Quoted:
I miss my war!  It was best time of my life!  Nothing I ever have done before or afterward has ever come close to the adventures I had as a 18 Series cat on a go team with the ROE shackles removed!

18Z50.....

Caution:  War is dangerous.  Consult with your recruiter before going to war.  War my cause serious injury and even death.  If you experience an upset stomach, vomiting, headache, dizziness, loss of appetited, or feeling of depression or suicidal thought, you should discontinue going to war and seek immediate help at the VA.  In some rare cases, War my be  habit forming and addictive.  Seek expert advice before attending SFAS or the SFQC.

Quoted:
A little background:

Up until January 2001, the US military had been subjected to some of the stupidest, most detrimental, demoralizing treatment by the Clinton White House for 8 years.  The senior NCOs and officers had grown up during the Reagan Administration where the military had one primary focus:  Train for combat and deploy on a moment's notice to dish out coordinated, professional, industrial-scale violence on our enemies with swiftness.

When Clinton came into the WH, she instituted all kinds of social experiment garbage, SHARPs training, EO quotas, don't ask-don't tell, and there was a clear departure from the war-fighting spirit from the top-down.  To this schism, there was a lot of cultural resentment from dudes who had joined a professional military tasked with doing our Nation's business seriously.  When I was a private, all my Drill Sergeants had combat patches, and practically all the NCOs with 5 years of service or more in my first unit had been Panama or ODS vets as well, so we got to hear how things used to be concerning training, ammo allotments, field rotations, and deployments.

Once George W. Bush came into the WH, he inherited a mixed military culture of camouflage welfare recipient garrison Pogues, and war-fighters who were chewing at the bit to deploy and slay enemy combatants.  After 9-11, everyone knew it was game-time and he had already done a 180 in several areas, military pay being the first one.  Clinton had made sure we didn't get a pay raise for years, and when Bush came in, it hit our wallets significantly and was very welcome.  Morale picked up tremendously because you knew the Commander-in-Chief was making the military a priority.

As things moved forward into 2002, we saw one Battalion from down the street deploy to Afghanistan, but nothing for us.  More and more guys started murmuring again, saying, "We're never going anywhere.  We're gonna continue to do DRF cycle picking up pine cones on Sicily while everyone else gets a piece of the action.  This sucks!"

Then we got word we were deploying "somewhere" in early 2003, while pallets of DCUs, IBAs, Wiley Xs, desert boots, and MOLLE gear piled into the Brigade supply system, filtering down to the Companies with mass issue eventually ending up in Joe's arms as he hobbled away from each Company supply room down in the basement level.

Right before we deployed, they had all the NCOs from my Brigade (325th) meet in York Theater (Fort Bragg).

Imagine this perspective but everyone in BDUs (we couldn't wear the DCUs until the day we staged for loading the birds IIRC):

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Firs0.4sqi.net%2Fimg%2Fgeneral%2F600x600%2F59185088_fOrhbY9zmUHJ0Z2vR021UuiSzTMr2e6EgMQWdBz5oxw.jpg&f=1&nofb=1


Some butter bar 2LT gets up in front of that screen and says,

"Alright gents, watch this short video presentation and then I'll be giving you your CENTCOM AOR ROE briefing."

I looked over to the dude to my left and said, "Wake me up when this stupidity is over." or something to that effect.

It gets quiet, and then Drowning Pool's Let the Bodies Hit the Floor slowly crescendoed into full volume, and the screen erupts with footage from Desert Storm, primarily focusing on the Highway of Death slaughter with escharred corpses hanging out of the APCs, trucks, and tanks, F-15Es, F-16s, A-10s, M-1 Abrams, and Bradleys blasting Iraqi units endlessly.

There was a unanimous roar among us all, as this was unexpected.

The little JSG Lieutenant gets up on the stage again, and starts off his very animated and motivated "ROE briefing".

One of the first things he said that slapped us all into full focus was...

"I don't care if your Company commander tells you to tape up your mags or not have a round in the chamber of your weapon.  That's an unlawful order and will be disobeyed!"

"You are to shoot first and ask questions later!"

"If you see a threat, do not wait to be fired upon."

The shouts of "Hooah!" were visceral.  I couldn't believe what I was hearing, but I liked it.

We all went back to our Joes and told them we're getting ready to kick some serious ass.

To be a SAW gunner, M240 gunner, FO, TACP, Scout Sniper, or Scout/Observer in the early days of OIF in 2003 was everything and more than a young hooah could have hoped for.

