You served as an exchange master gunner to the British Army and a master gunner trainer and adviser to the Royal Saudi Land Forces. How would you compare the professionalism and training of those two forces with the Army?

I’ll start with the Saudis. I was over in Saudi Arabia in 1993 and 1994. They had just purchased Bradleys from us, so we were truly doing tactics training and also showing them how to use the vehicles. Their discipline level was not up to par with what the Brits were or even with the American Army. It’s just because so many people over there were rich. They were millionaires and they were just in the military because they were required to do so because of their family and their background. They were willing to do some of the things we were doing, but they didn’t really go at it with the same type of drive the British troops did.

They were very professional and we would go from place to place in the U.K. training different units and I was very impressed with everybody I met there. Their professionalism is right on par with ours in the American Army.

My time with British Army was fascinating. I was an exchange NCO. I was there with the seven best instructors in the British Army. I had to go through their instructor course teaching on the Warrior and their recon vehicles and that was definitely one of the hardest schools I’ve been to. They really took their jobs very serious. They were very professional and we would go from place to place in the U.K. training different units and I was very impressed with everybody I met there. Their professionalism is right on par with ours in the American Army.

 

We know today’s armored fighting vehicles, the Abrams, the Bradley, and the Stryker, are leaps and bounds above anything else on the battlefield in terms of technology. What challenges, if any, does this technology present in crew training and can you give our readers an example?

The most important thing is the gunners and loaders when we talk about tanks. The Bradley fighting vehicle is a little easier for a new person to learn. Now, we do have changes in technology from the days when I first started working in the Bradley. We had the first generation auxiliary sight and the first generation thermal sight. We didn’t have laser range finders back then. I understand from talking to some of the people here at Fort Carson [Colo.] that now all you have to do is aim the hand station, push a button. Now you have the laser range finder, so they are trying to find more ways now to enhance the fighting capabilities of the vehicles. If you are a crew member, that means you have to do more training. Simulations that we use only give you so much experience, but then you actually have to get in the vehicle and go on the range and do gunnery training and fire on targets.

Simulations that we use only give you so much experience, but then you actually have to get in the vehicle and go on the range and do gunnery training and fire on targets.

Another challenge is that now that we are doing so many deployments crews don’t have the time to train that they used to back when I was a young troop in the military. That is definitely a challenge. As the Army is starting to downsize and go to a smaller number of brigades, they will have a chance to get back in the simulations and some of the other training.

 

You served in the Abrams as well?

I did. I was a master gunner. The way it worked back in the day was that you had one senior master gunner and you’d have the junior guy. So, when I was the battalion master gunner and we had tanks, I would work with them and then I’d have my junior guy, he was a tanker guy, I was a Bradley guy, and we’d work together. I worked with both of them before. I also had an opportunity to work with the British Warrior and Challenger while I was in the U.K.

 

What makes the M1 and M2 such capable platforms?

The M1 fighting vehicle, I will tell you: the next best vehicle in the world that I know of and have personally seen was the Challenger, the British … tank. What makes the M1 so lethal is its ability to fire moving at high speeds. The tank is very accurate; it has a very stable platform. Also, the M1 has the fire-and forget-mechanism [XM943, Smart, Target-Activated, Fire-and-Forget (STAFF) round], so you can lock on a target, fire at the target, move the barrel, go to another target and that round tracks by itself. Also, the amount of ammunition you can store in the turret and load.

In some tests we ran years ago, that thing would get up to about 100 mph. The armor on it can withstand the equivalent of, I don’t know what it is now, but we used to say you could drop a 155mm howitzer round on it. I don’t know if that is true, but it has the capabilities to withstand some pretty serious artillery.

The other thing I would say about it, is it is just an accurate tank. It has got a low silhouette. It’s just a great vehicle from a firing platform standpoint.

The Bradley fighting vehicle has the best turret of any vehicle I’ve been around and I’ve been around a lot of different foreign vehicles. We have a very sophisticated night sight and thermal sight. We have all kinds of different ammunition that we can fire from the 25mm cannon. We also have the machine gun there that works very well. The thing about it is, with the TOW launcher on it, that’s what really sets it apart from the other personnel carriers, because with that TOW launcher it can defeat all known armored vehicles. There’s not really another good armored personnel carrier that you can compare to the Bradley. The Warrior was OK, but the Warrior doesn’t have a stabilized turret. When you look at those two vehicles that we have, we really do have the two best armored vehicles in the world.