AirDrop for the uninitiated
It is not just the convincing outsiders of the lunacy of their ideas. It can be equally difficult convincing our lords and masters of potential viability.
When I started in MoD we worked for the Director of Air Defence - naturally he was an Air Defender with no trucking background or previous knowledge. One of my roles was to write the Service Deviations (SD) for the Herc - we had just short of 100 which had to be re-staffed every 6 months. However....
You may recall that during the Bosnia deployments one of the Regiments was deployed forward in Pristina (I think) and expected to be cut off by the Nasties. We needed to re supply them by airdrop but the aircraft had to remain above the missiles ie above 17,000 ft. 2 ideas seemed feasible using either a slotted parachute (one with every other gore removed) or by tie-ing the parachute so that it never really opened. Then with wind measurements from a ground party it was reckoned the load ( albeit travelling fairly fast, about 75 ft/sec if memory serves) could with reasonable certainty be put into a football pitch. But we needed JATE (as it then was) to do some trials and these needed a SD.
The DZ was the Boscombe Calibrated Range on Salisbury Plain aka the Larkhill Artillery Impact Area. I did a lot of research and produced what I thought of as a masterpiece, complete with the need, pictures of the loads and parachutes, maps of the DZ etc and explanations of where it actually was we were going to drop. In it went to the D and after a while out it came again unsigned but with a few queries. After several more attempts, I gave up trying to convince him remotely and asked to see him.
In I went, SD paperwork in hand. After some discussion we came to his problem - how did he know that if he granted the SD there would not be any unwary civilians standing on the DZ when dropping took place.
I thought for a moment "Well, Boss, it's like this. 30 minutes before we arrive the Artillery will be lobbing 155mm shells into the area. 30 minutes after we depart they will begin lobbing shells again." "Ah" he said and signed without another thought.