During my time in the Army Air Corps..... just joking.... I was an Air Force Enlisted Terminal Attack Controller working with Army maneuver units ("a drop of blue in a sea of green") we were pretty much red-headed step-children, definitely NOT the poster-boys the career field is today (they literally use some of "my" guys for recruiting posters....). Most of the Air Force didn't know who we were, and more importantly, didn't care.
Now I've never been truly high-speed, jumping out of perfectly good aircraft or swimming to work. While I've never worked with SF or Rangers, I have worked with just about every other type of Army combat unit. Still, compared to "regular" Air Force, I/we were relatively high-speed and I got to learn this during an extended Air Based-Ground Defense (ABGD) training event.
Now for the uninitiated, the Air Force world pretty much revolves around the airfield, which is defended by Security Forces, but when shit-hits-the-fan they'll hand pretty much anybody a fucking rifle and have them man the perimeter..... and in general most Air Force don't really have a clue what a perimeter is and have some issues pointing the bang-stick in the right direction (here's a clue....it's away from the multi-million dollar aircraft). Because of this, anybody that might be assigned to serve as ABGD has to go through some additional training.....and somebody has to be the "bad guys" for this training.
Enter this 1C4 and two of his comrades. Because we're with the Army 24/7 we don't "do" ABGD and command freed us up to help out. We show up at the right time & place with our gear and it's kind of a shit-show. There's a bunch of regular Air Force types and it pretty much looks like they're camping....not being "in the field" but camping....camp fires, smores, and everything....though I didn't recall seeing beer. We show up in MILES gear already setup, our GAU-5Ps (shortened full-auto M16's), and all we have to do is pop the mobiflex (special tent) and dump our gear. That takes all of a half hour and we're just chilling in our tent waiting.......until...
KA-BOOM!
As soon as we hear the explosion, all three up us pop on our helmets, grab our rifles, and start clearing the camp (as we already had our MILES gear on). The rest of the REMFs were quite startled when the idiot accidentally set of a grenade burst simulator and then a bit shocked when they saw us bursting out expecting an attack.....I mean, this was a training event, right? There was one Security Forces rep there and I'd like to think she was impressed, but hell if I know. She just bitched out the moron that was playing with the simulator and decided it was a good time to gather everyone up for a little intro to ABGD Aggressor duties. She asked us to form a line for a little walk-about, but really didn't do shit to actually organize us, so I pulled rank and did so, having one of my guys take point, another trail, while I took lead with "Buffy" (the Security Forces Senior Airman) beside me.
As we headed over towards the training site for ABGD we were able to take a leisurely route along the road. As we got closer she demanded we get off the road into the ditch....reasonable enough. Now I had already scouted the map and at a certain spot I had my point check out the road crossing and when it was clear, started sending everyone over to the ditch on the other side.
Buffy fucking lost her shit because we could be seen crossing the road from one vantage point on the ABGD camp. Frankly I didn't care and I kept the group moving, listening to her bitch and moan. Once we were all over the road my guys linked up on me and I tried to calm Buffy down. Yes, we could be seen if we crossed here, BUT the ABGD camp was basically on a large field at the very edge of the training area. At some point we'd have to cross this one road to access the camp, but what she didn't realize.....not sure if she had actually looked at the map, or walked the area, herself...was that this crossing spot was better than most anywhere else AND it gave us access to a creek bank at the base of the hill. The creek ran along maybe 75% of the camp's accessible side and by entering here we can use the creek and trees as cover to come up anywhere we wanted with near impunity. The only places we didn't have great access to were the front and rear gates, but even then it was better than crossing the roads at the gates.
My guys agreed & backed me up. You could pretty much see the light-bulb moment when she realized that we actually had an effing clue as to what we were doing. Ended up kind of biting us in the ass because now we were in demand for almost every training op they had. Get a quick brief, play out the scenario, rest for a few hours, then repeat......
I honestly don't remember if it was three or four days of missions, but it culminated in a mass night-time attack where we had to push until dead. I still call bullshit to this day, but I got killed rushing a machine gun nest from it's rear. My rifle jammed bad (fucking Vietnam-era POS...got a brass wedged in somewhere it isn't supposed to fit.) and I allegedly got killed by a grenade. Not a simulator mind you, but some REMF shouting "grenade" and them miming throwing one (ok, I assumed the miming part). Dude, I was still a good 30 yards away and you want me to believe you successfully lobbed a grenade through a thick stand of trees, at night, with no NVGs? Whatever, what was I going to do, butt-stroke the fuckers?
The training event completed, we were deemed "high-speed" enough to get on the short list for ABGD Aggressors. I only got to do the training one more time. On that trip I managed to sever their commo lines and just walk in to their ammo supply point. The OCs wouldn't let me steal their Hummer and ammo, nor was I allowed to simulate destroy everything. After that it was like, "What's the point?"
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