Army Missile Defense Stretched Thin

Obama's politically correct Army Missile Defense Stretched Thin: Readiness, Crisis Response At Risk

Thanks Obama.

>" There’s no peace dividend in missile defense. While most types of Army units don’t deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan anymore, some scarce specialties are in increasing demand worldwide, such as special operators, division staffs, and missile defense forces like the famous Patriot. As long-range missile threats increase from Iran and North Korea, China and Russia, Hezbollah and Hamas, Army Chief of Staff Ray Odierno himself has said the current pace of missile defense deployments is not sustainable.

“Today, we have air and missile defense forces in nine countries,” said Col. Clement Coward, deputy commander of the 32nd Air and Missile Defense Command. “On any given day, nearly half of the Army’s Patriot batteries are outside the continental United States [and] we’ve begun forward-deploying THAAD batteries” — even though THAAD’s so new there are only three batteries in service. As a result, Coward told the Association of the US Army today, “we are rapidly approaching an inflection point where we face the risk of breaking our AMD force.”

Skilled personnel are thinking of getting out, equipment is wearing out, and upgrades are delayed because the units aren’t at home to get them, Army leaders warned. Even more worrying is that, with so much of the force either deployed or recovering from deployment, little is ready and available to respond to unexpected crises.

“The risk really comes in our contingency forces,” said Maj. Gen. Gary Cheek, assistant deputy chief of Army staff for operations and plans (section G-3/5-7), also speaking at AUSA.

“Where the risk is not apparent, but it’s very real, is if you’ve got a contingency requirement,” Check told me after the panel. “[If] I’ve got to send four Patriot battalions to protect key seaports, airports, tactical units, headquarters, in an active combat theater where I’m moving in forces, moving out non-combatants….I’ve really put that [contingency response capacity] at risk.”

With budgets shrinking and sequester looming, the Army doesn’t expect to buy a lot of new missile defense batteries any time soon. Besides, the asset under stress is not so much the equipment as the skilled personnel to operate it. “The people are the key,”..."<

continue -> http://breakingdefense.com/2015/02/...il&utm_term=0_4368933672-79be87f29f-408269433

Note:
Valerie Jarrett was seen at the artillery boneyard recently staring at some 75 MM M-51 skysweeper anti aircraft guns.
http://topic.ibnlive.in.com/shreya-ghoshal/videos/m51-75mm-skysweeper-uXk7WMUq5Rc-1961472.html

 

Oh, the things I could (and have) said in here about air defense!

To be blunt, the state of our Army Air Defense units and equipment is horrible. The equipment is absolutely ancient (most dating to the First Reagan Administration), and you are right, huge numbers are simply getting out. Easily 6 out of 10 people that I served with in a line PATRIOT battalion are now civilians, retention is very low.

And morale is low for many reasons. And yes, while there is no PATRIOT in Iraq or Afghanistan (they are needed there - no air threats), they have been forward deployed into nations like Kuwait, Qatar, UAE and others for over a decade. These deployments are covered by the 11th Air Defense Artillery Brigade, by the 4 PATRIOT Battalions (1-43, 2-43, 3-43, and 5-52) on Fort Bliss.

And to give an idea of the burnout rate there, each does at least a 1 year deployment in "the sandbox" every 4 years. The unit deployed now is the same unit that was deployed there in 2011. And unless things change, will be there again in 2019. And yes, the equipment there now has been there for a decade at least. The units come and go, the equipment stays in place.

And to see how bad the funding is, think of the next 2 charts I am about to present. Realize that like most major Defense areas, budgets are formulated 2 years in advance. So an increase to the budget today (unless specially earmarked as an increase in the current or next budget) will not actually take affect until fiscal year 2018.

