The U.S. Military Liaison Mission in Potsdam, Germany, was a primary source for CFE inspectors.

Equipment Recognition Training

A group of Army weapons specialists who came to OSIA's European Operations Command on a temporary basis beginning in October of 1990 played a key role in the TLE recognition training program. Sergeant First Class George A. Partridge, Staff Sergeant Thomas A. Favia, and Sergeant Joseph S. Nelson were members of the U.S. Military Liaison Mission in Potsdam, Germany. The Mission was staffed by NCOs and foreign area officers (FAOs) with a strong working knowledge of Soviet and East German armies, their equipment, units, and force structure. Because of German unification, however, this Cold War outpost was no longer needed and was closing. Having served at the Mission, Colonel Kelley knew the caliber of the people associated with it and its reputation for excellence. He made a point of actively recruiting weapons specialists from the Mission.

Weapons specialists from the Army and Air Force later joined the specialists from the Mission and added to the growing stock of information. Sergeant First Class Curtis E. Ingram, USA, focused his efforts on tanks while Master Sergeant Richard D. DiFormato, USA, gathered information on armored combat vehicles, and Staff Sergeants Gilbert Sierra, Jr., and Cecil L. Ward, USA, concentrated on artillery. The U.S. inspection teams also required a working knowledge of treaty-related aircraft and helicopters. Senior Master Sergeant Clifford A. Schroder, USAF, and Technical Sergeants Paul R. Angus and James L. Towne, USAF, provided that expertise. Their knowledge of aircraft and helicopters complemented the information their Army counterparts had assembled. The weapons specialists' collection of information and photographs were the basis for a three-level training program on equipment identification.⁴

Photo of a T-72 tank used in level one recognition training.

An armored vehicle launched bridge on display during Czechoslovakian training course.

Level two training dealt with Soviet, Eastern European, and U.S. equipment, listed in the Protocol on Existing Types of Conventional Armaments and Equipment, that was reportable but not limited under the treaty. Instructors broke this equipment down into 17 areas. This equipment included "look-alike" armored personnel carriers and armored infantry fighting vehicles, training aircraft, combat support helicopters, and transport helicopters. The armored look-alikes were vehicles built on the chassis of a treaty-limited vehicle but modified for purposes other than transporting a combat infantry squad. By treaty definition, these modified vehicles could not be armed with a 20 millimeter or greater gun or cannon. The two levels of training encompassed more than 400 pieces of Soviet, Eastern European, and U.S. equipment.

During a CFE mock inspection at the Hohenfels Training Area in Germany, inspectors checked these armored personnel carriers.

Although not yet assigned to OSIA, Lt. Colonel David P. Gessert, USAF, offered the use of his squadron's facilities, which were adjacent to OSIA European Operations' building. Colonel Gessert commanded the Air Force's 7580th Aerospace Squadron, known as the Berlin Corridor Flyers. Its mission ended with German unification. While closing down the 7580th, he allowed OSIA's weapons specialists to develop and conduct equipment identification classes in the squadron's briefing rooms. These classes, while important for all inspectors, were critical for weapons specialists because none were expert on all weapons systems. U.S. Air Force weapons specialists, for example, knew U.S. aircraft, but they had little or no knowledge of U.S. Army weapons and equipment, much less the weapons of the Warsaw Pact's ground forces. The same was true for U.S. Army weapons specialists, who were expert in U.S. and some Soviet ground forces, albeit using NATO designations, but had little exposure to U.S. and Soviet aircraft.⁶

Lt. Colonel David P. Gessert, USAF

Lt. Colonel David P. Gessert, USAF, was the first CFE team chief selected at OSIA's European Operations Command. An Air Force Academy graduate, he was a command navigator with 3,000 flying hours. Just prior to this assignment, Lt. Colonel Gessert had commanded the Air Force's 7580th Squadron, the Berlin Corridor Flyers.

On the initial months--recruiting, training, enlisted force:" I was the first team chief here. My deputy, Chief Warrant Officer Mike Lukes, was an old INF Treaty inspector; he had a lot of experience. In all honesty, he probably trained me more than anybody else did. He and I went out as the team chief and deputy for all the initial NATO mock inspections. We had the opportunity to take out all of the enlisted teams. There were four enlisted members on each team, and we had eight teams. There were two interpreters and two weapons specialists, and it was a mix and match of Air Force and Army guys. Chief Lukes and I essentially set the teams up and initiated their training. The first real mock inspection we did was with the French; then we worked with the Luxembourgers, Belgians, Dutch, and Germans.

"We had all these extremely qualified NCOs, but they were either qualified in rocket systems or they were qualified in tanks, master gunners, etc. We also had some very, very qualified Air Force maintenance personnel who worked on F-4s or F-15s or F-111s, but they didn't know tanks, our own tanks, let alone Russian tanks. So we were pretty much starting at ground zero. Everybody was extremely professional; there was real expertise in certain fields, but no one had expertise in all of the Russian equipment, or in the variety of Russian equipment. What helped was that these guys were professional NCOs, and they were operators. They knew how to turn a wrench, so they weren't guys who just looked at pictures from behind a desk or some intelligence analysts. These guys were soldiers, they knew how to walk into a wing, a brigade, or a regiment, and decide quickly if they had their act together or not. That's why they were hired. So we had all these real smart guys, soldiers and airmen. These guys could walk and chew gum; they'd done some stuff in their life."

On the initial mock inspections: "The initial mock inspections were very brutal, especially with our allies. The allies looked at this CFE mission initially as an opportunity to talk and to celebrate together. From our own INF experience, we knew the Russians were very professional, and that we had to approach it that way. We exercised every aspect of the treaty and made it very, very tough and very, very difficult. The allies, at first, regretted it. They didn't like it. They didn't think the Americans were nice. What we tried to explain to them was that you train harder than what you actually do in reality. By the time the inspections began, I think the allies became tougher and we became easier. But when I say easier, it's because we were not reasonable in our mocks, for we always pushed to the extreme to make treaty points. Many times we would purposely be unreasonable with the allies for training purposes.

"Mock inspections taught you how to orchestrate an inspection, how to organize an inspection, the mechanics of trying to get a crew of eight people underneath the team chief to work together as subteams. You did it so that when you hit the ground you weren't worried about who had what room or where's the equipment going. You had to learn how do to the mechanical things to make an inspection work. When you hit the site, your time was very limited. You had to use it wisely.

"It takes organization and some thought. I believe I've used the example before that we learned that it takes a much longer time to do a treaty inspection report than ever anticipated because of the legal aspects, using the proper verbiage, and referencing the proper points in the treaty. These things just took longer than anticipated. There are also some straight mechanical things you have to do to facilitate and to keep your inspection going."

On leading multinational inspection teams: "I think that actually made the mocks more important. Learning how to put together and orchestrate an inspection with three new people helped. We always have three new people on every one of our real inspections, in addition to the core six-man team. During the mock inspections we learned how to make it work. How to make it task-oriented, to know what task you want to give to a new member, and what you want to give to an experienced inspector. You learned how to organize and how to set up a true, thorough inspection. Sometimes it was very, very tough because you had to learn how to use somebody from another country who had a slightly different agenda than yours. But if you know how to facilitate an inspection, how to organize--which we learned during the mock regime--it made it much easier. That's what the training really taught us to do, how to conduct a good, well-orchestrated, well-organized inspection. And it took a while to learn that. You don't go into it blindly."