The new year is off like a rocket. 2025 has dawned with more optimism than we’ve known for years. Inhaling that hopeful air, I asked my Army team leader and good friend, retired Army Master Sgt. Mike Preston, about his goals in the new year.
“I don’t do New Year’s resolutions,” the party pooper said.
“You should,” I said. “To celebrate the fact you’re still here, and I didn’t shoot you in the war.”
I should probably explain.
The Army is packed with all sorts of weapons: handguns, rifles, machine guns, bombs, missiles. It’s a big arsenal. But some of these weapons are better than others. I loved my trusty M16 in Afghanistan. I named her after my wife, and with that rifle, I could hit anything.
But one weapon I wish we could have left back at base was the AT4. This Swedish-designed, unguided, shoulder-fired, recoilless anti-tank weapon is more trouble than it’s worth. It’s a big dumb green tube, designed to be fired once and then abandoned. It cannot be reloaded.
The problem is that the $1,500 unit cost makes training with live rounds too expensive. The Army, therefore, made us train with specially adapted versions that fired tiny 9-millimeter tracer rounds. This little spark zipping downrange toward tank targets is completely unlike firing the real warhead, which, in addition to being incredibly loud, shoots fire out the back end.
When firing the thing in training, we looked ridiculous, checking our six and calling out, “Back blast area clear!” before firing a spark without any back blast at all.
The weapon has an unnecessarily complex safety, cocking, and firing mechanism, part of which involves sliding a lever up and down a long, exposed groove. This is a problem in desert environments where the sand gets into those slots and messes up the machinery.
In my year in Afghanistan, my company had three AT4s prove to be either manufactured duds or rendered inoperable but still armed due to grit in their workings. Being a combat engineer, I was assigned to destroy these junk weapons with explosives, an only slightly tricky operation, for which we weren’t well trained. The key was to figure out where the warhead rested inside the tube and apply the C4 directly outside of that.
About once a month, our squad would go out into the empty Afghan desert and practice shooting, with old Soviet junk vehicle targets. Preston was the range NCO, standing beside me as I prepared to fire my first real AT4. I flipped up the sight, pulled the safety pin, struggled to operate the cocking lever against the grit.
“Back blast area clear!” I screamed, just to make a show of doing so the one time it would actually matter. I aimed and pressed the firing button. Nothing.
“Did you hold down the safety lever?” Sgt. Preston called from where he stood, three paces to my side.
“By the book, Sergeant, I swear! This thing is junk.”
He told me to recock the weapon and try it again. I did. Nothing.
Preston started to cross in front of me. “OK, let me check if —”
The weapon roared! I didn’t realize Preston was that close, and I hit the firing button again. That rocket screamed by, perhaps 6 inches in front of Sgt. Preston. Hopelessly unaimed, the warhead missed the derelict vehicle and exploded in the dirt.
Sgt. Preston and I stood frozen for a moment, both of us so glad I’d fired before he had taken one more step. Bad range safety on both our parts.
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“I guess it will fire after all,” Preston said casually.
That was 20 years ago, and I’m glad my team leader, Sgt. Preston, survived to become one of my best friends. I still believe the AT4 is worthless. What’s not worthless is this new fantastic year stretched out before us all. I wish you the joy of it, my friends.
Trent Reedy, author of several books including Enduring Freedom, served as a combat engineer in the Iowa National Guard from 1999 to 2005, including a tour of duty in Afghanistan.
*Some names and call signs in this story may have been changed due to operational security or privacy concerns.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