I had this cheap little 35mm film no-name camera.  Digital cameras were just barely becoming a thing back then and I didn't have one.

I just found a bunch of photos I forgot about I need to upload sometime.  Here's one I've had for a while.

https://i1085.photobucket.com/albums/j422/LRRPF52/14CrowellinOverwatch.jpg

Quoted:
A little background:

Up until January 2001, the US military had been subjected to some of the stupidest, most detrimental, demoralizing treatment by the Clinton White House for 8 years.  The senior NCOs and officers had grown up during the Reagan Administration where the military had one primary focus:  Train for combat and deploy on a moment's notice to dish out coordinated, professional, industrial-scale violence on our enemies with swiftness.

When Clinton came into the WH, she instituted all kinds of social experiment garbage, SHARPs training, EO quotas, don't ask-don't tell, and there was a clear departure from the war-fighting spirit from the top-down.  To this schism, there was a lot of cultural resentment from dudes who had joined a professional military tasked with doing our Nation's business seriously.  When I was a private, all my Drill Sergeants had combat patches, and practically all the NCOs with 5 years of service or more in my first unit had been Panama or ODS vets as well, so we got to hear how things used to be concerning training, ammo allotments, field rotations, and deployments.

Once George W. Bush came into the WH, he inherited a mixed military culture of camouflage welfare recipient garrison Pogues, and war-fighters who were chewing at the bit to deploy and slay enemy combatants.  After 9-11, everyone knew it was game-time and he had already done a 180 in several areas, military pay being the first one.  Clinton had made sure we didn't get a pay raise for years, and when Bush came in, it hit our wallets significantly and was very welcome.  Morale picked up tremendously because you knew the Commander-in-Chief was making the military a priority.

As things moved forward into 2002, we saw one Battalion from down the street deploy to Afghanistan, but nothing for us.  More and more guys started murmuring again, saying, "We're never going anywhere.  We're gonna continue to do DRF cycle picking up pine cones on Sicily while everyone else gets a piece of the action.  This sucks!"

Then we got word we were deploying "somewhere" in early 2003, while pallets of DCUs, IBAs, Wiley Xs, desert boots, and MOLLE gear piled into the Brigade supply system, filtering down to the Companies with mass issue eventually ending up in Joe's arms as he hobbled away from each Company supply room down in the basement level.

Right before we deployed, they had all the NCOs from my Brigade (325th) meet in York Theater (Fort Bragg).

Imagine this perspective but everyone in BDUs (we couldn't wear the DCUs until the day we staged for loading the birds IIRC):

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Firs0.4sqi.net%2Fimg%2Fgeneral%2F600x600%2F59185088_fOrhbY9zmUHJ0Z2vR021UuiSzTMr2e6EgMQWdBz5oxw.jpg&f=1&nofb=1


Some butter bar 2LT gets up in front of that screen and says,

"Alright gents, watch this short video presentation and then I'll be giving you your CENTCOM AOR ROE briefing."

I looked over to the dude to my left and said, "Wake me up when this stupidity is over." or something to that effect.

It gets quiet, and then Drowning Pool's Let the Bodies Hit the Floor slowly crescendoed into full volume, and the screen erupts with footage from Desert Storm, primarily focusing on the Highway of Death slaughter with escharred corpses hanging out of the APCs, trucks, and tanks, F-15Es, F-16s, A-10s, M-1 Abrams, and Bradleys blasting Iraqi units endlessly.

There was a unanimous roar among us all, as this was unexpected.

The little JSG Lieutenant gets up on the stage again, and starts off his very animated and motivated "ROE briefing".

One of the first things he said that slapped us all into full focus was...

"I don't care if your Company commander tells you to tape up your mags or not have a round in the chamber of your weapon.  That's an unlawful order and will be disobeyed!"

"You are to shoot first and ask questions later!"

"If you see a threat, do not wait to be fired upon."

The shouts of "Hooah!" were visceral.  I couldn't believe what I was hearing, but I liked it.

We all went back to our Joes and told them we're getting ready to kick some serious ass.

To be a SAW gunner, M240 gunner, FO, TACP, Scout Sniper, or Scout/Observer in the early days of OIF in 2003 was everything and more than a young hooah could have hoped for.

I had this cheap little 35mm film no-name camera.  Digital cameras were just barely becoming a thing back then and I didn't have one.

