Hey everyone. I currently find myself in the Philippines doing an exercise called PHIBLEX (Philippines Bilateral Exercise). we are one of the major units playing, but there is a higher headquarters that comes from Okinawa that is overall in command of the US forces. I myself am in the port of Subic Bay and have set up our comm center for the MEU CP. We have 3 satellite receivers and lots of single channel radio gear as well. Through the satellites we get web and email services as well as DSN (Defense Switch Network) phone lines. We will be wrapping up the exercise in the next few days. One of the nice things about being on shore is we have greater bandwidth and only about 20 users instead of over 2000 like on ship. The web is flying!! As such, I wanted to take the opportunity to upload some pictures I have taken. Normally I link my pictures through Picasa, but you can't use that on Govie computers.
Before that we had been operating in Guam and Tinian. I didn't get to go ashore on Tinian (which I regret) but some others did and I saw the pictures they took at the north airfield where they loaded up The Bombs. On Guam I went to the Asan invasion beach and saw some interesting things. There were still bunkers in evidence and I saved some sand from there as well.
Well, that's it from me. Perhaps if I had the time, ability, and something interesting to write about, I would do my Ernie Pyle literary impersonation, but alas, I lack it all!
Talk to you later,
Todd O.
The Philippines (Subic Bay Port)
The Comm setup
Me and the Phoenix
Two Cobras on the flight deck
The business end of a Cobra (AH-1Z)
Me in a Japanese Bunker with modern supports
Rough seas hitting a resupply ship during a RAS (replenishment at sea)
The mighty CIWS - pronounced sea-wiz - See the movie Battleship for a cool demonstration
Coming for a landing with the Philippines in the distance