Hillah, Iraq.

The Navy and Marine Corps have a long tradition of asking a lot of their officers and NCOs. Challenging tasks are often accomplished by young men and women with no training specific to the mission, and few resources. This tradition is accompanied by an equally long history of never turning down an assignment, or even letting on that you have no idea whatsoever how you are going to get it done, or even if you know what you are talking about. It is best to speak with great authority, confidence, and enthusiasm, and work out the details later, particularly if you have no idea what you just agreed to do.They say that in a crisis, you revert to your training. So when the Special Forces guys asked if I would teach them to call air strikes, I readily agreed. And then my Naval Academy midshipman training kicked in: I did nothing. Then I did more nothing. Then I started seriously stonewalling the project, with the occasional misdirection mission required to keep people from remembering what they asked me to do. Finally, when it seemed that my aggressive programs of denial and sloth were going to succeed, they asked me how the presentation was coming along.

“Oh, fine.”
“Almost done?”
“Yep. Almost.”
“…..”
“Yep, coming along nicely. Real beauty, too.”
“So, when do you want to teach?”

Despite my best efforts, I was going to have to teach this class. Fortunately, I have more than a passing knowledge of calling air strikes, so I set about generating Power Point slides.

As with most things, I found that the job was not nearly so odious when progress actually began. Before long, I was generating dynamic slides detailing the arcane martial art of calling air strikes, and found that I was in danger of enjoying myself. I scoured my electronic war books and the internet for pictures of airplanes, explosions, and John Wayne, and spent hours finding just the right videos to highlight the subtle nuances of bringing thunder from the sky.

Then I started to think big. I began working up a plan for a major live fire exercise somewhere out in the desert. Based on my impressions from my combat missions so far, the pilots (Air Force) and aviators (Navy) are always looking for something to do instead of drilling holes in the sky waiting for Something Exciting to happen, and generally they are all too willing to help. And there are plenty of other warfighters looking for something to do, and I will be happy to oblige them.

We will need a big stretch of desert, hopefully with an abandoned Army base or ghost town in it. And some old hulks for targets. Perhaps we can get some artillery or mortar support for marking targets. And I plan on working up teams so that in addition to the FAC training, we can get time shooting mortars, artillery, and marking targets with lasers. And tracers. We probably need to shoot tracers, too. And smoke grenades. Definitely need some smoke grenades. Not that we need all that for the exercise, but once you get locked in a serious fire plan, the tendency is to push it as far as you can, as the late Dr. Thompson would say. And, as I learned in Fallon, the gift to get this year is a personal bombing range (air power sold separately), so I decided to reward myself. I feel that I have earned it.

I need to get the blessing of the colonel, of course. Then find an existing range, or some real estate that has range potential. Then, order up a little air power, and let the training begin.

I suspect that the really hard part of this whole deal will be getting someone to actually agree to let us go out in the desert to blow up old tanks. My secret weapon is to give the guy who has to sign off on this boondoggle first dibs. I hate to advocate shameless bribery, but it has worked for me.