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Are American ‘Techs’ in Ukraine?

Civilians, or people “in civilian clothes.”

I listened to a podcast today talking about the war in Ukraine and the challenges of providing more sophisticated Western armaments to the Ukrainians to defend their nation from the Russian invasion.

The information shared was that some of these weapons are fairly sophisticated, and the employment of them in combat by Ukrainians is not something that they can just roll out to the front lines and start using.

An example would be the Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) and other higher-tech weapons being furnished — with the manuals all written in English. Besides having to be able to employ the weapons systems in combat, they have to be maintained, or they won’t work when the time comes to fire them.

Which comes to a war story. While in the Army, I ran into an officer who had been “detailed” to Israel to help them with training soldiers on the TOW Anti-Tank System.

He was instructed to wear only civilian clothing and not be referred to by his military rank. Why? Because no Americans were supposed to be in Israel providing that type of assistance.

Might some “civilian” technicians be in Ukraine? More than likely there are some “true civilians,” and then perhaps others.
Eric Holdeman is a contributing writer for Emergency Management magazine and is the former director of the King County, Wash., Office of Emergency Management.