Sneak Attacks - are they worth it?

[jrcar]

Jason I agree with you on several points (like motars, sensors and calling for fires) But you are using the advantages of hindsight, no western army was designed, or equiped to fight in Afganistan, or even Iraq. For example extra range in our strategioc circumstances (South East Asia/Pacific) is irrelevant. Most engagements happen at 50-200m (we generally expect to fight in close country/MOUT). The US Army is still equiped to fight in Europe/korea. Not many chances for long range engagement by infantry there. In the conflicts we are aimed out our weapons are appropriate, its when we are asked to go somewhere to fight where we had not planned that things can come unstuck (10 years ago I don't think any one would predict US forces in Afganistan... and then only fighting the Russians, let alone having Australians there!).

On the heavily equipped indigenous forces that is occasionally true, but they almost always lack the capability to fully utilise them due to a lack of training, doctrine and logistics. A capability is not just the weapon!

On Strykers IMHO a lot of people (including the US Army) have lost sight of what they are there for, they are not to replace Bradley etc, but to replace HUMVEE. If you have a choice of sending inf in unarmoured vehicles, or Stryker what is better (and I agree in these circumstance M2 is better still, but can you get it there in time)? Most of the attacks appear to be on HUMVEE equiped units. And using tracked armour for routine convoy protection is expensive, they are really only cost effective when used cross-country.

In our case we are moving from no vehicles/landrover to increasing numbers of LAV25/LAVAPC and Bushmaster (Light armoured truck).

Cheers

Rob

[ October 03, 2003, 05:57 PM: Message edited by: jrcar ]

[Agua Perdido]

Good discussion, here. Is there another example of strategic "maneuver vs. attrition" warfare in the Pacific Theater? Japan executed a brilliant campaign up to early '42, using well-trained, technically-excellent (well, except for their army) forces to inflict loss after loss on the ABDA nations.

However, in spite of their hugely successful opening series of offensives, their only shot at victory would be the Allies agreeing to let them win. Imperial Japan had no means to FORCE the Allies to recognize their victory. This keeps tickling the back of my mind in the discussions I see of inflicting "disarticulation" and "command paralysis" on a strategic level. No matter how hard you "shock" (in the psychological sense) a nation, what happens when they don't decide to surrender? When they realize that in spite of whatever "shock" you've inflicted, you haven't sunk their navy/shot down their air force/killed their army/burned down their cities, so they can still keep fighting?

I suppose my question is: how common is it that the "center of gravity" that strategic maneuver warfare seeks to "shock" ISN'T the enemy army?

Apologies in advance for misusing terms--I'm not so familiar with the "academic" maneuver warfare language (some parts of this thread were beginning to remind me of literary theory...).

Agua Perdido

(And to marginally tie back to CMBB, note that the other bale of hay shattering the Japanese spine in summer '45 was a tidal wave of Reds washing over Manchuria... I admit I'm none too familiar with that campaign, only that it went very, very badly for Japan in an extremely short time.)

[JasonC]

Yes there are some places we agree. But on to the rest.

“you are using the advantages of hindsight“

I deny it. I’ve been saying similar things to anyone who will listen for ten years.

“no western army was designed, or equipped to fight in Afghanistan”

You decide what to take there, of the equipment you have. They decided badly, because they overemphasized the importance of “light” and underemphasized the importance of “reach”. And I could have told them so. I wrote about it at the time we first went. The best light infantry acting as FOs, certainly. But also scoped rifles, ATGMs, and mortars. I’d read Churchill on campaigning there, I knew how extreme the terrain is and the paramount importance of reach in such mountains.

“extra range in our strategic circumstances (South East Asia/Pacific) is irrelevant.

What? Since when are “our strategic circumstances” SE Asia/Pacific? Do you mean your own unit and its assignment or something? Also, ask anyone who was in Nam whether smart 81s would have made a difference. Do you need LPs? Sure. But you needn’t exchange light infantry for light infantry at 50m. That plays into none of our technological strengths. We may still have a training edge but we want all of them not just one.

“The US Army is still equipped to fight in Europe/Korea. Not many chances for long range engagement by infantry there.

Um, Korea is hill country. Infantry gets places the armor doesn’t. From which is sees a long way. It definitely needs weapons with reach in that kind of terrain - as well as acting as FO, of course. As for Europe, ask anyone who was in Bosnia what role scoped rifles played. Or mortars. In fact, those two probably did more of the day to day fighting in that war than all the other arms combined.

