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21 March 2017

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A. Pols

One wonders why such drops aren't provided with self-destruct devices...

SAC Brat

Too bad it wasn't a pallet of poor quality Chinese AK-47 ammo and grenades and mortar rounds with dubious fuses like were found along the Ho Chi Minh trail.

Outrage Beyond

Is the ISIS terrorist in the first shot wearing US-issue digital camo?

John Minnerath

A topic that shouldn't have the liberals coming out of the wood work and swarming it.
Something I have a bit of experience with, so I'll make a brief comment.
"Guided Cargo Parachutes", didn't even know they existed, but not surprised I guess, and also not surprised they can fail.
I saw many more drops come down far from the intended DZ than hit where they were supposed to.
We also made many jumps, usually on a dark night, where we came down miles from the intended location. Those were always a mess totally FUBAR.

turcopolier

Outrage Beyond

There are camo factories all over eastern Europe making this stuff in a multitude of patterns. Romania is a big source. I have been in a number of units and projects that designed our own camo for foreign procurement. Some of it was deliberately bizarre. pl

turcopolier

SAC Brat

As you know I was in Black SOF operations in SE Asia in the long ago unpleasantness. My outfit provided a lot of such defective arms and ammunition to the enemy in exactly the way you describe as well as burying it their own arms caches that we had found. pl

Peter AU

Between UN aid and Russian aid, Russia has been delivering a large amount of supplies to Deir Ezzor

@mod_russia

#SYRIA Last week, Russian aircraft delivered 122 tons of humanitarian aid provided by the UN in Deir ez-Zor besieged by ISIS terrorists
https://twitter.com/mod_russia/status/840161684295671808

Andy

Guided parachutes are still pretty rare and expensive. Most cargo is still air-delivered the old-fashioned way.

Here's a fairly recent video of a US airdrop with some spectacular failures:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-YsSL65quM


turcopolier

Andy

Extremely funny. thanks. pl

John Minnerath

Yes, anyone who spent time in airborne units saw that stuff happen often.
It was hilarious except when the screwballs got all their wires crossed and came in over you with a heavy drop while everyone was still on the DZ.
Then it was every man for him self trying to get out of the way.
When ever we needed a new truck we'd loan it to a nearby BG to use on a drop because we knew there was a good chance it would end up as a pile of scrap metal. Sometimes maybe a case of beer for the heavy riggers to make sure. :)

SAC Brat

Yepper. Some of the the SOG programs were incredibly clever and corrosive. One can only imagine the psychological impact of not trusting one's gear. I still don't know why the US and Russians don't have a PR campaign to make everyone believe all the attack aircraft and helicopters are flown by female pilots.

I would like to think that some of the dinosaurs from the Secret War period could have rolled these Jihadis up in a ball as their beliefs appear stiff and brittle. The US and the British used to do this very well. Is there a memo instructing everyone to play nice or are your group's talents no longer PC?

(It is understood that we won't know about some programs for twenty years)

turcopolier

SAC Brat

Yes, but we still (US/RVN) still lost the war IMO because of extremely effective IO ops conducted in the US. But... Some of the projects we had I would hesitate to tell you about because of the possibility of creating ill will where hardly any exists any longer. But, in addition to the cross border raiding and recon force (large) we had a number of other projects in a psy-war branch. I was in the field with a project and then brought in to headquarters on Pasteur Street in Saigon as deputy staff intel guy and the head intel guy. I was a major then. We all held jobs that in line outfits would have gone to more senior officers. My favorite thing that the psyops guys did was to have huge amounts of NV money printed by the same banknote company in Europe that printed the real NV money (dong). Ours had a strip on one end of the notes that said that these were "inflation warning notes" and were not to be spent under any circumstances. We bombed the north with this stuff by the millions and millions. It fell like snow all over the north. They all cut the little note off and spent the money. pl

J

Colonel,

I guess they forgot to watch Meet Corliss Archer's The Algebra Problem.

turcopolier

mauisurfer et al

You seem to ask my opinion of the marine nudie picture problem. I have no idea if the dastards are still on active duty (serving) I have no idea if what they did is actually illegal but they should not have spread this material around without the consent of the women involved. Having said that, I would agree with Bacevich that this is not a world shaking event. IMO this matter should be dealt with in a disciplinary way with a minimum of hysteria. I have had men all over the world insist on showing me nude pictures of women in their lives. I always thought their impulse to do that incomprehensible but since many of them were men on whom I relied to keep us alive I did not think it worth chewing their ass about it. they were not philosopher-kings but why should they have been? pl

Booby

In the summer of 1968 my Marine helo squadron at Quang Tri began doing limited parachute resupply missions. We would guide off of a TPQ radar beacon to a designated fix & release the load. At a predetermined altitude the chute would open & the load was suppose to land at a Marine Firebase. The loads usually missed the drop zones & went to the NVA. Few loads landed on their targets. One exception was a load that had a chute failure. The 2000 pound "rock" scored a direct hit & destroyed a 105mm howitzer. & We could not comprehend why we were attempting parachute resupply in good weather. Later we would find out that we were doing R&D on the ability to support the 9th Marines who planned to go into the Ashau Valley for a sustained operation (Dewey Canyon) during the monsoon in February 1969.

The Marine KC-130's did a good job of keeping loads in the DZ at Khe Sahn by using extremely low level drops.

Linda

Speaking of bizarre camo - remember the Pink Panthers Syran Defense Companies?!

Linda

I think you underestimate the effect of such a thing on the woman. They were already going all out to do their best at succeeding in a man' world and the Marines are surely that. So, they have at least partly made it and then nude photos come along and take away all their hard earned acceptance as a fellow professional.

Peter in Toronto

Conspiracy theories of America and Israel supplying ISIS aide, it is plainly clear that the principle supplier of arms and war materiel to IS and the other insurgent groups are the dysfunctional, fatally corrupt Iraqi and Syrian armed forces.

Today, the "HTS" (ex-Nusra, de facto West Syrian IS branch) launched some sort of counter-strike in one of the countless festering pockets of resistance the inept government has been incapable of clearing, with a freshly captured Russian T-90A spearheading the assault...

Walrus

The Turcopolier has successfully avoided schadenfreud.

MRW

COLONEL,

Were you at the MACVSOG conference in 1992 in Vegas?

MRW

OT. Listen to Stephen Cohen this week on Comey and NSA’a Admiral.

https://audioboom.com/posts/5733884-how-the-new-mccarthyism-grows-stronger-stephen-f-cohen-nyu-princeton-eastwestaccord-com

turcopolier

MRW

No. Presume that was an SOA event and I had not joined until much later. pl

turcopolier

walrus

It was good! pl

turcopolier

Linda

Yes. I understand the mental trauma suffered by women marines, but it is not the most important thing in the world. IMO the notion that women can serve in the armed services in large numbers without experiencing this kind of indignity is illusory. Grunts have little sense of what is appropriate. I remember that the Defense Companies wore some sort of pinkish camo, but more than that I remember the "murabitun" in Lebanon who actually did wear pink camo. pl

MRW

SOA?

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