First, here is a chart on the number of new PATRIOT missiles ordered for a 5 year period:



Now notice that absolutely no new missiles were ordered in 2014, and none for this current year. And with a fixed shelf life of around 15 years, the last orders (140 in 2013) were basically replacements for the about to come outdated PAC-2 series from the mid-late 1990's. The large jump was in replacing most of the remaining PAC-2 with more updated GEM series missiles, and nothing since.

Now here is an even more disturbing number, the amount budgeted for upgrades and replacing old equipment:



Now RDT&E is "Research Development Test & Evaluation". In other words the amount spent on new research into the system. Procurement sounds like it is buying new equipment, but in reality it is generally spent either buying units that were sold to the manufacturer (Raytheon) to be completely stripped and rebuilt then sold back to the Army as needed (RECAP or Recapitalization), or replacing those parts that can be purchased new (for example the HEMTT trucks that actually haul them around). We have not bought an actual "new launcher" since the early 2000's (which were actually 1980's era PAC-1 launchers rebuilt as PAC-3 launchers).

The majority of that "Procurement" money actually went exactly to HEMTT haulers. Replacing the 1980's era "Dragon Wagon" M983 PATRIOT haulers with newer M983A4 units with up-armored cabs and air conditioning. The trucks are now mostly new, the launchers, radar and other equipment however is the same Reagan era stuff from 3 decades ago.

And if people think that R&D has actually improved, think again. The PATRIOT R&D budget was almost nothing because it was expected that by FY2015 we would start transitioning to the MEADS replacement as well as THAAD and the PATRIOT would start to be retired. Well, MEADS is pretty much dead, THAAD is stagnant, so the only solution is to try and get by with PATRIOT for a while longer.

The Army loves PATRIOT, but it also realizes it is well past it's prime and it is time to build the replacement system. And that is just not happening. Maintenance is so behind in our stateside units that I doubt we could actually deploy more then 50% of them if we really have to.

Yea, I can go on for pages just about the state of our air defenses.

http://www.bga-aeroweb.com/Defense/Patriot-PAC-3.html

 

What about the CONUS air defense ?

When I was growing up in the South Bay of Los Angeles County during the 50's there were Army AAA batteries ( 90 MM Sky Sweepers and even 40 MM bofor's) scattered all over the Los Angeles metropolitan area. By 1960 those AAA were replaced by the Nike-Ajax and soon the nuclear tipped Nike-Hercules. The Los Angeles metropolitan area was the heaviest defended area in the CONUS during the 50's and 60's.

The job of the CONUS air defense in the air was the responsibility of the states Air National Guard. From P-51's in the late 40's to F-101's F-102 then the F-4 Phantoms eventually the F-16.

When 9-11-01 happened we got caught with our pants down. Because of the over downsizing and BRAC during the Clinton administration, the California Air National Guard was down to one F-16 squadron which was based up in northern central California. March Air Force in Riverside, Ca. that use to be a SAC base with one squadron of B-52's, one squadron of KC-135's and a squadron each of reserve and ANG F-4's became a Air Guard and reserve base with no fighters. The George Air Force Base in San Bernardino County where Air Force F-16's were stationed was deactivated, the last Air Force aircraft that could intercept enemy aircraft and provide a Combat Air Patrol (CAP) over Southern California even though it's not the job of the Air Force but the Air National Guard.

So on 9-11-01 with no Air Guard or Air Force fighters able to provide a CAP over the Los Angeles and San Diego metro area, the Marine Corps FA-18's from MCAS Miramar had to provide the CAP. Not the responsibility of the Marine Corps or the Navy to provide air defense for the CONUS.

There was a Nimitz class carrier tied up to the wharf at NAS North Island in San Diego on 9-11-01, but do you know what is involved getting a carrier out of San Diego harbor ? But the carrier was able to cast off lines and weigh anchor and put to sea off of Southern California in 24 hours and the carriers air wing fighters and attack aircraft were all based at either NAS Fallon in Nevada and the NAS Lemoore, Ca. and had to fly from 600 to 800 miles out to the carrier. Anyone who was in Southern California for the first couple of weeks right after 9-11 and you heard those jets flying above at night, they were Marine and Navy FA-18's providing the CAP.