I just found a bunch of photos I forgot about I need to upload sometime.  Here's one I've had for a while.

https://i1085.photobucket.com/albums/j422/LRRPF52/14CrowellinOverwatch.jpg

Quoted:
Yeah pretty much. My boys in 3-7 IN fucked up Baghdad big time and basically leveled BIAP. THUNDER RUN BABY!!!!

Quoted:
You had to be there to believe it.

March 2003 to March 2004:

“Hey man, y’all want some AT4s? Here’s like 5 or 6.”

Driving around in unarmored humvees, doors off, rear security in a lawn chair in the back.

$100k in cash in my backpack.  Turn in some Arabic receipts and get another $100k.

Captured weapons everywhere, no pistol issued to me so I had a seized .38 revolver with no reloads stuck in my DCU pocket for emergencies. I.e. not getting my head sawn off by hadji.

Having a bonfire at night like Lord of the Flies, with some of Saddams johnnie walker blue label getting passed around.

Go feed the tigers at the zoo during lunch.  Stop for hummus and ice cream at the market.

Let’s go explore the tunnels under the palace. Rumor has it there’s an underground route to the airport.

Hawaiian shirt day. Or week

Big boy rules.  Do what you want, how you want, but you own the consequences.

Replaced my name tapes with CPT Ali Baba.

Got pulled over on Route Irish by a bird colonel for not wearing my seatbelt. He didn’t like my name tapes.

Thanksgiving 2003 spent with the locals, teaching them how to eat shrimp, then getting violently ill from food poisoning.

Handing out “puffy potato chips” (pork rinds)

Oh damn we shot the local mayor in the ass in front of a crowd of screaming locals.

Quoted:


So you were a CA guy too?

Quoted:
Yeah pretty much. My boys in 3-7 IN fucked up Baghdad big time and basically leveled BIAP. THUNDER RUN BABY!!!!

Quoted:
@Possum-Sammich

422?

Quoted:

Haha yes, no adult supervision!

Quoted:

I was 422nd

Quoted:

Nice!  You went in with 3ID?  Who were you with after they went home?

We were on our own at first.  Got put onto C5s suddenly at Bragg, flew to Kuwait, then sat for a couple of days.  We weren't assigned to maneuver units yet, so our commander was like "Fuck it lets go."  Drove north with literally no plan other than find some Americans that needed civil affairs.  I would walk into a TOC and be like, "Hey, you guys need some help?"  They would give me a map of their area and we would hit the streets.  

I spent a few months with 3ID, then 1st Armored, then 2nd ACR for most of the time.

Quoted:


I wound up attached to 1AD DISCOM after 3ID ripped out. After we got to Baghdad and set up the CMOC in the green zone...well what became the green zone....my team got sent down to LSA Dogwood where the CSH was at the time and just started running missions out of there....and then we discovered there were a metric shit ton of explosives that got abandoned at Al Qua Qua military complex..so we started trying to mitigate the theft of that for a while.

Quoted:

Hmmmm.... I seem to remember some CA guys being involved in a treasure hunt in the area around that time...

Army Probes Alleged Theft of Cash by Troops
By David Zucchino
April 24, 2003
12 AM
Times Staff Writer
BAGHDAD —

Army commanders said Wednesday that American military personnel had removed about $12.3 million from huge caches of U.S. currency that were found by fellow soldiers in recent days in an exclusive neighborhood once home to senior Iraqi officials.

Investigators have recovered all of the stolen money, officials said, and commanders have ordered soldiers not to search for more hidden cash in the area where they discovered about $656 million in boxes inside cottages on Friday. Civil affairs officers found an additional $112 million Tuesday inside kennels in the same area.

One commander said three galvanized aluminum boxes containing an additional $12 million found at the cottages were allegedly removed and hidden by five soldiers for several hours before being recovered by investigators Saturday morning.

Those three boxes of cash had not been reported to commanders. With that amount, a total of about $780 million has been found in sealed structures in a tree-lined Tigris River area at the edge of the sprawling Presidential Palace complex in central Baghdad.

The currency apparently was left behind by Baath Party and Republican Guard officials as they fled the U.S. invasion.

Two of the three stolen boxes, each originally containing $4 million in tightly wrapped bundles of $100,000, were still sealed when they were recovered in a stone-lined canal near a mansion, commanders said. The third, which had been pried open, was retrieved near the operating base of soldiers implicated in the thefts.

