How will it not be a "Turkey shoot"

[gunnergoz]

GAO used to put out some very interesting monographs as well. Don't know about recently, however. Anyone read anything lately from GAO that was pertinent to our subject?

[Scott B]

Nothing lately; it's all FCS stuff. Most recent one of interest to the CM:SF crowd would be this report from August 2004.

Most of what I see with regard to transformation is fixed on the Future Force, and trying to figure out how to fund it with budget supplementals that are supposed to be paying for the war. Stryker's basically doing fine in Iraq, so I'm not surprised we're not hearing as much about it these days.

Scott

[Battlefront.com]

The thing you want to look for is (now) called Stryker Warrior. It should be entering service this year and phased in over several years. It is a scaled down (i.e. realistic) version of what was called Future Warrior. Basically it is a few more doodads for the grunts to play with. The full concept is still not practical for fielding, so Stryker Warrior is what could be seen as a compromise with reality. Very interesting stuff.

Steve

[gunnergoz]

Scott B-

Thank you, that's spot on.

[Bigduke6]

I've read this thread from end to end and I am suprised no one has mentioned the Syrians. Surely the level of their training, the quality of their equipment, and the Syrian and indeed the Pan-Arab national attiude to a U.S. invasion would have something to do with the ability of a Stryker unit to accomplish missions in the country.

Syria is a much more homogeneous society than Iraq, and the Assad government for all its nastiness is factors nicer than the Saddam regime, and the Syrians know it. I would guess resistance to U.S. attack in modern Syria would be popular. (This is not to say the BFI scenario won't slant that - the Assad government is hit with a funamentalist coup the Syrian masses don't support, for instance, but that brings us to the next point, which is the Syrian army.)

Certainly if the modern Syrian army were to fight against a U.S. force with the same effectiveness that the Syrian army fought the IDF on the Golan and the Bekka valley, then we are talking about a U.S. walkover. The U.S. military is quite as efficient on the IDF on the battlefield, and if the U.S. is a lot worse at intelligence-gathering, it brings a much wider range of firepower to the table.

Have the Syrians learned from their mistakes? Would they? Are the Syrian small-unit commanders professionals, or are they guys who just use graft to pad their salaries? Is the Syrian rank and file willing to die in an attempt to keep out the "Christian invaders", or would they just quit because they would see a U.S. invasion as a problem of the Syrian governent, which they don't have anything to do with?

Then there's the time factor. Would the Syrians have the time and intelligence to hide weapons and explosive all over the country, or would the Americans come too fast and massive to allow that to happen?

And then there's the near abroad. Would Palestinians go and fight for the Syrians? Would they open their territories to Arabs wanting to go to Syria, to fight the Americans? Ditto for Jordan - Jordan does a good job of walking a moderate line, but a U.S. invasion of Iraq is, to Amman, a whole lot more palatable than the same thing in Syria.

Double ditto for the Bedouin; you can buy them out with Toyota pickups only so far, after that they're going to support their own. If the Bedouin sided with the Syrian defense, as opposed to holding aloof or supporting the Americans, then the Stryker brigade has a huge problem - the whole desert is potentially hostile at a stroke.

Then there's the fun issue of Arab politics. Syria has been THE front-line state against Israel for the entirity of Israel's existence. The Saudis and the Sultan of Brunei may have been willing to sell Saddam down the river to get rid of him, every one hated Saddam and his regime was pretty secular, and what's more the country is roughly evenly fractured (in terms of political power) Shia/Sunni.

It's a very different kettle of hummus when you consider Syria - that's a predominantly Sunni society, and besides its wars against Israel it was a main battleground against the Crusaders. If you think old wars have no meaning in modern politics, I refer you to Kosovo.

All these factors may seem extraneous to the tactical battle, but I would argue differently. At bottom the question is how hard the Syrians could and would fight, and the things that would determine that go far beyond a straight comparison of the Syrian army and a reinforced Stryker Brigade.

Here are three plausible ifs (i.e., they could be the case, although not necessarily would be the case):

1. The Syrian populace thought they were fighting a legitimate jihad against the Christian invaders - just as they did in the days of Saladin.

2. The Syrian government and military have the time and rational wherewithal to conceive of and use intelligent, rational, tactics to fight the Americans, and use a strategy of insurgency and inflicting casualties.

3. Syria's neighbors support that fight

4. The U.S. has no more political will in an attack into Syria, than it is displaying in Iraq

Then my prediction would be the U.S. wouldn't even invade. (As may well be the case in RL right now.)

My point is, if the U.S. did invade, the critical thing in this war scenario is not the presence of absence of Syrian ATGM with tandem warheads - although that's a tactical factor. The important issue is the commitment of the Syrian people and state to fighting the Americans.

