Room for improvement in newest weapons

Stars and Stripes ^ | European edition, Sunday, July 13, 2003 | Mark Oliva

[Tailback]

ping

[GATOR NAVY]

My last ship I had PLGRs and commercial units for use in our ship's boats. I agree with everything you said about them, especially the headache of the special lithium batteries. I hated the PLGRs.

I figured out everything I needed to know to use the commercial sets in 15 minutes with no manual just by playing with them. No way you could that with a PLGR.

[Tailback]

Hey chief, I checked out your BIO and I love that quote "20 years service in the Navy, never drunk on duty, never sober on liberty." How's duty in Japan? I've always wanted a tour in Asia but Istanbul was as close as I've got.

[GATOR NAVY]

I like it enough I've been here 13 years. Married a local girl 10 years ago. Next year I'll be retireing and coming back to the States.

[EuroFrog]

I was saying Duh to the fact they actually put something so stupid into that article. One would think personel trained on the grenade launcher would know it was unsafe to tote around with one in the chamber. Big common sense issue.

[glorgau]

The military's lightweight PLGR GPS is 4 times the size of my personal GPS I bought with my own money.

Have you tested your GPS against EMP? :-) A decent air burst about 20 miles up would turn that and most civilian electronic devices into paper weights.

[glorgau]

"20 years service in the Navy, never drunk on duty, never sober on liberty."

Just a heads up... my dad was a career Sergeant Major and lived by the same creed. he retired and it took him 10 years to die from cirrhosis of the liver. He had built no outside interests and had nothing but liberty.

[GATOR NAVY]

Actually, that's my tag, and while I appreciate your concern, it's not a literal description of my life-at least not since I got married 10 years ago.

[Tailback]

And do you think that the piece of junk PLGR built by the lowest bidder will do better? Which enemy force will use EMP against the US military? If we're fighting someone using EMP against us I'll have worse problems than having a GPS that doesn't work. Besides, I can still read a map.