panzersaurkrautwerfer

The ROKA is certainly not a "camera" Army in the sense of lacking skill. It is however, from a culture that values appearances very much. You can see this taken to a radical end in the DPRK (EVERYTHING IS GREAT WE ARE FINE DEATH TO AMERICA), but in the ROK it is much closer to being prideful. When we did the after action reports during joint training events their portion was always how great they did and how swell everyone was at their job, then we'd leave and they'd stay and then they'd go into what was broken and how they'd fix it. So in that regard their training tends to be pretty good...but if there's cameras and allied troops they tend to dress it up a bit. I imagine the Koreans were okay with the T-80s given the size of their average crewman. The chief complaint they had against the M48 was that it was too big for Korean crewmen, US vehicles are designed to accept some rather large dudes, which correspondingly makes them less optimal for a country made of smaller folks. It's also one of the reasons the Koreans went with the K1 vs a Leopard 2 or Abrams. I never got close enough to actually climb aboard a T-80 though, imagine I'd find it cramped however (the loader's area certainly gives the interior spaces of the Abrams a wider more open feeling, and again it was designed for a larger average crewman in the first place. In regards to FCS, the problem of getting a round to a point is not as pronounced as it is ensuring that point is a target. The lack of quality optics on Russian tanks would be the greater chokepoint than the performance of the fire control system.

Gotcha. Again it's pretty much a non-factor (at least it was for my time on active duty) because encountering it was marginally less likely than Iranian allied space aliens showing up on the battlefield. I read the sensor thing somewhere or possibly imagined it, but again it's not a threat system that's proliferated to the degree that understanding it was essential. Either way it's still very much something that some clever maths can give you a reasonable model of performance from.

The range at which you spot things is often less relevant than the terrain you're spotting in, and crew experience/work load. If you ever sit on a live fire, or even just a "force on force" type setting you'll be surprised at what does not get acquired, or at how long the process from target presentation to target destruction can take. So what is often "obvious" is frequently much less so staring into an optic inside an armored box. This is partly the reason why the US still puts (on occasion) some emphasis on being able to open the hatch and take a look around, simply because the naked human eye is better than sensors at painting a cohesive picture of the surrounding terrain. It's not helped by poor ergonomics and control layout and the crew fatigue issues that come from T-72/T-64 derived platforms. I do think this might be a systems wide flaw, the ROK seemed to have a much more permissive engagement time and larger targets for their T-80U equipped unit than their K1/M48A5 guys. Then again it could have been a bit of a showcase vs an honest gunnery training exercise*. In regards to armor composition, this is however, where having the actual physical thingy is pretty valuable. There's less mystery to how it accomplishes its mission, but especially in the case of what the actual contents do to the penetrator, or how it breaks up armor piercing effects using whatever the contents are, this is certainly something that remains with some mystery. Maybe the .5 CM gap between DU rods within the mesh allows for a degree of flexibility that better absorbs the forces of KE rounds. Maybe .4 is too hard, while .7 is too ductile. Who knows? What it does or does not do happens inside a non-publicized realm between the inner wall of the tank and the outer layer. As the case is with Relikt the main difference is the range at which the ERA engages (as it is cued by a sensor last time I checked vs contact), and the effects of the ERA itself are fairly well understood, as are the capabilities of most, if not all Russian ERA tiles. This is largely a result of both technical intelligence, and the Russian advertisement of the system. Also again it comes down to maths in a lot of ways, if using a selected Russian sabot type round for the test, an efficiency of 50% reduction in penetrating value occurs and the primary difference is range of interception, given known variables (weight of tile, size of tile face, velocity of tested rounds and composition), some assumptions (proportion of tile "shell" to "filler" based on knowns of Russian ERA construction) you can work out broadly the optimum intercept distance, the required velocity and throw weight of the ERA etc and come up broadly with what Relikt can do and what is required to defeat it. Unless the Russians have an Abrams they've cut open to poke and prod at the armor arrays (they have, it's just almost certainly one of the Egyptian ones that lacks the US specific armor) though, just what's happening within the passive armor arrays will remain somewhat a mystery. Massive HEAT type rounds are effective from some directions, KE works from some angles, but the actual thickness, and how that effective thickness is accomplished remains a secret specifically to frustrate folks trying to figure out just what they need to do to build an Abrams killing device (and fuel internet speculation too I am sure). *On a scale of 1-10 for Propoganda, with 10 being the DPRK's training events (all filler no killer), and 1 being a US NTC exercise (a ruthless exercise in the "good guys" losing 80% of the time), ROK stuff seemed to float around a 4-6 depending on the audience. They still seemed to train realistically within a budget, but they did often modify certain parts of the exercise to mug for the cameras (one of the infantry units I worked with totally departed from their part of the training lane to "assault" a camera crew that'd come out to film the event before returning to the mission). They also do not like looking bad in front of their US counterparts, so sometimes you could tell the event was hyped up, but rather than being an event with a possible outcome of "failure" it'd been practiced and adjusted to ensure 100% mission accomplishment of amazing destruction of DPRK aggressor targets. So the very large targets, with cessation of target presentation during smoke/dusty conditions, and long target presentation times might not have been "this is what the tank is capable of" and more "this is to ensure we don't look stupid in front of our allies" Of course, equally of note is the US tanks completing the training were not so impacted by the dust/smoke, and did not require the larger targets to accomplish similar results on the same range.

