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Light Infantry on the modern battlefield


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ah yes well attacking would be an utter disaster unless terrain utterly favored the attacking light infantry so their havs could be rained down. and still itd be a mess. i meant more in your speedbump scenario. Saddam driving on Kuwait fall/winter '90 has a vastly different ending with javs imo. without them i can see the airborne units really being ground up and nearly wiped out air support or not...

you also misunderstood me i meant US light infantry WOULD be the exception because even countries with javelins besidesbthe US dont have them in the numbers needed.

You don't need Javelins to be a large threat to armoured forces. On a desert and large open plains they truly are a must, but in a more restrictive terrain, eg. forests and urban environments, infantry can easily engage and destroy armour with NLAWs and other AT weapons that lack the range and top attack quality that the Javelin has.

 

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of course you dont. But it certainly helps and they unline alot of other at weapons are fire amd forget and almost certain kills on any tank in the world at short and long range. something almost any other AT weapon system cant do now and definitely not with the smaller size and mobility of a javelin versus say a kornet.

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@sublime

My bad. Yeah I agree. Javs provide a much happier ending for many Light Inf scenarios. Again, against competent enemy it can still be tough, but if the terrain is on your side it can rapidly become a bloodbath for the attacker as Javelin apocalypse rains down!

@augusto

To my understanding, Light Infantry means nothing really bigger than HMMWVS are in your TOE. So no I don't regard Styker as light infantry.

Edited by Currahee150
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dont worry currahee. and good luck. i was on your path in 02 when I was 17 and its probably the biggest what if fork of my life. i ended up choosing drugs and a lifestyle of crime that ended with years in prison eventually cleaning up my son and a hard but decent life. i had done everything but the swearing in ceremony and picked combat infantry so i definitely would have been in Iraq and Afghanistan. would i be dead now? or maimed? and for what? otoh i may have no and be a success now too. ya never know

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ah yes well attacking would be an utter disaster unless terrain utterly favored the attacking light infantry so their havs could be rained down. and still itd be a mess. i meant more in your speedbump scenario. Saddam driving on Kuwait fall/winter '90 has a vastly different ending with javs imo. without them i can see the airborne units really being ground up and nearly wiped out air support or not...

you also misunderstood me i meant US light infantry WOULD be the exception because even countries with javelins besidesbthe US dont have them in the numbers needed.

 

Probably not; Saddam's forces had enough artillery of the right kinds to suppress most of the Javelins paired with tanks and terrain that comfortably out-ranged them and enough long-range MRLs that trying to get light infantry out of contact (or into contact) would mean risking getting them smashed by DPICM. Assuming they were competently handled of course, but the US leadership wasn't particularly glib about Iraqi capabilities at the time, so they still would of **** bricks at the idea of a single paratrooper division squaring off against between six to twelve attacking Iraqi divisions with no reserves except the Saudi national guard to call upon. Even if the 82nd was defeating the corps directly attacking, there would be no such guarantee the units on the right and left weren't falling the pieces, leading to a situation where the paratroops are standing tall but fall apart during a retreat.

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dont worry currahee. and good luck.

 

@sublime

Thanks! I'm about to get an...abrupt introduction to military lifestyle, so I'll take all I can get.

 

@Apocal

As for how Desert Shield would have gone done with Javelins, I think we could pulled it off (only if we had the then-fictional Javelin though). Iraqi moral is not, er, world renowned, (heck, they even managed to make the M1A1 look bad against ISIS), so I think the first few companies disintegrating  from missiles that literally fall out of the sky would have sent them into retreat. And it is my understanding we had significant air support in the region, so we could have suppressed some of the Iraqi artillery. But yeah, you are right about the flanks - I wouldn't have much faith in the Saudi National Guard, so the 82nd could have been surrounded and eventually destroyed as it ran out of ammo. This is all conjecture - I may not be giving the Iraqi Republican Guard enough credit (I mean, they did  actually launch counterattacks in Desert Storm, albeit short lived and futile ones), and I may be hyping up the FGM-148 up just a tad too much. . 

