, while mechanized divisions were to
  have five of each type.  It strengthened battalions to four companies,
  instead of three.  It added an attack helicopter brigade to each
  division, increased the size of the how itzer battery, and specified
  other changes to increase combat power.
  ù The Soviet 8th Guards Combined Arms Army consisted of three motor
  rifle divisions, one tank division, and supporting units of artillery,
  engineers, and attack helicopters.  It was one of nine Soviet armies in
  forward offensive posi tions along the former border between East and
  West Germany.
  ù REFORGER (REturn of FORces to GERmany) was a major NATO exercise in
  Europe.  This annual operation, a hallmark of the Cold War years,
  involved mass movements of personnel and equipment to Germany and other
  NATO
  
  nations.  It was designed to help all NATO forces simulate how they
  would have to rapidly build up and reinforce their forces as a prelude
  to war with the
  Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact.  While some of the reinforcing units
  would bring their heavy equipment via ship, most of the units would
  obtain their equipment from pre-positioned stocks in Europe.
  END NOTES - 305
  5 Plans and Staff Officer.
  6 A division is commanded by a major general (two stars).
  7 A corps is typically commanded by a lieutenant general (three stars).
  VII Corps was located mainly in the West German state of Bavaria.
  8 Saddam's Republican Guard consisted of eight divisions totaling about
  100,000 men.  These received the best available recruits, supplies,
  training, and equipment and were considered the most reliable element of
  the Iraqi
  Army.  During the war, four Republican Guard divisions were virtually
  destroyed.  Saddam kept the strongest and most loyal division in reserve
  around Baghdad, and it never saw action.
  ù GPS uses satellites and portable receivers.  These tell you where you
  are with extreme accuracy.
  10 "Force-oriented" means that Vil Corps' goal was the destruction of
  enemy units themselves, not capture of a geographic objective.
  I I Army tactical radios typically have ranges of 8 to 35 km (5 to 7, 2
  miles).  In flat terrain, relay stations or "repeaters" are usually
  positioned every 16 to 24 km ( 10 to 15 miles).
  12 As in football.
  13 Medina Ridge was the name American troops gave to a IOW rise, about 7
  miles long, in the Iraqi desert north of Kuwait, where the First Armored
  Division's Second ("Iron") Brigade destroyed a brigade of the Iraqi
  Republican Guard's Medina Division (sixty T-72 tanks and "dozens" of
  personnel carriers) in forty minutes on the aftef- noon of 27 February
  1991.
  14 FM 100-5 (June 1993) defines a hasty attack as one launched "with the
  forces at hand and with minimum preparatioin to destroy the erlemy
  before he is able either to concentrate or establish a defense."  SucP
  
  an attack 11 enhances agility at the risk of losing synchronization."
  Hasty air tack is con trasted with deliberate attack, which takes more
  time to prepare.
  15 FM 100-5 defines piirsiiit as "an offensive operation against a
  retreating enemy force."  Eyploitation is the follow-up to a successful
  attack.  "Explc)itations and pursuits test the audacity of soldiers and
  leaders alike.  Both of t bese operations risk disorganizing the
  attacker nearly as much as the defendc
  16 Double envelopment is a simultaneous maneuver against both flanks of
  an enemy position.  It was first used by Hannibal to crush the Roman
  army at Cannae in 216 BC, and has traditionally been regarded as the
  ultimate expression of generaiship.
  Honing the Razor's Edge
  I A linear sheaf is a particular type of artillery impact pattern.
  A Cavalry Officer's Life
  I Captain McMaster's troop used color code names.  Red for I st Platoon,
  White for 2nd Platoon, Blue for 3rd Platoon, Green for 4th Platoon, and
  Black for the Troop Command Element.  Captain McMaster's tank call sign
  was Black-66.
  Roles and Missions:
  The ACR in the Real World
  I An extended-range version of the Soviet SCUD, the Nodong ballistic
  missile has a range of 1,000 km (620 miles) with a 1,000-kg
  (2,200-pound) warhead.
  With an accuracy ("Circular Error Probable") of perhaps 500 meters
  (1,640 feet), it threatens all of South Korea and many of the cities in
  Japan, China, and Siberian Russia.
  ù Note that all times are given in terms of Seoul's time zone, which is
  fourteen hours ahead of Washington, D.C., and nine hours ahead of
  Greenwich
  Mean Time (GMT), which the U.S.  Army likes to use for reference world
  wide and for some obscure reason calls "Zulu" time.  When it is 7:00 AM
  in
  Washington, it is 9:00 PM in Seoul, and 1200 Zulu.
  ù The U.S.  Eighth Army includes all Army forces in Korea and
  Japan-totaling
  
  25,000 troops in 1997.  Eighth Army Headquarters in Korea is commanded
  by a four-star general who is also nominal Supreme Commander of all
  United Nations forces on the peninsula.  In practice this means he
  coordi nates planning, logistics, intelligence, and operations with the
  South Korean military command structure.
  ù Pacific Command (PACOM) in Honolulu, Hawaii, is commanded by a four
  star Navy admiral and has operated control over virtually all U.S.
  forces in the Pacific region, including Eighth Army in Korea.
  ù Weighing 40,000 to 45,000 tons at full load, these huge, boxy cargo
  ships are loaded with military equipment, maintained on long-term lease
  in
  END NOTES n 307
  secure harbors near potential trouble spots, and operated by mixed
  Navy/contractor crews.  A typical MPS can carry 522 standard 20-foot
  vans
  (350 ammunition drums, and thirty-two refrigerated) plus
  roll-on/roll-off parking space for I 10 general supplies, thirty with
  fuel up to 1,400
  HMMNW-sized vehicles and 1,500,000 gallons (5,764 cubic meters) of bulk
  fuel that can be off-loaded.  The diesel-powered ships can make 17
  knots/31.5kph.  These should not be confused with the speedier SL-7 fast
  transports.
  6 The 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment is normally assigned to the Ill Corps
  in Texas.  Under the Robust Screen contingency plan described here, it
  would be transferred, with all of its attachments, to the operational
  control of the lieutenant general (three stars) commanding IX Corps in
  Korea.
  7 Manned by small civilian crews, they proved their worth in 1990 and
  during operation Desert Shield.  Just seven of these ships carried I I %
  of all the U.S.  cargo transported to the Persian Gulf ( the other 89%
  came most ly by slower chartered transport ships, with only the most
  urgent cargo ai.r lifted at great cost).
  8 Ist MEF included three infantry brigades, squadrons of attack and
  trans port helicopters, some light armor battalions, and an air wing
  with squadrons of F-18 Hornets and AV-8 B Harriers.
  
  9 Time references are given in terms of Uganda local time, which is
  three hours ahead of GMT, and eight hours ahead of Washington.
  Tomorrow's Troopers
  1 Task Force Smith was a detachment of the I st Battalion of the 21 st
  Infantry
  Regiment, reinforced with a field artillery battery.  It was rushed to
  Korea shortly after the North Korean Army launched its invasion of the
  South on
  June 25, 1950.  On July 5, lacking effective anti-tank weapons, the
  ill-trained and poorly led task force was overrun and destroyed near
  Osan.  In
  American military history it has become a symbolic object lesson of how
  not to train, equip, and commit troops to battle.
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SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Vault2.0.-.Fiction-and-audiobooks/Books/C/Clancy, Tom/1994 - Tom Clancy - Armored Cav.pdf