This guy’s clearly wearing MultiCam and has all the high-speed identifiers that a US trooper would wear. I can’t seem to find a high-rez version of this photo, which itself is a mystery, but given the story that surrounds the photo and context of that area of Afghanistan, I’m leaning heavily toward an adoption by at least some groups of French military (their version of the PJs) of MulitCam uniforms.
In this photo released by the French Army, Nato French soldiers evacuate wounded from Tagab, Afghanistan, Monday Nov. 16, 2009. Insurgents fired two rockets Monday into a crowded market northeast of Kabul where the head of French forces in Afghanistan held a meeting with tribal elders. The attack killed at least twelve and wounded 20 other people, the French military said. (AP / HO / ADC Jean-Charles Thorel)
The only thing that makes me pause, is that I reported a while back that USAF PJs were wearing MultiCam combat uniforms in the AO. This guy could be a PJ but I can’t see enough of the helo and am skeptical that an AF bubba would be sporting Rock Star hair and a hillbilly beard. Wouldn’t look too good with the rest of his pals at the Bagram Links.
So help me with this dear readers…who is this guy?
Warning folks, this will get your blood boiling. And you talk about a flashback to 1986…
An alert DT reader tipped me off to this video reportedly taken by Taliban insurgents before and during the assault on Wanat. Looking at it makes you wonder how the US base wasn’t totally overrun given the insurgents’ commanding attack position and the interlocking fields of fire.
These were clearly tactically savvy, well disciplined militants who’d done their homework. My question is how were they even allowed to setup on the outpost in the first place? Where’s the overwatch? Where are the patrols?
On another note, I have been pushing to get the Ganjgal report from ISAF and just received word that the investigation isn’t complete. I’ll keep on it, but if anyone has better intel on that please use the “SEND IT” button to the left…
Bet you all didn’t realize I was an expert on everything from the F-22 to Military Working Dogs, huh?
Well, Fox News sniffed me out and threw me a bone this morning on the story of that precocious pooch Sabi– the Aussie EOD dog that went on a 14 month Walkabout in Uruzgan.
They should clearly keep me on a much tighter leash at Military.com.
In case you all haven’t seen it, we have a proof of life that the Osprey has indeed landed in Helmand (though I can’t tell if 10 have actually landed — or maybe it’s shot on the same set as the American moon landing was staged…?)
I did notice that the Remote Guardian system is not installed at least on the ones you can see in the footage. I can’t get the Marine Corps to cough up a straight answer on what the status is of that system they said would be capable for the Afghanistan deployment.
Best line: “It’s kind of like going from a VW bus to a Maserati…”
As someone who owned a Westy for a while, I can definitely relate.
I’m sure we’ll soon have more operational footage from the deployment, and when we come across it, it’ll be here.
I’m set to post a new story on Military.com with exclusive details on which units have received the two different camo patterned uniforms the Army is experimenting with in Afghanistan.
Defense Tech is the first site to reveal this information, which comes from a quick interview this morning with PEO Soldier’s Col. Bill Cole.
According to Cole, the 3rd Squadron of the 61st Cavalry Regiment has already been issued the UCP-Delta duds, including a new chest rig developed for Natick and patterned in the UCP-D. And if you’re one of the lucky Joes in the 2nd Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment, you’ll be getting a whole ensemble of the U.S. military’s most popular camo pattern: MultiCam.
Cole said the service used rapid equipping force funds to purchase plate carriers in MultiCam and each Soldier will be issued molle gear patterned in Crye’s colors.
Both battalions operate in Afghanistan’s eastern Kunar province.
You can read more details this afternoon on Military.com, but I thought I’d go ahead and spill the beans here for our faithful followers.
(Picture is of a Soldier from the 3rd Squadron, 61st Cavalry Regiment…notice the MultiCam Camelbak)
Well, it looks as if the Marine Corps sent over the first contingent of MV-22s to Afghanistan last week, and as we suspected, the Corps decided to fly VMM-263’s birds off the Bataan, through Pakistan and into Camp Bastion in Helmand.