Edited by Currahee150
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@Apocal

As for how Desert Shield would have gone done with Javelins, I think we could pulled it off (only if we had the then-fictional Javelin though). Iraqi moral is not, er, world renowned, (heck, they even managed to make the M1A1 look bad against ISIS), so I think the first few companies disintegrating  from missiles that literally fall out of the sky would have sent them into retreat. And it is my understanding we had significant air support in the region, so we could have suppressed some of the Iraqi artillery. But yeah, you are right about the flanks - I wouldn't have much faith in the Saudi National Guard, so the 82nd could have been surrounded and eventually destroyed as it ran out of ammo. This is all conjecture - I may not be giving the Iraqi Republican Guard enough credit (I mean, they did  actually launch counterattacks in Desert Storm, albeit short lived and futile ones), and I may be hyping up the FGM-148 up just a tad too much. . 

 

The Iraqis operationally made some decent cheese moves, including sacrificing their best RG division to enable the rest to escape from Kuwait, it was tactically where they were just completely hopeless... but tactically ineptitude is a trait they share with the Saudis. Sacrificing a couple of partially motorized infantry divisions to fix the 82nd Airborne in their positions and using their Republican Guard heavy division to smash the Saudis is just the sort of thing they'd do. It would be atrociously set-piece and limited duration (the Iraqi general staff could plan a workable operation, but anything longer than three or four days would come to pieces as reality drifted from the intended execution) but it would definitely bleed anyone under the guns white in the process. That's how they won against the tactically superior Iranians, by applying the old Korean saying, "Big cannons defeat small cannons and many cannons defeat few cannons."

 

And we didn't have much airpower in the region when the 82nd first touched down; it was about four weeks after they were in place until the mass of aircraft truly started arriving in-theater. That probably could have been expedited a bit and maybe stopped a total rout if the 82nd was getting mauled, but the issue would have been in doubt.

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Saddam driving on Kuwait fall/winter '90 has a vastly different ending with javs imo.

 

One thing I overlooked in this post: by time the fall and winter rolled around, heavy was already in theater, along with massed air. Javelins wouldn't have mattered much because we had enough combat power to outright smash any serious, sustained Iraqi attempt to cross the border.

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Oh yeah, I agree if the Saddam hadn't decided to emulate Hitler at Dunkirk and driven south to Saudi Arabia, then Operation Desert Shield/Storm would have gone down very differently, and Gulf War I wouldn't be remembered as M1 rolfstoming T-72s, but rather as an operation at  saving the 82nd Airborne chestnuts from the fire (that would have been an epic evacuation...might have given Dunkirk a run for its money, which isn't a good thing)and then watching an amphibious (at least, I suppose it would be) invasion of Saudi Arabia. I guess in the overall scheme of things it wouldn't make today too much different, but the early '90s would have a very different vibe to it. I think Javs could have given the 82nd a fighting chance, but you point out some inescapable operational realities that even with Javs, the 82nd's stand could very well have bee military defeat waiting to happen, Javs or no Javs.

 

While we're at it, why did Saddam stop at the Saudi border? I know Hitler freaked at his forces being so far forward and exposed (or at least that's a theory I heard), but why did Saddam say "I could totally own the Saudis right now...but nah"?

Edited by Currahee150
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While we're at it, why did Saddam stop at the Saudi border? I know Hitler freaked at his forces being so far forward and exposed (or at least that's a theory I heard), but why did Saddam say "I could totally own the Saudis right now...but nah"?

 

Because he never intended to invade Saudi Arabia.

 

It's important to remember that Kuwait was, historically-speaking, a rather wealthy province of Iraq. It was broken off from Iraq in 1920 (IIRC) by the British to prevent the Iraqis from having meaningful access to the Persian Gulf, forming a rump state created out of whole cloth. There was a modest reunification movement in Kuwait, but it never amounted to much. All that would have been somewhat acceptable, but the Kuwaitis actually snatched territory from Iraqis while they were fighting in the Iran-Iraq War, then used slanted drilling equipment to quite literally steal Iraqi oil from under their noses. Additionally, the Iraqi government owed quite a bit to Kuwait (and, to be fair, Saudi Arabia) and the Kuwaitis were quite... abrasive in their demands for repayment. So Saddam had plenty of reasons (some of them good) to be angry as a hornet's nest at Kuwait... or rather, the British-aligned Kuwaiti royal family.

