Waiting for tools
The 167th Infantry Battalion of Talladega County should have 42 M-60 machine guns. It has seven. And that M-60, as precious as it may be for businessmen, teachers and lawyers training for war, won’t even be the gun the troops will use when they get to Iraq’s battlefields and cities. They’ve learned to become warriors with less equipment, shorter training times and fewer troops. They’ve learned to wait months for small, but critical, elements that allow them to train for wars with demands that are unlike any other in the Guard’s 227-year history. “Sometimes you’re waiting for a handful of screws for three months,” said Spc. Daniel Stewart of Ashville, a flight engineer who was deployed to Afghanistan. “The active duty troops get them first. “You’ve got to be deployed to get equipment.” Sapper plates — armor that goes into bulletproof vests — are scarce. Soldiers train with vests about 12 pounds lighter than the ones they’ll eventually wear in desert combat. They train on older vehicles, unarmored aircraft and equipment, when not in short supply, that is older than what they’ll use when they come under fire or are relied upon by other troops.
“We made the best we could with what we have,” said Maj. David Crenshaw, of Helena, a Chinook helicopter pilot who served in Afghanistan. “We are not given premier equipment, because over history, we have been third-tier, here for national defense. “This is different for us, how we supplement the frontline troops.” The challenges that overseas wars pose to training have some Alabama National Guard members worried they can’t fulfill either mission – home or abroad – to the best of their intents or abilities. For instance, 11 percent of the 420 Guard members surveyed for this story rated equipment quality as “excellent,” while 13 percent ranked it “poor.” Some 40 percent said it was “good,” and 36 percent said it was “fair.” “Old, out of date, and overused,” were common responses in the survey referring to training equipment. Alabama National Guard officials were careful to make the distinction between the equipment soldiers trained on and the equipment they received once they were overseas. “When they leave the country, they have the best equipment that America has to offer,” says Maj. Gen. Mark Bowen, adjutant general of the Alabama National Guard. “It’s the training that is on old equipment.” A general’s wish list Bowen, who resigned last week following an investigation into an inappropriate relationship, says he wishes the federal government “would give us the equipment I’m going to war on,” for training. “They need to give us what we’re going to have.” Working out of the state headquarters in Montgomery, Bowen holds a Cabinet-level position in command of all the state’s Army and Air Guard units. Part of his appointed job is to make sure soldiers are equipped and trained. He pulls out a bulletproof vest. Right now there is a shortage of sapper plates, a protective piece of armor that protects the chest area, so many Guard troops train without them. A soldier trains with a lighter vest and is expected to maneuver and shoot in a heavier one, says Bowen. And the soldiers have to be retrained in marksmanship and other skills once they get the sapper plates. Lt. Col. Robert Horton, the Alabama National Guard’s public affairs officer, likens it to two football teams with the same skills and quality of players — one that has trained and been outfitted with proper equipment, one that has not. When the teams meet on the playing field, the team that has practiced with inferior equipment will be at a disadvantage. It’s a shell game, Bowen said. The Army shuffles equipment based on where it is needed most at one time. Many units leave equipment overseas for troops arriving after them to use on the front lines. Despite the challenges posed by equipment shortages, Maj. James Hawkins, training officer for the Alabama National Guard, says the state has an “excellent training program” effectively meeting the challenges posed by the current war. Guard units typically train for one weekend a month and two weeks a year. Members learn navigation, urban combat driving, check-point techniques, participate in live-fire exercises and are taught how to identify IEDs, among other skills, he said. They get more of that training at the mobilization station, which is whatever base they are sent to before deploying. “Alabama was ahead of the curve, and we’re proud of that,” he said. Overall, survey results showed many Guard members are satisfied with the training, if not the equipment used for training. Seventeen percent of respondents said training was “excellent,” 46 percent rated training quality as “good,” with 30 percent rating it as “fair.” Only 8 percent rated training as “poor.” |
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Respondents commented that they wanted more training, more “hands-on” training and training more specific to what their jobs would be once deployed. As the war goes on, “we refine and add things,” to training to make it relevant, Hawkins said. But insurgents employ constantly changing strategies, he added. Before he was deployed to Iraq, he was told that a convoy should drive fast to pass cars on roadways. When he got to Iraq, he was told convoys should slow down and keep a distance from passenger cars. “Guerrillas, by their nature, are adaptive. We have to constantly adapt to their changes,” he said. “Our soldiers are smart, very good at adapting, quick learners and improvisers.” Adapting to the mission Some National Guard units are sent on what the Army calls “in lieu of missions.” A unit is sent to perform a duty they were not originally trained for — a chemical weapons unit providing security in Iraq, for example. Hawkins said the state gets advance notice if a unit will be sent in lieu, and there is time “to give them quite a bit of training before they go in new skills.” The Guard sends as many of the soldiers as they can to Army schools and they spend all drill weekends doing intense training, he says. But the nature of a changing conflict can mean that once overseas, soldiers take on new roles. Stewart’s unit ended up doing air assault missions in Afghanistan, “which we never trained for,” he said. Chinooks, originally meant to be used solely for supply missions and to ferry troops and equipment around, proved to be better suited than the Blackhawk helicopters for flying with heavy loads in the high altitudes of Afghanistan At Fort Benning, Ga., the aviation unit trained on a lot of skills that were infantry-related — how to clear a building of “bad guys,” for example. “I’m in aviation, I’m not going to do that,” Stewart said. Pfc. Demetris Burrow, of Birmingham, a helicopter refueler who served in Afghanistan, described the two months of training at Fort Benning he received before deploying as being crammed and involving a lot of classroom time instead of hands-on work. He would like to see longer training, but recognizes that everything changes so quickly that it is difficult to train soldiers adequately on what they will see when they are actually overseas. Burrow didn’t have problems with the equipment they got once overseas. The lack of equipment can “put a drain on units at home,” who are training to go overseas, according to Capt. Shannon Suggs, training officer for the 167th Infantry Battalion in Talladega. The 167th trains mostly with M-60s, a “very dependable, good weapon,” Suggs said, but not the guns that the soldiers in Iraq use. Those are the newer model M240s, known as “240 Bravos.” “We have no 240 Bravos, none,” he said. “A lot of Guard units don’t have them. They haven’t made it to us. Why the only infantry unit in the state doesn’t have them, we don’t know. “Everyone knows it’s a problem, but there’s not anything that anyone can do about it.” Suggs said the machine gun shortage has been brought up so many times by troops, that statewide briefings often start with an officer saying he knows about the shortage, his boss knows about the shortage and everyone in the chain of command knows about it, but it’s out of their control. The troops will get the newer guns when they deploy, Suggs said, and they will get more training then, too. “But it would be better,” if they had access to the weapons ahead of time, he says. “A soldier would be more comfortable with it if they can use it more. You want to have it in your hands to train with, whatever you are going to use when you get there.” When giving an order to soldiers in a combat situation, he said, you don’t want to be wondering if they know how to use the weapon. |
