Given Flintlock's comments on the "More focus, people!" post yesterday, I offer up this picture of things you might see driving down the highway in various parts of the country. For most of us, the sight of military vehicles on the road in the US is a curiosity. Unlike Germany at the height of the Cold War, it's been a long time since people in the US have seen literally divsions of soldiers and vehicles on the roads and in the towns (the Louisiana Maneuvers in 1941), much less divisions of foreign soldiers (the Civil War for the South, War of 1812 for the North).
This scarcity of contact, given our internet-fed, 24 hour news cycle politics, makes for interesting reactions. For some, when it's "their guy" in office, they derive a sense of satisfaction. When the "other peoples guy" (or gal, eventually) is in office... the same vehicle (and, I would point out, same occupants) take on a sinister pallor.
Of course, the black helicopter crowd views them all with fear and loathing all the time. They're at least logically consistent...
The thing is, intent matters, and how we view things is filtered through a lot more data than just the simple matter of the presence or non-presence of an item.
Just as if most of you were to see me coming down the street with a rifle, you're going to figure I've got a new toy to show off. Someone who doesn't know me, seeing that exact same walk... wonders "What the hell is that guy doing walking down the street with a rifle?"
Do that where I live, and as long as you don't look directly threatening, no big deal. Do the same thing in downtown Kansas City, you're going to have lots of uniformed company, who also happen to be armed, and probably at that point, far more dangerous to you than you were ever going to be to anyone else. Context matters. But it helps to remember that consciously or subconsciously, *you* provide some of that context yourself.
Two U.S. Army soldiers walk their vehicle through the muddy paths of Forward Operating Base Airborne south of Kabul, Afghanistan, March 6, 2009. The soldiers, assigned to the 10th Mountain Division's 3rd Brigade Combat Team and part of Task Force Spartan, took control of the base last month. DoD photo by Fred W. Baker III
Okay, enough of a lecture. Let's also tidy up a loose end from yesterday... Josh got all excited when he saw there was a minigun mounted on the patrol boat - and then wanted to know why I didn't have any pictures of the minigun firing. So, long-time reader and Coast Guard father Larry and I teamed up to give Josh what he wanted, sorta -
So, Josh, here's a close-up of that minigun...
And, of course - the You Tube of the boats in action...
This scarcity of contact, given our internet-fed, 24 hour news cycle politics, makes for interesting reactions. For some, when it's "their guy" in office, they derive a sense of satisfaction. When the "other peoples guy" (or gal, eventually) is in office... the same vehicle (and, I would point out, same occupants) take on a sinister pallor.
Of course, the black helicopter crowd views them all with fear and loathing all the time. They're at least logically consistent...
The thing is, intent matters, and how we view things is filtered through a lot more data than just the simple matter of the presence or non-presence of an item.
Just as if most of you were to see me coming down the street with a rifle, you're going to figure I've got a new toy to show off. Someone who doesn't know me, seeing that exact same walk... wonders "What the hell is that guy doing walking down the street with a rifle?"
Do that where I live, and as long as you don't look directly threatening, no big deal. Do the same thing in downtown Kansas City, you're going to have lots of uniformed company, who also happen to be armed, and probably at that point, far more dangerous to you than you were ever going to be to anyone else. Context matters. But it helps to remember that consciously or subconsciously, *you* provide some of that context yourself.
Two U.S. Army soldiers walk their vehicle through the muddy paths of Forward Operating Base Airborne south of Kabul, Afghanistan, March 6, 2009. The soldiers, assigned to the 10th Mountain Division's 3rd Brigade Combat Team and part of Task Force Spartan, took control of the base last month. DoD photo by Fred W. Baker III
Okay, enough of a lecture. Let's also tidy up a loose end from yesterday... Josh got all excited when he saw there was a minigun mounted on the patrol boat - and then wanted to know why I didn't have any pictures of the minigun firing. So, long-time reader and Coast Guard father Larry and I teamed up to give Josh what he wanted, sorta -
So, Josh, here's a close-up of that minigun...
And, of course - the You Tube of the boats in action...
I have been in several as part of my duties as a National Guard Mechanic, and they will accept a 6'4", 260 lb carcass with little to no fuss. The turrent and seats are designed to take a variety of sizes and shapes, as evidenced by the fact that a 5'3", 130 lb mechanic also fit into it and had no problem reaching all the bells and whistles. She also wanted to take it out and try to do donuts in the parking lot, but we were shot down quite quickly on that matter, I am afraid to say.
I don't think I've ever seen a military vehicle on the road. oh wait i think I saw a truck when headign to Mildura. No soldiers a marching or even walking regular though. I think I saw some foreign sailors in town once. At least I hope they were foreign, I'd be mortified looking like that and they don't look like the pictures on the official site.
Personally, coming from a city that was a major joint services base and also had at least 30 military multi-service schools, I seriously miss men in uniform in the streets of our cities/towns... Having lived in the State for many years now, however, I began to have an American reaction to the military vehicle convoys in the streets...
They're so cute, like little baby GAU-8s, every one of them *tear*
I remember reading once about a .22LR minigun, and how even in THAT tiny (and cheap-as-water) caliber, it was prohibitively expensive to fire. Just imagine, if they ever surplused them to civilians, how expensive it would be to fire 30x173mm at 4200 rounds per minute!
I've read that he has a twin AA gun in his collection and absolutely delights in piling the brass up over his ankles (and who wouldn't?)
Not too uncommon to see a convoy transporting - mosty trucks and trailers with a 'free' vehicle or two but I can't recall the last time I saw anything that looked like a unit moving itself around.
The problem with that system was that it turned out that a lot of that hardware was NOT getting necessary preventive maintenance as it sat in the unit armories. And driving it back and forth to the training sites in 45-mph convoys was expensive both in terms of money and of time. So now MOST of the Guard and Reserve keep most of their equipment at regional facilities referred to by designations such as Equipment Concentration Sites, (ECS,) or Mobilizationa And Training Equipment Sites (MATES.) These are usually located on a military installaition, and have a small corps of civilians who are paid to do the necessary maintenance. Marrying the soldiers up with their equipment is now a matter of getting them on a bus and driving them to their assigned storage site and drawing their hardware. And in the meantime, the equipment can be issued on a temporary basis to ANY unit which needs it for training at the installation where the site is.
So we now see a lot fewer military convoys on the road. any more.
And they're doing it with far larger, heavier units, too, as I've alluded to with all those german Panzers at Fort Bliss.
Which gives rise to the interesting visual here in Leavenworth, which has a Union Pacific trunk line running through it - of seeing trains of Canadian military kit going north and south through town.
Kinda fun to a vehicle junkie like me.
Farkin' kill-joys... *sigh*
2. Ever driven through a radar trap in a Cougar?
3. Leopards in Texas: http://www.strathconas.ca/images/csqn/20feb09/P1200304.gif
Cheers
Now the that the D's out though.. she may have a slap comin' to her.
Indeed it is!
2. Ever driven through a radar trap in a Cougar?
According to the internet, the Abrams can be pushed to 42 mph...if you blasted through a 30 mph speed trap at 42, do you think they'd have the balls to pull over an MBT?
Speaking of Camp Clark and artillery they had an artillery unit there a year or two ago that was training but they didn't fire anything. Of course since Camp Clark is only one mile by two miles it's kind of small for that kind of thing. I just thought it was strange they didn't do that at some bigger base.
It was a freeway with a speed limit of c.67 mph.
Cheers