During a rotation to NTC I used my smoke vehicles and a few heavy vehicles from the unit we supported to draw the OPFOR in by confusing their spotters. The heavy vehicles masked the sound of the smoker's and the smoke cloud mixed well with the vehicle dust cloud. My most effective deceptive missions were late at night or early in the morning.

SGM (R) Antonio Brown I mostly saw smoke when training on obstacle breaching. Given the enemy can free effectively when blind (t&e mechanisms and the like) I didn't think smoke would provide much help except to confuse the defender as to where we were actually breaching and hopefully spread his attention across several points.

SGT (Join to see) that should say "fire effectively" not "free effectively"

SSG Carlos Madden When we switched to the turbine smoke systems is when we added graphite which allowed us to disrupt most optics and thermals because the graphite when mixed with smoke comes out hot. This gave a strange heat signature. With the right smoke team they can create a cloud up high with a haze down low to obstruct the view of elements in the high ground looking down.

1SG (Join to see) In the bush a mission can be conducted almost any time of day because the atmosphere is so different. That also creates a problem because the lack of airflow will cause the smoke to move very slow to the objective or sit in one place.

SGM (R) Antonio Brown - Whoa. I didn't know that. Pretty cool. They left that out of our AIT training in 2002.

SSG Carlos Madden I do not know why they left it out especially since we deployed with them in 2001 when I was a SSG in the 101st Chem Co on Bragg. When we put the graphite in the hopper we had to first suit up like it was a decon mission because the graphite was so fine and it got everywhere. We knew it was a inihilation hazard before the manufacturer told us.