Near Colorado Springs, Colorado this (Thanksgiving) weekend. Fort Carson, which has mechanized (tank) units is located there. If you drive on S. Academy Blvd, you can see a rail yard that serves the base. It looked like a full tank corps was loaded on flatbed railcars (translation=80+ railcars), on spurs in their railyard. Dont know if they were shipping in or out. No associated APCs noted, just heavy armor and support vehicles. The tanks and associated equipment were painted a tan, reminiscent of British WWII vehicles (think about the color of grass in the winter), and several sported the Roman numeral IX, which I assume is the corps. These were American M1 tanks and American (at least as far as I could see) support vehicles.

Is it normal to rotate an entire heavy Army corps out during the winter?

-- bob (bob@bob.bob.bob), November 28, 1999

Answers

Yep. Time for the Carson Kids to Rotate throught he NTC in the Mohave in Cali. No Biggy. Also, FYI, the number of tracks that you describe is in NO WAY a Corp movement. 80 Railcars, with only 2 M1A1's per flatbed tallies up to 160 tanks. Thats if only tanks were on board. My old Battalion at Ft Hood was made up 4 tank companies, with 4 platoons per company, and 4 tanks per platoon. With the extra two HQ's M1's, we had +/- 66-70 tanks on any given day. That and, another Tank Battalion, along with the Infantry Battalion to support and you ge twhat is made up of a Brigade size element. A Corp is made up of Divisions. A Division is made up of 3 combat Brigades, and two support Brigades. You can do the math from there. It's perfectly normal for a brigade to rotate out for a 3-4 week training out at NTC. They're trying to go, train and get back before Christmas. You'll see...those tanks will be shipped back through your area inside of a month. Bet on it.

-- Billy-Boy (Rakkasan101st@AOL.com), November 28, 1999.

Did you take a picture? Asked a vet friend, who said your description sounds Italien, but need a picture to confirm, don't wanna spread rumors. infowars.com alledgedly has lots of pictures of foreign troops training on usa soil, maybe you'd recognize the equip there?

-- Hokie (nn@va.com), November 28, 1999.

Hokie-

You think they're Italien (sic) because the have "Roman" numerals on them? I could be wrong, but but I don't think the Italians use M-1's. Billy-Boy is correct; they are probably going to the NTC. The reason that there are no APC's or very many other support vehicles is that these are generally requisitioned out of the the NTC's motor pools; that is they are borrowed for the exercises there by the visiting unit, but the visiting unit must supply it's own tanks. Don't know why this is, just that it is. Nothing weird here, just normal training.

-- (cavscout@comfy.inmybunker), November 28, 1999.

This is from an earlier thread, much on the same line of questioning, RE:tank movements, and foriegn troops. Ignore that crap on the Infowars website. Too much Propaganda for my liking. As far as special the 'russian trained units'. Again, "BULLSH*T!" Man...I was in One of two OPFOR (opposing force) units that the United States Army/military has. One is located in a shithole that is called the Combat Manuever Training Center or CMTC in Hohenfels Germany. It's called 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry under 7th Army Training Command. I was there for two years, and yes, we did train as if we were russkies, wearing Black BDU, driving VISMOD (visually modified) vehicals. The other Unit is Located in , wow, Pay attention Kayla,... Barstow California! This is called NTC, The National Training Center, another shithole, home of the 1st Battalion, 73rd Guards. They simulate desert warfare, utilizing russkie tactics and yup, even use real russian tanks and weapons to 'add to the realizm' Enough with the foil. As far as the PA sighting, the army is currently finalizing the upgrade of all M1A1 Abrams MBT to the newest variant of the M1, the M1A2. Theye are -attempting- to finish this by the end of the year. If they don't get it done, General Dynamics stands to get hit with some really heavy fines for failure to complete the contract. As far as the darker paint, its called CARC. Chemical, A..., Resistant, Coating. (cant remember what the a stands for) CARC goes on really dark, and fades over a period of months, as the U.V. breaks down the coating. When I worked in the paintbooth for a while, we refered to CARC as "Cancer In A Can" or "Bucket O' Tumors" Nasty stuff...

-- Billy-Boy (Rakkasan@yahoo.com), November 28, 1999.

TAIPEI, Taiwan, Nov. 26 (UPI) Taiwan's stock market plunged Friday on fears that mainland China's naval fleet is conducting military exercises to intimidate it.

The leading stock index dropped 309.09 points to 7,595.44 on sluggish volume. Both the drop and the light trading were attributed by market observers to a report from Hong Kong early Friday that some Chinese naval ships were deployed to "combat positions" during the exercises.

The stock market here also was affected by China's apparent missile threat. On Wednesday, the Washington Times reported that China had installed short-range missiles at its Yangang base, some 275 miles from Taiwan.

Thursday, Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui accused China of threatening his nation with missiles, and the defense ministry called for more military spending.

Heightening concerns over China's military exercises were unconfirmed reports it is returning 50 "retired" submarines to combat readiness. Taiwan's defense ministry called that report a "fabrication."

-- Nikoli Krushev (doomsday@y2000.com), November 28, 1999.

Bob,

What you saw was 3 squadrons of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment shipping their stuff to Fort Polk, LA (the Joint Readiness Training Center, or JRTC) for a rehearsal of their upcoming trip to Bosnia next year. The story has been covered pretty extensively in the Colorado Springs Gazatte over the past few weeks. You're right, it's not typical for large movements in the winter, but this is sort of a special case.

bob, send me an email. We seem to be in the same general area.

-- rob minor (rbminor@hotmail.com), November 29, 1999.