AAR from an American tanker in Iraq

[V]

Buddy of mine posted this "aar" shortly before he returned home from Iraq. He drove a tank and recounts his combat experiences in this thread on my forum.

http://www.madcowssteakhouse.com/viewtopic.php?t=11056

Here is a piece of it, from fighting in Tal Afar:

We push up further and circled the wagons. The IA started shooting everywhere, making it impossible to tell exactly where we were getting shot at. At this point, my gunner decided that now was the perfect time to take a dump, using an MRE bag to do the deed. In the middle of a firefight, our gunner was taking a ****. Things started to cool off a little, the tempo of the fight rising and falling, when the Insurgents decided to hit my tank directly. Over the radio, one of the rear tanks called to us “66 someone is running behind your tank, I think he might have...” BOOM! Two grenades had landed on our back deck, forcing us to button up (close the hatches). During all this, we had been attempting to get authorization to fire our main gun, but our higher ups thought that an escalation of force at this point might not be prudent.

Finally though they relinquished. We had caught group of insurgents in the alleyway to our right through our CITV (Commanders Independent Thermal Viewer, this allows the Tank Commander the ability to target things independent of the main gun direction). The insurgents had no idea we were looking at them though, with our main gun pointed down the road. They had been making hand and arm signals to each other and mocking us for our apparent lack of knowledge at their presence. They were informed with the blast of a 120mm Smoothbore Cannon High Explosive Anti-Tank Round.

The rest of his long post is at the link above.

[Battlefront.com]

Always nice to read something from the average grunt's perspective. Shame he had to go back into a place that had already been cleaned out once before, but that's what you get when you don't have the boots to maintain control of regained territory

Steve

[John Kettler]

V,

My brother George was an SFC in the HHT of first of the Stryker brigades deployed in combat, and he spent some hairy times in Tell Afar himself. Believe I'll send him the link. Mercifully, he managed to retire intact before the latest round of stop losses, but he was nearly blown to bits by a VBIED (went off behind him), took 120mm mortar fire close enough to feel the shock wave thump him hard, buried a lot of buddies, and had several friends badly wounded (one shot through the teeth, bullet lodged in tongue). Your buddy's account was quite interesting, and the typos made some already surreal stuff worthy of Apocalypse Now (the doves, for example) even more so. I rather liked the "diver's hull" and the "plum of smoke," which seem to mean several different things at once.

Regards,

John Kettler

[c3k]

To me, the ROE which demands a tank commander get permission to fire his main gun - in the midst of a firefight - is ludicrous, and stands out starkly from the rest of the narrative.

Do you have any other information regarding this requirement? (The requirement to seek permission to fire the main gun.)

Thanks,

Ken

[Andreas]

Originally posted by c3k:

To me, the ROE which demands a tank commander get permission to fire his main gun - in the midst of a firefight - is ludicrous, and stands out starkly from the rest of the narrative.

Must be one of the 'benefits' of network centric warfare.

All the best

Andreas

[Battlefront.com]

The problem with counter-insurgency and conventional forces is that conventional forces are trained to use maximum firepower to solve problems. This is exactly the opposite of what is needed for counter-insurgency warfare. So I see the ROE as a regretable stop-gap measure until the military can figure out how to retrain and retool itself for prolonged opposed occupation.

Somewhere recently I read that the Russians have a proverb that fits in well with what is going on in Iraq. It goes something like this:

Just because the only thing you have is a hammer doesn't mean everything is a nail.

The linked story basically hits on all the reasons why the insurgency has been growing, not shrinking. And he did it in a way that most lay people should be able to understand.

Steve

[MikeyD]

A Sherman's classic 75mm gun would've been preferable in that situation. Many more types of rounds, many more rounds stored, and reduced likelyhood off gross overkill from firing the 120mm - with reduced need to get permission to fire it. Maybe the next step in Abrams TUSK program is going to be refitting a low pressure 90mm :eek:

[Guest Guest]

deleted per user request

[offtaskagain]

Originally posted by c3k:

To me, the ROE which demands a tank commander get permission to fire his main gun - in the midst of a firefight - is ludicrous, and stands out starkly from the rest of the narrative.

Do you have any other information regarding this requirement? (The requirement to seek permission to fire the main gun.)

