Received a lengthy email from my soldier today. Here goes:
Here comes another long one! If you aren't interested you don't have to read it, but I try to explain as much as possible because I know most of this stuff is completely foreign to you and esoteric to me and the Army.
I passed by part of the Bone Yard today while I was driving in my Gator (my sweet 6-wheeled ATV golf-cart thing -- It's FAST!). I surreptitiously snapped some pictures as I cruised by...not sure if I'm supposed to be taking pictures of this stuff but I figured it'd be interesting to see some of the aftermath of the heavy bombardment we did of this base in the late 90s before we took it over in 2003. Most of these pieces of twisted metal are just vehicles...there is a row of beat-down tanks about a quarter mile long that I'll eventually try to get pictures of.
Also, not sure if I mentioned it, but this is the base Saddam Hussein and Ali Hassan al-Majid ("Chemical Ali") used to develop chemical weapons. It was also one of the concentration camps Chemical Ali sent Kurds and Shia Muslims to be gassed during Saddam's ethnic cleansing era. I drove by the building with the gas chambers. No one is allowed inside it. It's a large, derelict brick building with broken windows. It apparently has many underground levels and rooms. Kind of disturbing. If anyone is questioning why we came here in the first place, a large part of it was to get rid of the assholes who did this to innocent people. Saddam and Ali will go down in history as the Hitlers of the late 20th century. Look at this.
On a more positive note, look at the pictures of the MRAPs. They are "Mine Resistant Armor Protected" vehicles. They are taller than they are wide (which is not the case for standard HMMWVs, or "humvees"). They have a V-shaped hull which deflects IEDs away from the vehicle. These things have saved countless lives in the past few years. Some of them weigh up to 60,000 pounds! That's about 10 times the weight of a standard HMMWV!
The weird arcing bow looking things on the top of them are designed to deflect high-tension wires that insurgents used (unfortunately with much initial success) to decapitate or eject the soldier in the gunner turret. The armor plates you see on the side are designed to stop RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) and any small-arms fire. The cylinder-shaped antennas are part of the CREW system (Counter-Remote-detonated-IED-Electronic-Warfare). They jam a range of radio frequencies from those emitted by a car's keyfob to garage door openers to radios to cell phones. They work by blasting the surrounding area with "noise" so that the devices IEDs have that are listening for the detonation signal can't "hear" it. They are programmed to not jam the exact frequencies that we know we are using ourselves for our radios. The gunner turret is covered with camo netting and has 270-degree side and roof protection so the gunner can't get shot from the side or behind, and also to prevent passersby from throwing grenades into the turret without the gunner seeing it and having a few seconds to grab it and throw it back out. There is a pneumatic hatch in the back of the vehicle that weighs several hundred pounds, which deploys once the vehicle is stopped so the team inside can exit quickly during a firefight or an emergency.
One criticism of the MRAPs are their cost (some of them cost over a half million dollars). But when you consider that they save lives, and that lives are priceless, you can also factor that our government pays the family members of deceased servicemembers $400,000 if they die. So they are an excellent investment.
Another issue is the menacing appearance of them. The pictures don't do them justice. They are HUGE. You have to climb a ladder to get inside them. And the thick, tinted ballistic windows make it near impossible to see the faces of the soldiers inside...which adds to the menacing impression they give. The reason why this is bad, instead of good, is because the intent of COIN (counterinsurgency) is to show the local populace that we are there to help them and do our best to only harm the bad guys.
The last main issue with them, also because of their size, is their absurdly high risk of rollovers. When I was in Texas, we all had to get trained on an MRAP rollover simulator, which rolls the vehicle 360 degrees several times and stops either on its side or upside down...we learned drills on how to grab the gunner and pull him inside the vehicle so he doesn't get crushed. Especially in Afghanistan, where the roads are poorly built and these things often scale mountains using goat trails designed for loads extremely lighter than these things, rollovers happen too often.
Oh yeah -- see the water behind the MRAPs? That's the putrid, unhealthy-looking water I mentioned before that is in pools everywhere around this base. The water table is really high out here so certain parts of the ground never completely get sucked dry by the heat, which is why there is so much stagnant water.
Again, more to come later, but I hope this gave you a little closer of a look at what Iraq is like.
I should get a chance soon to take a helicopter ride to Kirkuk to see a team of soldiers I have there operating some satellite equipment. I had their equipment sent to them today (boy it is quite funny trying to communicate with the forklift drivers who don't speak English very well). But on my way back from Kirkuk I'll have a chance to land at a few other bases before I return to Taji because the air transport out here is kind of like a bus route with stops at each base along the way. So I'll do my best to take some pictures!
Love,
Richy
No comments:
Post a Comment