The question is, where was the Army's air defense missile batteries ? Is the U.S. Army capable of providing air defense for the CONUS ? Is this classified ?

The Russians don't (*)(*)(*)(*) around when it comes to Russian continental air defense. They have an entire separate military service responsible for providing the air defense for mother Russia
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/russia/agency/pvo.htm

 

Well, the cold war was a different era. The defenses of the 1960's through early 1970's were intended as a defense against incoming bombers, not ballistic missiles. And when the threat became more from missiles then bombers they were all closed down as pointless.

Now when you are talking about "Air Defense", that is really 2 different things thrown into one. Part is Air Defense as in aircraft, the other is Missile Defense.

But either way, it is largely meaningless. In the US we only have around a dozen PATRIOT Battalions, and 3 THAAD Batteries. That's it. You can also add in the Ticonderoga and Arleigh Burke class ships with their SM-3 missiles, but those would only be good in coastal areas.

Most of the ADA assets are at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. And there are a few Battalions scattered in places like Fort Sill and Fort Hood. None of these are in any way set up or even prepared for any kind of "rapid deployment". So no, the Army is in no way prepared to assume an "Air Defense" capability to protect the US like it was during the Cold War.

Now is it possible? Yes, I guess it is. But I would not do it with PATRIOT or THAAD. I would use a variant of the AEGIS Ashore system and place it in critical locations more or less like Nike was.



Yea, I remember NIKE from my youth. Even though I did not know it there was a Battery just a few miles from my house when I was growing up.

https://www.google.com/maps/@34.1851729,-118.4822851,196m/data=!3m1!1e3

Each of those 3 rectangular boxes was the doors to where the missiles (mostly nuclear tipped) were stored, 6-8 per rectangle. And a few months ago I took the tour at SF-88, a former Nike battery just north of San Francisco.





The tour is spectacular, and tells a lot of the system and what serving there was like during the Cold War. It is a free tour, and I encourage anybody that visits San Francisco to take it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nike_Missile_Site_SF-88

But no, I can not see our country ever being willing to spend that kind of money ever again. For some reason they all want to be ostriches, and pretend that our country will never be under threat ever again (or that we can send out drones and destroy any enemy with no loss of life).

 

Well one question I was always wondering about for two years has been answered.

THE OOZLEFINCH, A MYTHICAL BIRD, HAS A LONG AND DISTINGUISHED HISTORY WITH THE MANY U.S. ARMY ARTILLERY BRANCHES. OUR PARTICULAR SUB-SPECIES BELONGS TO THE AIR DEFENSE ARTILLERY FAMILY AND HAD EVOLVED TO POSSESS UNIQUE QUALITIES. IT WAS COMPLETELY FEATHERLESS, FLEW BACKWARDS AT SUPERSONIC SPEEDS, AND PREYED ON SOVIET BOMBERS, WHICH IT SNATCHED OUT OF THE SKY WITH ITS POWERFUL TALONS.

THE ORDER OF THE OOZLEFINCH WAS A DISTINGUISHED AWARD GIVEN TO NIKE MISSILEMEN WHO DEMONSTRATED SPECIAL AND UNIQUE QUALITIES. THOUGH THE CRITERIA FOR THE AWARD WAS A CLOSELY GUARDED SECRET, IT WAS KNOWN TO BE NEGOTIABLE!

But I digress.

http://www.nikemissile.org/site_sf88.shtml
There's a video of site SF-88

From this website. -> http://www.nikemissile.org/

 

Yea, you got me there. When I first signed onto the other forum you know me from, the name "Mushroom" was already taken, so I picked Oozlefinch since I was in Air Defense.

 

I was always able to figure out the "mushroom" with you sitting on that nuke in your avatar but never knew what an "oozlefinch" was. I know now.

