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Squads to test training to improve combat casualty care
Soldiers wounded in combat may have a better chance of surviving if the Army gives its warriors better, more realistic point-of-injury training to help their wounded battle buddies, say officials with the Army’s Squad Overmatch Study. Training to respond immediately to combat injuries can be vital, as about 80 percent of the initial treatment in combat situations is done by the wounded soldier himself or the soldier next to him, rather than their medic, they say. A team is working on ways to improve immediate care for soldiers at the point of injury so they stand a better chance of surviving until they get to the next level of care, and ultimately to the hospital. The team includes scientists, medical simulation experts, psychologists, engineers and advisers. This fall, six squads — four Army and two Marine Corps — will take part in a joint effort to improve tactical combat casualty care, or TC3, at the squad level, a move officials say can help fill a gap in tactical training.Source: Squads to test training to improve combat casualty care
Training for individual first aid/buddy aid/self aid is leaps and bounds beyond what it was when I was in. The tools available to the individual soldier and the Combat Lifesaver as well as the attached medic are far and away improved over what it was at the beginning of the War on Terror.
Having said that, there’s always room for improvement. As noted, this is a part of a larger initiative, known broadly as Squad Overmatch.
Currently, there really isn’t some great gap in organic capability between an American rifle squad and any other in the world. Small arms are pretty much small arms. The advantages our squads have are the quality of training, and the access to support from higher echelons, be it fires, sustainment, or intelligence.
The Maneuver Center of Excellence at Ft. Benning is working to find ways to increase the capability of the rifle squad to better enable it to defeat an enemy squad. Much of that involves improved training. Some involves improved technology, and some is about improving what the squad carries with it.
That last item is a real challenge. The squad has to be able to maneuver. That is, move. But between weapons, armor, radios, and other mission essential equipment, the squad is insanely loaded down with weight. That makes it almost impossible to move rapidly. Training and physical conditioning can only take you so far. And the Army has struggled for decades to reduce the soldier’s load, while in reality seeing it ever increase.
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ROK Live Fire 2015
For some reason, Korea, like a lot of Asian nations, loves to put on a big spectacle live fire for domestic consumption.
Our Army doesn’t do much of this. It really don’t have much training value, and fuel and ammo are expensive.
Still, it’s hella fun to watch.
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We Joined Troops Battling Washington’s Wildfires | War Is Boring
The air is hard to breath as we walk up the gravel road. Smoke fills the air, obscuring the trees and mountains in the distance. It’s Aug. 25 and we’re about 10 miles south of Loomis, Wash. — one of several towns in the path of the Okanogan Complex Fire. It’s now the largest wildfire in Washington state history at more than 200,000 acres. Members of the Washington National Guard are checking to see how close the fire has come to our position. The smoke is an eerie yellowish color. It would almost look like fog if everything around us wasn’t bone dry, and if the air didn’t taste like ash. As we peer through the haze from a ridge, we can see a few embers from the fire. At first just one tree, then several. “OK, you can grab some pictures or video real quick,” Staff Sgt. David Vinton hurriedly tells me. “But we need to go.”Source: We Joined Troops Battling Washington’s Wildfires | War Is Boring
An interesting look at National Guard support for the firefighting effort in the Okanogan Complex Fire in Washington state. Read the whole thing.
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The Skyhawk soldiers on.
Spill tipped me to this. The US Air Force has contracted with Draken to provide adversary support to F-35 operational testing at Edwards AFB.
8/27/2015 – EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. — A-4 Skyhawks have taken to the skies over Edwards in support of operational test of the F-35A for the Royal Netherlands Air Force. They are part of a tactics development and evaluation exercise initiated by the 323nd Test and Evaluation Squadron and supported by the Joint Strike Fighter Operational Test Team from Aug. 17-28.
“Each service and each country has their own specific test events that they want to test for themselves, for their own service and their own country requirements,” said Rich Radvanyi, JOTT Planning Cell chief.
The JOTT has five operational test squadrons composed of the 31st Test and Evaluation Squadron, the Marines’ VMX-22 squadron, the United Kingdom squadron 17(R), the Dutch 323nd Test and Evaluation Squadron and Navy squadron VX-9.
Much as Lex worked with ATAC providing Kfir’s and Hunters to the Navy as contract adversary support, Draken offers jets as needed to the Air Force (and other customers).
