ping
Indeed their plan is working.
Sorry but production of Armored Humvees and development of a better armored vehicle for urban warfare should have been stepped up right after Somalia. The man has a point.
The fact that HUMVEEs are unarmored has been a vulnerability that the Iraqi irregulars have exploited, through their IEDs, the weapon of choice in breaking up patrols.
There have been reports of GIs lining the interior of their HUMVEE with salvaged body armor, and this seems to be somewhat effective, at least in preventing secondary schrapnel from torn pieces of the vehicle itself from further injuring the passengers. It should not be too involved to install a similar feature designed as an integral part of the vehicle during manufacture, on the side walls and beneath the floor boards. Compared to armor plating of similar effectiveness, the weight advantage would more than compensate for the relatively higher cost of the design.
I retired as a First Sergeant and can guarantee that if this young Specialist had been in my unit and shot off his mouth like he did in this article he would have been a very unhappy camper while standing on my carpet (and yes I did have a carpet in front of my desk.) A finace puke clerk becoming a tactics expert - phooey!
Gruber stated that his company wasn't even supplied with waders to get ashore at Omaha Beach and actually got wet up to their waists and that additionally enemy gunfire had killed and wounded some of his comrades.
"If I'd known FDR and Ike were so dumb, I never would have (continued on pg. D3 Style section)
A trivial point to be sure, but it makes me wonder about the rest of the story.
Well soldier, you had better reenlist, because you still ain't there yet.......
There you have it. A REMF finance puke, who is ticked off at having to stay longer, wants to make trouble in order to get back at the powers-that-be.
Hey, specialist, the reason you don't have all that fancy armor stuff is because the combat arms guys (for the most part) already do--just stay at your desk, and they'll tell you when it's safe to come out.
Most reading this won't know exactly what a Specialist is.
Spoken like a true Army combat financier.
Translation: "I was forced to stay in Baghdad another 90 days living in relative comfort filling out finance forms and pulling guard duty on the ramp at Baghdad International Airport, all while forced to eat three hot meals a day served up by contractors. I couldn't come up with a better way to bitch about my personal plight, so I decided to whine about body armor and not enough armored HUUMVs. I just mailed off my own set of expos'e photos to Hackworth concerning the lack of concern by our leaders regarding combat duty related paper cuts, in order to make more out of my bitch than is warranted."
A david HACKworth in the making. I bet this this idiot is verrrrryyyyyy sorry to contribute to the liberal cause.
Heldt enlisted with a friend in 2001 mostly because "it was time to grow up."
Sounds like SP4 Heldt hasn't achieved his objective. He joins an all volunteer Army and whines when deployed to a warzone for a period longer than he thinks is fair. One wonders how confident the others in his unit are in Heldt's commitment to accomplish the unit's mission.
To read the complaints of a finance clerk regarding lack of body armor is laughable. How often do you think SP4 Heldt draws his weapon and UBL of ammo to stand guard duty much less going on patrol?
Of course that E-4 is an expert …
Finance specialists tend to be division or higher. They tend to have cots, electricity, and work shifts.
As a rule, finance specialists pass on scuttlebutt. They aren't the ones who create events that others talk about.
I don't know what more I can add that the NCO corps hasn't already stated. This SPC is a REMF and is whining just like every REMF I ever met. They cried in Bosnia in 98 because we didn't have cable installed. They stayed in air-condition connexes and offices while Armor/CAV and Infantrymen went on 4-10 hour patrols in full kit and stuffed into XM1114s or guarded their spoiled REMF butts at the base camps.
As to why we don't have the vehicles/armor in the quantities we really need, here are a few reasons:
1. The "military-industrial complex" is nowhere near as big and powerfull as Hollywierd and the National Socialist Left make it appear to be. Anyone tried buying 5.56mm(.223CAL) rifle ammo lately? It's getting rare because the cuts to the military manufacturing capabilities in the 90s means we have trouble keeping up with the ammo demands and are now buying civilian ammo.
2. It takes a lot of money to rebuild the Armed Forces, especially one that was overused/abused and underfunded. I really would have liked another two years of improvments and Bush's policy innitiatives in place before we went into action....But what we want and a pile a manurer.... We don't get to set timelines when our enemies attack. We are getting gear and training to the soldiers as fast as currently possible and we are pushing those limits on a daily basis.
