The Sum of All Fears.pdf - Delta Force

what Grierson would have thought of the TO & E for the Buffalos today!'
'It is substantial,' the General allowed. He'd commanded the 11th Armored
Cavalry Regiment a few years earlier. The Black Horse Cav was still in Germany,
though he wondered how much longer that would last. But the historian was right.
With 129 tanks, 228 armored personnel carriers, 24 self-propelled guns, 83
helicopters, and 5,000 troopers, a modern Armored Cavalry Regiment was in fact a
reinforced brigade, fast-moving and very hard-hitting.
'Where are they going to be based?'
'The regiment will form up at Fort Stewart. After that, I'm not sure. Maybe
it'll be the round-out for 18th Airborne Corps.'
'Paint them brown, then?'
'Probably. The regiment knows about deserts, doesn't it?' The General felt the
standard. Yeah, there was still grit in the fabric, from Texas, and New Mexico,
and Arizona. He wondered if the troopers who had followed this standard knew
that their outfit was being born anew. Maybe so.
CHAPTER 6
Maneuvers
The Navy's change-of-command ceremony, little changed since the time of John
Paul Jones, concluded on schedule at 11:24. It had been held two weeks earlier
than expected, so that the departing skipper could more quickly assume the
Pentagon duty that he would just as happily have avoided. Captain Jim Rosselli
had brought USS Maine through the final eighteen months of her construction at
General Dynamics' Electric Boat Division at Groton, Connecticut, through the
launching and final outfitting, through builder's trials and acceptance trials,
through commissioning, through shakedown and post-shakedown availability,
through a day of practice missile shoots out of Port Canaveral, and through the
Panama Canal for her trip to the missile-submarine base at Bangor, Washington.
His last job had been to take the boat – Maine was huge, but in U.S. Navy
parlance still a 'boat' – on her first deterrence patrol into the Gulf of
Alaska. That was over now, and, four days after returning his boat to port, he
ended his association with the boat by turning her over to his relief, Captain
Harry Ricks. It was slightly more complicated than that, of course. Missile
submarines since the first, USS George Washington – long since converted to
razor blades and other useful consumer items – had two complete crews, called
'Blue' and 'Gold.' The idea was simply that the missile boats could spend more
time at sea if the crews switched off duty. Though expensive, it worked very
effectively. The 'Ohio' class of fleet ballistic missile submarines was
averaging over two-thirds of their time at sea, with continuing 70-day patrols
divided by 25-day refit periods. Rosselli had, therefore, really given Ricks
half of the command of the massive submarine, and full command of the 'Gold'
crew, which was now vacating the ship for the 'Blue' crew, which would conduct
the next patrol.
The ceremony concluded, Rosselli retired one last time to his stateroom. As the
'plankowner' commanding officer, certain special souvenirs were his for the
asking. A piece of teak decking material drilled for cribbage pegs was part of