When I was a young 14S SHORAD Air Defense Officer in the 1990’s, I was told point blank: “we don’t need short range air defense, probably ever again”. And the maneuver commander proceeded to use my AVENGERS for jenky-ass overwatch because they had a FLIR. In truth, you’d need an engineering company to properly dig a position for all these AVENGERS and then they are just stuck where they are. There was no competent interest or understanding of short range air defense, back then, beyond the idea that all our adversaries would be LOW RENT post soviet collapse and decades behind us in technology.
That attitude did not change, based upon what I’ve heard, during the Global War on Terror and perhaps the negligence got WORSE. BTW: one of the reasons WHY I left the Army was because of the incompetence and outright unethical behaviors of officers appointed over me and this includes the inappropriate use of air defense in operational planning. THIS WAS SYSTEMIC, ENDEMIC, all across the US ARMY … perhaps Ft. Bliss is waking up now.
Link: https://thecradle.co/articles-id/37343