1. Again, it isn't as dicey as you're making it out. The "how" is fairly well established, the physics are fairly standard, as is the performance of the various pieces that get assembled into the ERA tile. The exacts likely have been validated by some wayward or "borrowed" tiles, but there is nothing Relikt does that is so left field to require destructive testings. 2. The M829A2 was tested extensively against K-5 tiles. 3. I have very little idea on the M829E4. The last time I was on a tank was late 2014, and the new sexiness for us was that we no longer used HEAT training rounds having entirely converted to MPAT. The E4 was still a "hey this thing is coming" for us. The actual penetration values were not something we trained on extensively, more where to shoot. When I was on Bradleys generally the points of aim revolved around avoiding armor, but with the Abrams the point of aim entirely was "this is where to shoot to make this thing explode" vs concerns about penetrating in the first place (we're big fans of the side shot just under the turret for the obvious reasons, although center through the lower armor was also popular. Turrets were not regarded as especially resistant to M829A2/A3 fire, although Relikt was not something in common enough issue for us to have to worry about).

Again, it's been publicly shown often enough. We borrowed a whole Soviet satellite for a few hours back in the 60's from an exhibition, and the Brits got especially cheeky with BRIXMIS. You put a piece of military hardware out there, especially in a space that isn't especially well secured and it's bound to have someone at the least getting some good measurements for eggs heads to crunch the numbers on. There's not much revolutionary about Russian ERA. Which isn't to say it is bad, just simply it is a generational system. If newer generations did something wild like used diffused plasma buffers and electrically charged plates to cause incoming rounds to phase into the underverse, then that's pretty hard to figure out. However it is just ERA with some new tricks, nothing that is so far removed from what is already within the state of the art to disable, just historically it was not cost-effective to build without a threat. As the case is though between the wages paid to Russian engineers, aggressive Russian sales demos (and letting military personnel from third party countries crawl all over the gear being pitched) and a respectably competent technical intelligence capability in the west, there is nothing that you have that we cannot possess (or at least get a real good look at). We are at a bit of an impasse. There's very few things left in armor design that represent a decided technical edge (western optics and some of the more advanced armor arrays mostly), mostly it is a matter of budgets and design philosophy. No one has what composite armor or the first run of thermals any more was in the 1980's, or a tank that frankly surpasses all other tanks in all ways like the T-55 did for a time. And Russian ERA remains firmly locked in a sort of Red Queen situation in which it is running as fast as it can to keep up. Not to mention anything claimed in public for a weapon that is for sale should be taken with a grain of salt the size of a small mountain. As an additional tangent, if we absolutely need our mitts on Relikt in order to know how to defeat it, how in the world is it possible that Russian armor can have a prayer to stop the M829A3/A4 if they haven't yet gotten their mitts on it* *For clarity, I'm being sarcastic. They don't need a M256 with rounds to figure out how to try to counter modern sabot rounds. More to the point having the piece of equipment is excellent....but outside of stuff that operates using techniques not well understood, or relying on specific composition, you can make pretty reasonable guesses to performance.

