Armored Cav: A Guided Tour of an Armored Cavalry Regiment

by Tom Clancy

  The new suit was a major improvement over the earlier model, resembling a quilted jumpsuit with thick insulation. The outside is covered in a camouflage cloth similar to that of the BDU, and together with the layered inner protection of the suit, it is resistant to virtually all known chemical agents. On the inside is a fabric shell containing an activated charcoal liner to absorb moisture and keep the occupant (relatively) dry, and consequently (relatively) cool. In fact, soldiers who wore them during Desert Storm actually found them quite comfortable, though some of this was due to the fact that Desert Saber, the one-hundred-hour ground war, was fought during a period of cold and rain! The downside of these new suits was that after being worn for something like five continuous days, the inner shell and charcoal liner literally peeled off onto the skin of the wearer. The newer models have been designed to avoid this problem, and seem to work well.

  Soldiers on operations wear the suits whenever there is any danger of chemical attack. In the event of a suspected chemical attack, each soldier immediately dons a protective mask and hood, as well as a set of booties designed to keep the soldier from fouling—or “sliming”—his boots with toxic agents. The mask is an improved design with replaceable filters (they have an easier “draw,” making it less fatiguing to breathe), and even a small port to take water from a standard canteen. The suit is by no means comfortable, but it’s a vast improvement over past designs, and a much better alternative to becoming a chemical toxin casualty.

  So when will General Sullivan give every soldier a GPS receiver and a personal IVIS terminal? (Remember the Space Marines in Aliens?) Well, don’t laugh yet, because such things are on the way, and will probably be part of the soldier’s outfit before the end of the first decade of the 21st century. For example, Trimble Navigation, of Sunnyvale, California, is already working on integrating a miniature GPS antenna and receiver into a standard “Fritz” helmet. And biomedical monitoring and transponder gear will probably be part of a soldier’s standard kit by 2010. If this sounds far-fetched, stay tuned: Things like fully powered body armor with air-conditioning and environmental controls are already being discussed at places like Fort Benning, Georgia (the Army Infantry Center), and Fort Detrich, Maryland (where they work on habitability and sustenance technology). There will be Starship Troopers!

  Food: T-Rations and MREs

  “An army travels on its stomach.”—Napoleon Bonaparte

  Nothing in soldiers’ lives so affects their well-being and morale as the quality and quantity of their field rations. The problem with food is that being organic, it tends to spoil. So ever since people first left their caves to make war on their distant neighbors, warriors have been trying to find better ways to package food and make it last. In the time of Alexander the Great, goatskins and ceramic vessels provided the packaging for food and drink, albeit not terribly effectively. Napoleon awarded prizes to inventors who demonstrated the ability to preserve foods in glass jars. But the basic packaging technology that would be the standard for the next 150 years, the tin can, was a British invention—with everything from canned butter to boned pheasant being canned and shipped to British troops around the world. However, in those days it was expensive to package food in this way; and only delicacies and supplements like butter and condensed milk ever found their way to the forward troops. The desire to keep down costs and maximize the efficiency of the ration system perhaps hit a low point during the American Civil War. The malnutrition that resulted from the basic diet of salt pork (bacon), hardtack (unleavened bread), and black coffee may have caused as many deaths as bullets did. Only the desperate intervention of citizens’ organizations like the United States Sanitary Commission and the Red Cross avoided even more grievous losses.

  Over the next century and a half, advances in canning technology and reduced costs of canning (due to civilian consumption) contributed to better quality and longer shelf life. And in due course, the U.S. Army attempted to produce nutritious and tasty canned and packaged rations. The best known of these, the famous C and K rations of World War II, provided individual portions of well-known foods in cans and sealed packages, with shelf lives measured in years. Some, like the canned beef stew and spaghetti, were almost identical to civilian products from Armour or Campbell’s. Others, like the hideous pork patty (sausage in grease gravy), and the notorious fruitcake (a sort of sweet and sticky hockey puck), were usually passed along to captured enemy troops. Because of their mixed reception by front-line combat troops, the Army felt obliged to supplement or replace the field rations with fresh food as often as possible. This policy—admirable in principle—could nevertheless be taken to silly excesses, as in Vietnam, when jungle patrols might have chilled cases of beer airdropped to them, and remote firebases greeted returning patrols with full-course steak dinners and well-stocked bars. Clearly, in the attempt to make field rations as palatable as possible, the Army supply system had gone berserk and needed to be fixed. Luckily, a new packaging technology had come on the scene to help the military with this problem.