Thanks,

Ken

That's nothing new. I knew tankers who never fired their gun in an entire deployment. Pretty much anything that goes boom is restricted.

[V]

"We had caught group of insurgents in the alleyway to our right through our CITV (Commanders Independent Thermal Viewer, this allows the Tank Commander the ability to target things independent of the main gun direction)."

If systems like this are going to be modelled, I would be interested in learning how it will work.

[frieze]

V: that seems much easier to model than the situation is without it. After all, this way the tank commander has visibility in all directions (in some reduced capacity) when buttoned, rather than a totally different visibility structure.

[frieze]

offtaskagain: is the same thing generally true of the 50 cal? I have no experience in this area but it seems to me that it would be a fairly effective deterrent in an antipersonnel capacity and wouldn't be burdened with all the destroying-neighboring-buildings problems that 120mm gun rounds tend to cause.

[Battlefront.com]

My understanding is the .50 is pretty much the only thing the tanks use these days.

V, we aren't going to model this directly. First off, there is a difference between "peace and stability ops" and "high tempo combat ops". We're simulating the latter, which means there is a lot less emphasis on firepower restraint. Having said that, there are victory conditions that can be established that will penalize the player for damage to buildings. Meaning, we won't constrain the Abrams artificially, but if you go about doing WWII style "recon by boom-boom" then you'll likely find yourself losing a lot.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

AdamL,

I'm interested in learning a bit about the "non hammer" methods, and the re-organization that has to happen first

Where can I find out more? Or would you elaborate on your thoughts?

Read studies and reports about counter-insurgency and you'll find that the overriding emphasis is on non-lethal or (if unavoidable) discrete firepower. One speaker I heard last week talked about a project he worked on for CENTCOM to evaluate progress in rebuilding Iraq. They proposed 120+ indicators of progress and not a single one was "kinetic". Meaning, progress could not be measured by body counts. Things like improving the standard of living, lowering unemployment, numbers of civic groups, etc. was what mattered.

There are lots and lots of ideas about how to successfully occupy a foreign nation with a military force. The ones that have been found to yield the worst results are the ones the military is most suited for. Conversely, the things the military is least trained and equipped for are the things that are needed most.

One interesting school of thought, to which I subscribe, is to downsize the military and create a large "civilian" force. Or as I call them, Door Kickers and Door Knockers. The Kickers go in to take out the conventional forces and establish dominance in a military sense and short term security. They come with all the things that make big boom-booms and firework shows.

The Knockers come in right on the heals of the Kickers. They come with different uniforms and pretty much just sidearms. Their main weapons are accountants, construction crews, engineers, civil servants, fire fighters, police, judges, lawyers (bit my tongue on that one!), healthcare workers, and representatives of various other civilian type organizations. These groups all work for the government, not for private enterprises (though there would be a lot of sub contracting). This means the ultimate control and responsibility is with the government, not with CEOs back in the US. Most importantly, these are only organizers and mentors, not the workers. The workers come from the local populace instead of imported from outside. The work will take longer to start, but the locals will be employed and feel a part of the process instead of sitting on the outside looking in. Employment reduces crime and the incentives to go to insurgent groups.

The goal is to get the Kickers out of the urban areas and off to remote bases ASAP, then start sending them back home as quickly as possible. They stay out of the way and out of sight unless there is a serious problem that the Knockers can't handle. If such a situation should arise, the Kickers come in under the direct control of the local (and ONLY the local) Knockers. They do their job and back to their bases. Since they wear different uniforms the local populace won't be as confused about who is who. This is a big problem in Iraq right now. As one LTC put it to us, "we go in and knock down a house and next day we come to them and ask if there is anything we can do to help. We do this in the same uniforms and that confuses them.". When people are confused and unhappy, they tend to only look at the negatives. Meaning, all uniforms of x design = the worst case. This makes complete sense.

From a national policy standpoint the division of tasks is quite practical. Train a subset of the total headcount to be hardcore warfighters. This is basically a large, expanded Rapid Reaction Force. In and out so they can be ready for the next task. The others are trained to run governments and civil services initially, then train and hand over the jobs to locals. As a group the civil types can't suppress an insurgency, but that's not the point. The point is for them to set up and maintain conditions where an insurgency doesn't start in the first place. History shows that once an insurgency starts it will take years (usually decades) to contain it and it will probably not go away for 100 years or ever. Therefore, the goal should be to stop it before it starts.