If you did not want us to get out mitts on it, you should stop offering it for sale to people who might be equally interested in Russian equipment and American dollars.

There was some thought put into ground mounted Hellfires, but the employment was more along the lines of a launcher unit somewhere behind friendly lines that would fire in support of forward designation teams. I believe it was part of the whole 9th ID experiment with dune buggies and all. I think the Lockheed Martin thing is along similar lines, perhaps a recognition of the limits of ATGM launcher vehicles. As far as strapping them to IFVs though there's not a lot of point to it, the Hellfire has a lot of range it wouldn't be able to exploit in direct fire with as pointed out some pretty major cost and weight penalties. Think it's more likely you'll see a vehicle mounted version of the Javelin in regards to something like a Bradley.

The use of AAA weapons in direct fire certainly isn't unheard of, the use of the quad-50 mounts in World War Two and Korea against personnel, and the M42 in Vietnam are pretty well documented. The chief issue is that those, and the ZSU are all AAA weapons being used because they're otherwise unemployed. What makes direct fire use of AAA assets less desirable in a conventional war is they've got better things to be doing, and are often a low-density asset (or losing one often has an outsized effect on the battlefield).

Sarcasm ignored: The more pressing question is what the tank dumping the smoke going to do with the time between lase and shot? While there's a few seconds (very few) in between laser strike and round strike. This isn't a ATGM where you've got enough time for the commander to go through the mental process of being engaged and give orders to the driver. The tank broadly is going to be about where it was when it was lased (especially true if stationary). The smoke will deploy, but it isn't a force shield. The automatic smoke system does a lot more against something with a flight time measured over 5-6 seconds though. Re: Passive range finder Very likely on the horizon somewhere. I mean if you could build a computer program to recognize a tank type target and then scale the size of the image received vs the actual size of the tank you ought to be able to get enough for an accurate enough to shoot range.

It makes some sense, or at least you're at an odd juncture. On the one hand the tank crew usually makes the decision in what to fire, on the other hand, often there may be a platoon-company fire plan that dictates what AFVs engage with what weapons (and when)*. Having some control, especially when it "matters" (ATGM vs KE or autocannon fire) would be helpful. *As two examples: 1. Defending an engagement area against an enemy mechanized platoon with supporting tank, a mechanized infantry platoon splits its fire. One Bradley and its dismounted infantry squad engage the tank with ATGMs, while the remaining three employ their autocannons against the enemy PCs. 2. Real life vs CMBS, a tank platoon will often split the same engagement area between tanks. One tank engages only PCs, the other only tanks. This avoids target overkill and having to "dump" rounds (or if you're shooting at PCs and then a tank arrives, the fastest way to get rid of your HEAT round is just to shoot it at the enemy tank, hope it hits something worth breaking and throw a sabot in instead of trying to unload the weapon).

It can also be the safest way to move with armor support though. Machine guns especially are not laser guns, and you get a lot of stray rounds flapping around. And a lot of larger cannons will throw debris kicked up by firing pretty far. Then you start tossing in things like sabot petals going everywhere. Realistically you don't want armor or support by fire to the rear of your forces, as much as on an offset so there's a general lack of friendly stuff with rounds literally going over them. If you're forced to move along one axis, staying behind the armor, or forward and to the flanks is also a good option. It's also worthy of note that some of the lower profile Russian vehicles (namely the BMPs) lack sufficient clearance to fire over the top of troops anyway so working abreast of the BMP is likely your better option.

Yeah, it's an odd duality. MANPADS are pretty marginal in conventional conflicts except for in large numbers. However they're extremely dangerous in ANY number in the hands of terrorists.