The Draken Skyhawks have an interesting history. Built as A-4Ks for the Royal New Zealand Air Force as a slight variant of the A-4F, they were later upgraded with the APG-66 radar (same as the F-16A) and avionics allowing the use of precision guided weapons. But in 2001, New Zealand decided they no longer needed jet combat aircraft, and retired their Skyhawk fleet. Having a good radar aboard allows the Draken Skyhawks to provide a sophisticated threat profile in exercises, beyond that of most other contract aircraft.
Sixty-one years after Ed Heinemann’s Hot Rod first took to the skies, the Skyhawk still soldiers on in active service with Brazil, Argentina, Singapore and until this year, Israel. That’s one hell of a record for a combat aircraft.
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Air Combat- Past and Future
Of course, that’s based on an assumption that future air combat will be conducted in a manner similar to the dogfights over North Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, where fighters maneuvered hard to get into a narrow cone behind their opponent, and a visual ID was required before engaging. The caterwauling over the lack of a permanently installed gun on the Marine and Navy versions also leans heavily on the assumption that modern air to air missile will work just about as well as their 1960s counterparts.
Guess what? Times change. Pull out your cell phone. Look at it. How many of you have a 6th generation iPhone or Galaxy? It’s pretty incredible, right? A tad more advance than, say, this:
Why would you assume that phones improve, but air to air missile technology doesn’t?
And the assumption that future air to air tactics will be like those of Vietnam also ignores (willfully and studiously) the fact that the Navy and the Air Force used the lessons of Vietnam to fundamentally change our entire approach to air to air warfare.
Here’s a homework assignment- watch all four of these videos. It’s about 40 minutes.
Wigs is one of the most respected fighter pilots to come out of the Tomcat community.
And here’s Bio, another highly respected member of the community.
When I joined my first F-14 squadron in 1981 (VF-24), the A-model was still relatively new and some US Navy squadrons were still flying Phantoms. The potential threats that we most often trained for were the MiG-17 and MiG-21, which were not match of a threat beyond visual range (BVR), but could be a handful if you got engaged within visual range (WVR). Since we always expected to be outnumbered, and with the lessons from the air war over Vietnam still fresh, we spent a lot of our training fuel and time on ACM – air combat maneuvering, or dogfighting.
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When we started to get serious about the threat, especially when the AA-10 Alamo arrived, we realized we had to employ AIM-54s against enemy fighters. So of course we began to train with them. I think the capability was in TACTS all along, we just never used it. Fortunately the Navy introduced the AIM-54C in 1987, when we really needed it. The Charlie corrected many shortcomings of the Alpha, in both outer air battle and closer-in tactical environments. With its long motor burn time, large warhead, and radar improvements, the AIM-54C was a tenacious missile. Again, it is too bad it doesn’t have a combat record.
One of the coolest visuals I remember was from TACTS debriefs at Fallon, when a division of Tomcats launched AIM-54Cs against simulated Fulcrums at 30-plus miles. A few seconds after launch the debriefer rotated the view from overhead to horizontal, and there were four Phoenixes performing their trajectory-shaping climbs. AIM-54s were not 100% kills, but they sure started to reduce the threat as scenarios developed.
Air combat has changed in the 40 years since Vietnam. The single most common tactic in air to air combat today, world wide, is the “in your face” long range Beyond Visual Range radar guided missile shot.
That means that the key to success in air to air combat is seeing the other guy before he sees you, and having a weapon that can exploit that sensor advantage. The APG-81 AESA on board the F-35, coupled with off board sensors such as E-3 Sentry or E-2 Hawkeye, will give the F-35 an increased probability of “first look” while the relatively stealthy airframe will delay an opponent the chance to lock up.
Am I still critical of the F-35 program? You bet. The decision to give the Marines a supersonic jump jet drove just about every aspect of the design of all three variants, and imposed compromises and costs that have greatly hampered the entire program. But that doesn’t mean the jet is an utter catastrophe.
Every fighter program is always criticized. You may not recall this, but the newspapers just about ran out of ink writing articles about what expensive disasters the F-14 and F-15 were. How’d that work out?
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Goodyear once built an inflatable airplane.
And the crazy thing is, it worked pretty damn well.
