How U.S. Artillery in Iraq Regained Its Status as ‘King of Battle’
Mil & Intel
By Kevin Knodell | February 09, 2020
A handful of soldiers looked up at a screen showing a group of mysterious figures moving through a field. Their shapes and movement were unusual, and with the angle of the sun, they were casting very large shadows. The soldiers had already ruled out the possibility of the figures being human. Some suggested wild dogs or coyotes; others suggested goats. One or two joked about science fiction monsters and aliens.
Modern video surveillance technology has made impressive strides over the years. From the sky, military aircraft can transmit live footage of the battlefield in a way that was once in the realm of science fiction. Pop culture often depicts the footage in sharp HD that is easily “enhanced” for clarity to the point that it has become a punchline. Despite these strides, the reality is that the imagery is often grainy, pixelated, and often requires a lot of observation, context, and guesswork to interpret.
At the 2-8 Artillery Battalion’s Tactical Operations Center (TOC), soldiers are inundated with images, intelligence, and reports about the comings and goings in northwestern Iraq as they scan their battlespace for ISIS targets. The 2-8 operates from a large American compound inside Qayyarah West Airfield — an Iraqi Air Base in Saladin Province, Iraq that is often referred to as simply “Q-West.”
After several minutes of debate, battalion commander Lieutenant Colonel Stephen Thibodeau — who most of the soldiers know simply as “Colonel T” — concluded, “Oh, hey! They’re not goats, they’re chickens. You can see the wings there flapping.” It had been a relatively slow and uneventful November day on Q-West in Iraq, but the guessing game provided some brief entertainment for the soldiers looking at the screens.
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