________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
infantry outfit all the way back there from the forward area. That's what really rankled the
infantry types, and I thought so too. So, I sold the concept that ADMs would be delivered to
the brigade's rear boundary by Corps assets. We engineers would do the pickup; someone
else would provide the essential security. Aviation would fly it. We would no longer drive it.
I mean, it was absurd to think we were really going to put a vehicle on the road to go all
those miles back to Kaiserslautern and then back to the front and make it in any kind of
responsive time.
So, we modernized the whole concept of operations. If it's a Corps' mission and if the Corps
has a priority for the use of it, the Corps must provide the resources to get it there. Aviation
or Corps engineer assets would deliver it to the brigade's rear boundary, where then the
employing maneuver commander with his engineers would pick it up, take it forward, and do
all the necessary things as before.
When you put ADM operations on that basis, you needed fewer of them. They were more
flexible because you didn't have to have ADMs out in many places. Now they would be
provided forward. We had fewer people involved. The number of training inspections each
year was reduced. You didn't have so many infantrymen and infantry battalions that had to
be involved. We reduced our inspection requirements from 48 of the 52 weeks a year down
to something like 22 of the 52 weeks a year. That was still a sizable number compared to
previously when the battalion commander had it once or twice a year, but at least down to
something that made a lot more sense.
We really reconstructed the entire ADM approach, I think, rewriting doctrine in a rather
reasonable, logical way. That became the way until General [Bernard W.] Rogers, then the
Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, got rid of all ADMs in the theater in the mid-'80s,
primarily because of, I believe, concern for their availability to terrorists. We now had gone
from what was, in my earlier day, a huge contraption down to a rather nice-sized backpack-
sized munition.
Q:
Storage security wasn't such a big concern in the '50s, but by the '70s, the security of the
weapon had become a matter of substantial concern to us.
Wasn't there always the problem of the release authority too? You referred to that. It was a
nuclear weapon so it did require rather complicated procedures.
A:
Yes, it was always complicated. The problem there, that we also sorted out, was that
engineers had to have ADM release handed down to platoon and team level, whereas in the
artillery that was at battalion and battery level. So, we engineers had to be training sergeants,
Spec4s, in an arena where artillery could be training captains and majors. That was one of
those things that heightened the risk of failure.
The change we made was to ask, "Why do we have to do release there at team level." The
people in charge, the employing maneuver unit, ought to have that sort of responsibility. So,
we sorted out release authorities and when and where it was to happen. We didn't change the
basic release items. We changed who had to handle them.
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