Truckin' (Sorry this is long one)
(A lot to cover - this one got a little long. Again, sorry...)
The first rays of sunlight slowly creep over the horizon. The rays illuminate sixty or so 18-wheelers sitting bumper to bumper in a line that stretches across the Army base near Balad. The convoy’s objective is Combat Support Center Scania, about 160 miles away, south of Baghdad, near the town of Ash Shawmali.
Scania is best described as a “truck stop in the middle of nowhere." Danger is present for every convoy, each a rolling target of opportunity for the bad guys who attack with rifles, machine guns, grenades and roadside bombs.
The Strykers are here to prevent the bad guys from disrupting the convoy, tasked to escort the cargo trucks operated by civilian contractors.
The Strykers have the combat power to stop the attacks. The Strykers have changed convoy Standard Operating Procedure. If there’s someone trying to attack, they’re not going to just keep moving. They are going to stop, engage the enemy and destroy them if they can.
The convoy, which had just delivered supplies to Anaconda, begins to roll out just after dawn for the return trip to Scania. Leaving the gate, the trucks split up into separate “serials,” with the fast, eight-wheeled Stryker combat vehicles accompanying them, each loaded with up to nine dismounts - infantry troops. The HHT command vehicle of the Squadron with Jake at the controls takes a position in the first "serial". (The term "serial" is familiar to people in the field of electronics or computers and means the same thing here. The trucks form a line, one behind the other, in series - as opposed to parallel.)
The convoy soon is hauling a-- down a flat, black highway through a lush green countryside of fields, canals and squat mud brick farmhouses north of Baghdad. The Strykers bring speed, firepower and technology to the convoy escort job - three things that help keep the convoys safe.
Sitting in the commander’s vehicle, the Major monitors the progress of the convoy on computerized display screens. Each Stryker is represented by a blue dot, tracked by a GPS (Global Positioning System) satellite, each vehicle's location continuously updated on the map. Each vehicle sees this information and can also monitor the road ahead and the fields along the road with their video cameras.
When a “contact” occurs, the Major can mark the location of the attack with a red icon on the screen, and enter a description of what occurred. Each Stryker can then read the information by touching the icon that appears on the screen in their vehicle. A warning tone automatically sounds as each Stryker approaches the marked location, and a prerecorded voice (a woman’s) announces, “Danger. Danger. Enemy in area.” (How Star Trek is that?)
The Major also scouts the terrain the old-fashioned way, standing up through the open hatch, looking for any trouble ahead.
While the Major monitors the convoy’s progress, his gunner operates the (RaWS) Remote Weapons System, targeting the hull-mounted .50-caliber machine gun by working a joystick to center the cross hairs appearing on a black-and-white screen.
While the gunner sweeps the scope around, two more Stryker Soldiers watch for trouble from the sentry hatches at the back. Wearing helmets with headphones and microphones, they steadily feed information about activity on the road to the vehicle commanders.
Everyone tenses as the convoy approaches the built-up, urban outskirts of Baghdad. The roads are thick with traffic - cars, buses, trucks and construction vehicles. They pay close attention to highway overpasses, often used as an attack platform. The Soldiers also scan for signs of IED's (Improvised Explosive Devices) buried along the road, or anyone silhouetted on a rooftop.
Just before 9 a.m., they get a report of shots fired at one of the serials from the side of the highway. No one is hit. The escorts can’t tell where the shots came from. “Let’s keep moving if we don’t have a target,” the Major orders.
Always, the aim is to keep the convoy moving.
South of Baghdad, in open countryside, however, the Strykers have found an IED buried in the northbound lanes of the highway, and the convoy is halted as explosives experts are called in. Before they get there, the Major decides the convoy can detour around the IED, and the convoy rolls again.
Just after noon, the first serial rolls into CSC Scania.
The truckers say they are glad to have a Stryker escort. They've been driving in Iraq for the past 10 months and said attacks dramatically increased in the spring, prompting “hundreds” of drivers to quit in April. It was rough. Convoys got hit almost every day.
The convoys stopped running for about five days during the worst time. More than 1,000 trucks were marooned at Scania. Fuel supplies dwindled at places such as Anaconda, and dining facilities ran low on milk, eggs and fresh fruit. The back logs have been filled, the trucks are rolling, and the attacks have diminished. Thanks in part to the Strykers.
The Strykers have gone a long way toward helping keep the supply roads open. Much of the convoy escort work continues to be done by military police driving up-armored Humvees and gun trucks, but the MPs aren’t trained to dismount and fight an ambush, as the Stryker Troops are.
Now there's a combat force on the route that can engage and destroy the enemy, as opposed to just running the route. When Strykers get into a "kill zone", they assault that kill zone, and kill the enemy.
