USJFCOMLive

We’re halfway through Bold Quest 09’s 10 days of testing and assessment, so that means it’s time to switch things up.  After five days of testing combat identification systems in Camp Lejeune’s patchy sunshine, it’s time to begin another five days of testing in the fading afternoon and early evening.

I talked to Tom Swanson, a contractor who supports BQ lead John Miller, about the change.  He told me it is essential that BQ’s participants get a chance to get a look at how well the technologies being assessed work in darkness.

With the technology the U.S. and coalition forces have, we can work on a whole other spectrum and see through the night.  Our forces operate that way and we need to match the way they operate.  We’re taking advantage of the night because we need to develop CID and technologies to operate in that same environment.

Army 1st Lt. Matyas Kovach, the executive officer of Company C, 2nd Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment, a unit from the 4th Brigade, 10th Mountain Division supporting BQ assessments as the Blue Force, acts as the battalion’s liaison officer in the Littoral Warfare Training Center, which acts as the operations center for Bold Quest.  Kovach said the soldiers of his battalion often train using night vision goggles and the laser targeting devices which can only be seen through them, so the Wild Boars are ready to support the BQ effort as it shifts to later hours.

In the Army we train to the saying of ‘We own the night,’ so while the hours of limited visibility are cumbersome to most people – especially the enemy – we like to think of it as a time that we can shine.  Our technology and our tactics are such that we have a marked advantage during nighttime.  It’s actually good training, because a lot of new soldiers – especially soldiers coming out of basic training – don’t have a lot of familiarization with our night vision devices.  It offers them a good opportunity to maneuver and move around in the woods.

Kovach said that it’s really key for soldiers – both those familiar and unfamiliar with night vision devices – have a chance to work with them, because while they do allow them to pierce the darkness, they offer a different view of the world while doing so.  He called the skill of working with them perishable, even for those who have used them in combat situations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Imagine looking through a toilet paper tube, and that is two or three inches away from your eye, and everything outside of that is complete and total darkness.  You can use that to your advantage because everybody else is just seeing the darkness.  But it does take a bit of getting used to to acclimate yourself to having that limited field of vision.  You don’t have as much peripheral vision as you normally would.  Everybody uses the phrase ‘You have to keep your head on a swivel.’  You literally do when you’re wearing night vision devices.

Lejeune is a busy place, full of Marines from the II Marine Expeditionary Force and other units itching for the chance to get out to the ranges and train.  It’s especially busy at night, so today’s switch off of Daylight Savings Time allows BQ’s warfighters and testers to get some nighttime work done before things get too crowded in the back 40.  Swanson pointed to a matrix that showed all the other organizations making use of the same ranges and landing zones being used by BQ and told me that in Lejeune’s crowded training areas, it’s important for the team to finish the work it gets done in darkness early.

There are a lot of other folks out there, so it’s easier on scheduling to do it this way.

As the change occurs, we’ll have plenty of photos and video of BQ participants under the cover of darkness.  Check back often.