The oozlefinch would be a good avatar.

 

Actually, "Mushroom" is from a nickname I was given while I was in Panama during jungle school.

We were doing our long range patrol phase, and we were given a map, a radio, and a starting and ending point. We had to plot our own route avoiding known "enemy positions" and get to the destination without being detected. And in the first 2 hours of movement we were given 4 or 5 different updates telling us to change our route with no explanation why.

One of the guys in my squad asked me why we kept getting change orders, and I told them I had no idea why, they were giving me no information and differing answers as to why.

"Oh, so you're a Mushroom Corporal. They are keeping you in the dark and giving you bulls**t."

Henceforth I became known as "Corporal Mushroom" for the next 3 years I was in the unit.

The picture came many years later, completely unrelated. It was the day I graduated from Warrior Transition Course (kind of mini boot camp for those joining the Army from another service), and took my first tour of the missile museum at the White Sands Missile Range. Several of us took an hour to view the displays outside, and one of them was a full-size mockup of the Fat Man atomic bomb. Since one of my favorite movies is "Dr. Strangelove", I could not resist getting on (ignoring the "do not climb" signs) and have my buddy take a picture, a'la Slim Pickens.

 

I always thought it was from the mushroom cloud from a nuclear explosion.

I figured out your avatar from day one, Maj. 'King' Kong.

Dr. Strangelove is the best Cold War movie ever produced in my opinion.

 

Today the air defense has to be concentrated on two main threats [potential threats], missiles and stealth fighter / fighter bombers.

This is why it's more important to invest into VHF radars [or X band radars]. Of course without discussing details, the present core of air defense today should be it. Since sooner or later Russians and Chinese will have enough operative stealth attack units to be taken seriously as potential threat.

For the rest, once the Cold War ended, there is no more concrete reason for a redundant anti missile defense.

 

Stealth aircraft are not that big of a threat, and easily defeated by several tactical techniques.

Primarily, achieve air control in the theatre. That is one thing that the US has pretty much mastered since the Korean War.

As far as "Stealth Attack", the solution is rather simple. Take an existing ADM system and modify it with HARM warheads. Then you do not even need RADAR, you home in on the aircraft's own RADAR system itself.

And we already have some pretty snazzy RADAR systems simply sitting in R&D Hell because the budget for their development has been cut to almost nothing. But even with MEADS in limbo, that has not stopped Raytheon from trying to improve the system already used by PATRIOT.

http://www.raytheon.com/news/feature/patriot_aesa.html

And to me that looks like it is primarily a drop-in replacement for the current MPQ-65 RADAR system.

Now as far as VHF RADAR, no. VHF is good as early warning RADAR, we used it that way ourselves. However, it is very farsighted and pretty damned poor for an actual air defense system.

And for most air defense systems, the improved RADAR would have to also be able to be installed in the missile itself. Because 90% of the time that is how the threat is actually killed. The missile initially homes in on the return-directions form the ground based RADAR, then as it gets toward it's terminal objective it homes in on it's own internal RADAR system. So these fancy new RADARs would not help as much as you think.

Air Defense is now primarily intended to defend against missiles. They are not forward deployed like FLAK guns were in WWII, or even more mobile and smaller systems like HAWK. Modern US systems like PATRIOT and THAAD operate well behind the front lines, in secure air space primarily defending against inbound missiles, and the occasional aircraft that sneaks through the CAP.

Sorry, even though PATRIOT is no longer my MOS, that does not mean I do not pay attention to the current developments in the field.

 

During the Gulf war, one of the more celebrated weapons was the Patriot missile system; they rushed PAC-2 missiles into production to meet the need. These Patriot missile batteries were set up to defend Israeli and Saudi Arabian cities from Iraqi missile attacks. They were a common sight around Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as an example.



These were primarily used against Iraqi Scud missiles which had an unstable flight path and weren't particularly accurate but this unpredictability made them difficult to shoot down.