  The coming of the space age and man’s early ventures into orbit and to the moon meant that he had to take food and drink with him. At first this took the form of pureed foods in toothpaste tubes and crumbly crackers and cookies. But the astronauts’ distaste for such stuff, and the high public visibility of the space program, forced NASA to research and develop better food products to keep flight crews happy and healthy. At first, they tried freeze-dried foods—quick-frozen and then placed in a vacuum to remove all the moisture. But this did not work well with meats and baked goods. And by the end of the Apollo moon-landing program, NASA was allowing common grocery items like bread slices, canned meats, and peanut butter and jellies on lunar missions. The real breakthrough came with the development of the “wet pack,” a sealed plastic bag with dehydrated foods such as meat slices, stews, or vegetables, sterilized to prevent spoilage (usually by steam heating or radiation bombardment), and then rehydrated for use by the crews. The same techniques were applied to other types of prepared foods (lasagna, chicken and rice, etc.) for larger institutional-sized containers. And thus the technology behind the T-ration and the MRE was born.

  The current U.S. Army strategy of feeding soldiers in the field is based around the following three types of rations:• A-Rations—These are fresh foods, procured locally from around the operational area, and prepared by standard Army field kitchens. This is the cheapest and most preferred type of ration (by both the soldiers and the Army), though local vendors and supplies may limit availability.

  • T-Rations—These are prepared foods, from vendors like Stouffers and Swanson, packaged in large aluminum trays, matched into meal sets for groups of twelve soldiers, and then heated in buffet-type heaters with boiling water. They usually do not require refrigeration, though some special meals (like the famous 1990 Thanksgiving dinner during Desert Shield) may require cold storage in transit.

  • Meals Ready to Eat (MREs)—This is the standard field/combat ration of the American military. An MRE is a series of wet, dry, and freeze-dried food packs, with an accessory package (spices, a spoon, fork, napkins, etc.) sealed inside a rugged (some say too rugged!) brown plastic bag. There are twelve basic varieties, with one of each variety being packed in a case of MREs. Each MRE contains about 3,000 usable calories of food, and each soldier in the field is allocated four per day under the current Army supply scheme.

  The contents of a Meal Ready to Eat (MRE). This particular one has pouches of chicken with rice, cheese spread, crackers, drink mix, coffee, and a cookie bar. Note the small bottle of Tabasco sauce, a favorite of the troops.

  JOHN D. GRESHAM

  The T-rations have been a godsend to the Army in terms of cost and portability. When you open up a T-ration box, you usually find three aluminum trays of food—a meat entree, a starch dish, and a vegetable dish. Also in the T-ration box is that most prized of Army foodstuffs, an oversized bottle of McIlhenny Co. Tabasco sauce! In all deference to the Army and their contract
ors, the foodstuffs supplied to the troops can be a bit on the bland side, especially to some ethnic groups that have found a career in the Army so attractive. So the addition of spicy condiments has become an essential part of the T-ration specification. Overall, the T-ration program has been a success, though everyone has his own preferences. For example, one young cavalry officer that we spoke to had nothing good to say about the chicken breasts in honey glaze sauce over rice. But a senior supply officer of a cavalry regiment declared the dish “delicious,” and said that he could eat it every day! Like the population that makes it up, the Army is a mixture of tastes.