“10 years ago I don't think any one would predict US forces in Afghanistan“

I’ve been studying for the whole political and military issue of militant Islam since the early 1980s. Iran and Lebanon were all the warning I needed. I minored in it in college because I saw it coming. It is not like they haven’t been shooting at us for 20 years. They just finally hit something, too big to ignore.

“On the heavily equipped indigenous forces that is occasionally true“

Look I don’t consider having RPGs, 82mm mortars, and HMGs being “heavily equipped”. The Chicoms had basically that in Korea 50 years ago (infantry AT improves a bit, that’s all). It is a sign that something is wrong that it does count as heavily equipped against our light infantry.

Real heavy equipment of indigenous forces would be Toyota technicals with 120mm mortars using Swedish smart ammo, Russian or French ATGMs, Man-Pads, MGs using saboted AP, Automatic Grenade Launchers, hand held GPS, off the shelf night vision, and plastic mines. All are available commercially to anyone with hard currency with effectively zero export controls. That is the threat. We shouldn’t even break a sweat against the AK and RPG militias.

“Strykers…are not to replace Bradley etc, but to replace HUMVEE.”

Just horsefeathers. You wish. The Humvees aren’t going anywhere, they’ve got a whole ACR switching to using them. The Brads are the things not being brought to theater. How many Brads were there in Somalia? How many are in Afghanistan today? Nada.

The rear echelon boys don’t want to haul the extra POL, so they only love things with wheels. The C-17 was meant to make the Brad deployable and we spent billions on them. Then we put out a new vehicle spec that pretends C-17s don’t exist and everything must move by C-130. We have months on end to prep for major military affairs, and can afford half a year dithering at the UN, but we can’t send half a dozen Ro-Ros? I don’t think so.

“using tracked armour for routine convoy protection is expensive“

Flying casualties to Germany for emergency medical treatment is *more* expensive. Nothing wastes money like losing. It is crazy that we don’t have more Brads out there.

Have they bloated over the years with extras, thinking mostly about Europe? No doubt. So make a stripped model that saves weight wherever it can. But keeps the tracks, the TOW, and armor that will stop a 14.5mm round.

Have you heard the Stryker failed its 14.5mm tests? The solution is to add additional armor plates, add on steel. Several tons of it all told. Just like the Germans were doing to defeat the same Russian round 60 years ago.

By all means, bring a LAV rather than nothing or Hummers, use ‘em as back up if the terrain requires. But the movement is away from armor and it is not progress. They all think lighter is modern because the future is in speed. Meanwhile we lose choppers and AA7s and hummers to 40 year old RPGs. That is hindsight - already. Now take advantage of it - already.

[JasonC]

"I suppose my question is: how common is it that the "center of gravity" that strategic maneuver warfare seeks to "shock" ISN'T the enemy army?"

What he said. I'd love an answer to this one, too, from the maneuverist side of the aisle. Cases please, not hypotheticals. And wars, please, not "zen maneuver - not fighting at all".

[JasonC]

(Crickets chirp bump...)

[JasonC]

It is at least actual maneuver.

Hans Delbruck I believe was the one who distinguished forms of military success he saw throughout military history, into annihilation and exhaustion methods. With the former aimed always at the enemy's military, the latter usually aimed at his logistics and sometimes at his political will.

He was thinking of "Fabian strategy", as classicists typically call it. Fabius denied battle while preserving his army in being, and waiting for his enemy's supplies to become exhausted. Aware that battle is always a risk, he sought to avoid it unless disaster was sure to follow otherwise. Kutusov was doing essentially the same thing to Napoleon. Delbruck would call this a strategy of exhaustion.

What is interesting is the way in which the word "attrition" applies to both, as currently used anyway. In some respects it has flipped its meaning.

There was a time when expecting to win by attrition meant by slow processes acting without battle, largely through logistics. March attrition was the principle kind - meaning men falling out, scattered along the lines of communication, desertions. But also losses to sickness. WW I was the first in history in which combat inflicted more losses than disease.

To Delbruck, the opposite of exhaustion was seeking decisive battle, the annihilation method of victory. It was characteristically faster but risker and bloodier.

Post WW I&II, "attrition" was thought of as slow and bloody. "Maneuver" as quick and potentially less bloody, but by some at least conceded to be riskier.

Denying battle was feasible in pre-modern armies because they were slow on the map, matched in speeds, and essentially point-like in space, on the operational scale anyway. Before the Napoleonic wars armies on one field of battle rarely exceeded 40,000 men, and those had to be deployed very tightly with the tactics and weapons of the day.