There was a lot of debate afterwards about how effective the Patriot really were. There was usually a (*)(*)(*)(*) ton of shrapnel raining down after a Patriot was launched against an Iraqi scud, and often the shrapnel would cause damage. It was my understanding the Patriot was never intended to defend populated areas, but rather military targets.

 

We produce F35 in Italy, so we know the subject ...

As I pointed out in other occasions the VHF radar [with a wavelength wider than some profiles of common airplanes, this is the trick, it has been published on the net, so I can mention this ... Italian law about this is quite strict, you know] is not accurate, in fact it's not an engagement radar, after the detection by the VHF device you need some other devices, more accurate than this, to guide a missile to hit a stealth unit.

For the rest, I wait to see what someone will publish on the net.

 

There is a lot of confusion by people about how PATRIOT actually works, and how effective it really is.

For one thing, the "accuracy". A lot of people hold it up as a success, a lot of others hold it up as a failure. The truth is in between.

First of all, in an engagement with "perfect accuracy", you are only going to have a 50% success rate maximum. That is because for every engagement, 2 missiles are launched at each target. So even if the first one hits and takes out the target, the second one will self-destruct so only 1 hit is recorded for 2 launches.

Then you have the confusion on how we would regard a "success" as opposed to a layman that knows nothing of the system.

The original PATRIOT up through PAC-2 used a missile that was primarily designed to take out aircraft. In other words, they used a proximity fuse and attempted to take out the target essentially with a giant shotgun blast of shrapnel directly against the target. Against aircraft this works wonderfully, shredding control and fuel lines and weakening the structure so either the aircraft is destroyed or has to return to it's base (either one considered a successful hit). The idea of the PAC-2 missile was to use it against other missiles with simply a larger explosive warhead.

The PATRIOT did indeed have a "hit" rate of over 97% (42 targets engaged, 41 targets hit). But the later assessments took a great many things into account (the 2 missiles for each target, difference between "hit" and "kill", etc) and the "success" dropped to 50%, then 40%, then 30%. But a great many SCUDs that were recovered after being hit by PATRIOT showed the clear signs that an intercept had indeed happened. SCUDs were found throughout Saudi Arabia after they hit the ground, peppered with shrapnel damage.





However, the problem was that such a "shotgun" effect was almost worthless on a ballistic missile in it's terminal phase. They all to often still continued their ballistic descent and hit the target. "Missile Shotguns" were a concept, and would have worked great against ABT ("Air Breathing Threat" - cruise missiles), but were largely ineffective against Ballistic Missiles.

So the lesson of the Gulf War was twofold. The experimental software (PAC-2 ABM) did indeed work, but the warhead was largely a failure. However, they then looked at another system that was highly successful in the war, the M829 "Silver Bullet" kinetic kill anti-tank round. PAC-2 was an offshoot of the Star Wars program, so they went back to the drawing board to combine more fully many of the concepts of SDI into PATRIOT. For the next generation the missile (GEM - Guidance Enhanced Missile) the timing of the fuse was improved ensuring that the "shotgun" effect was more concentrated, the RADAR in the missile was improved, and the casing and explosive were designed to create even larger shrapnel in a smaller cone.

Then in the late 1990's, PAC-3 came out. This was a radical redesign of the system. Instead of having 1 missile per canister, there were 4. And instead of having an explosive missile like all the others, this was a kinetic kill weapon. Now the Army finally had a missile that was actually designed form the ground up as a ballistic missile killer, the first "real Star Wars" missile defense system.

In 2003, PATRIOT was once again called upon to defend against SCUD missiles launched from Iraq. And this time, the results were very different. In the 9 different engagements of ballistic missiles by PATRIOT, every single one of them was successfully destroyed before it reached the target (2 by PAC-3, 7 by GEM). There were no friendly casualties by inbound ballistic missiles in all of OIF where PATRIOT was set up to defend the area. In all of OIF, Iraq launched at least 20 missiles, 9 were in range of Army ABM and destroyed, 11 were outside of the range of ABM, and only 1 did any damage to Coalition forces (7 April 2003 an Al-Samoud stuck the area of the 3rd Infantry Division killing 3 soldiers and 2 embed reporters).

