-- one worm at a time.
John e-mailed me Saturday, probably to see if senile dementia had claimed me (in addition to the usual dementia), and asked me for some thoughts on the story-cum-video of the recent Apache shootdown. So, in order for the rest of this to make sense, go downstream to the 10th and read this, including the comments, 'cuz Dusty chimed in (Comment Hat Trick!) with a couple of questions, too.
John replied to one of them,
Bottom line: someone other than the BillTs of this world and their tactical descendants in ARCENT have gotta wake up and smell the coffee.
A couple of comments later, after a rather disparaging remark about the general state of inertia at Galactic Level (i.e., where the stars dwell), I added the cryptic comment
That said, I did an end run at Line Pilot level back in 2001, but it's been slow filtering out -- more on that later...
Later's finally arrived.
Background Info: Inertia at "Echelons Above" does not necessarily equate to business as usual at Line Level (where I lived for thirty-seven years). When the Bad Guy pops up with a new weapon (or a new means of using an old one) to counter one of our weapons, or to counter our tactics in using that weapon, we put our heads together to come up with a counter-tactic to counter his counter. Why a tactics solution? Simple -- you can implement a tactic immediately, rather than waiting twenty years for the announcement of a requirement for a new item of equipment, initiating the bidding process, etc., etc., etc.
Example: when the NVA succeeded in emplacing a couple of 37mm radar-directed AA guns they dragged into our AO in 1970, a couple of our guys got the surprise of their lives one morning when the friendly skies fifteen-hundred feet over the western Delta suddenly erupted with grey-brown-black flak puffs.
We'd been hearing zeep! noises over the FM channels for a few weeks, which told us that there was a radar set in the area, but we'd figured it was the side lobe from one of our ground surveillance sites on one of the Seven Sisters mountain cluster. What our guys heard that morning was the search zeep! followed immediately by the tracking zeeeeeeeep! and several high-explosive interlopers at their altitude. If they'd opted to wait for the Army to decide that there was now a requirement for an aircraft-mounted radar jammer -- wellll, you get the picture. The tactics solution was to vacate that altitude for treetop-level posthaste (thus nullifying the gunners' fuze setting) and simultaneously yank into a 90-degree turn left or right of the original flight path to break the radar lock for the several seconds it took to dive fifteen-hundred feet. Worked every time we tried it. We eventually rendered the guns inoperative by the simple expedient of rendering the gunners inoperative...
Of course, the reason we flew at fifteen-hundred feet in the first place was to get above small arms fire. Flying lower got us out of the 37mm envelope, but plunked us smack-dab into the small arms/RPG/punji stake/thrown rock envelope. The tactical solution for *that* was flying just above the weeds, hopping over dikes and treelines, jinking and bobbing at 120 knots, which was about twice as fast as doctrine said we should be flying at that height (if I called dragging the skids through rice plants "flying at altitude," Dusty'd be laughing so hard, Murray would hear him...)
Cut to September 2001. A young CW2 Scout Pilot who was soon to be departing Boz had just finished venting to an old CW4 Scout/Gun/Utility Pilot who had just finished arriving.
"My IP says that if we go into combat with the tactics they want us to use, we're gonna get creamed. He says that you Vietnam guys learned how to survive everything they threw at you, but they won't teach those tricks at Rucker -- nobody wrote them down and nobody remembers them..."
"Wanna bet?"
"You remember them?"
"Yup. I also wrote most of them into the battalion BattleBook in '98. Could you use a copy?"
Long story short, he got both hard copy and digits. About twenty-five pages worth, not including glossary, index and cover. His IP loved it. His Boss loved it.
They changed the cover and the headers and forwarded copies to the rest of the Brigade. In 2004, one of my fixed-wing buds told me he'd seen a dog-eared copy in Khandahar.
It's been slow filtering out, but it's out there and spreading. Wonder if Rucker will ever start teach --
Nah...
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