In a release from Task Force Leatherneck in Helmand, the service said all ten of the squadron’s aircraft made the trip and that aviatiors, crew and maintainers from VMM 261 were en route.
Marine Corps Times picked up on this before us…(that’s OK, I’m happy to give my alma mater a shoutout)
“I am very excited to have these new birds here,” said Lt. Col. William Depue, executive officer for Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 263 (Reinforced), adding that the aircraft’s increased speed and range will “cut the size of the area of operations in half.”
The Ospreys, which formed the bulk of VMM-263 (Rein) with the 22nd MEU will join Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 261 as part of MEB-Afghanistan’s aviation combat element, Marine Aircraft Group 40.
“Although we are not the Marines who will operate these birds here, we were happy to be a part of getting them into theater,” said Depue.
The Ospreys will be used for medium-lift assault support, transporting troops and cargo throughout the MEB’s area of operations, and will augment the other fixed– and rotary-wing aircraft that have worked tirelessly since the MEB’s arrival in Afghanistan in May, flying more than 19,000 hours.
well, now the Corps is on the hook for the performance boost they’ve been bragging about. We’ll keep a close eye on the deployment and maybe even join them next year to see how they’re performing. But until then, keep scanning our coverage and don’t hesitate to provide us with feeds of your own on how this deployment goes.
You know, it’s been said that the U.S. Army is the best equipped force in the world but I’m really more amazed by what we don’t have that other armies do than what we do have, or what we want to have that others don’t.
Take, for example, the four shot 25mm XM25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement System currently in the works (the XM25 is itself an offshoot of the doomed XM29 OICW thingie). It’s supposed to be effective out to 500 meters against point targets, will have a built in multi-spectrum electro-optical sight, and will have the ability to individually program the burst time on the launched projectiles so that they explode behind or over the target, thus defeating any frontal cover the target might have.
Sounds good on paper, and I’m sure there’s no other Army out there trying to develop a weapon specifically designed to attack a target behind cover, but the reality is, we haven’t got one of these either (yet, and I don’t see these getting issued soon either), and there are a lot of really simple weapons currently in service which could just as easily perform this mission.
Rifle grenades: What’s wrong with rifle grenades? We, the American army, used the hell out of them in WWII and Korea, but they went away after that. Were they not high tech enough, or was this one of those “no guns on jet fighters” decisions, where we decided that the types of wars we’d be fighting in the future would render these weapons obsolete? There are any number of designs out there now that could immediately enter service with the US military as short range (<300m) anti-personnel, anti-tank (ok, anti-APC), dual purpose, individually fired munitions, yet we haven’t got any.
I understand that we have dedicated grenade launchers like the M203 now that can fill the role of the rifle grenade, but the 203 is an individually assigned weapon, and in the standard infantry squad there are only two (one per team) and in the Army’s table driven organizational scheme, if your unit isn’t authorized any (like mine) then you just go without. With a rifle grenade, on the other hand, everyone in the unit has the capability of carrying one or two, and they can be fired by anyone (this capability would enable a commander to stockpile the grenades in a defensive position, or with a support by fire element, without disrupting unit organization by shifting grenadiers around.)
Shoulder fired weapons: Next to the AK-47, the most common weapon carried by the insurgents is the RPG-7. Introduced as a shoulder-fired anti-tank weapon in 1961, it is now the most prolific such weapon in the world. What is the US equivalent? The single shot AT-4 (M136.) The US used to have a reloadable shoulder fired weapon, the M1-M20 series rocket launchers (a.k.a “Bazooka” and “Super Bazooka”) but the Bazooka was retired from service during the Vietnam war and replaced by the M72 LAW (tanks and the new ATGMs like the TOW and the Shillelagh would eliminate the need for a short ranged infantry based AT weapon) and later the AT4.