To put it in CM(1) terms, if the Syrians are fighting a popular war, then their average soldier is a fanatic regular, a significant percentage of their troops are fanatic veterans, and a smaller percentage is fanatic crack troops.

If the war is not popular, the 2007 Syrians on the CM battlefield will be conscripts and greens, in which case the Afrika Korps with its early 1940s equipment probably would run them over.

I am very interested to see how the BFI backstory takes stuff like this into account.

[RMC]

I read a piece about Syria a year or so ago when the buzz was that the US was going to have to invade Syria to get the WMD that Saddam snuck over the border just before the invasion.

The gist was that the Army was poorly trained and equipped, with the equipment it did have was poorly maintained.

[flammenwerfer]

As others have said, the US forces lost quite a lot of armor in OIF over the last 2 years.

Steve [/QB]

I'd be curious to know how much armor (specifically M1A1) was lost in the initial race to Baghdad during small scale tactical engagements as opposed to 2 years of trying to keep the peace.

[ October 11, 2005, 02:10 PM: Message edited by: Flammenwerfer ]

[Peter Cairns]

What about Kosovo, surely if the issue of airpower was so crucial then Nato would have taken out everything with wheels in the first week.

As it was after almost a month Serbian Tank losses were only just in to double figures. I don't think we can expect a scenario where the enemy is as accomadating as the Iraqi's and just lines them up in formation in the desert, for you to pick off as you like.

Peter.

[Sergei]

Originally posted by Peter Cairns:

As it was after almost a month Serbian Tank losses were only just in to double figures. I don't think we can expect a scenario where the enemy is as accomadating as the Iraqi's and just lines them up in formation in the desert, for you to pick off as you like.

Apples and grapefruits. It's a bit easier to hide your tank brigades in forested hills than in an arid plateau... and I don't see how Syria would suddenly erect big forests on their eastern frontier to hide in. I also doubt that the Serbian armoured forces were even really deployed to frontline there, as it was more effectively defended by infantry.

[mazex]

Originally posted by legend42:

What can go up against the M1A1 tank?

I guess the later Leopard 2 tanks would do quite good against the M1A2, and I somehow fancy tanks named after big cats... Let's suppose the UN sent down some european troops to stop the invasion? Now that would be an interesting fictional scenario!

[juan_gigante]

That's why we'll have Blue on Blue match ups. In fact, using Blue on Blue and European troops we might get in a module, people could have the France vs. Germany modern game a few people were asking for. You can really do a lot with this.

[MikeyD]

Everybody's assuming a 2007 Syria game is going to mirror 2003 Iraq. Firstly, Stryker Brigade didn't even reach Iraq til 7-8 months after Baghdad fell. also, I think we can assume EVERYBODY in the region would've learned a few painful lessons watching the goings-on since '03 - the reason why we're in such a pickle currently is because of painful lessons learned by Saddam from his 1990 experience.

"How come the M1A1 is not suffering any losses that im aware of in Iraq which will be a similar situation, will it not?"

Judging from Abrams performance in Iraq the number of vehicles knocked out should be more than equalled by the number that just catch fire spontaneously! Seriously, we might not see a lot of Abrams K.O.s but i can imagine a heapin' helpin' of "Gun Damage" and "Immobile" during a game.

[cassh]

Originally posted by Sergei

It's a bit easier to hide your tank brigades in forested hills than in an arid plateau...

Or urban and village terrain - which is actually where they hid most of the Serbian armour - better thermal and IR protection and background 'noise' making aerial reconnaissance, satellite, JStars and MK1 Eyeball actionable intel more difficult.

[JonS]

Originally posted by MikeyD:

Seriously, we might not see a lot of Abrams K.O.s but i can imagine a heapin' helpin' of "Gun Damage" and "Immobile" during a game.

Not a lot of victory points accrue from "Gun Damage" or "Immobile" ...

[GSX]

Well since Kosovo has been mentioned. There was no ground war, airpower solved the equation. The Serbs withdrew as far as I know?

SO why not think anything diffrent would happen in Syria? If the premise happens, there arent going to be many Syrian regular units left to fight.

So its an insirgency war.

[ozi_digger]

Originally posted by GSX:

Well since Kosovo has been mentioned. There was no ground war, airpower solved the equation. The Serbs withdrew as far as I know?

SO why not think anything diffrent would happen in Syria? If the premise happens, there arent going to be many Syrian regular units left to fight.

So its an insirgency war.

Oh boy, you're just asking me to come out of the woodwork with a statement like that aren't you?

