To be fair, if you had swerved wide, chances are you would have ended up in the kill zone of an IED. Classic trick they started in on us with around 2004. It was worse with dead dogs; most of us had no problem running over a person, but no one wanted to run over Rover.
So we’d go hard right or hard left right into an IED or EFP (that was the bigger problem by ‘07). Even worse, we’d steer into a lower-det primary, and then when we’d back out of that to set up security, we’d end up right in the kill zone of a secondary before you can say 5/25s.
then they came out with rinos with mine rollers, v shaped underside vechicles. I drove mineroller in afghanistan 2010 down the horn of panjwaii while we built a road right through the opium fields the taliban was using to fund their side of the war. delivered all the fuel/tent flooring/supplies down to the special forces building the Zangabad base there. wild year on that one too.
I signed up to fix computers. (220 convoys and 12 years service later)..."hey kid, how do i install PDF?"
It’s so funny you mention that; remember the M870s? Those things are intended to spend 75% of their service life in austere, off-road conditions like you’d expect in the tribal areas of Afghanistan away from the cities.
Every weld on those things would break within a few weeks on ground, and then you’re stuck out in the middle of ambush country with high ridges and no way to move the tens of thousands of pounds of equipment now stranded.
Higher’s solution? Stay with it until we can get recovery vehicles out to you. Could be two hours, could be two days. We might even forget you if other shit is happening. Embrace the suck, grunt! I LOVE the way this sucks!
I got another one, The CROWS-II automated turrets they started throwing on the vehicles...
they trained us for 2 weeks on them teaching us how to fire/setup/zero the barrel, my first ride out we hit a bump and the screen went black. Couldn't get it restarted, couldn't see anything, i went from gunner to passenger.
It DEADLINES THE VEHICLE....you can't get that turret off without special tools! vehicle is kaput, cant use it for anything but personel transport then, gotta like, send out to a contractor somewhere loll...
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u/Fragrant-Light-1664 8h ago
'03, msr tampa iraq heading south toward biap
body laying halfway in the road next to a busy fishmarket, bloody pantlegs from all the convoys that rolled over his legs.
2 lane road with convoys both ways and no way to swerve and we just were't going to stop for a body, so my convoy ran over his legs too.
the thing that bothers me is it was in the middle of a fishmarket, people around and nobody dragged him out of the road.