Between ~1996 and 2005, most FMTV trucks accepted by DCMA for the US Army had my signature on the truck property forms along with my DSN phone number.
I got three or four calls in Sealy Texas from NCO's in Iraq trying to score ballistic composite glass armor because they stopped these EFP attacks⬇️
1/
DCMA Sealy was getting photos from contractor relatives of bombed FMTV's with sheet metal armor and receiving IED damaged trucks to get rebuilt.
You could tell the blast damage from how the windows were missing and the roofs were bowed at the top.
2/
When you pulled out the stowage boxes in the cabs there were usually spent 5.56mm or 7.62mm brass casings...
...and occasionally a lot of dried blood.
3/
The first low signature armored cabs build and fielded with the 82nd Airborne Division in Mosul (pictured) were accepted on New Year's Eve 2004-2005 by me, my DCMA supervisor and my office's commanding Colonel.
Bush Administration policy was the military went to the war and everyone else went to the mall.
I was single then & volunteered.
4/
The three of us started at 8:30am and worked until 10:45 pm getting the first batch of cabs inspected, properly packaged & onto trucks for highway shipment to an airport for direct cargo flights to Iraq.
The three troopers in this LSAC cab all lived with minor injuries.⬇️ 5/
I didn't go to a New Year's Eve West Coast Swing Dance that I had planned for weeks to attend that night at the Melody Club to chase skirts...
...I knew I was too tired to kick up my heals and then drive back safely.
But it was time meaningfully well spent.
6/6
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The problem with this thought is the Iranian drones being fired now are the uber sophisticated Russian-guilt Geran using radio mesh and cell phone sim card link video-navigation.
They are flying lower and more sophisticated trajectories taking advantage of radar shadows from oil infrastructure in the Gulf to prevent the generation of good intercept tracks.
Gun armed ships and attack helicopters low amongst oil rigs are the best play here.
2/3
It is only a matter of time until Geran/Shaheed FPV motherships are being fired by the IRGC at Gulf Oil infrastructure using Gulf Cell phone networks as video data links.
This is a point I have been pounding upon since 2023.
The "Big/Expensive/Few Mafia" in the US Flag ranks and Western Defense Contractors have denied this harsh reality for reasons Upton Sinclair has expounded upon. 1/
Both I and @johnkonrad were mocked for pointing out how deadly drones were for being disintermediated from existing military platforms for ubiquitous commercial transportation infrastructure like cargo containers. 2/
The Ukrainian Operation Spiderweb showed who were prophets and who were the complete and utter fools.
BLUF:
The Big/Expensive/Few, love the F-35, fanboy community got to eat 💩
Very, Very, few people understand the implications of this Israeli hack combined with its deep penetration of Iran's Regime means for the US-Israeli campaign to exterminate the Mullah's Regime Security Forces.
Let's talk about Gorgon's Stare & Post GWOT smart bombs🧵 1/
Gorgon's Stare and its peer systems like ARGUS, Vigilant Stare, Constant Hawk and Agile Condor are Wide Area Aerial Surveillance (WAAS) systems, the all-seeing eye in the sky.
They are increasingly sophisticated mergers of multi-spectral cameras, computer data bases and more recently A.I.
2/
WAAS has had a rocky and politically charged history (See 2011 text below) but the data fusion technology has gotten to the point that more and more cameras can be networked together over larger areas with the data saved for later analysis.
I don't doubt that Ukraine cyber hacked in Russian digital terrain elevation maps that the Russians compiled for themselves. Up to date digital terrain elevation maps are a good thing to have.
Plus NASA also had a huge archive of digital terrain elevation data.