Laura Young
ECB Publishing, Inc.
On Wednesday, Feb. 16, the Kiwanis Club of Monticello welcomed Captain Carl Hackney of the Royal Armoured Corps in the British Army as their guest speaker.
Kiwanis Member Don Condon introduced Hackney, noting that he served for 22 years as a soldier in the British Army and then has served three more years as an officer in the Queen's Cavalry.
Hackney engaged the audience with a slide show of pictures and diagrams illustrating his military career in three regiments from 1997 to the present. In postings and tours in the Balkans, Eastern Europe, Iraq, Afghanistan, Canada, Belize and the United States, he specialized in intelligence gathering, reconnaissance and surveillance. Hackney described his service as crew on British Combat Vehicle Reconnaissance (Track) in all of his tours, conducting reconnaissance “in all operations, under all conditions, at all times of day and on multiple platforms.” Usually they were ahead of the forward troops, gathering information to report back to those planning troop movements.
At a number of overseas postings, Hackney worked with American troops, and this led him to be later selected for a posting to South Carolina. There, he was involved in testing and mentoring one of the U.S. reconnaissance squadrons. Hackney added a bit of humor as he shared how he overcame the language barrier that arose as his British speech encountered the dialect of troops in the American Deep South. Hackney offered numerous points of contrast between the British and U.S. approaches to reconnaissance and combat. The two armies learned about each other's structure and strategies, and they were able to mingle their doctrines. This work ultimately was very rewarding to Hackney and, because it had the result of saving many lives, he received a Coin of Excellence.
He then talked about the future of reconnaissance vehicles and how those compare to Russia's latest tank.
During the wrap-up Q&A session, Hackney responded to questions about the use of drones, cyber warfare, what Putin is up to in Ukraine and the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.
On the latter topic, he responded, “I wasn't surprised they did it the way they did it. I wasn't offended either, by the way. There's a lot of ex serving people saying 'ah we wasted our time because you did that.' When they did it in Iraq and they took eight, ten years to get out of there, they were questioned, 'they didn't do it right.' When they went out in days, 'they weren't right.' There is no playbook for how to do it. They saw Russia coming. You can't be committed to that area, putting that amount of money and that amount of equipment into that area and have that happening up in the Eastern Bloc. You wouldn't have the ability to get over there. You can't focus on all that at once. I think that was the driving factor for getting out of there quickly.”
Questions then circled back for a more extended discussion of the new Russian T-14 tank.
At the end of the Q&A session, Hackney announced that, in a few short months, he is retiring from military service “to pursue a more relaxed, warmer life, full of love and happiness in the United States, if they'll have me.”
A lunch of pasta salad and towering club sandwiches was provided by the The Porch in the Green.
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