3. We could have had the M1114 Armored HMMWV in 1999, but didn't. Why not? Ask Bill, Hillary, and John Kerry. Ask them why the improved body armor wasn't bought. Ask them why all the add-ons for the rifles were not bought in the late 90s. We did have them, but only for select members of SOCOM. There was no money to buy them for the conventional military. Ask them why it was only through investment in the M1 Abrams tank program by allied countries that our M1 tank fleet was saved and we now can buy the M1A2SEP. I bet you they will say "that's none of your business!" (Kerry's favorite ANSWER)
BTW the HMMWV is NOT a combat vehicle and we are trying to get new vehicles out as fast as we can. These new vehicles were in the prototype stage and stayed there in the 90s so Clinton couldn't cut them. They are now comming out. Things like the M-8 AGS (or maybe the 120mm armed Thunderbolt) for the 82nd ABN, the Cobra Armored vehicle for the Military Police, and many other things too detailed to get into. We stand on the edge of a technological and tactics quantim leap. We've been standing here since Clinton took office and froze military upgrades in favor of implementing more socialism. Now we can make that leap.
Lastly, I just went to a PLDC graduation today (my soldier there was on the Commandant's list). Most of these soldiers had 2-3 combat stripes on their uniform and were headed stright back to combat. These soldiers were not complaining..... says something, I guess...but I don't know, I'm just a dumb captain....Maybe this REMF SPC with less time in service than I've been an O-3 is 50x smarter than a prior service officer with 12 years in....or a slew of 1SGs and CSMs with 20-30 years....
Somebody has misplaced his tube of Combat Vagisil.
A small recollection or two about finance in the war. We needed to pay our local workers in local money; we could have paid them in dollars, but they would have been gypped by moneychangers. But... would finance give us local money? Hell, no. They explained that you had to go from Bagram to Kabul to change it at a bank, and it was too dangerous for them. So we did it.
I won't even go into depth on the operation fund rules, which were unwieldy as hell. For instance, we could pay an informant for giving us information leading to the capture of certain people or weapons. The Small Rewards Program was created by Rummy and he directed that no one would add complex rules or restrictions to it. When Finance got done with it there was a 338-page series of rules and restrictions that they said, "were not rules and restrictions but merely guidelines to facilitate implementation." Those guys are worth a battalion each; unfortunately, it's to the enemy.
By the way, we took gunfire, and RPGs, and land mines, and IEDs, in the vehicles we had -- Hiluxes and Tacomas (ordinary Toyota pickup trucks). We got some HMMWVs but had rotten luck with them, and an IED blows up an uparmored HMMWV just as thoroughly as a Tacoma.
Another finance war story. When I got medevaced, treated & released, I didn't have the stuff I needed to stay -- I had to buy a $60 Brigade Quartermasters poncho liner so I didn't freeze my yarbles off in the uninsulated, unheated transient tent. So I went up to finance -- in mixed civilian clothes, dirty, and bloody -- and got the run-around from the fine troops in finance. The killer of it was I HAD A CHECKBOOK and was just trying to cash a check (a courtesy extended to the REMFs without any problem). Fortunately, I ran into a Finance Corps O6 who was wondering what such a dirtbag was doing in his offices... when he learned, he couldn't do enough to take care of me, and I actually left with his business card for any other guys that found themselves "in town."
I bought TWO poncho liners with my resulting gains.
My unit may be unique in that we were the only like unit that actually got all of our guys paid all of their pay while overseas. We did that by keeping two guys off the books in the US to chase the paperwork and abuse the clerks. I know guys that were over there concurrently with us and are STILL missing incentive or proficiency pays, because, I guess, the finance clerks are so busy advising the generals and their staffs that they haven't got time to stamp their damned papers or whatever it is they do.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
The last straw for Heldt, who works in the Army's finance unit, came earlier this month when the Army extended his year-long 'boots on ground' tour of duty another 90 days, through the June 30 transfer of power deadline in Iraq."
I wish an asteroid would hit this guy. Apocalypse would be worth it. What a piece of crap. He is a FINANCE CLERK. He does nothing but sit on his butt all day long and screw up people's pay. He is at Baghdad International Airport. That is the cushiest assignment in Iraq. He is getting paid tax-free, getting a hostile fire bonus, incurring far fewer expenses than he would at home so he is saving a ton of money, he is eating 3 hot meals per day, he is a short walk from a decent PX, and he has MWR facilities. If any FReepers are anywhere near this guy, please beat him on my behalf.