Comments for Train as you fight. Fight as you train.

Train as you fight. Fight as you train.

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 07:24:04 -0600

So, there I am, visiting Bill and Bob's Excellent Afghan Adventure when I'm hit with a reverie bat. A reverie bat is like a cluebat - it provides sudden flashes of insight, but hurts less. Memories of the Army in the 70's, training in the 80's, Desert Shield and Storm in the 90's, and... the present. In this case, Afghanistan. This picture is what knocks all those disjointed memories out of the nooks and crannies... the banner Old Blue uses for the blog - of an Afghan BMP and M113. It's the markings on the vehicles that cause the cascade. Circle Trigon Party. Aggressor Armed Forces. Train as you fight. Why are the French on that flank? Heh.

Comment from BillT on 2009-02-12

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 03:52:22 -0600

If you know Spanglish, you can read Esperanto, Josh.

Comment from Josh on 2009-02-12

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 01:22:35 -0600

Sh1fty - I added it to my Amazon shopping list, thanks.

BillT - So did you all have to learn to read Esperanto?

Comment from BillT on 2009-02-12

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 00:36:06 -0600

I know two of the US pilots originally trained *here* back in the DreamTime to fly the Mi-8 and Mi-17 and another one who's just an Mi-24 guy. The engines got swapped out at 300 hours and went to the recycle bin to get turned into soda cans.

I still have my Green Trigon ID card and my "paybook" stashed in a drawer at home -- and yeah, everything's in Esperanto.

Comment from Sh1fty on 2009-02-11

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 22:17:27 -0600

I just finished Red Eagles: America's Secret MiGs by Steve Davies, which gives a good account of how hard it was to keep just a handful of MiG-17s, -21s, & -23s operational, and to train people to fly them. Good read.

http://www.amazon.com/Red-Eagles-Americas-General-Aviation/dp/1846033780

Comment from Consul-At-Arms on 2009-02-11

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 09:04:58 -0600

I've quoted you and linked to you here.

Comment from Old Blue on 2009-02-10

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 21:16:17 -0600

The banner picture looks at home on your site, John. It's an honor to have the reference.

Afghanistan is like Alice's Restaurant when it comes to hardware. It will probably be Pakistani, but it will work in a pinch. You just need to know where to find it. My terp found cell phone chargers with clips to hook directly to a 12 volt car battery in the bazaar in a small town. Plus, I'm sure we provided them with tool kits for the 113's. The Afghan drivers were actually pretty interested in their vehicles. They keep the old Russian dogs running. I've got some video of them firing the gun on the BMP.

It freaked me out to see the Daschka on the 113, though. They Afghans were very proud of that gun. Very simple, very hard to mess up. Big, powerful cartridge. Not what you are used to seeing on a 113. Seeing the two vehicles in the same livery in a war was bizarre.

Comment from Oldloadr on 2009-02-10

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 15:47:14 -0600

Of course we did...;)

Comment from John of Argghhh! on 2009-02-10

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 15:01:38 -0600

Snerk! I told ya the aviation types would take it over...

Comment from Attila of Argghhh! on 2009-02-10

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 14:01:54 -0600

Actually, when they first showed up at Langley for their inaugural visit to the States after the Wall fell, an AN-124 was in tow, stuffed to the gunwales with spare engines. The Russians told us they swapped them out at 60 (yeah, six-zero) hours. And you're right J.T....they don't do "maintenance" on engines, they just replace them, or did.

When I got to war college, one of the profs did his PhD dissertation on Soviet industrial techniques. The use-and-toss attitude, he believed, came from the experiences of WW II. No time to do any of that refurb nonsense; just spit another one out from the East-of-the-Urals assembly lines and GET TO BERLIN! That approach STILL hadn't gone away as late as the early 80s.

Comment from J.T. Wenting on 2009-02-10

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 12:43:18 -0600

As to MiG-29 engines, they're rated at 500 hours.
That's not 500 hours between overhaul, it's 500 hours until they're ready for the scrapheap.

Comment from J.T. Wenting on 2009-02-10

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 12:40:42 -0600

with SO many airframes flowing out of Russia for the past 50 years, why is it that we're still flying F-5s as OPFOR when we could be using the real deal?

The number is actually rather low, and then there's the problem with spare parts.
OPFOR army forces usually use(d?) standard equipment fitted with plywood or fiberglass panels to make them look more like WarPac hardware.
Some helicopters were similarly modified to look like WarPac choppers.
With high performance aircraft this is not an option.