While designed as anti-armor weapons, as the insurgents can attest to, they also serve admirably as “pocket” artillery, and what I wonder about is why we don’t use something similar. We have a number of similar weapons (the Marine Corps has the SMAW and the M3 Carl Gustav is in service with SOCOM forces) in our inventory. The exclusivity of the M3 especially bothers me. Of a similar weight and size of the AT4, it presents a significantly greater capability in that you can reload it and you can fire a variety of munitions through it. Again it would be a lot easier for an infantry platoon to carry a pair of M3s and 40 seven-pound HE projectiles than it would be to carry 40 AT4s. Yet its use is limited to SOCOM, while the regular Army has to settle for the AT4.
So here’s a little sidebar story from the Oct. 28 suicide attack on the UN guest house in Kabul.
Turns out a contract truck driver held off Taliban attackers with his AK while 15 UN workers were barricaded in a laundry room behind him. John “Chris” Turner was pouring 7.62 down range during the 2 hour gunbattle, saving the lives of the UN workers cowering in the cubby…
“I am armed. I carry an AK-47 and I kept firing it to keep the attackers away from the group I was guarding,” he said, describing how he shot from the entrance of the laundry room. The group later jumped over a back wall to take refuge in a house behind the guest house.
I’ve bumped into a ton of these cowboy types in both theaters and it doesn’t surprise me for one second that Turner did what he did. While the third country nationals are less ballsy, the Americans I’ve met transiting through the AO are by in large adventurers, self-reliant and extremely patriotic. They work hard as hell, put up with poor living conditions and I’ve never seen them complain or act bitterly towards the troops they help keep comfortable.
I’ll never forget when we came back from a week out on patrol in Afghanistan and we’d been ambushed twice — once on our way back to the FOB — and we arrived into Salerno pretty late. The KBR workers opened the chow hall for us and whipped up some grub for the platoon that came back battle and served it to us with a smile. They seemed genuinely happy to do it.
Guys like Turner do it for more than the money — part eccentric, part thrillseaker, part patriot — they do it in part because to them there’s a sense of service to their duties. They genuinely like being around the troops and doing what they can to make their lives easier and safer so they can do the job of taking it to the bad guys.
Here’s a video Turner made back in the day when he traveled to Afghanistan to do a doc on the drug trade there (and to get a bit of the whacky tobaccy for himself).
Great walk-off from his dad:
“He said he was burned a little, but that he wasn’t hurt,” the father said. “He’s got more guts than a Missouri mule.”
So the next time you hear the poobahs whining about how F-ed up “contractors” are in the war zone, remember they’re talking about guys like Chris Turner, a man who put fear aside and slung lead to keep the UN workers he was living with safe from the evil doers…
When I was searching for a pic to illustrate the previous post, I ran across this one of a Soldier actually employing local foliage as camouflage.
Just yesterday I was chatting with a source and he was saying how Iraq had made Soldiers lazy or complacent because of the relative convenience of the fighting there (close, vehicle borne engagements in primarily urban settings) whereas Afghanistan stressed old school soldiering skills that were last seen in Vietnam.
One of the things he mentioned was using local foliage to camouflage your outline, and low and behold, here’s a Soldier (clearly a designated marksman with his souped up M14) who’s destined for Ranger school.
U.S. Army Sgt. Zachary Adkins, from Sweetland, W.Va., conducts a dismounted patrol with his platoon near Combat Outpost Herrera, Paktiya province, Afghanistan, Oct. 11. The Soldiers were searching for sites from which the Taliban has been using to fire rockets at the outpost. Adkins is deployed with Apache Troop, 1st Squadron, 40th Cavalry Regiment.
Recent Comments
Part III : Guided missiles will also be programmed to...
freefallingbomb
Part II : If a tank shoots at another tank at only 5...
freefallingbomb
Part I : To the poster "Will" : You wrote:...
freefallingbomb
Yeah, I don't get it. The "Dragon...
Ptsfp
Should wikipedia Ned Kelly.He used armour that worked in...
Nick
Marines win agin hoo rur
greg
To the poster "batvette" : You wrote:...
freefallingbomb
gee lets forget about winning a war as long...
greg stocks
Time to bring military clothing into the 21st century. I...
bobbymike
Part IV : …………...
freefallingbomb