Military Ring Info

When I think about the time that I spent in the military the thing that I miss the most was the teamwork. There is such a feeling of satisfaction that a military leader gets when his troops work together to pull off an operation.

Each man has a specific job to do and each job contributes to the mission. If one of them fails the fate of the others will be in jeopardy. Thats the way that military teamwork goes. All of our military ring customers know how to operate as a team.

Sometimes a custom military ring customer will wind up with a group of individuals that he or she has never seen before but each one will know their individual job. they will instantly meld together and perform as a team because they are used to operating as a team.

If I consider all of the things that I miss from my time in the military the teamwork will have to top the list. Military teamwork, (as all of my military ring customers know) can’t be duplicated in the civilian world.

US troops are gearing up for the biggest part of the new offensive in Afghanistan. The offensive action thus far seems to have been to capture the area around Marjah. It seems that the city of Marjah is the focus of the offensive so this is where the biggest part of the battle will take place.

NATO forces are consolidating for the attack and once again we are letting the civilian population know that they should be prepared to leave the city.

This will be the most difficult part of the offensive begause fighting is tougher for the attacking force in an urban environment. The structures which are indigenous to the big city offer defenders cover and concealment from the invading attackers. Buildings offer excellent protection from enemy fire and there are thousands of good hiding places inside of cities which you may not see on a normal battlefield.

Cities also give the defenders concealed avenues of movement through the streets and alleyways. The defenders can move easily and quickly through the streets without being seen and they can mass forces very easily. The city by nature of its narrow streets gives its defenders excellent kill zones where they can methodically take out the attackers.

The advanced technology that our military ring customers have will do a lot to equalize the advantages of the defenders by providing real time battle intelligence. We wish our troops well. 

The Precision Guided Mortar Munition is a new mortar round which the Army is developing. This new round will increase mortar accuracy enough to take out point or hard targets. This is very significant to me for two reasons.

Not all of you custom military ring customers are aware that is is difficult to get direct hits on targets with mortars. A mortar is an indirect fire weapon which kills be showering shrapnel on the target, not by hitting the target directly. In addition the mortar fires a high angle trajectory. Now my military ring customers who are fire direction specialists understand the ramifications of this but most other military ring customers probably don’t. What this means is that when a mortar fires a shell it fires it into the air at an angle greater than 45 degrees so the shell travels more distance up into the air than it travels across the ground. While it is in the air it is buffeted more by the wind and weather effects. This causes it to be moved around and thrown off course. Many of these factors can be identified and corrected before it is fired but there is still an effect.

The next good thing about the precision guided munition is that it gives the lower level commander an option to use a precision weapon. Normally precision weapons are only used by division level commanders and higher. The precision mortar will give the task force and company level commanders the opportunity to take advantage of precision bombs.

There is much debate on the don’t ask don’t tell policy of the US military regarding the service of gays in the armed forces.

First of all lets remember that gay men and women have always served in the military and always will. I say that we should not deny anyone the right to serve in the armed forces for any reason other than that person not meeting the minimal physical or mental requirements of military service.

On the other hand we must keep in mind my military ring customers that the military is a unique organization and there are certain rules of order which must be maintained because of the nature of their job. The military is not a organization which can afford to promote indivuality. All must conform to its established and proven protocols.

For example there are dress regulations, haircut regulations, standards of conduct, etc. These have been proven over years to be effective in maintaining military order and can’t be overlooked or relaxed.

Whether a person is gay or not should not be a standard of military service. The terms of the military take precedence over the likes or dislikes of the individual. Anyone who meets the standards that the military required should be allowed to serve, but sexual orientation can’t be flaunted. A soldier either male or female should look and behave like a soldier.

The Osprey has been used sparingly so far in Afghanistan but the Marine Corps has used them in the ongoing offensive on Marjah.

I for one certainly hope that this new piece of technology will soon be utilized more than it currently is. It is too valuable to not be utilized.

In the latest incident three of the MV-22’s were used to ferry Marine Corps Force Recon military ring customers along with Afghan Troops into position to help conduct a raid on Taliban forces.

For those of you military ring customers who may not be familiar with the Osprey let me drop a little knowledge on you. This craft combines features of a transport helicopter with features of a transport airplane. It can take off and land vertically so it doesn’t need the benefit of a runway. Once airborne it can fly as a propeller driven airplane which lends itself to greater speed than a helocopter. Thus it can quickly ferry troops to almost any area on the battlefield to conduct operations. Its speed of operation will insure surprise when our marine ring customers show up unexpectedly and unannounced.

The term Final Protective Fire really means exactly what it says. It is used by combat arms units conducting defensive operations. This is a term that you do not want to hear during combat because if you do you are in some serious trouble.