As an alternative the Navy leased several IAI KFirs from Israel, to give the flyboys something to fight against that didn't look and fly as much like a Phantom or Tomcat.
The F-5E was chosen because of its similarity in size, speed, and agility to the MiG-21. When engaging at near-BVR ranges it suffices quite well. When closer in, the speeds are far higher than they are for most land engagements, and identity is more readily established by behaviour than looks alone.

Comment from Oldloadr on 2009-02-10

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 11:53:16 -0600

Besides the engines (which I'm sure drive it) the MC rate for soviet designed/built airframes is dismal. When the Luftwaffe inherited MIG-29s from the fall of the wall they discovered that it was a struggle to make 30% MC rate, even as they were keepig their aging F-4Fs at 70+%. That's not good enough when you spend a lot of money to set up a scenario at REd Flag, Green Flag, etc...

Comment from John of Argghhh! on 2009-02-10

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 11:39:27 -0600

I dunno. Mebbe some of our Afghan vets can chime in.

I do know that every tool set I've bought in the last decade has had both metric and imperial tools in it.

Which, of course, has nothing to do with anything military.

Comment from fishmugger on 2009-02-10

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 11:34:34 -0600

Hey John,

RE: the picture of the BMP and M-113. Do the Afghans carry two sets of tools to fix and or repair their equipment? They would need metric to work on the former Russian stuff and Craftmans to work on our old stuff. Is Sears in the area? It just popped into my head.

I think I need a nap.

Comment from Casey on 2009-02-10

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 10:12:24 -0600

Josh sez

Haha okay...so here's what I wanna know...with SO many airframes flowing out of Russia for the past 50 years, why is it that we're still flying F-5s as OPFOR when we could be using the real deal?

Spare parts. ;)

Well, that, and there weren't that many airframes "flowing" out until after the fall of the USSR. Even then, many former Warsaw Pact countries (as John points out above) still used those aircraft in front-line units.

Not to mention Russian/Soviet engines suck rocks. Power plants have been a usually-unappreciated advantage for the West since the beginning of the 20th century.

And the avionics are primitive, and would need replacement so that the pilots could interface with our networks.

So we have: relative paucity of airframes, crappy engines, and dissimilar avionics. Oh, and no spare parts.

It's probably cheaper to use the F-5s, although I thought the A-4s were a great idea.

Comment from John of Argghhh! on 2009-02-10

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 09:33:24 -0600

Heh. Well, I admit I didn't want to spend another hour or so on the post, DJ. Ya caught me. Sigh. The memory comes from discussions I had at the Command and General Staff College, oddly enough.

Josh - those markings are the proper markings for the Afghan Army, and,if wikipedia is to be believed, actually date back, intermittently, to the 1880's.

Heh. I found my notes. It was the Saudis between 2AD and the Marines and Brits between the Arabs and 1st ID.. You're correct, DJ, an error in memory. Nice thing about the Internet - I can fix it.

Comment from Josh on 2009-02-10

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 09:16:01 -0600

The French were the far left screen with none of the arab forces near them.
The UK 1st Armored Div was closest to them,

I'm surprised the Brits weren't the ones with itchy trigger fingers...I know I would be, in their position...

Comment from Josh on 2009-02-10

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 09:12:06 -0600

The only thing I don't understand...why are the Afghans painting the Circle Trigon mark on their armor? Did we throw old equipment at them so they would have something to drive, and didn't bother painting over the marks? Or did we get it from them to use as OPFOR? Or is it just a coincidence and they painted it on their because it means something different to them?

No doubt some one will now fill the comment section with "Me too!" stuff about the Air Force and Navy Aggressor programs...

Haha okay...so here's what I wanna know...with SO many airframes flowing out of Russia for the past 50 years, why is it that we're still flying F-5s as OPFOR when we could be using the real deal?

Comment from DJ Elliott on 2009-02-10

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 08:57:59 -0600

You have an error in memory.
The French were on the left flank of XVIII Corps
which was to the left of VII Corps
which was on the left of the Egyptian-Syrian Corps
(tri-border was the boundary between them and US).
1st Cav Div was the Div to the left of the Soviet equipped units.
I MEF was to the right of them in the pocket.
US/British/French equipped Arab units had the streach from I MEF to the sea.

The French were the far left screen with none of the arab forces near them.
The UK 1st Armored Div was closest to them,
it was just to the left of 1st Cav Div.