Your statement about "PATRIOT not intended to defend populated areas" was true in 1990, but not in 2015. Today we commonly place them to defend key cities in friendly territory, like Doha and Kuwait City. And they are mixed, like all PATRIOT units. 5 launchers with combinations of PAC-2 and GEM missiles (for air and missile threats - 20 missiles total), and 1 launcher of PAC-3, 16 PAC-3 missiles dedicated to missile threats. And with a range of around 20km, they can now hit and destroy the missile before it is over populated areas.

 

Trust me, I know all about having to search the net for information about such things. Everything I ever mention about missile defense is from a public source because I can not do otherwise. This was my profession for 5 years, and my security clearance means I would get huge penalties if I ever violated security on what these systems can do. Which means I spend a lot of time before I make posts scrounging open sources before typing anything.

The F-35 is not the F-117. And also like any "Stealth Aircraft", it is not an "invisible aircraft".

And yes, I know of VHF. It is generally used for early warning and for Air Traffic Control (ATC). Indeed it is not an engagement RADAR.

However, STEALTH is so effective because the technology works against Air Defense RADAR, as well as the RADAR placed inside the missiles. It's biggest threat in reality is not missiles at all, but guns. An Air Defense Gun (like the ZSU) can be aimed manually with directions provided by RADAR against stealth aircraft. This is a real worry, and why our Stealth traditionally only operate at night (so gunners can not use any visual targeting).

The F-35 is not really "stealth", however it is "stealthy". The RADAR cross-section is much lower then conventional fighter aircraft, which means that it will have to be much closer to an enemy before it can lock systems on it. And because they operate as fighters and not attack aircraft (like the F-117), that means they will have both radio and RADAR operating which will also give their positions away.

 

Nicely done with your post. As an airman serving in a non-combat occupation during that war, the Gulf War, the biggest issue were Patriot false alarms in the KTO, Kuwaiti Theater of Operations. not to be confused with false targets which is a separate discussion I'm not going to get into. Most of these false alarms were around the time the air campaign began, so that puts it around the middle of January '91.

I was based in Riyadh, and by this time our unit had been moved from the relative comfort of individual apartments at Eskan Village to a tent city very near King Fahd Int'l Airport with 10 of us to a tent. Usually these SCUD alerts would be in the early morning hours, so once you're up, there's little chance of getting any more shut eye at that point as you'd be up at 0530 anyway. You'd hear over the loudspeakers "SCUD alert &#8230; MOPP level four" We'd hurry up and put on our MOPP gear. There was a metal desk in this particular tent and those closest to it would hide under that. The rest of us would stumble around with our red-lensed flashlights and head for the SCUD bunkers. As you well know, these MOPP suits are claustrophobic and hot, so for 2 hours or so we're breathing stale air with our thoughts to ourselves. Usually around dawn, we'd hear, "All clear, MOPP level zero.." What had happened was the radar confused our own returning B-52&#8217;s with Scuds.

Not my photos, but eventually it just became a running joke to wear part of the MOPP suit, being part of Scud alley.

- KFIA Tent City

- Patriot missile battery

- Playing a game of poker in a MOPP mask and hood


As I say, these false alarms peaked during the air campaign and by the end of February had dwindled down to about 2 or 3 a week.

 

In Vietnam when at a base camp, fire base or at one of the air bases, you could hear when Charley dropped mortar rounds down the mortar tubes from some distance away when the weather conditions were just right giving you some warning.

Then you heard everyone yelling "IN COMING" as everyone ran for a bunker or a trench. You could always tell who was married. They ran the fastest as if they were running the 100 meter dash at the Olympics.