Civilian transporter trucks are scary. Getting on the HETs was always a little twitchy simply because it's a somewhat delicate procedure to make sure everything is lined up right, but it's a truck designed from bumper to bumper to transport Abrams and similar vehicles, and manned by dudes who load AFVs for a living.* Some random civilian lowboy operator almost always goes through the process in which something almost breaks catastrophically, or is obviously only marginally able to accomplish mission (like adorable little wooden braces, or tracks hanging scarily off the sides of the trailer). *Especially the Korean Service Corps dudes, their ability to load/unload vehicles is almost supernatural, although their odd uniform wearing habits and mandatory smoke breaks while driving are a little odd. On the other hand once you get to the upload location, minus drivers, once you've figured out what truck you're loading on you're pretty much good to hop on the truck and go to sleep until you get to your destination.

The story had not much to do with spares (again, they existed, just "I get in trouble if this tank isn't working!" was not justification to break into the "we are now at war" stock), and a lot to do with how readiness is reported. I'm positive every Russian fighter plane in Syria is fully functional and operational and doing missions, it just happens for some reason planes 123, 456, and 789 are in the hangers for unrelated training and crew rest, and for some reason we're ordering spare fan blades just in case! Readiness and readiness expectations are often great examples of why zero defect mindsets foster bad climates. I'll break it down a bit simpler: Leader A believes his organization needs to attain 95% readiness. He therein sets the standard that 95% of all equipment must be fully mission capable at all times. He then hangs people's evaluation scores, or their future careers on their ability to achieve 95% readiness, (OR ELSE). He does not however have access to more parts, more mechanics, but he's sure at organizations below his level can handle it. Leader B is in charge of a sub-unit within Leader A's organization. He likes being Leader B and would like to have Leader A's job once Leader A gets promoted. If he does not achieve 95% readiness he will not achieve that goal. He's already working the mechanics on 12 hour days and extra details on weekends. The spare parts budget does not cover the additional repairs required to get from 90% to 95%. He cannot possibly accomplish mission. He then finds ways to adjust the readiness numbers without overtly lying (like in my example). On paper, as reported, his organization is at 95% while in reality it's at 88% because A Company put a Bradley in a ditch and it needs some suspension work. Leader A gets the report, puffs up his chest. He realizes he is an amazing leader, and all it took was his divine guidance to make the readiness status go up 5%. Realizing he has the golden touch, he then mandates maintenance status will be at 97%. Leader B the is forced to resort to even more sketchy math to attain standards. The cycle will continue until it breaks down dramatically (Leader A sees a tank broken down in the motorpool, and asks Leader B how he's at 110% readiness with a broken tank). The readiness status numbers become a joke and ultimately everyone understands it's a joke, but it's sort of a collective joke that so long as leader A's boss doesn't catch on, life continues as always. In good military forces, readiness is still high. Even struggling with parts issues, we rarely had more than two tanks down for more than a few hours (the great benefit of Company level maintenance, fast response times). But the magic numbers exist to fluff someone's resume. Which is exactly what I'm certain is behind any reports of 100% readiness, because simply it's impossible. Complex machines break. They do it often. Given enough of them doing a thing some number of them will not be available because broken, or be conducting required maintenance and unavailable for mission. The same thing occurred with various Soviet and Chinese 5 Year Plans/whatever. The massive results didn't exist outside of creative math, but the creative maths increased expectations of performance. It often leads to reinforcing failure (or doubling down on marginal performance) which is always lovely.

