US army in iraq baffles me (gear and hardware related)

R

rocco

Active member
i have respected the ideals of the US army, mainly "everyone makes it out of the battlefield" rule.
i have always believed US army would do everything in its power to totally minimise their casualties. perfect example is in vietnam, US operated medivac huey's which saved many american lives.

but i keep wondering, wtf is US doin, allowing its troops to die in Iraq.
i feel so bad every time i hear that US troops are dieing to RPG's and road side bombs... this shouldnt be happening...

im biased and naive cuz yes, i have mainly read websites about IDF, so please dont hold it against me. but why doesnt US up-armor its MBT's, APC's and Hummers... same go for the brits...

check out these links:
http://www.defense-update.com/features/du-1-04/rpg-threat.htm

http://www.defense-update.com/features/du-3-04/up-armored-humvee.htm
During the security and stability operations that followed operations Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan) and Iraqi Freedom (OIF), a limited number of up-armored Hummers were available in theater, but as of May 2004, most vehicles remain unprotected. As a result, many Hummers are often falling prey to repeated attacks that causing heavy casualties to coalition forces. Soldiers traveling in these soft skinned vehicles become highly vulnerable to every type of attack, even stone throwing and fire bombs. Highest lethality attacks are by small-arms fire, grenades, mines and RPGs.
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the US has more than eneugh cash to upgrade their hummers to say these...
http://www.defense-update.com/products/h/hummer-plasan.htm

(p.s. thats not IDF linx :D)

if it even saves 1 american life, its totally worth it... read the quote... SMALL ARMS FIRE... men are dieing to small arms fire, which could be avoided... and a little bit of ERA could go a long long way for the heavy APC/AIFV/MBT

what do you guys think?
 
one of the reasons the all hummers don't have the up armor package was complaints, from the soldiers on the ground, that they were too heavy for transport and were getting stuck. there was an article about that on military.com somewhere.

soldiers are going to die, it's war. we do everything possible to minimize those casualties from body armor to using air strikes and uavs. but when it comes down to it we need the soldier on the ground in the thick of battle to bring the fight to the enemy.
 
but the thing is the soilders arnt dieing in the thick of the batle. us troops are dieing to cowardly ambushes...

now that the main war is over, US should use its toughest vehicles for patrols and troop deployment. to minimise its casualties it should set up equipment for urban warfare.
 
let's not call ambushes cowardly. it's a tactic of warfare and we use it too. the problem is we're fighting too conventionally. we can't roll into town with tanks to take out an enemy dressed as a police officer or some lady shopping. armored vehicle help for patrols, but they're still bullet magnets.
 
it is cowardly, these people dont wear uniforms, and endanger the lives of civilians from which they shoot from i.e. human shields/hostages and also civilians near the target, whic arnt always soilders, but workers aswell...

true with fighting conventionally, thats why i think US forces should have a second set of vehicles for urabn warfare, and in addition they should increase street level intel.

armor vehicles are bullet magnets, but they should atleast be able to stop bullets from hitting the soilders inside them... or they are useless.
 
There is nothing cowardly about attacking supeior forces. If you can find a way to do it and get away with it, all the better. They are not cowards. The peole who attack civilians are cowards.
 
I said very early on... even with the 9/11 attacks to stop using "cowardly." these are simply other tactics. And if you ask me, it takes a heck of a lot more balls to ram a plane into a building than to push a button from miles away to launch a Tomahawk cruise missile.
 