By any chance, did you notice the same thing ?

 

Most of us in our tent were bachelors, but I suppose now that I think about it, the married guys were often quickest to the bunkers. I don't want to imply anything I may have experienced in Riyadh or Dammam, Saudi Arabia is at all equivalent to your experience in a forward operating base in Vietnam. We were most often based at the furthest point a SCUD missile could reach and were give ample warning to react. With a mortar you've got on the order of seconds to react.

You can see Riyadh in the lower right quadrant on this map and where the suspected SCUDs were being launched.



I do think your observation is probably accurate, married guys probably felt they had more of an attachment to something back home and moved a little quicker.

 

I saw Air Force ground crews at the DaNang Air base on the perimeter along side the Marine grunts defending the air base during attacks.

During Tet of 68 there was a Marine tank platoon protecting an Air Force air base that was short handed. Air Force mechanics manned the .50 cal. HMG on the M-48 tanks.

In today's wars, you can be a thousand miles from the front lines and still be in a combat zone.
Any airman can find himself being a grunt just like in the Nam.

I know one young airman back in 2003-2006 who found himself in Iraq. (Two tours of duty) Forget what his MOS was but he found himself doing the Army's job of providing security for convoys.

 

Very true, many airman were used in ground combat support jobs in Iraq and Afghanistan and faced many of the same dangers as 11Bravos to the extent of improvised explosives and small arms fire. Just personally, I'm not comfortable talking up any of my experiences. I delivered Air Tasking Orders, that was my primary mission. I did not go looking for trouble in the sense of looking for and engaging bad guys. Anyway, I apologize for diverting your thread away from it's intent to discuss potential Army Missile Defense weaknesses.

I knew that Mushroom served on a Patriot missile battery so I was relaying some anecdotal chit chat about my experiences with them. Whenever they did shoot a Scud down as we watched the same news reports as civilians were getting, we'd high five and cheer them on. It wasn't until the dust had settled, and the 100 hour ground war was effectively over, that some were maligning the system and saying the success rates weren't all that great against Scuds. I think Mushroom cleared that up pretty well.

 

Mushroom was also a Marine grunt for ten years before shipping over to the Army.

 

That he was...once a Marine as they say.

 

Well, there are some things I obviously can not really discuss here, but I will kind of skirt around the edges of it.

Part of the reason (then and now) for MOPP 4 in an attack is that it is impossible to tell until after a missile hits if it has an explosive warhead, or a chemical-biological one. And even if the missile was "taken out" by PATRIOT, there would still be a cloud of such agents. Only the missile would be destroyed, not it's payload.

Even today it is SOP for when inbound missiles are detected, we go immediately to MOPP 4. When I was deployed, we had 3 sets of MOPP gear. One in our sleeping quarters, and another in our TOC which were both brand new and still sealed. We then a third set that was "training" which we wore during drills.

And I am one of those that still firmly believes that there were chemical weapons used in the Gulf War. There are just to damned many reports of detectors going off and other things that point strongly to their having actually been used. I have talked with to many that found evidence of such impacts in 1990-1991 to ignore them.

One simple fact always comes to mind with me, "Gulf War Syndrome". Every single symptom (chronic fatigue, joint pains, memory issues, diarrhea, neurological conditions) are also long term symptoms of exposure to chemical weapons (specifically nerve agents, like Sarin). Now while after GW1 a lot of people tried to blame these on other causes (insects, disease, depleted uranium, PTSD, burning oil wells, etc), the interesting fact that we have over 250,000 Gulf War vets that suffer from this after a 6 month war. Yet we have none suffering from it after a decade long war in the exact same region under exactly the same conditions.

And in 2003 the same chemical weapon detectors that were reported as having gone off repeatedly in 1991 made hardly a chirp. Our main systems that were showing "false positives" as the stories seem to go are the M9 paper, the M256 kit, and the CAM in addition to the M8 detector.

