[Joy Toy Man]

Hey,

I am pretty new to the site(About 3 weeks) and had a question on Gulf War on gear. I wanted to know where all soldiers issued radios invididual?
From my research only Special Forces and officers commanding troops or Platoon Leaders would have radios. I know after the Gulf War Radio they were standard issue but was this so before the Gulf War.
Any help on clarify this for me would be great.

 

[STALL STUFF]

During the 1st Gulf War, radios only went down to squad level if there were available and to support special missions/requirements within the convention force. By this time the AN/PRC-126 was out and the unit of issue along with other SINCGARS (Single-Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System) compatible radios, made distribution better. However, inter-squad/team communications for conventional US military forces was not a standard procedure. SATCOM was another highly desired item but channels were limited as were available radios. SATCOM then was considered a Theater Commanders managed Asset.

 

[mattlocke06]

when I was over there my unit didnt. each vehicle had a prc radio, and if we dismounted we had to unhook the radio from the truck and carry it on a pack frame. we were not the quick reaction forces you see like the 82nd airborne or anything, so im not sure what they carried. Then you didnt see this " swat " type gear you see today. nobody wore knee pads or high dollar goggles or sunglasses. chest rigs , we didnt know what those were, lol. we still had the Vietnam era state of mind. soem guys still preferred the H style suspenders.

 

[major.rod]

I was a platoon leader in the 101st before Desert Storm, worked in Honduras on the Ops side with SF and SEALS and commanded a mechanized rifle company during Desert Storm. The last four years of my career were spent looking at infantry equipment/tactics for the future.

Before 1992

Conventional light infantry table of equipment (TOE) had PRC126 radios down to squad level and 2 PRC 77 at platoon level (platoon leader and platoon sgt). There was also one KY57 encryption device per platoon (about the size of an LST 5 - Bobcat radio). It was common procedure to lend those radios to smaller elements if they were going to be away from the larger force (patrol or observation post).

Mechanized units had almost no PRC126s but had a radio per vehicle (two for platoon leaders and platoon sgts so they could listen to more than one frequency simultaneously like platoon and company net). Typical procedures did not take the radios out of the vehicles (a combat vehicle without a radio is severly limited).

Special operations units typically had 2 - 4 radios for internal communications and maybe 1 - 2 radios for lang range communications.

Even today radios are typically NOT issued to the individual soldier (not including special operations excluding rangers which are closer to conventional forces as far as quantities of radios). During the initial invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq it was very common for soldiers to purchase commercial radios or "motorola talk abouts".

SINCGARS radios were first issued in 1990 and had only reached the most deployable units (special forces) in quantity. The large majority of units were using the PRC77 family of radios.

Hope this helps. Probably a lot more than you wanted. What were you planning on bashing? That would cut down on the typing.

 

[Devgru-08]

Damn Now Thats my forte' lets put it this way I as a comm man 2531 field radio operator must say wish I had the $h!t they have today! One radio,one squad, and if that radio ever went down.Big if its runner up! then this means you start running. cell phones werent even invented yet! man wish I had what they had today!

 

[Devgru-08]

By the way has the ky-57 been diclassified yet! lmao theres an oldie but a goodie! ah memories! They suck! You gents on the other hand Rock! Glad to see we pioneered the way for these kids today! better chance of survival is the way i look @ it.god Bless ya's & God Bless them even more! Ooh-Rah!

 

[mattlocke06]

Damn Now Thats my forte' lets put it this way I as a comm man 2531 field radio operator must say wish I had the $h!t they have today! One radio,one squad, and if that radio ever went down.Big if its runner up! then this means you start running. cell phones werent even invented yet! man wish I had what they had today!

I hear ya, we had old prc radios that barely worked. I laughed when I watched the movie Jarhead. One of them made the comment the Army had all the good radios, I would like to know where our good radios were , cause I never seen them,lol.

 

[Apache26]

Believe me, the radios today are not that great and not much more user friendly. With several different families of radios being issued, and they all have their own quirks, everyone has to be a damn commo genius to get them to work and synch with each other. I won't get into specifics on an open forum but I wish we could have the technology with the ease of use of the old PRC-25/77 series.

 

[major.rod]

Apache, be careful what you wish for. I worked with both types of equipment (retired two years ago). I agree with the user friendly part but your SINCGARS radio is 25% the size/weight of a PRC77. Your battery last twice as long. You are routinely talking secure (the fact that you don't have to change your callsign every 24 hours attests to that). An advesary cannot jam you simply by figuring out what freq you are working on and holding down his mike. With the PRC 77 to have those capabilities you had to attach a KY57 which was half the size of your radio (and used different batteries) and some cables that made that monster take up the size of two PRC 77s. A huge pain if you had to hump it. I won't go into crypto but your present system is light years over mine (we used the same "code" during combat ops in Iraq because once we got it working we were afraid to change it). PRC77's had one freq setting at a time and if you wanted to change it you had to MANUALLY turn the knobs. Yours has upwards of eight settings and the ability to scan. SINCARS is fully compatible with the PRC 148. PRC 126 (squad radios) had HALF the freq range of a PRC 77 and NO secure capability. When you changed your freq to the other half of the spectrum as designated by your CEOI (still use those?) you lost commo with your squad leaders or had multiple freqs at the platoon level or worse sent the PRC148s to the company commo NCO so he could change the PRC 148 to the other half of radio freqs.

 

[Joy Toy Man]

Probably a lot more than you wanted. What were you planning on bashing? That would cut down on the typing.

Thanks to all who answered my post and I got alot of great personal info.
Ok I have posted the GulfWar Bashes I am doing then on the bottom I have the 1/6 scale radio that I have on hand so which would go best with the figures I bashed by telling me the # in the pic on bottom. In the responses I got confused on the model #s of Radios posted in this thread. Now if you can point it out it would make it easier for me.
Gulf War Marine Lima Company

Gulf War US Army This one looked cool in SpecFigures so I did it
but had no unit in mind but we will say a Army support unit.

Gulf War Special Forces Sniper give him Radio #1

Gulf War-Operation Desert Shield 101st Infantry

The figures still need some minor work and please let me know which radios would go best or if these figures would not have radios.

:devilhnd

 

[Joy Toy Man]

While we are on the subject are the knifes or bayonets right?
Also during Operation Desert Shield Soldiers were issues at first white covers for their Alice packs a few months later were the Chocolate chip covers?

Again thanks for all the help.:cheers

 

[mattlocke06]

While we are on the subject are the knifes or bayonets right?
Also during Operation Desert Shield Soldiers were issues at first white covers for their Alice packs a few months later were the Chocolate chip covers?

Again thanks for all the help.:cheers

I remember seeing some troops with the choco chip covers , but my unit wasnt issued them. I never heard of being issued white covers instead of choco chip covers. I remember our unit got some new guys in before the ground war and they were only issued one set of desert unis, no desert helmet cover. If you could you could add like civilian clothing to your figures, like tobaggans ( not sure if thats spelled right?), winter clothing. reason why we were not prepared for cold weather. Before we went over all anybody talked about was hot weather. So nobody really packed for cold weather , other than what was on our battalion packing list. So we were scrambling when it got cold that january to find warm clothing, having care packages from home with winter clothing.