Think about it another way... how quickly can a government scale up its military? How quickly can it scale up civilian and government overseers? The answer is years and weeks respectively. This strategy means that the highly trained military, which is hard to scale up, is not bogged down in protracted occupations, therefore it can be used as a tool many times within a short period of time if necessary. Each time such an action is necessary the nation can quickly raise a group specific to the area's needs, culture, etc.

Anyway... that's the sort of "out of the box" thinking that doesn't go anywhere in Washington or other Capitals. Politics being what they are, they won't support such a thing because it means fewer defense jobs for their constituents. Plus, civic groups do not contribute as much money to campaigns as contractors do. Governments are inherently reluctant to make fundamental changes even after it is apparent they are needed. Even incremental changes are like pulling teeth with tweezers; slow and painful. Shame... they are so ready to use force but so unready to make sure it succeeds.

Steve

[ September 19, 2006, 03:03 PM: Message edited by: Battlefront.com ]

[MikeyD]

In CMx1 when you target something you get a menu asking if you want to use the main gun or not. So there is some small restraint on using the main gun when the coax mg will do. Even without the 'peacekeeping' restraint you'd probably want to ration your 120mm rounds. if you're carrying APFSDS and a couple canister rounds that means you'll be carrying that much less dual-purpose HE in the bustle. HE can be used-up pretty quickly. Try playing with the IS-2 in CMBB to see just how fast you can run out of ammo in a game.

[Bigduke6]

Think about it another way... how quickly can a government scale up its military? How quickly can it scale up civilian and government overseers? The answer is years and weeks respectively.

Steve,

Although sometimes it is uncanny how much your take on the conflict seems to match mine, I think there is a huge problem with your assumptions here, at least as far as country like Iraq or Syria is concerned.

The issue is corruption. Islamic societies, most of them, are deeply corrupt, i.e., pretty much every one in government abuses his position for personal benefit. That is a tradition dating back, at least, to they heydey of the Ottoman Empire. It is more deeply "hard-wired" in a society like that, as (for instance) the idea of

equal rights before the law is in a Western society.

It sounds good to have a plan to establish a functioning governent that serves the people, and to use minimum force in the process, and to link that force to the rule of law. Were that possible, there might be a fighting chance of establishing a stable society, and so a useful peace, in a Muslim Arab country invaded by foreigners.

Problem is, how do you do that when the top officials, judges, lawyers, police, school teachers - every one - is on the take?

When their parents spent their lives on the take? When, in order to do their jobs "honestly" by the standards of functional Western civil society, they must insult their relatives and friends and indeed short change their children, all of who are expecting personal benefit because they are friends with or related to some one in a position of power?

By way of comparison, and also because I have some personal familiarity with the examples, take Ukraine and Georgia. The governments of both countries were deeply corrupt, so much so that both countries managed to kick out Soviet-style goons running the place, and replace them with leaders honestly committed to rooting out corruption.

Even better than places like Afghanistan or Iraq, in Georgia and Ukraine the populations are unarmed, peaceful, and as traditional Christian nations arguably are part of the greater European society.

Result on the corruption front? Precious little - basically only as far as the anti-corruption leadership is capable of managing by their personal efforts. When an entire nation is used to being corrupt, and sees no way or need to change it, little short of absolute dictatorship seems to have any chance of rooting out corruption. It's no coincidence at all that in both places, the last time those countries saw effectively corruption-free government, was when Stalin was willing to kill people wholesale for the sake of establishing Soviet rule of law.

Saddam apparently was unable to root out corruption in Iraq, and the Taliban tried but failed in Afghanistan. The Syrians haven't even tried.

So pretty much, I color this whole deal hopeless.

[Battlefront.com]

BigDuke6

Although sometimes it is uncanny how much your take on the conflict seems to match mine, I think there is a huge problem with your assumptions here, at least as far as country like Iraq or Syria is concerned.

Nope, you simply misread what I wrote I'll put it another way...

I know that nation building is measured in years. Just look at Bosnia and Kosovo for example. Probably 2 decades for those areas, and they have a far better culture of government than the Middle East (and many other parts of the world) have. It also took a number of years to get Germany and Japan reorganized, and those two cultures are deeply rooted in civic order.

