A 19-year-old Marine's first cruise missile hit shattered combat fantasies
“But I'll never forget being 19 years old and stuffing all this crap into this bag and being like, huh, that kind of sounds like him. Before I could even finish that thought, this cruise missile impacted inside of our base camp. A big plume of smoke just shoots mealy up in the sky, this fireball. And then the shockwave comes. And I'll never forget seeing the tents like actually shake, like them rattling from this shockwave. And then right afterwards, you hear the alarm start going off for incoming.”
Train so many times right that you never get it wrong
“In the military, we don't do things wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, until we get it right and then we all high five and go home. No, we do things so many times right that you'll never get it wrong. And that's the goal is that muscle memory so that when the trigger happens, when that audible cue occurs, you know exactly what to do. You can just fall back on to training. And it's almost like this autonomous thing to just execute.”
Kuwait and Saudi are no longer safe rear-area sanctuaries
“Yeah, I just wanted to add that with my experience and some of these other experiences that we're sharing today with Indirect Fire, it's really fundamentally different than what the service members today are facing in the Middle East. But you knew once you stepped off the plane in Kuwait and either going out on R&R or going home or mid-tour leave, something like that, you knew you were relatively safe. And what's happening now with this war is that that sense of sanctuary in Kuwait or Saudi is just totally gone. So the psychological effect of that, of not having that confidence that you're in a relatively safe space, must be, it's got to be really hard for the guys and gals over there now.”
Insurgents encased mortar rounds in ice for set-and-forget attacks
“But when we went out there to find this business, and we found out that absolutely through a hidden door, they're taking these rounds, these mortar rounds, and they're encasing them in ice and then shaving them around the tube. They then put the round encased in ice over top of the tube, and they can just walk away. They just set it and forget it and go observe the impact of their rounds so that they need to make adjustments as far as the elevation or anything. They can then observe from a safe distance.”
Today's troops face the greatest missile-drone threat in living memory
“Talking to my buddy, they're sleeping in battle rattle bunkers positioned both near their sleeping sites and also at work. He's on count now, made at least 50 runs to the bunker. They've got about 20, 25 seconds of warning to get into the bunker. Patriot, CRAM, and some other defensive systems in place. But just given the sheer number of missiles and other threats that have been coming in, just as we know from our studies, overmatch happens at a certain point, and some of those missiles have unfortunately made it through. But arguably the greatest threat from an enemy force to American forces from a missile drone, obviously kind of ever, certainly in our lifetimes and maybe, like I said, almost ever.”
Indirect fire follows a rigid five-step accountability drill
“But the thing that you pointed to, that units have is units really have a standard operating procedure on how to react to these incomings and what this is for someone who hasn't experienced it. It's really sort of like a five step process. Like you have that alert, you have an audible, if you're lucky, your base is outfitted with a system that there's an audible alert. So you can be alerted a little bit ahead of time to seek cover. So you take cover. And then depending on the threat, depending on how long it would take, there was always like an all clear signal, you know, after five minutes or 20 minutes, whatever it is. And like we do in the military, you establish accountability, no matter what size your unit is.”
Complacency creeps in fast under regular bombardment
“Maybe one of the dumbest things that I've ever done, going to the psychology of this is, you know, talking about that cycle of complacency during deployment. I remember by the end of deployment, when that ray, you know, the siren would go off, we would be peeking out of the bunker, and we'd be kind of casual about it all. And I remember one where we were all kind of hooting and hollering because we knew it was imprecise. And then, as you guys alluded to earlier, we had one where a guy was killed in his sleep. We had one where we were kind of poking out, and then it hit our little improvised aircraft hangar and destroyed it. And we were like, oh my God, get back in the bunker.”
Televised war amplifies the psychological toll on families
“Just want to pull the thread a little bit more on the psychological impact. Certainly, during our deployments, smartphones existed, the Internet was there. But for folks in theater, but also their families at home, the war is televised. And so just thinking about the video we discussed on the attack in Saudi Arabia or the various ones that are floating around on the Internet, and you certainly got to be careful these days and whether or not that was created by AI or not. But I just try to put myself in the shoes of a family member at home, like knowing that my loved one is in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, wherever, or at sea right now, watching these horrific and unfortunately successful attacks, and just then waiting for that message, that phone call, that signal, text to say that I'm safe.”
