Matter of Perspective

This Tuesday, Sept 4th, I drove to North Carolina to help a couple of Navy Seals with refresher JTAC training before they were to leave to go overseas. In layman's terms, a JTAC is a guy on the ground trained to control aircraft and have them attack certain ground targets. I happen to be a trained JTAC myself even though I spend most of my time flying. In this particular instance, guys from my squadron were supporting these SEALS doing refresher training. So I drove three hours to North Carolina (vice the 10 min flight) to train with these guys on a large target range. It was great training opportunity for myself and these SEALs. It was also a really good for me to get the chance to view their perspective. See it is the job of JTAC to talk an aircraft's "eyes" onto a target so that we can deliver ordnance on that target. It can be an extremely challenging task especially due to perspective. Here is an example: In this picture (above) we see the perspective of a guy on the ground. (Please forgive me for the drawings as I threw them together quickly). As this guy is moving along the road and approaching this town he notices a "bad guy" on the right side of the road at the far end of the building marked by the red star. Let's say that with that information he attempts to talk a guy in an airplane onto that target. As the airplane gets closer to the target here is what he sees (below). At this point we will assume that the guy in the airplane knows the location of the "good guys" marked by the blue star. Again the information the airplane was given was that a "bad guy" was spotted down the road on the far end of the building on the right. By looking at the perspective of the airplane you can see, the JTAC and the airplane may be looking at different targets. Now this particular example can be cleared up by further clarification. The JTAC could inform the aircraft that the target is in the building in a room on the top floor on the "north west" side of the building. The aircraft could also clear things up by asking the JTAC to confirm that the target was a "tank" on the far side of the building. In this case, and most cases, the perspective could be cleared up with a little extra effort. Isn't that often the case though? We all have had times where we had a different perspective on a subject than someone else. And in most cases it a little further clarification could have cleared things up.

That got me to thinking though ... what is the perspective that others have about me ... my relationships ... with God ... with my wife ... with my job ... with my leadership. Could a little further clarification clear things up? -kcH