So whoever thought Iraq could be built into a democractic society, even a flawed one, with relatively little guidence, violence, and time should be flogged in public.

The idea I floated in my previous post takes the realities of nation building into account. The military component (the Door Kickers) get in and out within a short period of time. They are difficult to raise on short notice, require highly specialized training that is basically not found in the general civilian job pool, and are extremely expensive to keep in the field. On top of that, the sorts of things that make great warfighters tend to make poor peacemakers. Lastly, when they are tied up, so too is the nation's political muscle. Therefore, the emphasis should be to keep the highly skilled Door Kicking military force from being deeply invovled in nation building.

But as Iraq and Afghanistan show, you can not simply beat up the rulling thugs and then have everything be peaches and cream. Nope, instead there needs to be a very lengthy and highly structured rebuilding process. For this you need a wide range of pretty much exclusively civilian skills. These people are easy to get a hold of on short notice since they already have the needed training (at least the majority of it). As a perk the government doesn't have to pay for their training since the private sector already has. This means that large quantities of people with the correct skillsets can be put together and tailored for a specific nation building enterprise. Better still, these recruits don't necessarily have to be citizens of your own nation.

So, want to take out a military regime in a SE Asian nation (not that I can think of one right now ) and establish a democractic government? Send in the military, kick out the armed thugs and oppressors, then send in a customized occupation force built around SE Asian ex-pats, eggheads with degrees in SE Asian stuff, construction experts with experience with local building materials, banking gurus that are familiar with the local banking systems, etc.

The military backs off and hands over day to day control to the Door Knockers force that will have at least a 5 year mandate, if not 10 year. The worse off the culture (in terms of corruption and lack of strong civic values), the longer the occupation will take. However, given the right formula, funding, and length of time even the worst off nation can be made radically better than it started off being.

Individual Door Knockers will rotate out, though some will stay for a long time. Either way the organization will remain intact and uninterrupted just like any business would. Freed up from this 5-10 year potential quagmire, the military is now ready to back up its nation's foreign policy with a credible threat of action.

I'm not saying any of this will be easy, but it has got to be easier than the way things are done now.

That explain things better?

Steve

[ September 19, 2006, 11:40 PM: Message edited by: Battlefront.com ]

[Bigduke6]

Steve,

We're sort of talking at cross-purposes here. I'm not disagreeing with the steps of your plan, but rather saying corruption makes pretty much any plan unworkable.

My point is that if corruption is endemic in a nation, getting rid of that corruption is beyond the capacity of a superpower. The problem with corruption is that it undermines everything: the courts, education, the economy, the military - you name it and whatever government activity you want is worse off because of corruption.

When a country tries to fix corruption itself, top-down, it is a huge uphill battle against tradition, and even if the people in power honestly want an even-handed attack on corruption, the people out of power will (naturally) assume the anti-corruption drive is simply a front by the people in government to promote their private interests.

And if foreigners are behind the anti-corruption drive, well, what better way to unit a traditional population against an anti-corruption government, then have foreigners announce they are doing this for the country's own good.

I think that one of the real blinders - not worn by you but by the bigshot US decision makers - is their assumption corruption can be defeated, and that people in corrupt countries want it to be defeated. That's the way things have been done since time immemorial, and the moment you declare war on corruption, you threaten the future of every single government worker who - with few exceptions - took the job not to serve the nation, but to gain financial benefit for himself and his family.

So besides changing the minds of an entire nation, you have to create a new bureaucracy out of whole cloth, and even if you just hire young people supposedly not polluted by the old way of thinking - a favorite tactic in the CIS - it usually turns out these young people are quite willing to be corrupt as well, after all, that's how their parents got ahead.

You have a great plan, but the tradition of corruption would unfortunately kill it, I think. The westerners come in, announce they intend to build a road and a bridge, and what's the result? Well, for starters maneuvers and behind-the-scenes deals between construction companies to get the contract. Even if somehow the best bid gets the job, every one else, and I do mean every one is going to be convinced that the project got awarded because of an insider deal.

Then you start building, and it begins: payrolls of ghosts, construction materials diverted to some one's dacha, cheapo materials going into the road so the contractors can skim the difference, government inspectors wanting a cut of the project, usually by threatening to shut it down for whatever violation, and so on. Sure, if you throw enough money at the road and all the parasites a thing like that would attract eventually it will get built: but frankly the economic effect is going to be nothing compared to all the cash you were putting in peoples' pockets just so you can build the damn road.