SHERMAN said:
There is nothing cowardly about attacking supeior forces. If you can find a way to do it and get away with it, all the better. They are not cowards. The peole who attack civilians are cowards.
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totally agree, the people fighting against us in iraq have none of the superior weapons such as tanks, planes etc. yet they are fighting and killing. its guerilla warfare, america, britain have done it before and its happening again now.
 
i mentioned this in another post. EVERY country that exists today, particulary first world countries, have used terrorism as a weapon of the government at one point in their history. you can't deny it. so if you want to throw cowardly around then we are too. but being a coward is an opinionated term, we're cowards to our enemy because we'd rather drop a bomb from 30k ft then walk up to them with a bomb strapped to our chest.

the colonists were called cowards by the brits during the revolutionary war because we used ambushes instead of attacking them head on, like a conventional army.

all these people are doing are using the only tactics they have available to combat a more superior force. heck, during the afgahn war the CIA taught them these tactics to use on the Soviets. since they beat the soviets, they know it's a proven strategy. so now they're using it on the US.

the only reason they target civilians is because it gets our attention, and all they want is our attention. no offense to anyone who has lost a pal in iraq or afgahnistan, but a dead soldier isn't worth nearly as much as a dead child or dead civy when we talk about terrorism. as a soldier it's almost expected that you'd die in combat, especially if you're on the line. and let's not forget, the high they raise the stakes the more the public disproves of the war and the more pressure the gov gets to pull out of it. it's already divided the US.
 
Keep in mind that the Pentagon is a valid military target for a 9-11 style attack. WTC, no, the aircraft used, no, but it is perfectly legal to hit a target such as the Pentagon. The military in Iraq is going to have to start treating everyone like insurgents if the problem doesnt go away soon...
 
then it shouldnt be cowardly for us to massacre everyone in fellujah, men women and children, even their pets. why? cuz thats the best tactic to end terrorism there.

but to each his own i guess ...
 
also, i think IMI suits up bradleys with ERA. US should have a full division of vehicles up armored and suited with passive armor and ERA, armed with OWS...
 
rocco said:
then it shouldnt be cowardly for us to massacre everyone in fellujah, men women and children, even their pets. why? cuz thats the best tactic to end terrorism there.

but to each his own i guess ...
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What dropping hundreds of bombs on people who have no defense against it, killing people who arent involved. If we put manpower in then massacred them then they can fight back, thats not cowardly, indiscriminant bombing is cowardly.
 
There is more to Iraq than killing people. That's how we got into this problem in the first place. We need to stop the insurgent but at the same time make friends with the locals. We've done this before with Special Forces units, so this is by no means new to us. The problem is we have too many regular army units with not enough training to deal with that problem. We might be great at killing people but that won't make lower the amount of insurgents in the towns.

The only way to stop the insurgent is to get the locals on our side. Which is easier said than done seeing as how most of the people will shoot an RPG at US forces for a $100 or so. They can be bought off because they don't see the "occupational forces" helping them. Not only that, the terrorists in Iraq are more intimidating because they threaten the locals with death and torture.

What needs to be done is more human level contact and liaison building. We're doing this in Afgahnistan and we've done it in Laos and Vietnam (before the conventional war fiasco that occured).
 
The north and south of iraq seem to be fairly safe, it is just around baghdad that there is most of the violence and that is where the most work needs to be done. Its all well saying you need more heavily armoured vehicles but its by staying in the vehicles and not meeting iraqis on the streets thats alienating them. The problem is that the iraqi citizens from what ive read seem to think of the americans as the agressors who are there for there own economic gains, and that is the viewpoint that has to be changed. Putting more troops on the ground would help as it would allow more soldiers to interact with the iraqis, but america doesnt have a good record of winning over the population. In somalia, in afghanistan only kabul is properly controlled the rest of the country is as lawless as ever. and now iraq.
 
somalia was a different issue. we really had no reason to be there. it was a civil war and we stepped into the middle of it. sure we were trying to protect the civilian population but that was a hornet's nest waiting to be stirred up. well now that i say that we've done that a few times.

but what's hard for people to realize is that afgahnistan is going to be 10x harder to fight than iraq. we don't realize it yet mainly because there isn't much media coverage on it. but since the country barely has any developed infrastructure and run by warlords we're in for a heck of a fight. i think it's better this way though, we have a lot of SF working there and the last thing they need is a camera critisizing their work.
 
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