Last night was my first solo CJOC watch. I went to bed early and then set my alarm for 2230 so I could get up and go to the gym to wake myself up before beginning the watch around midnight.
The shift was going really well; I was ahead of schedule on preparing all the reports I was responsible for and operationally, everything was pretty quiet so I didn’t have any situations to report. Then, around 5 am, I faintly hear the big voice – remember from my previous description, the CJOC is kind of a windowless dungeon connected to the outside world only by video feeds and telephones – followed by the battle captian repeating the announcement to the room over a PA, “Lockdown, Shelter in place.”
I hear bits and pieces of chatter around the room and then see confirmation in my classified computer’s inbox: IDF (indirect fire), target HQRS, 1x 107mm round, impact at US embassy, being investigated by HQRS and embassy.
I look up at the overhead video feed and watch the camera scan the area and find the point of impact. The round went through a second or third story window of a building that is still being built on the embassy compound. Luckily the round did not detonate and the building is not yet occupied. However, the position of the building in relation to our base, and the trajectory of the round show how close it was to doing real damage and how lucky we all were.
At the North end of the base, right next to the wall separating the base from the embassy, are three dorm buildings that house many senior officers, civilian contractors and most of the females on on this base. On the other side of the wall is the building with the 107mm hole in a window. Since the window was only on the second or third floor, and the three buildings on our side are all three story, the slightest adjustment in trajectory, and if the round wasn’t a dud, could have resulted in a very bad day at Resolute Support Headquarters.
As for CJOC duty, I had to report up the chain on this incident, and on two IDF’s that occurred at Bagram Air Field, where Dave is. Neither of those caused any real damage either, one landed on the runway and the other was shot down by the C-RAM. Their base has C-RAMs at every corner; they are pretty spread out and in a somewhat remote area (to accommodate for an airfield) so they get shot at fairly often, but are usually well protected by the C-RAM, a gatling gun with radar that will shoot a cloud of bullets at any projectile detected to be heading toward the base. On a ship, they are called a Sea Wiz (CIWS) but I guess the army had to rename their version that is stationary on the ground. At HQRS, we are in the middle of a densely populated city who probably would not appreciate a burst of 240 rounds shot into the air in an attempt to shoot down a rocket. We also rarely get attacks like this, and certainly none that close.