No thin formation could even hold against a compact one for any significant length of time. Therefore, armies could go pretty much where they liked as far as enemy forces were concerned, except right through an enemy main body. There were no operational "lines" of consequence.

Meanwhile the armies marched 12-15 miles a day. Put 25 miles between two of them and battle is possible only if both effectively agree to it. If one doesn't it simply marches away from the other one, and the second cannot catch it. It can only go places the other commander values - his crops, around his cities, etc. The difficulty of maneuver in this era was how to bring about a battle in the first place.

Students of the Napoleonic period reading maneuverism back into it often miss this point. They think Napoleon's "maneuver on the rear" was intended for psychological effect or what not. Not so. The point was to force battle by threatening enemy supplies.

He was seeking decisive battle but knew it was up to both sides whether there would be a battle or not. He wanted to make the other guy -want- battle. The way to do that was to bring about a situation in which not accepting battle would weaken the other guy rather than him.

Threatening a vital political point was the typical means most others had used before his day. He instead made the threat to his enemy's supply line - willingly running extreme risks to his own when necessary. That was innovative primarily in the level of risk it accepted. He practically always wanted battle. (He was good at it).

The Russians did fight the French when they invaded, though. They got clobbered at the battle of Smolensk. Then the brought in Kutusov and he adopted the Fabian strategy. He wanted his irregular cavalry to harass French forage efforts, to retreat into the Russian interior, to strengthen his own forces by recruitment, and to let the French forces - so far from replacements and supplies - melt.

It was a sound strategy, but he was not entirely allowed to carry it out. When Moscow was threatened, the higher levels of the Russian army all insisted on fighting to defend Moscow. Though Kutusov was opposed, he saw no option but to comply - he thought he'd be removed from command if he didn't. (Not a good thing, that, as a rule. A commander entrusted with the responsibility for execution but not the choice of means). So he stood at Borodino and offered battle.

Which he lost. Bloodily for the French, certainly, but nevertheless in no uncertain terms lost by the Russians. His beaten army, honor served, was then allowed to do what he had wanted to do in the first place - abandon Moscow and continue falling back. But he did not have Moscow burned. That was not a tactic, it was a happenstance.

No doubt the looting occasioned by French entry into the city was not conducive to firefighting. Perhaps some civilians there even resisted that way. Whatever, it was not a planned part of a military campaign. The city was almost wholly of wood and it burned, as Chicago once did in the days it was made of wood.

Now here is the question. Does the Fabian victory come about after or before? See, the French came in to Russia with over 500,000 men. By the time of Borodino they only had around 135,000 to bring to the field. There were lesser forces detached elsewhere, but overall French strength had fallen by at least half. This wasn't winter, the weather was still fine. It wasn't battle losses - those are an order of magnitude smaller.

After Moscow, the French have around 100K men left and the Russians opposite are still outnumbered. But the French then get halved again as they retreat out. They gather at Beresina and manage to fight there way out there, but only as a remnant. So one is left with the strange spectacle of an invasion by 500k (some say 700k) that ends with under 40k less than a year later, with only about 60k in identifiable battle related losses along the way.

Between 4/5ths and 6/7th of all the French soldiers that went into Russia with Napoleon were gone in less than a year due to anonymous "attrition" forces, unrelated to main battle, that no one has ever fully identified. There are harrowing tales of the winter retreat with Cossacks at the heels, to be sure - but less than a 1/5th and perhaps only 1/10th of the "attrition mystery" losses came after it got cold.

So what the heck happened? My own belief is that the French army came apart as it tried to march through White Russia, long before the major battles. The last main supply storage depot was at Minsk. I think as soon as the men marched a few days beyond that they ran low on bread, and thousands every night went looking for forage. They found themselves in a nearly trackless forest that had to that date never in history supported so concentrated a body of men.

My guess is they kept going looking for settlements somewhere to loot. They had to go miles and miles to find anything. They gave up completely on any thought of finding their way back to the army. Some would have been rounded up by Cossacks later in the year, and some may have met resistence from Russian peasants. Some probably succumbed to disease. A tiny number may have gotten themselves so lost they actually perished in the forests. But most probably either "went native", anywhere within 200 miles of where they left the army, or drifted back west as brigands and vagabonds.