  Because of the Gulf War, MREs got a very bad rep. Called at times “Meals Rejected by the Enemy,” they garnered many negative comments during the Gulf crisis. Part of the reason for this was the limited variety available to the troops during the early days of Desert Shield. During the dark days of August 1990, before the Army logistics and support services caught up with them, the first troops deployed to the Persian Gulf (mainly the 82nd Airborne and 101st Air Assault Divisions) had nothing to eat but MREs. At that time, there were only four varieties of MRE (as opposed to the dozen of today), a choice that was made worse by the dietary requirements of our Saudi Arabian allies. Prior to Desert Shield, the Saudi National Guard was primarily a security force charged with the protection of mosques around Mecca and other holy places. They were not a field army, and so lacked the support structure to maintain themselves in the desert of northern Saudi Arabia. The Saudis did not have a stockpile of ready-to-eat field rations for their ground troops, and lacked field kitchens to cook food for them. So the Saudis asked if they might buy several million MREs as interim field rations, pending delivery of their own field kitchens. This was cheerfully done. After the MREs were delivered, though, someone (nobody seems to know whether it was Saudi or American) realized that two of the four MRE types contained pork (ham in one, roasted pork in the other), and thus were forbidden for Muslims. To avoid embarrassing us, the Saudis kept the two varieties that did not have pork in them, and graciously donated the rest to the troops of the XVIII Airborne Corps already on the line up on the Iraqi border. Thus it came to pass that the soldiers of the XVIII Airborne Corps wound up eating ham and egg omelet and pork patty MREs for some weeks. They were positively sick of them! Nevertheless, everyone did eat, and they got on with the business at hand, the winning back of Kuwait.

  From this slight dietary debacle came the initiative to greatly expand the variety and quality of the MRE program. The first move was to develop and package a number of new types of MRE. The next step, which is still going on, was to look beyond the traditional foods that have been packaged into field rations and produce MREs that better reflect the eating habits and tastes of the young Americans that make up the raw material of the U.S. Army. More about the new MRE technology later, but first let’s look at the existing variety of MREs available for use by the American soldier.

  If you were to open a case of MREs—and there is only one kind of MRE package in late 1993—you would find one of each kind of MRE inside. This was done so that nobody could complain that the Army and its contractors were trying to force MREs of one kind or another onto the troops. So, in what is probably the first rule of MRE consumption etiquette, when the troops are issued their MREs, they randomly reach into the box, and just pull one out. In this way, no individual can claim he was“gypped.” The second rule is that it’s OK to “trade” for another MRE (like “brown bag” rules in grammar school). Once you’ve got your MRE, opening the package (each weighs about 2 lb/ 1kg) takes persistence; the brown plastic of the bags is so tough it’s almost bulletproof. As a result, the soldiers tell me that a Swiss Army knife (with a built-in scissors) is considered an essential tool for the MRE gourmet. Now, in case you wonder just what is inside these little brown plastic packages, consider some of the following menus:• Menu No. 2—Corned beef hash, freeze-dried pears, crackers, apple jelly, oatmeal cookie bar, beverage base powder (fruit drink), cocoa beverage powder, Accessory Package “C” (Taster’s Choice coffee, creamer, sugar, salt, pepper, gum, matches, hand cleaner, and toilet tissue), and a spoon.

  • Menu No. 4—Omelet with ham, potatoes au gratin, crackers, cheese spread, oatmeal cookie bar, beverage base powder (fruit drink), Accessory Package “C” (Taster’s Choice coffee, creamer, sugar, salt, pepper, gum, matches, hand cleaner, and toilet tissue), Tabasco sauce, and a spoon.

  • Menu No. 7—Beef stew, crackers, peanut butter, cherry nut cake, Accessory Package “A” (Taster’s Choice coffee, creamer, sugar, salt, pepper, gum, matches, hand cleaner, and toilet tissue), Tabasco sauce, and a spoon.

  • Menu No. 8—Ham slice with natural juices, potatoes au gratin, crackers, apple jelly, chocolate-covered brownie, beverage base powder (fruit drink), cocoa beverage powder, Accessory Package “A” (Taster’s Choice coffee, creamer, sugar, salt, pepper, gum, matches, hand cleaner, and toilet tissue), Tabasco sauce, and a spoon.

  • Menu No. 11-Chicken and rice, crackers, cheese spread, chocolate-covered cookie bar, beverage base powder (fruit drink), Starburst candies, Accessory Package “A” (Taster’s Choice coffee, creamer, sugar, salt, pepper, gum, matches, hand cleaner, and toilet tissue), Tabasco sauce, and a spoon.