A soldier with knowledge of the missing money from the opened box near the base had pangs of guilt and told investigators where to find the cash, said Lt. Col. Philip deCamp, who is participating in the investigation. That soldier has been cleared, he said, but five others are still under investigation.

Those five soldiers, who have not been charged, have cooperated with investigators to varying degrees, according to DeCamp. They face actions ranging from a letter of reprimand to a full court martial, which could include prison time.

The soldiers under investigation are from the 10th Engineer Battalion, which is attached to or under what the military calls “operational control” of Task Force 4-64 of the 2nd Brigade. The Times incorrectly reported in Wednesday’s editions that the suspects were members of the 4th Battalion, 64th Armored Regiment, which forms the core of Task Force 4-64.

Officials said investigators on Friday recovered $600,000 hidden in a nearby tree and $300,000 in a cooler on a truck carrying the cash to Baghdad’s international airport for counting and safekeeping. On Saturday morning, an additional $200,000 was found in a wooded area near the cottage.

The $300,000 had been removed from a box found earlier Friday night in a separate incident. The remaining $800,000 had been removed from the box recovered near the soldiers’ base.

No money has been reported missing from the cache found Tuesday inside seven kennels. Like the cottages, the kennels recently had been sealed shut with cinder blocks and concrete.

All the boxes of cash had been sealed with metal rivets and tied with green plastic tags marked “Bank of Jordan.”

Tape on the cottage door handles and the kennel locks bore the signature of a Republican Guard general dated March 20, the day the U.S. ground campaign began in Iraq. A slip of paper inside one box said the money inside was stored on March 16 under the orders of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

U.S. officials have said the cash is being held for the interim Iraqi government that is now being set up under U.S. auspices.

Commanders continued Wednesday to praise the conduct of two enlisted men who found the original caches Friday. Sgt. 1st Class Daniel Van Ess and Staff Sgt. Kenneth Buff immediately summoned commanders.

If troops find any more money, DeCamp said, whoever finds it is under orders to immediately secure the area and notify their commanders, who are to summon military police. Soldiers are not to pry open any more boxes.

Quoted:

I was 422nd

Quoted:
OIF II (fuck you Turkey) 04-05
Did our right seat ride and RIP with 1-10 Cav, 4th ID

Early on it was still the wild wild West.

Look like a shithead doing shithead things? Brrrp.
Launch a rocket/mortar at our house? Fuck you, have some 155mm/MLRS in your backyard. Yeah, we still did H&I fires too because 'merica!
Didn't like the 155mm the other night? Here, have a JDAM instead.
https://i.imgur.com/ISNmVw9l.jpg

Ammo was plentiful.
https://i.imgur.com/O8lrnZbl.jpg

Flex gun weapon systems.
https://i.imgur.com/TyQhJcKl.jpg

You can fuck more stuff up when you live and fight as a combined arms team.
https://i.imgur.com/gcw2OGTl.jpg

Apache guys are still fags.
https://i.imgur.com/WAcDFQIl.jpg

As it got closer to elections, we had to start being nice. They even took away our attached arty.

Quoted:


My 1SG, Commander and TM SGT for HOA were 422 during the invasion. You’re not the guy that shot the tiger are you?

Quoted:
A little background:

Up until January 2001, the US military had been subjected to some of the stupidest, most detrimental, demoralizing treatment by the Clinton White House for 8 years.  The senior NCOs and officers had grown up during the Reagan Administration where the military had one primary focus:  Train for combat and deploy on a moment's notice to dish out coordinated, professional, industrial-scale violence on our enemies with swiftness.

When Clinton came into the WH, she instituted all kinds of social experiment garbage, SHARPs training, EO quotas, don't ask-don't tell, and there was a clear departure from the war-fighting spirit from the top-down.  To this schism, there was a lot of cultural resentment from dudes who had joined a professional military tasked with doing our Nation's business seriously.  When I was a private, all my Drill Sergeants had combat patches, and practically all the NCOs with 5 years of service or more in my first unit had been Panama or ODS vets as well, so we got to hear how things used to be concerning training, ammo allotments, field rotations, and deployments.

Once George W. Bush came into the WH, he inherited a mixed military culture of camouflage welfare recipient garrison Pogues, and war-fighters who were chewing at the bit to deploy and slay enemy combatants.  After 9-11, everyone knew it was game-time and he had already done a 180 in several areas, military pay being the first one.  Clinton had made sure we didn't get a pay raise for years, and when Bush came in, it hit our wallets significantly and was very welcome.  Morale picked up tremendously because you knew the Commander-in-Chief was making the military a priority.