Was this Kutusov's dastardly clever plan? I don't really think so. He wasn't brought back to command at all until things looked desperate, and then he had a battle he was trying to avoid thrust upon him against his will. After that he did avoid battle successfully, without simply giving up. You can say the credit lies in holding the army together after the defeat at Borodino, and maintain it as a "fleet in being" to threaten the French and hound their eventual retreat.

But the retreat came as an "own goal" by the French, inflicted logistically. Nobody had ever tried to keep an army of 500,000 men or 700,000 men alive and operating as a body before. I mean, in human history. (The entire Roman army at the height of the Empire, policing Europe from England to Palestine and Morocco to the Danube, was around 350,000 men). Let alone tried to lead them through a nearly trackless swampy forest. With railroads such things can be done. But with bullock carts?

Napoleon just winged the logistical side of the invasion, after a certain point. He had a plan for supplies up to Minsk and an imaginary distribution system after that. But it was imaginary. The army shrunk to the size the land around it could support, which was about the size of other armies in most of history. Meaning within a factor of 2 of 100K. Once it dropped to the "ordinary" size, it melted thereafter at an "ordinary" rate - without receiving any replacements, as it was too far from home.

But it is certainly the best example I've been presented for a "victory without fighting".

[Grisha]

Regarding Strykers and add-on armor. They're pretty much at their weight limit as it is, so I'm not sure if much more weight (armor) can be added. And just where is the add-on armor going btw?

[Frunze]

Just a bit of devil's advocate here, really, since I don't really disagree with Jason but none of the advocates of maneuverism here are up to Fionn's level of argument....

Possibly the two Gulf Wars could be cited as examples of victories without fighting? Yes, both were against a weaker opponent, but the military success and casualty ratios were incredibly lopsided even taking that into account.

In the first, there were relatively few major battles - in the sense of two forces shooting at each other. The Iraqi military was effectively disrupted, and incapable of combat, before most of the major contacts between the opposing ground forces happened (e.g. road to Basra). Iraqi forces caught in the encirclement didn't try to fight their way out in most cases - there were rearguard actions to prevent Rep. Guard units from being caught in the encirclement, but not much fighting from those actually caught. This is often credited to air-bombing of the logistical and C3I systems - something Jason seems to think is not the best use of airpower - which left Iraqi forces out of supply and command. On the other hand, all this was in order to destroy combat forces, as Jason recommends.

In the second, Iraqi combat forces and "maneuver elements" were certainly targeted - more than in other U.S. wars actually, there was little emphasis on hitting infrastructure. But basically this was in order to clear the road to Baghdad and Tikrit, and it was correctly assumed that the Iraqi army would stop fighting when these cities were taken. Many Rep. Guard and other units were destroyed, but many more Iraqi military units melted away without fighting at all. Current events might be cited against this, but really I think that's another war, or seeds that may be growing into one.

On the other hand, maybe both these successes are due to the failure of an attempt to win without fighting...by Hussein. In both cases, esp the first, he failed to organize to fight, hoping to bluff his way to a negotiated solution. Even in the second, the decision to fight outside rather than in Baghdad and other disastrous decisions relate to this.

Then there's the bombing of Yugoslavia, which forced a withdrawal from Kosova without hitting Yugoslav military forces much at all. Infrastructure and industry, mostly. Maybe Jason would consider that a non-war, though?

[JasonC]

Grisha - yes the Stryker is already too heavy to meet its deployment specs. Crew and ammo have to be take out for a C-130 to take off with one aboard - and then the operatational range is far below spec (like, by a factor of 10). The weight it was supposed to have loaded, it has unloaded, without passing the armor sufficiency tests.

The present army proposal on the matter is to have 4 C-130s fly Strykers, a 5th haul their ammo and crews, and now that they need added armor plate to defeat 14.5mm, a 6th to haul the armor separately. Then the crew is supposed to install it when they arrive. Takes 4 hours. We've gone from roll on roll off combat loaded up to 1000 miles one per plane, to 6 hours to re-assemble after 100 miles with half again as many aircraft as vehicles.

The armor does not protect the top or the wheel wells. It goes on the bow, stern, and vertical sides above the wheels. Incidentally, the Stryker is already so overweight for the original chassis design that it can't really run on the 2 axles with drive-flat tires - before the added armor weight. They went from 4 to 2 run flats per side to save weight (natch).

