Our Ingenious Soldiers

Fire of Liberty

Here's an interesting piece their forefathers adaptation of tactics and equipment throughout by Joe Pappalardo over at the Popular Mechanics website that points out the ingenuity of our soldiers who crew the Stryker units in Iraq. As a reader and student of history, I hark back to days of the ancient Greeks after the Persian Wars, American colonial army, Wellington versus Napoleon, The Civil War, WWI, WWII, Vietnam, our current operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and I'm reminded of how the modern day soldier and generations of soldiers share one universal truth, which is that technology and techniques that you deal with in the proving ground and with the service academies generally are thrown out the window when the hit the battlefield and it rigorous conditions. It also shows you how the soldiers(In particular the eventual victor) in these wars tend to overcame all odds before them and improvised their equipment and tactics to overcome the enemy. Even more, this improvisation benefits the newer soldiers who rotate into the war zone and allows the manufacture of their equipment to improve the tanks, vehicles, weapons and other components to the soldiers conditions and standards. So give it up to the ingenuity of our soldiers and the generations of soldiers before them.