Of course, improvements in helicopter technology meant that its primary intended purpose, for downed airmen to rescue themselves, was rendered redundant. On the other hand, what an innovative solution.
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Sierra Army Depot
Yes, it’s RT, but it’s a straight news story. Worth watching a couple minutes.
The Army is roughly half the size it was at the height of the Reagan years. In addition to shedding almost half a million people from the active ranks (and who knows how many from the reserve components) the Army has also slashed the numbers of combat units. But of all the tanks and trucks and whatnot are still valuable assets. Waste not, want not. So, while a lot of equipment is sold to allies, there still remains a healthy stockpile.
A lot of equipment returned from overseas needs depot level maintenance. That maintenance is done at other depots. The advantage to storage at SAD is much like that at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base- you can store equipment outside for long periods with little deterioration.
The main warehouses.
Each little tiny dot is a truck or armored vehicle. The lumps to the right are “igloos” or ammunition storage bunkers.
Towed artillery pieces.
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What Might Have Been: Former NBA Center Darryl Dawkins, Dead at 58
Sad news out of Philadelphia. Former Sixer Darryl Dawkins has passed away at the age of 58.
He had a lot of nicknames, Chocolate Thunder, Double D, and Baby Bull among them. He was the first player to be drafted into the NBA out of High School in 1975, by the then-woeful Philadelphia 76ers. He was known for his thunderous dunks and somewhat flaky personality. He is, in fact, best known for smashing backboards and his legacy is the adoption of the collapsible rim. He was a giant man-child, already six-foot-eleven and 252 pounds as an 18 year old, one who possessed breathtaking physical gifts. He was, for his size, incredibly agile. He could jump through the roof, was immensely strong and lightning-quick, and had an exceptionally soft shooting touch.
For all that, Darryl Dawkins remained one of the great stories of unfulfilled potential in professional sports. Like so many who followed him, he could have been so much better than he was. Despite his ample gifts, he never worked terribly hard to get better. With all the tools to be a superior defender and rebounder, he was decidedly mediocre at both. Dawkins never grabbed 20 rebounds in a game, nor 700 in a season. He was foul-prone on defense, and turned the ball over with alarming frequency on offense. Also, Dawkins never developed an inside game, preferring (when not dunking) to shoot fall-away jump shots even against smaller opponents. (Even with that, he had an exceptional .572 career shooting percentage.) Against less gifted but harder-working centers, he was routinely bettered, especially in big games. So much so that Philadelphia dealt him in 1982 and acquired Moses Malone to play the center position. Malone, smaller and lighter than Dawkins, lacked Dawk’s gifts, but was a legendary worker and tenacious rebounder. With Malone in place of Dawkins, Philadelphia won a championship in 1983.
Dawkins’ lack of physical conditioning caught up with him, as well. Injuries shortened his seasons, and dampened his talent. After two decent campaigns with the New Jersey Nets, Dawkins was all but finished at 29. He would play parts of three more seasons, finishing his career on the bench with the Pistons. His career averages of 12.0 points and just 6.1 rebounds belied a superior, if untapped, talent. After one series where Dawkins had played poorly against the Celtics, Boston Globe reporter Bob Ryan called Dawkins “the greatest waste of space since Greenland”. And he had a point. Had Dawkins gotten a couple of years with a tough college coach to teach him the fundamentals, and instill a work ethic to harness his talents, he might have been a truly great player. But alas.
This much is true, though. Darryl Dawkins understood that basketball was largely entertainment. He had fun, engaged the fans, and was, by all accounts, one of the nicest guys in the league. He was never in trouble with the law, or for doing something cruel and asinine, like so many of today’s athletes. And he is gone too early. Which is a real shame. He will, in his odd way, be recalled fondly, and will be missed by those who remember him.
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The Unedited Scene between Vader and Luke in Cloud City
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Detroit Police Chief: Crime Going Down Amid Spike in Legal Gun Ownership | Fox News Insider
The number of shootings and robberies dropped from 2013. Home invasions are down 17% so far this year, Craig said, following a drop of 38% last year. Craig noted that in a survey of 1,800 felons, the respondents pointed to “armed citizens” as the thing they were most afraid of.
Source: Detroit Police Chief: Crime Going Down Amid Spike in Legal Gun Ownership | Fox News Insider
res ipsa loquitur
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