 

Saudi Arabia was much less arrogant in its dealings with Iraq and was an on-again, off-again supporter of Iraqi interests. Of course, we weren't about to let Saddam just topple our ally because he was butthurt about lines moving on a map, some stolen oil and having to repay his war loans. We especially weren't about to let him play the stupid "I am so inscrutable, woooo, maybe I'll invade, wooo, maybe I won't, woooo..." game with Saudi Arabia, though that is more the benefit of hindsight talking. Operationally, it made a lot of sense to keep a lot of troops on the Saudi border, including his best formations, but strategically, it was untenable and basically guaranteed a massive, unbeatable coalition arrayed against him, in spite of the fact that he had no intention of doing anything other than gobbling Kuwait.

Edited by Apocal
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One thing I overlooked in this post: by time the fall and winter rolled around, heavy was already in theater, along with massed air. Javelins wouldn't have mattered much because we had enough combat power to outright smash any serious, sustained Iraqi attempt to cross the border.

hmm got my dates wrong regardless i meant before the heavies came from Europe etc and idk about lack of javs making a diff. for example lets look at the ARVN in 72. Not stellar troops but when the NVA invaded the offensive was largely crushed by airpower. Discounting the Navy and Marines I think the Air Force could really have bombed the bejesus out of the Iraqis especially in a situation where the 82nd is in big trouble. Interdiction,CAS, etc at Gulf War levels completely focussed on destroying enemy ground formations could perhaps of crippled an Iraqi offensive on its own. Edited by Sublime
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There's an old saying that tanks cannot hold territory. They can take territory, they can blow things up. But when it comes to entering a patch of woods, inspecting vehicle trunks at a checkpoint, patrolling a perimeter, knocking on doors and rounding up prisoners of war you need infantry. CM's perspective is rather skewed because we're only looking at the pointy-end of the spear during an offensive.

 

I'm reminded of the often-repeated line about the Vietnam war. The US strategist said "We never lost a battle during the war!", his North Vietnamese counterpart replied "That is beside the point", or words to that effect. Having tank & planes blowing up stuff does you no good if you're not in control of the ground over the long haul. When asked how many troops it would take to pacify Afghanistan General Shinseki said 300,000 to 400,000. They pretty much crucified him for that statement.

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There's an old saying that tanks cannot hold territory. They can take territory, they can blow things up. But when it comes to entering a patch of woods, inspecting vehicle trunks at a checkpoint, patrolling a perimeter, knocking on doors and rounding up prisoners of war you need infantry. CM's perspective is rather skewed because we're only looking at the pointy-end of the spear during an offensive.

 

Mechanized infantry can do all those things.

 

 

When asked how many troops it would take to pacify Afghanistan General Shinseki said 300,000 to 400,000. They pretty much crucified him for that statement.

 

That was Iraq. Additionally, the people who crucified him were Rumsfeld and company, who espoused a view encouraging extremely light infantry (in the form of SOF) formations that relied almost entirely on airpower to do the killing while poo-pooing heavy forces as obsolete for modern warfighting.

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Mechanized infantry can do all those things.

Yeah, but boots and an M-4 costs probably less than 1200 dollars (I think...). A Bradley Fighting Vehicle costs 3 Million dollars, and a Stryker 4.9 Million*. Sure, those vehicles carry more than one guy, but they are still quite expensive. And not as strategically mobile as light infantry. Also, a light infantry company, if I believe correctly, will have more soldiers to do infantry tasks than a Mech Infantry company, as well as less maintenance to worry about. 

 

*Ok truth be told, I have no idea if those are adjusted for inflation. Just a quick internet search. I don't know why a Stryker would cost significantly more than a BFV. 

