Convoy operations

So one of the jobs I was lucky enough to have during my training was convoy commander.  I was nominated by my platoon to lead our convoy through about a 2.5 mile track they have on base.  There were towns set up all along the route, we had a humanitarian mission along the way, and of course, we had to keep an eye out for suspected IEDs.  All in all, it was an absolute blast!  It was surprising with how many actors they hired, and how realistic it seemed!  Our convoy was very successful- in fact, we were the only convoy that didn't get ambushed by the local "Taliban" population.  We delivered the food and water successfully to the village elder, and I was able to gain some intel from the elders and local police chief about activities in the area.  When a "suicide bomber" attacked the village and a villager was injured, we got him bandaged up and delivered him to the next village which had a hospital.  I keep putting everything in quotations marks because it was all a training exercise.  They used baby powder and fireworks to make it sound more realistic.  I am very safe on Kandahar, so please don't worry.

Here are the vehicles that we had in our convoy.  The large vehicle below is the MRAP.  It's a huge vehicle that is actually designed to take IED attacks.  In theater they are very armored.  There are 8 seats in the back of it, then obviously the driver and the front passenger.  They are air conditioned, which was always a luxury when riding around in the heat!  In our convoy we had two of these, and then two humvees.  There were 24 people in my platoon, so we were distributed amongst all of them.  We never drove the vehicles- there are people specifically trained to drive these huge things!  By the way, these are the vehicles seen driving around Kandahar on a daily basis.

Here are some of us riding in the MRAP one morning on our way to the rifle range to load the magazines for everybody to shoot later that day.  It was a huge benefit of being on ammo detail!  Riding in this with my own seat and air conditioning was definitely preferred over the hot, sweaty, crammed buses!

This is my battle buddy!  We were very happy to be inside!

We weren't moving at this point, which is why my helmet isn't strapped, but this is how we rode in it!  That's the air conditioning behind me to the right, and then the doors to exit are just to the right of that. I think the doors weigh about 200 pounds- something you definitely wouldn't want to slam on your hand!  The seatbelt that I'm wearing isn't the same as what was in the training- we had a five point racing harness with an inner circle that you had to turn in order to release the seatbelt.

Pretty sweet racing seatbelt if I might say so myself!

One of the most important things throughout the entire convoy was communications.  Ours looked as though they had everything, but they didn't actually.  Our vehicles weren't uparmored since they were just for training purposes, nor did they have actual radios in there.  When I say actual radio, I mean like this

Personally to me this thing looks absolutely ancient, but I honestly have no idea what they used to look like.  I assume this is actually fairly compact in relationship to how they used to look!  Either way, we got to play around with the radios...as seen below.  We learned how to assemble them, and then all of the basic functions, which I have unfortunately pretty much forgotten.  I'm hoping if I ever need them then they'll be kind enough to give me a quick refresher course!  The large antenna is missing from the unit that I'm playing with, but it's laying right in front of it if you look on the table.

It was fun learning how to properly speak on the radio, and some of the lingo involved.  Apparently our convoy did one of the best jobs communicating as well- and not just keeping the line super busy by talking too much.  I must say, I was very proud of my group!

That's it for the vehicles and most of the outdoor training....except of course where we spend most of our time, which was on the rifle ranges!  Stay tuned for plenty of pictures from and around the ranges!