  Once the package is opened, you collect your beverage (usually water, heated for coffee or chilled for the drink powder, or boxed milk). Then it is a matter of organizing what you have found in the bag. Should you desire to heat your entree package, you can boil it in water (if available). But true MRE gourmets tell me there is a much preferred method. Step one is to find a friendly HET driver and drop the MRE entree package down the exhaust stack while the engine idles. You wait for ten minutes (timing here is essential), then have the driver gun the engine. The MRE package blows right up out of the stack, perfectly heated through! Another option, though one shunned by many troops, is the use of a little Army issued gadget, the U.S. 1992 MRE Heater. This is a catalytic mitt, which, when activated with water, produces enough heat to make an MRE entree pack warm enough to enjoy. These are also used a lot in Arctic regions just to thaw frozen MRE packs. The downside is that the heaters produce hydrogen (an explosive gas) as a by-product of the catalytic reaction (this means no smoking or open flames around them), and the other by-products of the reaction are somewhat toxic and have to be disposed of carefully.

  So, you might ask, what are they like to eat? Not bad actually. You have to eat the entrees out of the wet packs, which tends to be a bit messy (a tip—slit the bags the long way to reduce the mess), though quite practical.

  In general, MREs are tough for the supply system to handle. Their contents are hydrated with so much water, they are relatively heavy and bulky. And of course, they make a lot of waste. In view of all the garbage generated by the MREs (the Army calls it “wet” trash or garbage), it is a good idea to use the brown plastic MRE bag to stuff all the waste in. This wet waste is a major problem in using MREs, as the current environmental policy of the Army is to treat the lands that our forces enter at least as well as our own domestic exercise areas. This means that trash must be packed out or buried in an approved waste site.

  Yet for all their problems, until the Army figures a way to make water out of thin air in the desert, MREs will remain the best compromise available. Because they require very little water to supplement the meal, the MRE is going to be field ration of choice for U.S. military forces when they operate away from home.

  Which brings us to our discussion of future MRE developments. One of the main goals of the Army is to make field rations that are both attractive to the soldiers and nutritious. That second goal has been achieved quite well with the current MREs. Well balanced nutritionally, particularly in mineral content (which is vital in areas where soldiers sweat a lot), each MRE delivers about 3,000 usable calories (if fully eaten), with four MREs being allocated for each soldier each day. Surprisingly, because of the high caloric content in each meal, troops in the field actually have the tendency to gain
weight (which is almost unheard of in military history), despite the heavy workloads placed upon them in field operations. But this does not solve the problem of variety and taste. In addition, with the growing diversity of personnel in the Army (Muslims are the fastest-growing ethnic group in America, and in the Army), it is becoming necessary to produce field rations that meet the strict dietetic requirements of groups like vegetarians and Muslims. In late 1993, a new series of MREs—with entrees based around vegetable products like lentils and potatoes—was produced and airdropped as relief supplies for the Muslims in Bosnia. As for more common American tastes, there are some promising efforts to package “fast” foods like hamburgers, as well as Mexican and Chinese entrees. But the crown jewel of these efforts is (yes, you guessed it!) an MRE with a slice of pizza in it. A specially shaped thermal mitt heats the slice in its wet pack and melts the cheese. These new “fast food” MREs will probably be getting to the troops in the field in the next few years, and should be quite a hit. Nevertheless, one old cavalry sergeant that we ate with at Fort Bliss was heard to say that the pizza MRE would not be complete until the contractor found a way to put a self-chilling can of beer inside! One thing that is certain, though. The Army is spending a lot of money to make sure that the U.S. Army is the best fed in the world. Bon appétit!

  Radios: The SINCGARS Family

  In May of 1940, when the Nazi Panzer divisions invaded France, most of their tanks were inferior in firepower and protection to the French and British tanks opposing them. But every German tank had a radio, while only special Allied command vehicles were so equipped. In maneuver warfare, every combat unit must be able to do three things: move, shoot, and communicate. The German Army gained tremendous tactical and operational advantages in flexibility and in command and control from those fragile, short-ranged vacuum-tube sets. Other armies paid careful attention to this lesson. They still do.