It's not the maintaining the equipment itself, its the maintaining the equipment "over the horizon" as it were. There's a whole level of complexity to keeping equipment operational well away from home bases, and this is something Russia has not had as much experience with. In regards to the operational readiness, a story: The M1A2 SEP V2s assigned to Korea were largely from the first and early runs of that particular model. They'd been used by 1st CAV, treated fairly roughly, and then replaced with newer M1A2 SEP V2s. The parts stocks for Korea at the time did not include as many M1A2 parts as they should have. Maintaining the standards the Army put down for operational readiness simply was not possible, we got close, and frankly could have gone to war with every tank in our formation, but some part of the population would have had some systems inoperable, or required breaking into the go to war parts stocks. And because they were the buggier SEP v2s, and had been previously used, they had a lot of parts that simply needed to be replaced one way or the other. As a result, some units instead of reporting that they had 9 operational tanks, and 5 broken ones would do some triage, and cannibalize parts from two of the broken tanks to fix up the other three enough to be fully mission capable enough to pass inspection. Or instead of ordering the needed parts electronically against the tanks that needed them which would flag the unit as having fallen below reporting standards, all the parts would be ordered against one tank, so the system would just show that X Company had one REALLY broken tank instead of five sort of broken ones which was within tolerances. Or there'd be all sorts of paperwork twisting and dodging. Tank C23 is totally broken right now when we're supposed to be reporting the issue....but the parts that fix it come in two days from now and it'll take about 30 minutes to install them. So let's just say it's fine right? Now for the American taxpayer, and the South Korean citizen, if war had broken out you'd have had all 14 tanks in combat. Between the warstocks for parts, looser standards (a headlight out on a tank is a "deadline" item for safety reasons, so the tank is not mission capable. In war time, zero pelvic thrusts given). We were ready and we'd have taken a terrible toll on the DPRK. But the easiest way to avoid getting someone shoving something very deep in you about readiness rates is to adjust numbers creatively, and I do not believe Russian equipment is so vastly more reliable as to not break down as much as it's western counterparts (and the Russian equipment I've seen does break down as often as its western counterparts). Given this I imagine someone is defining operational readiness is the usual slightly flexible way vs 100% strike readiness. *as far as training/garrison operations parts. There were literally warehouses and warehouses of complete M1A2s and spare parts located farther south.

I think making an ARM or using an APS emitter as a means of tracking enemy vehicles is not optimal for reasons discussed. What likely would be more useful is a sort of "jam on lase" option, effectively using a directional emitter and the sort of frequencies gleaned from ELINT to drown out the APS effectively as the firing cycle is about to complete. It would give the targeted vehicle a heads up for sure, but given the speed of emissions over the speed of a round it likely would give the same reaction time as a muzzle flash, or even the APS actually engaging. The fact APS is reliant on giving off emissions ensures finding the frequencies that they operate on is largely a matter of time, or even pairing the "fuzzbuster" to find traffic coming off the targeted vehicle (again, direction antennas I imagine), then giving off a short pulse of jamming paired with the expected flight time of the round (or perhaps even cued in the case of missiles to drown out the APS just during the missile's final run in to target. Either case the capabilities of the APS on the Armata are sounding very on par for conventional APS vs some majick sabot slayer.

I was more pleasantly surprised when they started using safeties, keeping their fingers out of the trigger well, and horseplaying in their barracks with loaded weapons*. Not death blossoming was simply a bridge too far for our Iraqis. *Massive OT, but when we were getting ready to go we were warned that a sniper was active in our part of Baghdad, and while he did not target Americans, he shot the living daylights out of any uniformed Iraqi person. Many theories and profiles were created, risk assessments run, attempts at establishing patterns made, and powerpoints produced. Fast forward to like, week two of the deployment. An Iraqi is killed with a shot to the chest by our mystery sniper. Our QRF burns out of the gate, trying to get there and hopefully catch this dude before he bops out of there. The Iraqis escort the QRF to the scene of the shooting. It's an interior barracks room with no windows. There's a shell casing on the floor, and the dude looks to have been shot from the other part of the room. Relevant information from that day: 1. Accidental shootings do not come with payouts to the surviving family. Sniper attacks do! 2. Looking back at the reported sniping attacks, nearly all of them were in very unlikely locations. 3. There were dozens of these "attacks" over the course of a few months. Needless to say it was a long year.