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Yeah, but boots and an M-4 costs probably less than 1200 dollars (I think...). A Bradley Fighting Vehicle costs 3 Million dollars, and a Stryker 4.9 Million*. Sure, those vehicles carry more than one guy, but they are still quite expensive. And not as strategically mobile as light infantry. Also, a light infantry company, if I believe correctly, will have more soldiers to do infantry tasks than a Mech Infantry company, as well as less maintenance to worry about. 

 

They're different tools for different missions.  Mech infantry is AWESOME if you're worried about tactical/operational mobility, or dealing with enemy forces that have vehicles of their own.  Light infantry is a great tool for contingency operations, or working in prohibitive terrain.  

 

Or in a stupid analogy, golf carts and cars do a lot of the same stuff, but there's very different missions for both, and the relative cheapness of the golf cart does not matter if the golf cart cannot accomplish the "going on the highway" mission you need to accomplish to get groceries.  Conversely the 69' El Camino is a very poor, very expensive choice to move around the golf course/old folks home.  There's some minor overlap in mission, but time and time again the biggest mistake you can make with infantry is mistaking mech and light infantry for interchangeable formations.  

 

 

 

Just a quick internet search. I don't know why a Stryker would cost significantly more than a BFV.

 

The Bradley is more steel less smart.  The various upgrades are digital, but a lot of the on board stuff is still the finest in 1989 analog systems.  Stryker is all wizzbang from tires to RWS.  

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I'm reminded of the often-repeated line about the Vietnam war. The US strategist said "We never lost a battle during the war!", his North Vietnamese counterpart replied "That is beside the point", or words to that effect..

i believe the Vietnamese general (Giap?) replied "Ah but you lost the war."

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The Bradley is more steel less smart.  The various upgrades are digital, but a lot of the on board stuff is still the finest in 1989 analog systems.  Stryker is all wizzbang from tires to RWS

I thought it would be something like that. Still...so a vehicle that performs less tasks than the vehicle it is supplanting costs more? Why does that not surprise me... 

I'm probably being too hard on the Stryker, and am being biased from the perspective of high-intensity warfare. From what I can tell, when it is deployed to missions that it is designed for (COIN/reducing casualties from IEDs) it does its job just fine. Deploy these things to WWIII, however...well, lets just say if CMBS happens in real life, I hope I'm not assigned to a Stryker unit. I still think its funny that what is basically an MRAP on (heavy duty) steroids costs more than a IFV with a dedicated ATGM launcher, thermal CITV, and chain gun. Even if the IFV is nearly twice my age.

 

 

 

stupid analogy

While your analogies may be...unique, they always get the point across.

 

 

 

An individual infantryman costs over $100,000 to recruit, train and equipment, on average

Ok...I deserve this. But you get my point.  I know it cost more than a few Xbox Ones to equip and train Private Miller. It also costs significantly more to pimp him with a 7.62mm proof ride. 

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I thought it would be something like that. Still...so a vehicle that performs less tasks than the vehicle it is supplanting costs more? Why does that not surprise me... 

I'm probably being too hard on the Stryker, and am being biased from the perspective of high-intensity warfare. From what I can tell, when it is deployed to missions that it is designed for (COIN/reducing casualties from IEDs) it does its job just fine. Deploy these things to WWIII, however...well, lets just say if CMBS happens in real life, I hope I'm not assigned to a Stryker unit.

 

It almost certainly would beat being assigned to a light infantry unit.

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From a CM perspective players tend to use their APCs as light tanks. There can be a debate over whether that is a force multiplier or merely suicidal. Back-in-the-day I used to work with an old former WWII jungle fighter. Their first day in-country the CO gathered the unit around their M3 HT and instructed them to NOT rely on their transport for protection during a firefight. He then abruptly pulled his .45 colt pistol from its holster and put a hole into HT's side, giving the green recruits quite a fright in the process! Infantry don't want to be anywhere near their transport when the bullets start flying. Its a bullet/rocket/missile/artillery magnet. The difference between infantry and light infantry is the taxi service involved. when things heat up both have a distinct preference for a nice cozy intervening terrain feature to snuggle behind.  :)

Edited by MikeyD
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