Ernest Graves
But some indication of positive feeling about this is the fact that RMK is now engaged
in a crash program to pave the road quite a bit of way with black base--at least as far
as Cai Lay--and there are all sorts of plans that have been made to keep the road open.
But I really can't say one way or the other.
[Q:
How has the MCA-funded [military construction, Army] LOC equipment aided the
group during your command?]
A:
It was an inspiration to have the MCA/LOC equipment. I would offer only one
reservation. As is almost always the case with something of this kind, the people that
sell it tend to emphasize the simplicity of the equipment and of the whole problem. In
other words, if we go out and buy something off the shelf, all our problems are solved.
I don't really think in the case of this commercial equipment that we have any fewer
problems than we have with military equipment. We have all the same problems. We
have the problems of skill of operators. We have the problems of repair parts. We have
the problems of having people that are really expert in the equipment. The problems are
all the same, but the thing that this equipment brings is unique capabilities to do a job.
For example, the self-propelled stabilizers that we use on the clay lime, the stabilization
batch plants that we are using to produce sand cement, the segmented compactors that
we are using for compacting the clay lime, the vibratory rollers for the compacting of
the sand cement: these pieces of equipment provide us a unique soil stabilization
capability down here--where we don't have any rock--that we would not have with
military equipment. The equipment is much more productive.
But I would be the last one to claim that it's any simpler to operate or easier to maintain
than the military equipment. It's equally demanding, and if any mistake was made with
the LOC equipment, it was underestimating the difficulty of setting up an adequate
support system for this equipment. Now that we know the need, I think the operation
is getting organized very well. But we didn't have, at the beginning, the kind of training
program we should, and we didn't have the kind of parts support, and we didn't have
in country as many people who were highly knowledgeable of this equipment as we
needed.
With the military equipment and with the warrant officers who have been working with
it a long time, we do have people that are familiar with it. What clearly is needed for the
commercial equipment is to have representatives from the manufacturing firms come
in at the very beginning--representatives who are just as knowledgeable relatively as
our warrant officers are with our standard equipment.
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