Normally you will fire the FPF when you are being overrun. When you fire the FPF you shot everything that you have left as fast as you can. Infantry ring customers know this term very well. When the Field Artillery Observer sees that his infantry is  being overrun he will call the artillery and ask them to fire the FPF.

The Field Artillery Fire Direction Officer has the FPF plotted as a line on the ground. He knows that the line is very close to the friendly infantry ring customers so he has the Fire Direction Center to give the guns the command to “Use Gunner’s Quadrant.” Each gun chief knows to use the gunner’s quadrant which is a precision instrument. This insures extra accuracy so that no friendly troops are hurt by friendly artillery. The artillery military ring customers know that they need to fire everything that they have as fast as they can to help out their infantry brothers.

“Fire for Effect” is a Field Artillery term which the Forward Observer uses to let the Field Artillery Fire Direction Center know that the last rounds in an adjustment have landed close enough to the target to do some damage and volley fire needs to be employed to have the desired effects.

This term is hardly used now because of the advent of new technology which takes away the neccessity of the observer’s radio calls for artillery. Nowadays he will use a laser rangefinder to get the location and range to the target and to send this information back to the Fire Direction Center.

Back in the old days before the laser rangefinder the Forward Observer had to determine this information himself. Human error in locating the target was a big factor as all of you Field Artillery ring customers know. Artillery had to be adjusted onto the target. The forward observer would spot individual rounds and when he saw that they were close enough to the target to do some damage he would give a final correction and add “Fire for Effect.” To his radio transmission. This would alert the custom military ring customers firing the artillery to use all of the howitzers at once. Doing so would pepper the taret with artillery rounds and cause great damage.

I came up with the idea of doing this post this morning after I ran into one of my customers from waaay back. Sergeant Major Kaiser came to me after he had returned from the first Operation Iraqi Freedom to have a military ring made. He, his wife, and I worked on the custom military ring for awhile and I got to know them during the process of us putting it together. He needed his custom military ring to be his military retirement ring also because he was in the process of putting in his retirement papers.

We worked until we got him exactly what he wanted and his wife presented it to him at his retirement that next month. That was back in 2001 if I remember correctly. I just happened to run into him this morning at a convenience store and asked him how the ring was holding up. I was happy as a lark when I found out that his ring was just fine. He had no complaints whatsoever. Now my beloved military ring customers that is what I’m talking about.

This is a true story. We want you to rest assured that when you get your ring from us you will never have a problem that we can’t resolve.

This post is dedicated to our Special Operations ring customers and is designed to give the rest of us just a little bit of insight into what you have to go through that the world never hears about. We can’t speak of anything other than some of the difficulties that we know that you have to face on a constant basis.

I was a Field Artillery soldier and I went through some frustrating times so I know that you do also. Even much more so than I did because your job is many times more difficult than mine was.

To the rest of our custom military ring customers this is what the term Operation Enduring Frustration means: It refers to all of the last minute changes that come that absolutely disrupt everything than you had planned to do. It refers to the impossible number of tasks that you have to accomplish in an impossible amount of time. It refers to the last minute change that throws all of your rehearsals out of the window. Now you have to execute without the benefit of a rehearsal.

It refers to all of the equipment that you don’t have, or to the equipment which you can’t seem to be able to get fixed. It speaks of having to work in a cold weather environment without cold weather equipment. It speaks to my Special Forces, Rangers, Delta Force, and Navy SEAL (and others) military ring customers of finding out that you have a follow on mission which requires you to spend two more weeks in the field when you ran out of food and water yesterday.

It speaks of the emergency that you have right now at this minute that you can’t tell anyone about because you communications equipment won’t work.

In a sense this operation applies to all of our military ring customers everywhere. We all have gone through these situations from time to time and we all know how Murphy’s Law operates. This is another post of support to all of our troops.

I can speak to the current offensive in Afghanistan only a little bit because I only know what I read in the news, but from what I can figure it is going well. Of course there are no operational details as there shouldn’t be, but we do know that US Marine Recon units have been airlifted behind enemy lines. The advancing forces should link up with them somewhere South of Marjah.

This is another tribute to our Marine Corps ring customers, and our Marine Force Recon ring customers in particular.

The resistance has not been heavy but the enemy that they are now fighting seem to be better trained than what they are accustomed to. Casualty figures are not clear but there is an estimated 120 Taliban casualties at this time.

The advance of our forces has been slow and methodical so as to completely clear out the Taliban. The strategy is to quickly set up a government in the newly cleared areas so that when our forces withdraw the Taliban won’t be able to retake control.