[UnderseaLcpl]

I sympathize with Sgt. Davenport on this one. I have an allegorical example to explain my sympathy.

My unit, which shall remain nameless due to fear that this will come back to haunt me should I re-enlist, is an artillery regiment. As such, communications are of paramount importance to us. Even moreso, the speed with which comms can be established is a priority.

The S.O.P. (standard operating procedure for those lucky ones who don't feel the need to have an acronym for everything) for artillery command in my HQ battery is that should be two element; a forward C.O.C.(command operations center) and a main C.O.C. (yes I have heard all the jokes about who is the main C.O.C. around here and every imaginable variation of "that's what SHE said" jokes)

In the aforementioned S.O.P. the "forward" would establish a postion within comms range of the firing batteries and control them. The "main" element would then move to the forward position, set up, and assume control. Then the forward would jump to a new position and assume control once the batteries moved outside the main's comm range. The premise of this technique is fairly sound; constant command and control whilst continuing to advance at the exhaustive pace of forward combat units. However, it suffered from one major flaw; in many instances, communications can take so long to properly establish (especially when one considers the ancient equipment allocated to Marine reserve units) that rapidly advancing artillery batteries often outpace the regimental heaquarters' communication radii.

In response to this problem several radio techs and operators from my unit decided to circumvent this problem by vastly reducing the set-up time needed for effective communications. This was acheived by several ad-hoc modifications to vehicles (HMMVW M-145's) that allowed them to travel with fully extended and operational OE-254 long range VHF antennae erected. In this fashion, we all but eliminated set-up times for communications and reduced the average "transfer-of-control" time from one and a half hours to 30 seconds. We even expedited set up of remote antennae emplacement (to prevent RDF targetting of radio vehicles) to a mere 10 minutes, as the OE-254 anttenae were detachable and could be carried by two Marines to a position 500m distant in a matter of minutes.

The USMC's response to this approach was to take our designs and simply give them to General Motors without any compensation, awards, or even a "thank you" to us. Inexplicably, General Motors ruled it an "illegal modification" and subsequently voided the warranties on the converted vehicles. To add insult to injury, we had to dismantle all of our modifications and answer to an investigative commitee to explain why we felt it necessary to disobey established USMC doctrine.

In summation, not only can the military take your ideas without compensating you, they can also eat you alive for daring to have some initiative.

Despite these setbacks we have converted two new M-998 HMMVWs to what we have designated as the "Super-Vehicle" configuration. I can only hope these will escape the attention of our "superiors".


Just my two-cents!