Back from Qalat

So I am back from Qalat. What a place, the American infanty packed up and left. They were replaced by a bunch of Romaniacs. There was a major breakdown in communication somewhere very high up the chain and this didn't happed smoothly. The Romanians didn't have any equiptment, food, water, or a plan for supply. We ran out of drinking water and ate stored MREs for a few weeks. The Romanians are also inadequately trained to function in their current capacity. What an ordeal.

Anyway, here are some photos from a training mission down by the Red Desert. It has become increasingly common for them to send me out to places like this to train foreign groups on things like procedures for calling airstikes, medevacs and exfiltration. We get inserted in a (hopefully) deserted location and start training the troops on whatever is the daily special. Usually it lasts for one day so we cover quite a bit. Most of the groups that we train are foreign special forces because they are the most likely to need the knowledge. Typically the trainers are myself and one other American, who is in artillery, not avaition. This diversifies our training to include calling for artillery and mortar support. We usually bring a platoon sized element or smaller to be trained.

This first photo is a chinook dropping off some Aussie SF on the peak of one of the foothills by the Red Desert before training. The insertion is a special variety called a "pinnacle" insertion. It is unique in that only the rear of the aircraft is near the peak of the terrain and the rest is hovering out over the side of the mountain. This isn't a photo that "pops" but it was an interesting scenario to get the locals in the forground and the helicopter performing a rare insertion(even more rare to get a photo from an "outsider" perspective to the event). To give you some sense of scale, the helicopter is about 60ft long and the locals are carrying plywood sheets. The hill is about sixty degrees and I would guess 800ft tall.


This is another photo of the Red Desert. Possibly the most difficult subject matter to photograph. The JPEG compression and low resolution of this photo erases the layers of detail that makes it such a rich scene. It is typically extremely dusty, this is the clearest I have seen the air over the long, rusty sands and still the horizon is washed out. It may not appear as vibrant on your LCD screens and in contrast to your AOL icons, but in its natural context, the conspicuous color blasts like concert speakers. I am making apologies for not just this single photograph but every time I take an image of this arid ocean, its splendor slips from my lens like a crafty fish dodging a net. I will have to be much more crafty to capture the view.

It is absolutely breath-taking in real life. There isn't anything out there. Even the Bedouins don't travel out there. The specles and dots that you see are mostly a large type of tumbleweed. This photo probably depicts the most densely "forrested" part of the Red Desert that I have seen. This was taken near the edge of the desert, nearer the center there is dramatically less vegetation.

The wind is constantly shifting and moving these dunes. There is a texture to them that isn't unlike the small ripples of sand in a lagoon. As you fly over, it looks like a thumbprint. I guess wind comes in all sizes because it also churns out inumerable, familier dunes. Exactly as the National Geographic channel shows them. The super sized winds make even larger dunes. Huge and subtle rollers that span hundreds of meters. The medium dunes appear deceptively consistant, only when you skim them at 200 km/h do you notice them rise and fall beneath you. These low frequency waves are a reminder that this sand sea is less fluid than it looks.



Lastly, I thougt I would throw this in there for fun. That is me in the foreground going full auto with a friend's AK-47. Truely a good stress releiver. Would I fit in at the post office or what?