First, airpower does not win wars on its own. It didn't during Op Allied Force, Desert Storm, etc etc. Kosovo is usually a huge debate about about the inefficiency of air power. However, when taken in context of Russian diplomacy, US politics and NATO ground force mobilisation, air power was effective as an enabler for all this stuff to happen.

Second, many other posters have pointed out - I'm gonna wait to see the actual scenario. A UN operation. Probably multinational. Possibly a psuedo civil war situation. US committment to the op may actually be quite limited and you're just playing the part of a US coy commander in a not-so-huge US task force. Same sorta situation with Kosovo - it took mass graves on CNN for the US to respond. That is, CMSF may not be in the same scale as OIF. I actually don't know so for me in the meantime its a softly-slowly-catchee-monkey approach.

[Guest Mike]

Originally posted by JonS:

2007 is not very far away.

485 days, and counting.

[moneymaxx]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />5 M1 + 4 M2 > 65 Strykers

That's a load of rubbish You didn't learn much from years of playing CMx1, did you? I'd take redundancy (and reliability, which we are simulating this time round), superior numbers, and superior mobility over a static force with a few toys any day of the year.</font>

[FFE]

Has this been answered:

What are the Syrian's nighttime and IR capabilities? No reason to battle during the day when you own the night.

[Battlefront.com]

Some quick answers...

I don't know how much armor was lost during the initial phase of OIF. However, that isn't a fair comparison. The Syrian forces have the benefit of adapting their tactics to those developed AFTER the fall of Saddam's regime. They, and every other country on Bush's Short List of Targets, are obviously furiously jotting down notes. So I'd fully expect that any advesary in the 2007 timeframe would favor the Insurgency tactics more than the Conventional tactics of the opening phase of OIF. Trying to shift large regimental sized maneuver elements is not going to be all that beneficial to anybody but the Coallition pilot's kill score bragging rights.

Kosovo wasn't in a vacuum. A very quick (and condensed) view is the Serbian people were literally empoverished by a government they knew to be corrupt, oppressive, and engaging in behavior that the world found to be unacceptable. They were deeply affected, in a negative way, by the breakup of Yugoslavia and were quite tired of living in that mode of being. Then NATO comes along and bombs the crap out of stuff. Not just tanks and facilities in Kosovo, but things within Serbia propper. And there was a very real threat that ground troops would come in next (there was a force deploying to Albania when the pullback started). It was the straw that broke the camel's back. If this attack had been in 1991 the results of the air campaign might have been very different. In short... not anything like Syria.

Stryker serves more purposes than a rapid strategic deployment force. It also can move, operationally and tactically, very fast and with fewer resources and issues. They moved from Mosul down to west of Fallujah with amazing speed and fully up and ready to fight. Then when they were finished, they moved back again to help squash a problem that cropped up after they left. This unit can move, on its own and without any backup, much faster than any tracked unit and with more punch than any light unit.

Strykers can exceed 60mph on the road (I've heard from several first hand sources that with the speed govenor "broken" they can push 80mph). And the tactical ability of a Stryker to quietly prowel the streets apparently has not been missed by the enemy. They don't like it. Abrams and Bradleys can be heard long before they are seen. A slowly creeping Stryker usually is seen before it is heard. Speed and surprise... two very important plusses for any military formation to have. Of course there are downsides too, but I'm just saying that there are other things positive about Stryker units than their logistical benefits.

The US forces don't own the night any more. They have a strong lease on it with a clause that allows them to kick out squatters One of the things that cheap NVGs for the consumer market has done is allow the enemy forces something to counter act Western investments in NV technology very quickly, cheaply, and not all that badly either. While the expected OPFOR won't have the ability to use them on the same scale of use as NATO type forces, players should expect to find out that they aren't necessarily invisible to the enemy at night. Certainly Syrian Special Forces units have such equipment.

Steve

[Guest Mike]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Strykers can exceed 60mph on the road (I've heard from several first hand sources that with the speed govenor "broken" they can push 80mph).

One (actuall a LAV 3, but ne'er mind....) pranged a car here a few months ago - killed hte car driver IIRC, but it wasn't teh LAV's fault - however there was some question of whether it was speeding or not - 100km/h (60mph) limit.....

[Bigduke6]

First a historical fun fact: Syria's 82nd Para-commando Brigade captured Mount Hermon in 1973 in a nightime ground/helicopter assualt, and then held it for the entirity of the Yom Kippur war, in the process shooting the bejeezus out of Israeli infantry trying to recapture the feature. I don't remember offhand if it was Israeli paratroopers or the Golani brigade, but I bet there's some one reading this who knows.

