Scene: U.S. Army headquarters field range area performing night vehicular land navigation. First Sergeant: Listen up Gents, are the vehicles ready to go?” Platoon Sergeants accepted response simultaneously: Roger First Sergeant.” First Sergeant: Its 2000 (pronounced twenty hundred or 8:00 p.m.) now and you guys have until 2200 (10:00 p.m.) to locate as many of the 15 coordinates as possible, any questions, comments or concerns?” (No response from anyone, ten second pause), Ok, move out and gettr done, my wifes waiting for me at home and I do not want to be out here all night.” (The Platoon Sergeants quickly briefed the truck sergeants who were the Humvee leaders and each Humvee truck with a leading Sergeant, driver, gunner and two dismounts also was composed of one Humvee with a medic for the whole troop, better known as all three platoons rolled out in order of the op formation plan with their first coordinate calculated). My truck Sergeant: Ok, we can make this first coordinate without our nods (night vision optics) on yet but it will be dark soon. The first coordinate is 3100 meters out at 194 degrees. Lets stay at twenty five miles an hour as much as possible.” (Interestingly enough but truthfully so, the first half hour went by without any of the Humvee crews finding any coordinate as they kept intersecting back and forth seemingly off track and pace with their particular coordinate destination they needed to locate. This was humorous and puzzling to me since everyone, especially the Sergeants were very keen at land navigation. Being a senior E4, though I had the E5 board coming up soon, I went on a select Lifeguard job on post for the summer because one lifeguard is chosen each year from each of the brigades to fill that cool void and then we deployed in October which delayed my promotion being away from the recon troop but I was the first out of 200 online soldiers in Iraq to zero, group and qualify my rifle in nine rounds to commence operational readiness. Being qualified for Special Forces selection and such, I felt compelled to respectfully add my input to the situation). Me: In all respect Sergeant, I think I may have a great idea to get us quickly and accurately through this vehicular land nav course.” Truck Sergeant: Go for it.” Me: All we need to do is develop our pace count and we will be all set. Usually on foot we excel at this and we know that around 65 full steps is equivalent to 100 meters and such so if we can incorporate a pace count proportionate to this Humvee then we will have no problem reaching our coordinate. For example, we know that one mile equals 5,280 feet or also 10/10ths of a mile on the odometer as common knowledge and that translates to 528 feet for 1/10th of a mile and being that we are calculating in meters, that means 528 feet divided by 3 feet or 39 inches more specifically (one meter practically) gives us a figure of roughly 176 meters per every 1/10th of a mile shown on the odometer. Therefore, if we need to travel 4,000 meters to our coordinate, that would translate to 4,000 divided by 176 to give us around 22.7/10ths of mileage to our location which is actually 2.27 miles away so if we follow the odometer for 22.7/10ths mileage then we will be on track if we also maintain our coordinate direction well. Another way would be to use the common knowledge that it takes about ten seconds to cover 100 meters at 25 mph such as a sprinter in the Olympics. If we need to cover 1000 meters at 12.5 miles per hour then that would take us 200 seconds or 3 minutes, 20 seconds and each speed we travel at can easily be prorated according to the distance needed and we can laminate a guide sheet of this information as a quick point of reference for the future and we will be right on top of our coordinate if we stay on track with our direction accurately of course and the dismounts will not have to meander aimlessly for vulnerable periods of time trying to find a coordinate. We can blacken out the odometer of course since this is a stealthy night op and have the dismount in the backseat adjust his nods (night vision optics) to proportionate close range so he can read the odometer speed and/or distance in tenths mileage readouts for the rest of the crew to guide by.” Humvee Sergeant: That was a lot of information but I think we can use that strategy, cool thinking.” Driver: (Impersonating Bill and Teds greatest adventure film) Dude, most excellent, give me a guitar riff. We are totally there man. No, seriously, we will probably be the first crew done with this op tonight.” (Almost one and a half hours later at 2152, 9:52 p.m.), Humvee Sergeant: Last coordinate called in with a final sitrep. Lets head back to base camp but its pitch black now and we need to keep this final coordinate intact without speeding on our way back. Are everyones night vision optics still clear with good batteries?” Humvee Crew: Roger Sergeant.” (Once at base camp with all the Humvees parked and the whole troop in casual formation before the Commander and First Sergeant, we were de-briefed as normal and I was given the opportunity to de-brief the whole troop as well, which was uncommon for an E4, but justified, in reference to informing them about the vehicular pace count techniques I was able to contribute aboard the Humvee I was on that evening and how it filled the void needed to complete each coordinate quickly and accurately. This was all common sense information that I developed myself and I was surprised no one else in the troop figured that out and I was also amazed that the Army never taught that vehicular applicable pace count for they are quite keen otherwise. That was just one of those factors that are easy to take for granted but can prove costly if not quick to find a solution such as we all did because even though I derived the strategy, subconsciously everyone had the aptitude and knowledge as well). Ryan Emmett likes this. Thomas Werth Jr., “I was a dismount that evening.” March 2 at 6:28 p.m.
Posted on: Sun, 23 Mar 2014 17:40:47 +0000
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