Re: ATGMs and Insufficient Airstrikes I would say it's a cultural thing, in the sense that it's a society adverse to blaming someone for mucking it up. In working with the Iraqis, despite catastrophic leadership failures, poor planning and all and all poor choices on the part of the Iraqi partners, it was always some piece of equipment there wasn't enough of, something breaking, or that we didn't provide some asset. Rarely the equipment or asset would have made a difference (or, because they didn't have enough printers they weren't able to produce enough copies of orders to stay awake, and THAT is why two of their checkpoints got wiped out when they went to sleep during the day and got murdered, so give us printers and Baghdad will be secure). I'm taking the ATGM reports with a grain of salt, as suddenly waves of TOWs from 360 degrees makes defeat acceptable...while the possible reality that it was simply poor tactics, over-confidence in the loud noises made by Russian airstrikes, and much more modest means that actually did the heavy lifting. In terms of airstrikes, honestly the Iraqis won't have enough airstrikes until each Iraqi soldier has a personal JTAC and AC-130 with orbiting F/A-18s. This is imperative and it is our fault they lack the means for total victory.

No. Not at all. It's actually a humor website written mostly by US veterans. See example: http://www.duffelblog.com/2015/10/mutant-super-soldier-cant-find-job/ Wherein Wolverine from the X-Men and Hulk from other comics struggle with employment after leaving government service. It's pretty funny most of the time.

I'd contend the absence of malfunctions to be utter nonsense simply because we're talking about machines with moving parts. By all accounts it sounds like something that'll get smoothed out, just that equipment is wearing out faster than intended when placed at a higher operations tempo in an environment that hates anything that has an air intake. Given the echelon at which most Russian stuff is repaired it is also reasonable that it might lead to longer downtimes as equipment is either sent back to Russia without replacement on hand, or support facilities are established. That said if strikes are as effective, and as numerous as boasted, it begs the question as to why no progress at all has been noted, and why seven days from now the ground truth would be dramatically different. Related hard hitting journalistic writing: http://www.duffelblog.com/2015/10/russian-troops-syria/ It would be a carbon copy if it was directed at the Assad family holdings. It's an air campaign directed against ISIS, and it has had some results as far as limiting just what ISIS can do (namely destroying heavy equipment, and some of the "strategic" type assets they previously controlled. Also limiting command and control functions). The point is not to produce a winner in the Syrian Civil War, it is to ensure the loser is ISIS. And that goal and resources invested are proportional to the US interest in the region. I would suggest you better understand examples before employing them. What comes after Kosovo and Bosina? At what point will Serbian aggression finally be checked? The gates of Vienna? The shores of Newfoundland? The slippery slope fallacy is called a fallacy for a reason. We can afford sitting out a terrible everyone vs everyone civil war, while ensuring same civil war consumes much of ISIS's momentum and resources. Also if we step in at all times there will never be a strong regional response to anything. It will be like Iraq when this all kicked off, they didn't have to fight because of course the Americans would come back in and win this one for them. They can die again, I'll just shuck my uniform off and hide in Bagdad until this blows over. Oh. Wait. The US isn't showing up in force? Hate to break it to you, Canada just more or less quit being an active player in Syria, and it sounds pretty much like the French had Mali handled with about six dudes and a French flag because they're that good. I demand Canada own up to it's part in keeping the middle east safe, and deploy a 15,000 person task force. Ya'll pretty much have Strykers (LAV IIIs at least), some tanks, jet planes. Ought to go swimmingly by your maths. Another relevant piece of journalistic awesome: http://www.duffelblog.com/2015/09/world-begs-us-military-force-syria-bitch-later/