The Israelis were smart and tried to recapture Mt. Hebron in night attack, but the Syrians had night-sights and they cut the Israelis to pieces. My source is O'Ballance's No Victor No Vanquished.

I know very little about the Syrian military, but armies have some universal characteristics, and I would be willing to bet my last hryvna that 20 years down the line, today, privates and lieutenants from the Mount Hebron now run Syria's commandos and special forces.

Another small point about night sights - the U.S. advantage is most pronounced in vehicle-to-vehicle warfare where thermals can pick out individuals, sometimes, at 5 kilometers or more. Where LOS isn't long, thermals aren't so useful.

And if it's a clear night, in the desert, at the shorter ranges a MarkI human eyeball can do a whole lot of what the expensive "NODS" can do, and it's much easier for an infantryman to carry an eyeball around with him.

Besides, great night imaging is only half of winning the night battle. Once you find a target you have to be able to hit it, or get in touch with something that can. This is perhaps the U.S. military's strongest suit: they react extremely fast with the right tool for the right job, and they are not shy about using several tools at once if that will make things easier. That's doctrine and training.

Which brings me back to Syrian military professionalism. Theoretically, Syria has the tools - an experienced military, a big pool of literate young men probably willing to fight, decent weapons - to check almost any invader.

The German general staff, for instance, was smart enough in the later stages of WW2 to figure out a highly cost-effective way to write down allied armor was German kids with panzerfausts - and they put that conclusion into effect. That's military ruthlessness and professionalism at it's "best", although the parents of the tens of thousands of Hitlerjugend slaughtered in the process wouldn't see it that way.

But as the Israelis have shown, the Syrians have had lots of trouble putting that stuff together in the past. See the proper set of tactics for the next war, is a huge distance from actually implementing it in your army.

So the question is, could the Syrians put into effect "lessons learned" from watching the Americans trash the conventional Iraqi military, and then thrash about but not be really hurt by an Iraqi insurgency?

[Glider]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

...

Kosovo wasn't in a vacuum. A very quick (and condensed) view is the Serbian people were literally empoverished by a government they knew to be corrupt, oppressive, and engaging in behavior that the world found to be unacceptable. They were deeply affected, in a negative way, by the breakup of Yugoslavia and were quite tired of living in that mode of being. Then NATO comes along and bombs the crap out of stuff. Not just tanks and facilities in Kosovo, but things within Serbia propper. And there was a very real threat that ground troops would come in next (there was a force deploying to Albania when the pullback started). It was the straw that broke the camel's back. If this attack had been in 1991 the results of the air campaign might have been very different. In short... not anything like Syria...

Now, I am going off-topic here, but I participated in these events so bear with me for a several sentences

The decision to pull back from Kosovo was a political one, i.e. at that time there was not a single military reason why the army positions there would be considered untenable. The obvious determination of the NATO pact to use ground forces, the destruction of the civilian infrastructure in the Serbia proper and the failure to obtain any kind of significant diplomatic support caused the government to cave in.

As far as the troops are concerned, the regime was not popular but NATO was far less so. At the time of withdrawals the losses among ground forces were light and the morale was quite high. They would have fought (and lost), no question about that.

Another thing, as a signaller who served with the General Staff I helped with computer graphics for some pre-war evaluations of the expected NATO performance. I couldn't help read some of them, though . And I can tell you that the General Staff signals&communication department severely overestimated the effect of NATO/US attacks on our strategic communication network.

[ October 12, 2005, 01:21 AM: Message edited by: Glider ]

[Bigduke6]

Here's a linky with a basic info dump on the Syrian military as of 2001. Bottom line, if competently led the Syrians could make things very bloody for an invader. But that's a huge "if".

http://www.meib.org/articles/0108_s1.htm

[19K30]

As a M1 Tank Commander, I can tell you that M1 is very vunerable in a MOUT setting. The M1 was designed for fighting the Russina T-72/T-80 horde in the Fulda Gap. Several concepts and modifications are being tested to improve combat effectiness of the M1 in MOUT.

I can tell you from personal experience that a M1 can be seriously damage/destroyed from a determined foe. One of the tanks in my Company became combat ineffective due to RPG's and IED's in Iraq.

Strykers aren't designed to replace the tank, but to be a lighter, radidly deployed, combat effective force used in areas where tanks would not be as effective or deployable.

Strykers are the bridge between light infantry brigades/divisions and the heavy mechanized brigades/divisions.

As a Tanker I am bias to tanks but I do see the use for Strykers. European countries have had stryker-esqe vehicles for decades. In some ways, the US is finally catching up to modern combat thinking.

My buddies, some of whom are combat vets on strykers, LOVE them and would never go back to tanking.