The first rays of sunlight slowly creep over the horizon. The rays illuminate sixty or so 18-wheelers sitting bumper to bumper in a line that stretches across the Army base near Balad. The convoy’s objective is Combat Support Center Scania, about 160 miles away, south of Baghdad, near the town of Ash Shawmali.
Scania is best described as a “truck stop in the middle of nowhere." Danger is present for every convoy, each a rolling target of opportunity for the bad guys who attack with rifles, machine guns, grenades and roadside bombs.
The Strykers are here to prevent the bad guys from disrupting the convoy, tasked to escort the cargo trucks operated by civilian contractors.
The Strykers have the combat power to stop the attacks. The Strykers have changed convoy Standard Operating Procedure. If there’s someone trying to attack, they’re not going to just keep moving. They are going to stop, engage the enemy and destroy them if they can.
The convoy, which had just delivered supplies to Anaconda, begins to roll out just after dawn for the return trip to Scania. Leaving the gate, the trucks split up into separate “serials,” with the fast, eight-wheeled Stryker combat vehicles accompanying them, each loaded with up to nine dismounts - infantry troops. The HHT command vehicle of the Squadron with Jake at the controls takes a position in the first "serial". (The term "serial" is familiar to people in the field of electronics or computers and means the same thing here. The trucks form a line, one behind the other, in series - as opposed to parallel.)
The convoy soon is hauling a-- down a flat, black highway through a lush green countryside of fields, canals and squat mud brick farmhouses north of Baghdad. The Strykers bring speed, firepower and technology to the convoy escort job - three things that help keep the convoys safe.
Sitting in the commander’s vehicle, the Major monitors the progress of the convoy on computerized display screens. Each Stryker is represented by a blue dot, tracked by a GPS (Global Positioning System) satellite, each vehicle's location continuously updated on the map. Each vehicle sees this information and can also monitor the road ahead and the fields along the road with their video cameras.
When a “contact” occurs, the Major can mark the location of the attack with a red icon on the screen, and enter a description of what occurred. Each Stryker can then read the information by touching the icon that appears on the screen in their vehicle. A warning tone automatically sounds as each Stryker approaches the marked location, and a prerecorded voice (a woman’s) announces, “Danger. Danger. Enemy in area.” (How Star Trek is that?)
The Major also scouts the terrain the old-fashioned way, standing up through the open hatch, looking for any trouble ahead.
While the Major monitors the convoy’s progress, his gunner operates the (RaWS) Remote Weapons System, targeting the hull-mounted .50-caliber machine gun by working a joystick to center the cross hairs appearing on a black-and-white screen.
While the gunner sweeps the scope around, two more Stryker Soldiers watch for trouble from the sentry hatches at the back. Wearing helmets with headphones and microphones, they steadily feed information about activity on the road to the vehicle commanders.
Everyone tenses as the convoy approaches the built-up, urban outskirts of Baghdad. The roads are thick with traffic - cars, buses, trucks and construction vehicles. They pay close attention to highway overpasses, often used as an attack platform. The Soldiers also scan for signs of IED's (Improvised Explosive Devices) buried along the road, or anyone silhouetted on a rooftop.
Just before 9 a.m., they get a report of shots fired at one of the serials from the side of the highway. No one is hit. The escorts can’t tell where the shots came from. “Let’s keep moving if we don’t have a target,” the Major orders.
Always, the aim is to keep the convoy moving.
South of Baghdad, in open countryside, however, the Strykers have found an IED buried in the northbound lanes of the highway, and the convoy is halted as explosives experts are called in. Before they get there, the Major decides the convoy can detour around the IED, and the convoy rolls again.
Just after noon, the first serial rolls into CSC Scania.
The truckers say they are glad to have a Stryker escort. They've been driving in Iraq for the past 10 months and said attacks dramatically increased in the spring, prompting “hundreds” of drivers to quit in April. It was rough. Convoys got hit almost every day.
The convoys stopped running for about five days during the worst time. More than 1,000 trucks were marooned at Scania. Fuel supplies dwindled at places such as Anaconda, and dining facilities ran low on milk, eggs and fresh fruit. The back logs have been filled, the trucks are rolling, and the attacks have diminished. Thanks in part to the Strykers.
The Strykers have gone a long way toward helping keep the supply roads open. Much of the convoy escort work continues to be done by military police driving up-armored Humvees and gun trucks, but the MPs aren’t trained to dismount and fight an ambush, as the Stryker Troops are.
Now there's a combat force on the route that can engage and destroy the enemy, as opposed to just running the route. When Strykers get into a "kill zone", they assault that kill zone, and kill the enemy.
posted by deesci | 3:54 PM
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