As things moved forward into 2002, we saw one Battalion from down the street deploy to Afghanistan, but nothing for us.  More and more guys started murmuring again, saying, "We're never going anywhere.  We're gonna continue to do DRF cycle picking up pine cones on Sicily while everyone else gets a piece of the action.  This sucks!"

Then we got word we were deploying "somewhere" in early 2003, while pallets of DCUs, IBAs, Wiley Xs, desert boots, and MOLLE gear piled into the Brigade supply system, filtering down to the Companies with mass issue eventually ending up in Joe's arms as he hobbled away from each Company supply room down in the basement level.

Right before we deployed, they had all the NCOs from my Brigade (325th) meet in York Theater (Fort Bragg).

Imagine this perspective but everyone in BDUs (we couldn't wear the DCUs until the day we staged for loading the birds IIRC):

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Firs0.4sqi.net%2Fimg%2Fgeneral%2F600x600%2F59185088_fOrhbY9zmUHJ0Z2vR021UuiSzTMr2e6EgMQWdBz5oxw.jpg&f=1&nofb=1


Some butter bar 2LT gets up in front of that screen and says,

"Alright gents, watch this short video presentation and then I'll be giving you your CENTCOM AOR ROE briefing."

I looked over to the dude to my left and said, "Wake me up when this stupidity is over." or something to that effect.

It gets quiet, and then Drowning Pool's Let the Bodies Hit the Floor slowly crescendoed into full volume, and the screen erupts with footage from Desert Storm, primarily focusing on the Highway of Death slaughter with escharred corpses hanging out of the APCs, trucks, and tanks, F-15Es, F-16s, A-10s, M-1 Abrams, and Bradleys blasting Iraqi units endlessly.

There was a unanimous roar among us all, as this was unexpected.

The little JSG Lieutenant gets up on the stage again, and starts off his very animated and motivated "ROE briefing".

One of the first things he said that slapped us all into full focus was...

"I don't care if your Company commander tells you to tape up your mags or not have a round in the chamber of your weapon.  That's an unlawful order and will be disobeyed!"

"You are to shoot first and ask questions later!"

"If you see a threat, do not wait to be fired upon."

The shouts of "Hooah!" were visceral.  I couldn't believe what I was hearing, but I liked it.

We all went back to our Joes and told them we're getting ready to kick some serious ass.

To be a SAW gunner, M240 gunner, FO, TACP, Scout Sniper, or Scout/Observer in the early days of OIF in 2003 was everything and more than a young hooah could have hoped for.

I had this cheap little 35mm film no-name camera.  Digital cameras were just barely becoming a thing back then and I didn't have one.

I just found a bunch of photos I forgot about I need to upload sometime.  Here's one I've had for a while.

https://i1085.photobucket.com/albums/j422/LRRPF52/14CrowellinOverwatch.jpg

Quoted:
I was up north for the invasion. On the ground when the 'herd jumped in.

Flew in on a MC130, NOE.  Crazy ride for sure.

The load out on my GMV was insane--.50 cal, M240, 2 x M249s, Javelin CLU with a bunch a missiles that we used up pretty quick and got more from the 173rd, a 60mm mortar, more than a few AT4s, tons of grenades.  All for 4 dudes in the truck.

It was crazy times.  Watching B52s carpet bomb Iraqi positions.  Wish I had taken more pictures.  I did use some disposable cameras, but like 3 were destroyed during my time there.

Quoted:
OIF II (fuck you Turkey) 04-05
Did our right seat ride and RIP with 1-10 Cav, 4th ID

Early on it was still the wild wild West.

Look like a shithead doing shithead things? Brrrp.
Launch a rocket/mortar at our house? Fuck you, have some 155mm/MLRS in your backyard. Yeah, we still did H&I fires too because 'merica!
Didn't like the 155mm the other night? Here, have a JDAM instead.
https://i.imgur.com/ISNmVw9l.jpg

Ammo was plentiful.
https://i.imgur.com/O8lrnZbl.jpg

Flex gun weapon systems.
https://i.imgur.com/TyQhJcKl.jpg

You can fuck more stuff up when you live and fight as a combined arms team.
https://i.imgur.com/gcw2OGTl.jpg

Apache guys are still fags.
https://i.imgur.com/WAcDFQIl.jpg

As it got closer to elections, we had to start being nice. They even took away our attached arty.

