Article

2004-04-26 Iraq-Jordan

What ARE we doing trying to fight a war from Humvees?

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Posted by Lone Ranger 2004-04-26 12:00:00 AM|| || Front Page|| [1 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 No kidding. We might as well send our troops out in Geo Metros. Probably more armor and they'd cost less.

Apparently the Pentagon can't figure out we need armor kits for our Humvees and we need them pronto.

Somebody should lose their job. Maybe that shocking occurrence will get the bureaucrats' attention.

Posted by Anonymous4556 2004-04-26 1:23:38 AM|| 2004-04-26 1:23:38 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 This is a "Newsweek" article. Might as well believe Pravda. Fact is that convoys can't be escorted with tracked vehicles - we'd wear out our entire inventory in a short period of time. What would we do if we need to fight a real war?

Posted by Zhang Fei 2004-04-26 1:29:53 AM|| 2004-04-26 1:29:53 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 We did not use tracked armor to escort convoys in Vietnam either - today's Bradleys and 70-ton MBT's would tear up Iraqi roads even worse than Vietnam-era tanks.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2004-04-26 1:34:07 AM|| 2004-04-26 1:34:07 AM|| Front Page Top

#4 The Humvee is a tool, nothing more. If it's causing blisters tape it up. The thing was to be a fighting jeep.

Posted by Lucky 2004-04-26 2:46:33 AM|| 2004-04-26 2:46:33 AM|| Front Page Top

#5 Well, I think of what has been going on in Israel and occupied territories for the past 30 years. Lots of fighting - but when was the last time you heard about Israeli soldiers being killed in an unarmored military vehicle? It just doesn't happen. I'll bet the Russians and the Germans (combined) in the Battle of Stalingrad didn't lose many troops getting whacked in unarmored tactical vehicles. Why is that? Because fighting in cities isn't done from admin vehicles - because its goddamn sucide to offer up that king of target.

I'm not swallowing up Newsweek as gospel - I've been thinking this same thought for three months, just watching the dozens of smoldering Humvees burning, day after day. Newsweek finally just adopted it as an issue.

Protecting yourself in war isn't easy. If I recall, a Roman Legion on the march made it absolute policy - the advance halted in mid-afternnon each day, so the legion could build a vertibale fortress every single day - I think it had to be a walled enclosure about half a meter thick, and shoulder high. Every single day. 'Hell of a lot or work - but no one every caught a Roman cohort sleeping the the open.

In my light infantry days, if you had to move along an unsecured route in an unarmored vehicle, then it was in a five ton truck. You ASSUMED that you were going to hit a mine, or attact heavy machine gun fire - at least. You lined the bed of the troop compartment with about two layers of sandbags, and build a sandbag wall around the troop compartment - ALWAYS. You had riflemen posted in all four directions, ready to unload IMMEDIATELY if you entered an ambush kill zone.

I don't know - it seems to me that when a theater commander loses his 150th Humvee crew to an IED or RPG, then its time to chane tactics. Stop riding, and start walking. It used to be "travelling formation" behind the lines, "travelling overwatch" as you approachd the LD, and "bounding overwatch" as you cross the LD. You encountered the enemy with the smallest force possible - as in one fire team.

Now it looks like everyone just hops a Humvee "taxi" and rides to the firefight, and gets out after the first RPG or IED convincingly wastes the Humvee in front of you.

Staying alive in urban fighting is hard work - and a lot of it is still spade and shovel work. Not exactly "joystick" warfare.

Hell, I even remember the drill in clearing a rowhouse street in "Indian Country" - you didn't go "house to house" via the street. That was the way to get shot by the bad guys. You went from house to house by going THROUGH the walls - you blasted your way down the street, wall by wall, using breaching charges. You were always working INSIDE the buildings. It was slow work, and it took a lot of breeching charges. But the enemy got the friggin' message. After the contents of about the third house in the row came blasting out the windows as you blasted through the wall into the next house, they got the message that an unstoppable juggernaut was closing in on them, and they weren't gonna get a chance to shoot at anybody at a distance - they were going to have to take a close-in blast (goodbye eardrums) and then try to fight through bleeding eyes and noses. I remember part of the drill after you breeched each house was to to toss a regular smoke grenade into any house you didn't intend to occupy - the smoke would displace air, and no one could breathe in that "cancelled" space.

This dancing around the edges, "plinking" jihadis, and racing around in thin-skinned vehicles - this isn't serious urban fighting. Its "Hollywood." 'Time to get back to basics.

Concerning the flag-draped coffin issue. As far as I'm concerned, they should make it a rule that every congressman - Representatives and Senators - should be detailed to PERSONALLY unload the caskets once every 90 days - and dig the graves - all with news cameras rolling. They should all then be trucked down to Bethesda to donate a pint of blood for the wounded. There will then be no more doubt about whether they appreciate the human cost of the war.

Posted by Lone Ranger 2004-04-26 4:30:26 AM|| 2004-04-26 4:30:26 AM|| Front Page Top

#6 Lone Ranger...ok, except, I seriously doubt you would want Hillary present at your family member's funeral.

Posted by B 2004-04-26 7:32:46 AM|| 2004-04-26 7:32:46 AM|| Front Page Top

#7 Lots of fighting - but when was the last time you heard about Israeli soldiers being killed in an unarmored military vehicle?

