Army Aviation Greening

I'm in my hotel in Enterprise, AL at the close of a pretty amazing trip to Ft. Rucker and the Center for Army Aviation. The trip was set up for a few CIA analysts to be introduced to Army Aviation, and we got to tag along; some people from NGA and NGIC came along as well.

I will post some details tonight or tomorrow and on as I try to figure out how this blog thing works.
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02-13-07 Day 1:

We met at the BOQ's (Bachelor Officer Quarters - basically the army hotel) on post at 0800 and then headed out to the DCD conference room (Director of Combat Development) for our Introduction to the US Army Aviation Warfighting Center briefing. Followed by briefings that outlined the current organization and structure of Army Aviation and what the future of Army Aviation might look like. These were a little dull. But then things started to pick up a bit.

We were briefed by an NGIC (National Ground Intelligence Center) representative about some of the current air defence capabilities of Iran. Good brief, but I actually knew 95% of the information already.

After lunch we went to the 1st AVN Brigade and met Major Jade Hinman. Maj Hinman is a M1-A2 tank commander who has served two tours of duty in Iraq. He is currently teaching Army Air Assault Operations and Army Attack / Recon Helicopter Operations classes here at Ft. Rucker. So he gave us a summary brief on each. And then the real fun began...

Maj Hinman is one of those soldiers who enjoys telling war stories. And he has piles of hilarious anecdotes which were made even more funny by his excellent delivery and mannerisms. So we just talked with him for a couple more hours and looked at some funny pics and mpegs he had on a memory stick.

Maj Hinman recomended an excellent sushi resteraunt just off post for dinner, and actually came with us for dinner which allowed us to hear more war stories for another couple of hours. Great times. And I tried sushi for the first time: not too bad, but nothing incredible either, especially for the price.

We got back to the hotel at about 8:30 and I read a book for a while and went to bed.