It is a complete fiasco. The LAV is twice as deployable and has more firepower. Its main problem was that it was underprotected, but now so are the Strykers. The M113 is more deployable and has better mobility and flexibility (added roles etc), and we already have them. Its drawback was that it was undergunned - but the MGS Stryker has also failed (won't remotely fit in a C-130), and the IFV ones have only a 50 cal or GL, same as 113s. Brads have vastly better firepower and better protection (they regularly bounced RPGs in Iraq). They were supposed to be out of the question because they need C-17s to deploy rather than C-130s - and now so do the Strykers.

We are paying $15 billion to get the protection of a LAV, the firepower of an M113, and the deployability of a Bradley. It is a scandal of the first order. Oh and it'll be wonderful in urban settings - the turning radius is 50 feet.

[ October 06, 2003, 04:03 AM: Message edited by: JasonC ]

[JasonC]

To Frunze - no, Iraq I and II definitely count as victory with fighting. The first probably killed around 40,000 Iraqis (some estimates run twice that). The second was cheaper, even for them, but still involved large scale destruction.

The first was fought by an annihilation battle plan. Iraqi forces were the main target. They did not just hit C3I and bridges with air, they sent AH-64s, A-10s with Mavericks, and F-16s and Harriers with cluster bombs after every tank, APC and gun they could find.

When the Marines went up the coast road, they took fire and halted repeatedly. They shot TOW missles at targets as small as 2 man fighting holes dug in the sand, at 2-3 km, systematically exterminating every Iraqi position that didn't surrender fast enough within about 1 km of the road. Expense be damned.

On the army sector, one ACR ran through 2 Iraqi divisions in a single night, leaving only debris. MLRS and whole brigades of 155s pounded targets for hours, then wedges of M-1s ran through them and annihilated anything not under a white flag. I've talk to people who followed 24th Mech - had to clean up after them, and I don't mean "mop up resistence" I mean graves registration work, and they say it was even worse.

Iraq II was maneuverist in concept. It still featured plenty of air force pounding of IDed Republican Guard positions in the field. There was fighting - remember the night the 101 had half its Apaches put out of service by rotor hits? But it was the softer stuff that suffered - Humvees, choppers, occasionally a Marine AA7 taking an RPG.

The 3rd ID had the hardest fighting but took the insignificant losses, because their armor was good enough. It wasn't that no one shot at them - they wiped out suicide militias and their "technicals" by the thousand with MGs and 25mm. Nor was it even that they weren't hit - they took hundreds of RPGs. They just won the duels. Brads took RPGs, lived, and fired back with 25mm annilihating the shooters. The Iraqis bagged like 2 M-1s - the rest smashed everything in their path. 3 ID rewrote the book on armor in urban terrain. Their lessons learned reports say dismounts do not need to go first; instead only send vehicles that can take an RPG and live.

But there is no question the basic strategy of Iraq II was maneuver warfare, despite the heavy army's practical bent toward annihilation battle and the air force's deep attachment to force on force targeting. Either would have worked because Iraq was so outclassed.

I have no problem using maneuver to deal with foes so weak there is no strategic danger. If the razzle dazzle fails you fall back on firepower without too much ado and still win. Nor with it as an operational or tactical means against first rates. It is when faith in maneuver replaces the attritionist strategy wrapper against the strongest states that I consider it dangerously unsound.

You can't afford to gamble on things going well. You must be prepared for the very likely eventuality that they will go badly, and that war against any first rate power may be long, and only settled by destruction of his military. To me this is elementary prudence. War is friction. No plan survives contact. All that good stuff.

As for Kosovo, it was certainly a war. If you ask the Serbs they will tell you that. However, Milosevic's capitulation was brought about as much by the threat of escalation to a ground campaign as by anything the air war actually did. McCain and Clark, among others, were pushing for a ground component. Actual victory was of course completely out of the question for an isolated, tiny Serbia against all of NATO.

[Frunze]

Originally posted by JasonC:

They did not just hit C3I and bridges with air, they sent AH-64s, A-10s with Mavericks, and F-16s and Harriers with cluster bombs after every tank, APC and gun they could find.

Good answer. Thanks.

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by Grisha:

Regarding Strykers and add-on armor. They're pretty much at their weight limit as it is, so I'm not sure if much more weight (armor) can be added. And just where is the add-on armor going btw?

There are two issues with the stryker armor:

1) the specified 14.5mm HMG safety was not reached. The basic ceramic plate as designed was safe against it but one (German) factory derived from the spec and now it is not 14.5mm proof anymore. They are discussing either changing the plates against good plates or else reinforcing it with an additional thin steel layer (which I think goes on the inside). These plates would be fixed, they cannot be taken off for flying.

