Gear / TTP List

[Ender]

Aside from the speed issue I think the list concept is a good one and agree with everything there and would even add a couple items:

• Shovels. Make sure every truck has one. A good one. I know this is more of a 4 shop request than a rucksack item but its importance can not be overstated. People ask me here in the States how Iraq was and I tell them 99 days out of 100 over there are spent with a shovel and that it is the one day in 100 they hear about here. They think I am highlighting the disparity in number of humanitarian missions compared to "martial machine gunning" missions and while they are mostly correct they too often don't realize I am being literal as well. In Iraq, as many of you know, it is impossible to go 1000 meters without tripping over a cache of some magnitude. Once your patrol has found the mobile AA piece (you weren't looking for) buried in the cemetery (for example) your ass is not leaving until it is recovered and if you were headed for one of AMZ's lieutenants, that is ok... someone else can do the hit... My point is with everything that is buried over there and the conditions of the roads everywhere it is very nice to have the means to dig quickly, comfortably and with some minimal expectation of effectiveness.
• Spray Paint. Lots of it. We stocked up on browns, greys, blacks and greens (of all shades) before we left specifically so we could modify our hides, equipment and weapons... it is very difficult to insert a sniper team and leave them anywhere for any length of time (because of the nature of local foot traffic) unless you have "pre fabbed" the bulk of their "hide" before hand. With the ghillie material, the right vegetation and a conservative amount of paint in the right mixes you can blend your hides without having to pick up a specific soil, building sample from your intended OP before hand to make sure they match. Without these materials expect to have your teams compromised within 8-12 hours of insert(if not much sooner...say like by daylight)... bottom line if you expect to insert anyone covertly and have them stay concealed you are going to have to do a considerable amount of prep work before leaving the LOD. Paint is fast and effective...and in combination with other concealment methods works quite nicely. (As an aside to paint re: hides etc... it is also helpful to be able to put a fresh [or old?] look on something in a hurry... cars, buildings, windows, walls etc...if you play off of what they are USED to seeing it is easier to trick "their" eyes.)
• Ditto on the NOD's... in fact EVERYTHING should go out with you every time. Frago's happen and there is no excuse for we don't have item 'X' because this wasn't supposed to be mission 'Y.'
• Cameras. We sent everyone who had one and wanted to out with their own personal cameras. No two people would have the same perspective on the same patrol and if Private So and So can back up his gut feeling (good bad or indifferent) to his Platoon Commander, about Mahmoud Such and Such and do so with color pictures it carries considerably more weight than trying to get the same 18 year old to articulate his complex (and often correct) instincts verbally. With the SIDS system now this goes a step further where E-2 So and So's snapshot can be relayed back to the FOB and used for immediate decision making. An example of this that I saw came from a Lance in my platoon. This kid took pictures of a group of MAM's earlier in a patrol.... hours later this same kid took pictures of another group of MAMs and noticed that one of the guys was the same in both groups...except for he had dramatically altered his clothing and general appearance. The Lance was able to take his digital camera and show it to our Gunny who then proceeded to look for, find and search the guy's vehicle. That camera enabled us to take a few RPK's and an RPG off the street of Fallujah before Al Fajr and highlighted just how effective good observation skills can be. If this E-3 hadn't had the picture to back up just HOW altered this guy's appearance was it is POSSIBLE that the platoon leadership may have mentally made an excuse for him (maybe he played soccer and showered, or is heading to prayers etc...) and let the guy slide. We had issues initially with the 2 not wanting to take pics from personal cameras but a JPEG is a JPEG and they weren't going to refuse hot photos with the proper format simply because they came from a camera that wasn't serialized. I guess more accurately, we were going to take the photos no matter what and if they wanted to use them they would have to deal with where they came from. On any given (5 hour to 5 day) patrol we would have 15 personal cameras on board in addition to the hot mega jobs we were issued. By the end of our deployments all of our debriefs would have 5 or so separate (fully edited, "azimuthed" and annotated) photo logs that would together provide a VERY comprehensive picture of what went down.