Across a few sources actually. The maintenance issues generally are described as readiness rates of 70% for combat platforms, and something like 50% for transports. This is in cooler headed circles held as about to be expected given the expeditionary nature of the conflict, and Russian lack of experience with same, rather than any special failing of equipment. As far as having little effect, the Syrian regime lost some more ground, and has made little if any gains against the FSA. While Russian planes are hitting targets, it does not appear the Syrian Army is able to exploit that. The question remains to if that's a flaw in targeting (what is being hit is not relevant) or the Syrian Army is just too broken to realistically go on the offensive. As to Joch: I think advocating a response proportional to national interest is quite useful input, as is illustrating the reality of a military intervention on the ground in Syria is highly useful. I will contend that you still have done nothing to show how it would be as cheap, or as easy as you seem to think it would be besides repeating that Mali happened, while failing to discuss the clear differences in region, threat, and political situation. I believe you are also mistaken in who is hurling insults. And as far as I can tell I've been fairly strongly against the idea of a NATO ground force for Syria, and have had little else that has required my shooting down. As to glass jaws, I am curious as to how I have given that impression. If anything I am curious as to how you're so easily offended as to forget to make an argument. This is proving rather tiresome in that you have done absolutely nothing to show: 1. Why it's specifically in the interest of the American people to be involved in a land war Syria-Iraq 2. Why does the US have a duty at all to respond to anything in the middle east. 3. How the very different terrain, people, and military problems of Mali apply to Syria 4. How invalid anything I have said is in regards to the complexity, and threat of fighting in Iraq or Syria is, and how your low ball estimates of forces required are accurate. It also begs the question that barring a specific reason why the US should go, why you are not too demanding for Canadian forces to be deployed to Syria. They should have more than enough forces to accomplish the mission by your estimates without American augmentation beyond perhaps logistics. Why are you not demanding Canadian forces be sent? Why cannot Canada live up to the international obligations you demand of others? The world wonders. We still won World War Two without invading Norway. Not every battle must be fought head on, nor every prize worth the price paid for it. While you jeer at my course of action, I will contend not acting is better than acting stupidly.

I believe the bigger problem with rearranging Syria would be the infrastructure and resources are not broadly speaking, ethnically aligned. You'd wind up with a few Danzigs and Sudetenlands I think by the end of the whole arrangement. A failed state is in no one's interest, much the same Detroit defaulting on its debts is in no one's interest. There's a lot that could be bad from Syria crumbling (realistically, it already is a failed state at this point IMO). But is any of it bad enough to justify military intervention and again the hundreds if not thousands of dead and trillions spent? Not really. Just as much as we shouldn't expect Germany to swoop in to save Detroit from its own economic hole in the ground, while Germany could certainly benefit from a more prosperous Detroit, it's a remote enough problem as to not terribly affect Germany on a whole. While the US would prefer a stable Syria, Libya etc etc, they were never political allies in a meaningful way, major trade partners, or strategic locations worth mentioning (Wheelus AFB being distant enough past to be discarded). Well armed militants are bad. Got it. But are they any worst than well armed militants anywhere? Should the US be deploying troops to fight Shining Path Guerrillas? How about Moro Liberation sorts? Perhaps Lebanon again? Somalia is quite a mess, perhaps there too. There's just that big line you have to draw between "this is a problem" and "this is a problem we need to commit blood and treasure to" and I feel no case has been made that Syria is so important as to command that degree of attention, or such a cheap investment as to be easily handled with modest assets. Pardon the delayed edit: Libya is actually a really good example of exactly why Sgt Joch is advocating a silly course of action. There was fairly minimal national interest beyond humanitarian issues and the danger of continued chaos. It was sold as a modest adventure requiring only aviation and some special forces stuff to completely resolve. The locals would all get behind one faction and then tah-dah! Libya is all great and okay now. Except for it turned out to be much more complicated, and rapidly exceeded the collective desire of the west to deal with, either requiring a larger intervention to prevent the revolution from eating its own....or what happened instead and simply walking away because we were all in for the simple short solution, and no one was willing to take the longer solution because it was such a minor interest in the wider spectrum of things. Which is why you should never trust someone who will tell you a conflict will be simple, easy, or cheap. Statecraft is a messy thing, and sticking your nose into a civil war is about as messy as it comes.

Just going to keep it simple and fast then. 1. As to your first point, slander aside, it's confusing when you mention them, THEN extol the virtues of working with rebels. It undermines your sarcastic point if you somehow tangle it in your actual argument. 2. Tell me this, how much worse off is the US with Libya a total mess? Would it be worth it to suffer loss of life and spend lots of money to fix it, or is it broken not really a pressing matter? Did a functional Syria even matter to the US in the long run? I contend the answer to the last question is no. It is not important, and will likely never be important. And given that understanding it becomes confusing why someone would believe the US should go in unless someone simply believed it was the duty of the US to fix all global problems. 3. I've stated my position, and done what I have felt I needed to refute yours. Several folks have agreed with my stance, which to me leads me to believe I'm making some sense to some people. As a gesture of good faith, I would invite you to discuss why my example of Fallujah is invalid, given that it as one objective would consume nearly all forces you believe are required for Syria and Iraq.

