I heard on NPR that today is the Afghanistan War 17th anniversary...Wow! how time flies, I was one of the first contractors on the ground back then 17 years ago, good times, bad times. Yes, time flies... And, now 17 years later with ~2400 dead, ~20,000 wounded, and the Taliban holding more ground now than they did back in 2001, I'm wondering, since we still have ~14,000 troops there...just what in the hell are we still doing there? Or, maybe the better question is why haven't we left?
Agreed. I question the same things. When Osama got bagged up we should have rolled out of there and not even turned out the lights.
Old comment by tribesman, My grandfather fought the British, I fought the Russians, my son fights you and I expect my grand son to fight the Chinese.
Otherwise known as regime change, and puppet government support and stabilisation.... Another couple of decades and a butcher's bill of dead and injured servicemen...but hey...the military industrial complex have investor dividends to pay, and corporate mercenaries to keep occupied... "Oh What a Lovely War"
That's a good point as the Chinese are there now in a very big way...now that we located massive amounts of minerals... As far as I am concerned, they can have it.
I didn't leave a effing thing in Assholestan, there ain't chit there but blood and heart ache! I personally took part in 278 Air born Evacs of U.S. Mil, mostly due to IED and insurgent attacks, and many of those ( one out of three) came home in a box with a flag over it! I was deployed there continuously in 3 month rotations between 2003 and 2008, and the whole time I was there, not one god damn thing changed! We gained nothing while there, and we freed the shit out of no one! We have stopped nothing happening there and have wasted american lives doing all that, for nothing! Yea, it's a tier 1 shit hole of the first order! Let the whole middle east from Egypt to China burn! There can never be peace in that whole region, only war, endless war!
@Ura-Ki "...deployed there continuously in 3 month rotations between...Let the whole middle east from Egypt to China burn!" Out of curiosity, why were your deployments so short? Was it the level of ops, wear/tear on equipment (helicopters)...? As far as letting it burn, it certainly would solve a hell'va lot of world problems...Hell, maybe that is the real solution!
A 3 month deployment was chosen because of the level of ops ran, daily averages were something around 8 for a 24 hour period! Yea, it wears on ya! Also, we were destroying turbines on our Helos at a very high rate, average 1 per 48 hour stretch from over spooling/over temp, our birds were over grose to begin with, even with the 2nd addition power upgrades, we had to push them, and it cost engines! We would get shipments of new engines every two weeks, and it was just keeping up with us! It became the norm to land after a mission and have a black smoking engines winding down and grinding to a stop while the ground crews were pulling a fresh prepped bird out of the hanger to take it's place! When I first got there, we didn't have enough birds, so we were borrowing or stealing from where ever we could, and we had our back up heavies, the CH-47s that we ended up using a lot!
Interesting! So, what I hear you telling me is the helicopters you were using (I assume they were the UH-60M medivac version) didn't have the carrying capacity necessary for the mission requirements? What in the world made them so heavy, armor? As a layman, I would think that helicopter would have more than enough lift for medical work, no? And, yet, as of 2014, the Army is buying more of them (HH-60M)? EDIT: I never knew because luckily I never had to fly in one but guess you guys do carry a hell'va lot. Got this from a simple query: "The MEDEVAC features include an integrated EKG machine, an oxygen generator, electronically controlled litters, an infrared system that can locate patients by their body heat and a built-in, external hoist. "There's a lot of the stuff built into this aircraft that we used to have to carry out to the aircraft..."
Evening Shift! Typical Conditions, Moon Dust, Tastes like Shit! It's every where and gets into every thing! Quarantine Hanger, Rapid deployment. These could be loaded and deployed any where in the world in 24 hours! Trials for a replacement of the MH-53 Pave LowIII Best bird we never got! MH-53 Pave Low III This is what I started out with in 1991 Big, Slow, Fuggly, and LOUD AS HELL! Not as bad the the MH-1N's, but still bad! I was almost killed because of one of these, rotor wash picked my up off the ground and tossed me 60 some feet through the air, and I'm not a little guy! Spent 6 weeks in Germany, then 6 months out before I could re qualify for flight status and rejoin my wing!
We are always fighting the last war! We were supposed to be able to deploy long range, at night, bad weather, yada yada yada! Problem was, we had a bunch of heavy ass gear, including the air to air refueling gear, 2 door guns, gunners with ammo, armor for the flight crew and engines, plus about 800 pounds of medical equipment on board, we were about 600 pounds over MTOW and outright level flight speed was about 30 MPH slower, and altitude performance ( never very good) was about half what a normal Hawk can do! Then on top of that, Hot conditions and Density Altitude made it even worse, it was like we were flying at 11000 feet all the time and 100 deg temps! We lost an average of 650 HP per shaft because of all that, out of 1800 HP per shaft rated! Wasn't until we got that "R" Hawks, with the composite armor, and 2200 HP rated per shaft engines that we finally had a good bird! Still no match for the Marines Bell/Agusta UH-414X Super Huey, but good enough! We swiped ( borrowed with out permission) 12 of them from Big Mean Green to play with, but they took them away from us and we got stuck with the Hawks instead!