The story is definitvly deeper than that, the Army appears to be glad to have an excuse to add the steel, IMHO.

2) true RPG safety from normal plates is a lost cause for a 20-ton vehicles which is supposed to carry 11 soldiers. The weakest shaped charge RPGs warheads are rated as 350mm RHA. The Stryker within its design spec can carry about 20mm alround and 40mm to the front. You would have to find a ceramic which has nearly 20 times the HEAT resistence as steel, which is pretty much fantasy for now.

There is talk to add spaced armor, e.g. a cage of strong wire, around the vehicle. This would be and must be able to be mountable in the field, the vehicle cannot fit anything with this cage on anymore. Also, the cage would be ripped off during normal operations on a regular basis.

There are a gazillion articles bashing the stryker out there, and most neither understand than a RPG is actually a very string weapon which you cannot protect an APC against (except by fire) nor do they understand that a Bradley has even less armor than the Stryker. Most of these idiotic articles put the armor of the M1 and M2 Bradley into the same class. The Bradley survices in Iraq because it can put out a lot of fire at long range and because it has its M1 buddies around.

The only real valid complaint is the 105mm gun system in the Stryker family, being both too high and too heavy for the C-130. It is bejond me why they didn't use the M8 gun system, a light tracked vehicle wih 105mm which fits perfectly well. It would screw their plan to have everything on the same chassis and motor, but I think not fitting the plane fits the plans even more.

[jtcm]

On a tangent: i saw picture of M1A2 what was taken out in Iraq-- small hle on the right hand turret side. I thought that was still Chobham armoured-- what did the Iraqis use ? 125mm ? One of the new Russian ATGMs, with hi-performance HC or kinetic projectile ?

In 1991, 4 M1s were lost to Iraqi tank fire, if I remember correctly-- and let no one, please, quote the Clancy-spread myth of a M1 bogging and resisting point-blank 120mm DU fire !

[Redwolf]

I am not familiar with that picture, do you have a link?

In general, the sides of M1 variants are rated 800-1000mm RHA equivalence resistence against chemical energy weapons. The best warheads you can get for RPGs are about 750mm RHA, e.g. the Israelis found some on the ship they recently seized.

However, the above thickness is striktly horizontal and the armor is angled to the top. If you fire from a higher elevantion you make good for a lot of it. The back of the turret and the hull are not especially protected (the turret has the blow-out ammo compartment and the hull has the engine rear which is known to be vulnerable). If you fire RPGs on modern armor from the upper level of a building you can be pretty sure to kill it if you have some minimal knowledge of the construction.

I don't think there are any kinetic energy ATGMs in wide use anywhere. The Iraqis certainly had none.

[JasonC]

The two causes of M-1 kills in Iraq that I know of, Iraq II rather than I, were Russian Kornet ATGMs, and repeated hits by large numbers of RPGs. The latter could start a fire in the engine compartment, forcing the crew to abandon.

As for Brads, there are clear AARs of them taking RPGs in Iraq II and surviving, returning fire, and winning the resulting duels. Not just avoiding being hit due to firepower. HEAT warhead penetration is highly variable (with impact angle etc), and the RHA ratings do not translate to that penetration on every hit.

As for the notion that the only valid criticism of the Stryker is that the MGS is too big for a C-130, methinks it is quite a bit worse than that. No, a 20 ton 11 man vehicle should not be expected to be RPG proof. But the Stryker in its present config manages to underperform all the alternatives in key categories, representing an impressive level of "miss" of the firepower, protection, mobility sweet spot. It has the fp of an M113, the off road ability of a LAV without he gas mileage, and nearly the difficulty deploying by air of a Brad.

If they had decided from the begining to give something up in the protection department, they could easily have kept firepower, off road ability, and deployability. Any light armor is better protected than light infantry. Instead we have a huge vehicle that needs C-17 airlift to go any distance and in practice goes by sea - when we already had a superior vehicle in that category in the Brad.

[ October 14, 2003, 04:27 AM: Message edited by: JasonC ]

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by JasonC:

The two causes of M-1 kills in Iraq that I know of, Iraq II rather than I, were Russian Kornet ATGMs, and repeated hits by large numbers of RPGs. The latter could start a fire in the engine compartment, forcing the crew to abandon.

But those were both hits into the rear hull, so that cannot belong to that photo.

I would be curious to see that photo.

[jtcm]

It was taken by Regis Debay, and it's in an issue of (blush) the Britsh magazine Combat and Survival. probably also in the French RAIDS.