Multiply this by an entire nation with an entire material and social infrastructure needing repair, and the task is obviously impossible unless you build the road at the point of a gun, and you have used that gun in the past.

My two cents'.

[Guest Guest]

deleted per user request

[Grimly Fiendish]

It was a day that I had been waiting for since I watched the towers fall. I had helped take the fight back to those that would see people terrorized. Now we were terrorizing them.

Sad to see such misdirected good intentions and misspent energy. What a waste.

[Nidan1]

Originally posted by Dave Stockhoff:

It was a day that I had been waiting for since I watched the towers fall. I had helped take the fight back to those that would see people terrorized. Now we were terrorizing them.

Sad to see such misdirected good intentions and misspent energy. What a waste.

Sadly this is the lot of mankind, it seems. What could we accomplish as a race if it were not for the effort we waste in perfecting new ways to kill each other?

However, isnt helping others a noble intent, and even if the methods are sometimes heavy handed and misguided, if one man feels as if he is doing something good, even in the midst of war, that can't be taken from him, no matter what your political or personal beliefs. I know that this premise can be taken to any extreme, but my gut feeling is that men should not be made to feel wasted...even in an unpopular endeavor.

[ September 20, 2006, 02:56 PM: Message edited by: Nidan1 ]

[rudel.dietrich]

As one of my bosses is fond of saying

'The only way to win a asymmetric war is never to fight one'

I don't see the situation in Iraq as winnable.

Too much has been done to be undone and too much ill will has been fostered among the people there.

Best situation is for the Iraqi goverment to ask the colation to leave.

That would save face for the colation and finaly give some semblence of a 'job accomplished'

But as it is now America has a moral obligation to clean up the mess it created no matter how long it take.

And simply pulling out would be the worst foreign policy mistake of this young century.

You never want to look weak in foreign policy and pulling out would do just that.

As a non American and as a somewhat outside observer my opinion is that you can advance all the ideas and plans you wish but I see the situation as unwinable.

[V]

Best situation is for the Iraqi goverment to ask the colation to leave.

That would save face for the colation and finaly give some semblence of a 'job accomplished'

They can't do that now, real civil war would break out which would most likely make the current bloodshed look like a tea party.

The Coalition cannot win until the Iraqi government can defend itself from the insurgency. It seems obvious they are still a long way from that point, sadly.

[rudel.dietrich]

Originally posted by V:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />

Best situation is for the Iraqi goverment to ask the colation to leave.

That would save face for the colation and finaly give some semblence of a 'job accomplished'

They can't do that now, real civil war would break out which would most likely make the current bloodshed look like a tea party.

The Coalition cannot win until the Iraqi government can defend itself from the insurgency. It seems obvious they are still a long way from that point, sadly. </font>

[Battlefront.com]

BigDuke6,

Oh, I know corruption can't be stampped out overnight. However, it can diminish with time. Also, in cultures of corruption it is possible to get things done right if you (the one with deep pockets) knows who is best to bribe. The Nazi regime was one of the most corrupt (in all senses of the word) governments the world has ever seen, and terribly inefficeint too, but man did they get stuff done.

I've heard this from guys back from Iraq. They knew things could be made a lot better if some money were to change hands under the table. But US law forbids this activity and therefore not possible.

Nation building needs to be seen as a vastly long term project with a lot of baby steps at the beginning that lead to bigger strides later on.

Rudel,

Yes, your boss is right that one can not win an asymetric war. One can only try to prevent one from getting started in the first place. The policy of the US since Vietnam was to simply avoid them, even if it meant "cutting and running" or leaving a massive mess behind after some sort of military adventure that went down the wrong path. Those who pushed for a war with Iraq used a different policy; if one doesn't know anything about asymetrical warfare then it doesn't exist.

Somewhere in the General Forum there is some quote from me prior to the war in Iraq. I said then that I believed we would make short work of the invasion and quickly take over the country with few losses. However, I expressed "fear" that we'd totally screw up everything after it. Either I'm some kind of briliant visionary or I'm just someone who is apparently more informed than many in leadership positions. I don't think I'm brilliant, so somehow I must be better informed. That is scary.

Steve