Quoted:


I wound up attached to 1AD DISCOM after 3ID ripped out. After we got to Baghdad and set up the CMOC in the green zone...well what became the green zone....my team got sent down to LSA Dogwood where the CSH was at the time and just started running missions out of there....and then we discovered there were a metric shit ton of explosives that got abandoned at Al Qua Qua military complex..so we started trying to mitigate the theft of that for a while.

Quoted:


It wasn't even half of what  it could have been.


Fuckers flattened shit more than they could've.

Quoted:

Nice!  You went in with 3ID?  Who were you with after they went home?

We were on our own at first.  Got put onto C5s suddenly at Bragg, flew to Kuwait, then sat for a couple of days.  We weren't assigned to maneuver units yet, so our commander was like "Fuck it lets go."  Drove north with literally no plan other than find some Americans that needed civil affairs.  I would walk into a TOC and be like, "Hey, you guys need some help?"  They would give me a map of their area and we would hit the streets.  

I spent a few months with 3ID, then 1st Armored, then 2nd ACR for most of the time.

Quoted:
Clinton had made sure we didn't get a pay raise for years, and when Bush came in, it hit our wallets significantly and was very welcome.  Morale picked up tremendously because you knew the Commander-in-Chief was making the military a priority.

Quoted:


@LRRPF52

So did you deploy to Iraq? Where was the pic taken?

Quoted:

According to him it is pre GWOT training
https://www.ar15.com/forums/General/Operation-Red-Wings-Ambush-Footage-2005/5-2302738/?page=5#i83964186

Quoted:


He was being facetious, or at least attempting to make it seem that way.  I just want to hear a definitive "yes I went to Iraq/Afghanistan for a combat deployment" before we get 40 more threads insinuating just that.

It's totally ok to not have been on a combat deployment, it's not ok to insinuate you have and just dodge the question every time its asked when you havent.

And before anyone cries about getting called out, he didn't answer that exact question last time either.  It's a pretty simple question and totally devoid of persec/opsec.

@LRRPF52

Quoted:

Sounds like your deployment is one of the scenarios they talk about in the CA course now.

Quoted:
I never deployed to Iraq.

Afghanistan had some very loose ROE at times.  In 2009-2010 it was the wild west in some places.

Quoted:
I never deployed to Iraq.

Afghanistan had some very loose ROE at times.  In 2009-2010 it was the wild west in some places.

Quoted:


Yeah Afghanistan 2009 was a fucking blast.

Quoted:


I'm glad we still take the gloves off and break things sometimes

Quoted:

Totally believe that.

Just often hear the restraint and power point stuff. Here on GD and on the news.

I haven't seen any good old fashioned news, like WW2. "OUR BOYS DESTROY CITY BLOCKS: BRING AMERICAN WAR MIGHT TO HUSSEIN" or "HELO PILOT FLIES NON STOP FOR 18 HOURS TO RAIN PAIN", etc etc.

As a regular guy I don't hear about the "time to wreck stuff" very often. I hear about mistakes, but never just victory through overwhelming force, unless it's VERY specific, like the Bin Laden raid.

Quoted:

Totally believe that.

Just often hear the restraint and power point stuff. Here on GD and on the news.

I haven't seen any good old fashioned news, like WW2. "OUR BOYS DESTROY CITY BLOCKS: BRING AMERICAN WAR MIGHT TO HUSSEIN" or "HELO PILOT FLIES NON STOP FOR 18 HOURS TO RAIN PAIN", etc etc.

As a regular guy I don't hear about the "time to wreck stuff" very often. I hear about mistakes, but never just victory through overwhelming force, unless it's VERY specific, like the Bin Laden raid.

Quoted:


Basically every direct action mission we do is with overwhelming force.

Quoted:



In the past 7-8 years about 90% of the actual fighting has been conducted by organizations where you typically dont hear anything in the news until somebody dies.  Like not just a couple big operations, dozens and dozens of teams running missions day in and day out per CENTCOM theater (of which we have three now)

My last deployment wasn't that long ago and we pretty much got it all. Firefights under 50 meters, minefields, IEDs, quasi-large scale combat operations with tanks and rocket artillery firing on us.  Experiences vary wildly, if you talk to somebody that sat in a guard tower the whole time you would get a different perspective.