Out of all of those, the only one not still in use is the M8, replaced by the M22 ACADA. Now the M22 is even more sensitive then the M8 is, but none went off in 2003 yet the M8s were going off like crazy.

The only reason why I can think of that they have been keeping this quiet is because of the US policy on reciprocity in the event of the use of weapons of mass destruction upon our own soldiers. US policy states that they will only use such weapons when and if they are used against us first. And if we ever admitted that they had been used against our forces, then the question must be why did we not respond in kind like we had often stated we would.

But in 1991, we had already dismantled our chemical weapons programs, and our only response would have been to nuke Iraq. And I can't see President Bush ever making that decision. Using nukes against Iraq would have had horrible international repercussions, so these were kept quiet. The coalition would have dissolved, and we might have found our own military then under attack by our former allies if we had used a nuke against Iraq in response for their chemical attacks.

 

That I was, and it still shows in many ways.

In total I have over 15 years in the combat arms. Rather unusual, when one considers the fact that I am a pacifist.

But one thing it has taught me is to analyze things before simply jumping in with both feet. I never simply "accept somebodies word", and I am always looking for new sources of reliable information simply because I always want to know more.

I know, kind of ruins my reputation as a grunt, but I can't help it. I guess I need to learn how to drag my knuckles a bit lower.

 

The M256 kit is definitely the most sensitive for vapor detection. We used a less sensitive test for an initial contamination check that involved limited unmasking, where two guys would unmask for 15 seconds while holding their breath, making sure their eyes are open. Someone then looked at their eyes for any contraction of the pupils. The first sign of any exposure to nerve agent vapor is contraction of the pupils or miosis as it was called.

The Air Force had a similar system to your Marines as supplements to the MOPP levels. These were color codes.. All Clear, Alert Yellow, Alert Red and Alert Black. A few times we were put on Yellow alert, MOPP level II which meant sleeping in our NBC gear As I was part of an aircrew, and we were issued the British MK IV suit, very lightweight and sought after for that reason. They allowed for more freedom of movement. For most of the duration, and once it was determined the SCUD attacks did not involve chemical agents we were in MOPP level Alpha. Basically taking cover in a hallway or bunker, donning the mask, hood, and gloves, and making sure to maintain full body coverage but no NBC overgarments were put on. If an attack actually ensued, Alert Black, MOPP level 4 would be issued and the overgarments would be worn. These were typially packed and sealed prior to putting on.

To the best of my knowldege anyway, there were only a few instances of M8A1 chemical agent alarms and positive M256 chemical detection kit tests involving Scud attacks. That's only reading about it afterwards of course. So I know about as much as the next person who can do an internet search. Regarding Gulf war syndrome; everything has been blamed including depleted uranium munitions, the experimental anthrax vaccine, nerve agent pills, toxins released from Kuwaiti oil well fires set by the retreating Iraqis, and sarin gas released from Iraqi weapons depots bombed by coalition aircraft. Most of the Scud missiles that fell and were tested showed minimal nerve agents if at all...whether the government is deliberately covering up informatioin, well that of course is conjecture.

I develped prostate cancer in my early 40s, but to blame that on environmental factors while deployed to the M.E. during Desert Shield/Storm, one can only guess. I have no other symptoms relating to what some refer to as "Gulf War Illness." I do believe it is real, whatever the cause, but my best guess is environmental toxins relating to the oil well fires and the massive amount of dust kicked up by military vehicles and inhaled into the lungs. It's probably the equivalent to asbestos. This is purely conjecture on my part however. We'll wait and see if the OIF veterans exhibit similar symptoms to Gulf war veterans, as I say again the dust over there is toxic as hell in my opinion especially after the Iran/Iraq war that did invovle chemical agents and God knows what else.

Anyway long post, and off-topic, so apologies again to Apacherat for diverting his thread.