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Grunt phones were a thing long before GWOT, it isn't even a case of reinvention - an old timer noticed the missing phones and corrected the problem. I don't kn
by woodman 10y ago
Grunt phones were a thing long before GWOT, it isn't even a case of reinvention - an old timer noticed the missing phones and corrected the problem. I don't know if the capability was intentionally dropped and then reversed, but if it was then this exact same thing happened in Vietnam with cannonless F-4s - because dogfighting was dead...
- vonmoltke 10y agoIt was an F-4 cannon deal with the grunt phones. When the M1 was designed the phone was seen as superfluous, so it wasn't added. The Army thought it was obsolete. I'm actually surprised the Marines didn't fit the phones as soon as they transitioned to the M1. I'm guessing they didn't have budget, since they were getting post-Cold-War Army hand-me-downs.
- woodman 10y agoThe problem could have been headed off if one of two things happened on the USMC end: consideration given to the fact that the Army doesn't use the M1 the way the Corps does, or if armor played a bigger part in combined arms exercises. The first case is a glaring oversight, the second is understandable - tanks are expensive and dangerous, the more time you spend around them the higher your peace time training death toll will be. I don't remember ever training with any armor outside of LAVs (or the humvee that would notionally be a tank before transforming into a notional CH-46).