It's pretty resistant in places, but a lot of those assumptions aren't "flew over a well cited ambush" location, but instead "flew by a US Formation circa 1989 and caught some .50 cal bursts at range." If a helicopter uses a consistent ingress-egress route it's pretty possible to set a massed small arms ambush that'll rather heavily maul a helicopter. It's possible. Still tricky and requires some good firing locations. Also it isn't like they've got ATGMs to spare in a lot of cases.

Check your geography again chief. It's not one person per however many thousand miles, it's population centered on various towns and cities. To put your estimates to lie, it took 10,500 USMC and US Army soldiers to retake just Fallujah plus 2,000 Iraq soldiers with an assist from about 800 British Army soldiers. Urban terrain against an asymetrical enemy is not the simple easy fight you make it out to be. The much smaller size of the enemy, and the relative ease of isolating the smaller population centers of Mali worked to the advantage of the French. Iraq and Syria (and you'll have to go to Iraq too if you're looking to defeat ISIS) are not the same problem as Mali, and it continues to baffle me why you're drawing the connection. Which you've spent quite a long time describing how either ineffective, or secretly sunni extremists they are. I find it interesting that their base utility entirely varies based upon what argument you're trying to make. Pretty big assumption. Assad is still playing for all the marbles. As long as he's going for being the one and sole ruler of Syria, while being backed up by Russia, Iran, and various Shia terrorist groups, I'm going to say your assessment is hopelessly rosy. Regardless you are rather setting things up for Libya part two in that you're neither addressing the reasons the Sunnis revolved in the first place, or giving the Shia a reason to feel safe around the Sunnis. This is likely what'll happen if/when ISIS collapses anyway, but you propose doing it at great cost to everyone vs simply to the involved parties. South Korea is a very close ally, major trading partner, and someone we have a long standing defensive agreement with. Also of those 38,000 guys only around 5,000 were "combat" soldiers, all of them located in the now defunct 1 ABCT 2 ID (which has been replaced by a rotational ABCT). The remainder all served in chiefly strategic level missions providing capabilities that the South Koreans lacked (space based assets, long range precision fires, advanced sensors, and a sort of skeleton to hang follow on UN forces in the event of DPRK invasion on). As the case is, the threat of US intervention went a long way to keeping the North Koreans on the right side of the DMZ, at little cost in human life and fairly modest expense. Syria is not a close ally, never was a trading partner, and whatever intervention there would cost greatly in blood and treasure, for an ambiguous outcome in a sort of marginal US interest at best. They're welcome to it. It's a poop sandwich and they're already devouring it and savoring the flavor at this point judging by results on the ground. Iran already has its hands full in Iraq too, while at the same time the Sunni parts of the middle east are salivating at the proxy wars offered. Not to worried about Iran ascendant at this point. You laid out some credentials, I laid out mine. I feel I am equally, if not better qualified than either folks you cited. My arguments have not changed simply because I do not believe you have addressed them. Thinking outside of the box is important, but it must also be tempered with ensuring those plans are practical, and executable (and perhaps legal and moral). I contend a large scale NATO invervention does not meet any of those conditions, and it has not been seriously considered not because of close minded individuals failing to see how a merely 15,000 guys and two months will sort this out, but instead a large number of paid professional military types sat down, looked at the situation said "nope!" and went on their merry way. I'd stay out of Syria, focus on degrading ISIS using air power, select special forces type operations, and economic warfare. Keeping them as a Syrian-Iraqi problem, and doing low risk options to assist the Syrians and Iraqis against ISIS are okay, but full on commitment is hopping into a decade of someone else's war.