In an insomniac bout last night, I surfed into the Discovery Channel in
the middle of a program about US armed forces in Afghanistan. In one
segment they were showing how combat controllers (I think that was what
they were called, perhaps it was "forward controllers") perform their
duties.
It is their job to provide target coordinates to air strikes. They do
this by sighting on a target and projecting a waypoint from where they
are to the target, which waypoint they then report to the bombers. They
showed a picture of a bazillion-dollar mil-spec GPS. Then the narrator
stated that the soldiers prefer to use consumer models as they are far
lighter and consume batteries much more slowly, while the film showed a
soldier using a clearly-labeled Garmin Vista to do the waypoint
projection.
I'm not posting this to add ammo to the Garmin-Maggie skirmish here. I
just thought it was cool to be watching it and see them using a piece of
gear I've got in my backpack.
Steve
Team Tierra Buena
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