The Gaza Strip and the West Bank combined are about 1,400 square miles, parts of which are occupied by about 100,000 settlers equipped and trained to fight their own battles. Iraq's land area is 168,000 square miles, or over 100 times larger than the West Bank and Gaza. The disparity in size is why American troops are taking more casualties - enemy infiltration from foreign lands due to long land borders, easier enemy resupply because of those extensive borders, difficulties with patrolling road links hundreds of miles long.

The appropriate comparison is with Vietnam, not the West Bank and Gaza strip. The US is not taking as many casualties as in Vietnam because it has better aerial surveillance, it's not fighting in triple canopy jungle, and it's got better fire control systems that enable it to hit the enemy where he is as soon as he is spotted. Equally importantly, it's fighting Arabs, not Vietnamese, which has two benefits - Arabs surrender rather than fight to the end, and fewer Arabs (than Vietnamese) are willing to risk their lives to fight Americans. Arabs are basically cowardly blowhards - I can't remember the Vietnamese doing this amount of posturing for so little fight.

Note also that we've only been in Iraq for a year, which means that those billions of dollars of hiddens weapons caches stockpiled by Saddam are still in commission. When Israel took over the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967, those territories are unlikely to have had billions of dollars of ordnance hidden away - neither Jordan nor Egypt either had the money or the inclination to provide a multi-billion dollar armory for the Palestinians. Whatever caches existed would have been easy to discover, given the small size of both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2004-04-26 10:13:05 AM|| 2004-04-26 10:13:05 AM|| Front Page Top

#8 The appropriate comparison is with Vietnam, not the West Bank and Gaza strip

Though you make some interesting points...that's a big stretch, if you ask me. Comparing the WOT with Vietnam is about as relevant as comparing the WII to Vietnam - both are about 30 years apart.

IMHO it's more appropriate to compare WWII to the WOT than it is to compare Vietnam.

Posted by B 2004-04-26 10:36:46 AM|| 2004-04-26 10:36:46 AM|| Front Page Top

#9 Shinseki's Stryker was supposed to fill the gap between the hummer and the Bradley. It ought to be put into action so we find out whether it works in the environment it was intended to address..

Posted by Mr. Davis 2004-04-26 10:37:55 AM|| 2004-04-26 10:37:55 AM|| Front Page Top

#10 The stryker's are deployed and apparently are doing a pretty good job. They have this interesting bird cage installed around them that appears pretty successful at stopping RPG's.

On another note, any thoughts on building unmanned tanks for urban combat. I am thinking of a tank chassis with at least two 20mm rotating turrents. Add this birdcage style armor around the thing and make the whole thing remote control. It seems to me a large caliber machine gun is a much better urban weapon that the 120mm tank guns on our abrams. Just a thought. I am guessing we have a bunch of m60 tanks just sitting around.

Posted by Patrick 2004-04-26 11:18:48 AM|| 2004-04-26 11:18:48 AM|| Front Page Top

#11 B: IMHO it's more appropriate to compare WWII to the WOT than it is to compare Vietnam.

Actually, the War on Terror is a lot like the Cold War, and Iraq is similar to Vietnam in that way. Just as Vietnam was merely a skirmish in the Cold War, Iraq is merely a campaign in the War on Terror. (Unlike in WWII, the US is not engaged in a large-scale battles in multiple theaters across the globe - all of them are merely skirmishes that involve a paltry number of troops and resources - certainly not the 12 million we had under arms and the and 50% of industrial output we incurred throughout WWII). Just as the US fought small wars across the globe during the Cold War, it is dealing with recalcitrant regimes one at a time in the War on Terror. The difference between Vietnam and Iraq is that the US's limitations during this campaign are more self-imposed than anything else. Unlike in Vietnam, there is no China or Soviet Union threatening intervention (although North Korea's an entirely different story).

Posted by Anonymous4560 2004-04-26 11:45:27 AM|| 2004-04-26 11:45:27 AM|| Front Page Top

#12 Patrick,

The article says they are in Kurdish areas. How can we evaluate their effectiveness where they aren't being shot at? They should be in Baghdad or Fallujah.

Posted by Mr. Davis 2004-04-26 12:33:41 PM|| 2004-04-26 12:33:41 PM|| Front Page Top

#13 Just being in the north does not mean they are not getting shot at. Here is an article at strategypage on a stryker that recently got destroyed.

http://www.strategypage.com/search.asp?target=d:inetpubstrategypagerootdlsdocs2004415.htm&search=stryker

Posted by Patrick 2004-04-26 1:32:57 PM|| 2004-04-26 1:32:57 PM|| Front Page Top

#14 This link should work better.
Stryker Link

Posted by Patrick 2004-04-26 1:34:52 PM|| 2004-04-26 1:34:52 PM|| Front Page Top

#15 Hmm, apparently Strategy pages search links are temporary. Basically go to www.strategypage.com, click on search, and type in STRYKER.

- Patrick

Posted by Patrick 2004-04-26 1:35:56 PM|| 2004-04-26 1:35:56 PM|| Front Page Top

#16 I'm wondering if we might not lay on some serious armour on the General Lee class and send 'em into battle. It's their natural home. Cheap gas, bad guys and a lousy script.

Posted by Shipman 2004-04-26 4:32:08 PM|| 2004-04-26 4:32:08 PM|| Front Page Top

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