Deliverator wrote: Also, the US military doesn't go anywhere without at LEAST mortars.
in 1999, to the best of my knowledge, my platoon was the only US Army unit in Croatia for a good long period of time. I know for a fact that the nearest US Army outpost was a 2 hour drive away, and the only other US outpost in Croatia that I was aware of, was a naval outpost at least 6 hours away. My platoon did not have any mortars - not a single solitary one. For indirect fire, we had MK19's and M203's. The nearest air support were fast movers based out of Tuzla (Airforce) and Kaposvar (Marines), and there were Apaches at McGovern. If things got hairy, I'm sure they would have come in hot and heavy.... But there was a theatre-wide restriction on getting low, due to the threat of surface to air fire.
The air force bombed a farm 300 miles off target (and in the wrong country) at one point (5 miles from my camp) for political reasons, we were left without supply for 10 days because Wesley bleeding Clark didn't want to further upset the locals (who were rioting to protest our bombing of their farm) by bringing us food and water via helicopter.
Then the marines dropped one 20 miles from their own air strip in another farmers field (600 miles off target, and in the wrong country - thank god it was a dud, and EOD had to come and do a controlled blow in place) at another point.
I'm just sayin'...... Air Support is fine and dandy, but its not always super accurate, and its not always available.
