Kandahar Province: catch all thread

[patmc]

My platoon provided convoy security in northern Iraq, and we usually travelled at night in an attempt to give the Iraqis better use of the roads during the day. Our convoys travelled with white lights, since it was pretty clear to the enemy which of the 20-25 veh convoy were US guntrucks, and which were TCN cargo trucks. It also let us spot IEDs. We always had NVG's in our vehicles though, but only used them during security halts when we cut our lights.

I find it hard to believe that any US unit in CENTCOM AO would not have NVG's. If they don't, their commander and S4 need to get to work. If they chose not to bring them, the leadership accepted too much risk. Its always better to have something and not use it. I even kept the NBC pro-suit in my bag in the trunk, knowing the .0001% chance I would need it, it was there.

[davidbfpo]

Thank you all for the explanations for driving at night - as described here - and the other comments for my armchair understanding.

davidbfpo

[ODB]

First let me say this is my opinion based on this side of the story, the author's perspective.

All the things that stand out in my mind come down to two things training and discipline or if you want to call it what it is "leadership". The first red flag in mind is the driver apologizing ahead of time for having never driven the vehicle before. There is absolutely no reason he should not have drive the vehicle before and the first time he does is in a combat situation, way to go leadership. Another red flag is soldiers standig in the head light beams. Absolutely nothing wrong with utilizing white lights but you'd never catch me standing in the head lights. Hey bad guys here I am, look at me. Absolutely many soldiers and units are horrendous when it comes to fire control and fire discipline. This goes back to many of my rants in other posts in how we do not train this enough. POSH training, safety training, and mandatory screenings take priority in todays Army, even during a time of war. I won't touch the NVD issue because too many uknowns and who knows if they weren't using them or if they didn't have them, or if some used them and some didn't.

Just a few things that stuck out to me.

Just somethings that struck me

[Uboat509]

In fairness to the unit I don't know when this event took place but I do know that certain vehicles were hard to come by for the purposes of training, particularly for the ARNG. There just weren't enough of them to go around and most of those were in theater. A few were available for RA training but not many and a suspect that it would have been hard for those ARNG units to get them. That in no way excuses some of the other jackassery that apparently transpired.

Ken Said

Yes, NVG are a pain but they have great value, however, one can operate at night without NVGs, many forces have done that for thousands of years and those that did / do it well train to do so (even if you have NVG; what happens if you're out long enough to run out of batteries...), it's not difficult and one can see at night.

I did not mean to imply that NVGs were not valuable or that this unit did not need to be employing them. I was only offering a possible reason why they were apparently not using them.

SFC W

[Ken White]

...I did not mean to imply that NVGs were not valuable or that this unit did not need to be employing them. I was only offering a possible reason why they were apparently not using them. SFC W

just amplifying on what you and Schmedlap said and reminding some that one can also operate at night without NVG -- but you gotta train to do that...