Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!cbnews!military
From: patterso@ads.com (Tim J. Patterson)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Training keeping pace with technology?
Message-ID: <10010@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 7 Oct 89 03:28:25 GMT
References: <9936@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM
Organization: Advanced Decision Systems
Lines: 28
Approved: military@att.att.com



From: patterso@ads.com (Tim J. Patterson)

In article <9936@cbnews.ATT.COM> jharper%euroies.ucd.ie@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (Jerry Harper) writes:
>
>
>It has struck me over the last few months that one of the primary
>presuppositions of weapons designers, and one rarely mentioned here, is
>that operators will know how to make *effective* use of the artifacts.
>(And the road to Hell is paved with good presuppositions :-).  Just how
>complete is the training within US forces concerning battlefield nuclear
>weapons?  

Extremely good point and a valid concern, I fuzzily recall a newpaper
article about 3 years ago that said during a recent NATO exercise in
Germany > 60% of the US tank crews could not use their range finders
because they didn't know how to work them.

  Another piece of RUMINT

     Tim

[mod.note:  This reminds me of a footnote to the boardgame "Squad Leader."
While noting that American tanks of WWII were fitted with gyrostabilizers
for elevation (and granting them a lesser penalty to fire while moving than
other nations) they pointed out that only one about crew in three
understood the thing well enough to keep it aligned for proper use. - Bill]