Kevlar Coffins

[Chops]

And you thought Brit Vehicles were dangerous....

http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/nov/05/armored-troop-carriers-unsafe-for-afghan-duty/

I thought BlackWatch was a Brit unit...seems to be mentioned as a U.S. unit in the article.

[MikeyD]

Well, there's no such thing as a 'safe vehicle' when you're talking 1,500 pound IEDs. Still, I recall Canada had rushed old M113s into Afghanistan after having disappointing results with LAV IIIs.

[MikeyD]

While we're at it, might as well not spare MRAP either.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/78443.html

[GSX]

I think the thing to remember here is that Strykers and many other vehicles aren't designed from the 'ground up' to be anti IED vehicles. They are designed for war fighting. The IED in Afghanistan is becoming more prevalent as the Taleban realise that stand up fighting more often than not gets them killed. Militaries can either use existing vehicles or have two sets, one for war and the other for police actions and who can afford that?

[costard]

How does an IED weighing 2000lbs get moved around?

[GSX]

How does an IED weighing 2000lbs get moved around?

A Truck perhaps?

[flamingknives]

Although the Stryker isn't wholly designed to withstand IEDs, I'd rather be in a vehicle like that than a tactical tracked vehicle, given the same weight of belly protection.

[Yair Iny]

Although the Stryker isn't wholly designed to withstand IEDs, I'd rather be in a vehicle like that than a tactical tracked vehicle, given the same weight of belly protection.

Why is that? Is there an advantage to a wheeled vehicle over a tracked one, given all else being equal?

[flamingknives]

Distance from the ground is the primary reason, plus wheeled vehicles are inherently inclined to have more of a vee shape.

Plus if you lose a wheel station on an 8-wheeler you can keep moving. Lose a track and you'll make it a dozen metres at best.

[Yair Iny]

Thanks. I was thinking about it and thought maybe the solid "walls" formed by the tracks would capture more of the blast, but your explanation makes far more sense

[GSX]

I suppose losing a track doesnt really matter under those circumstances, where the enemy isnt present.

[YankeeDog]

... except that the Taliban have gotten into the habit of using IEDs in groups, and detonating them in sequence (e.g., to get soldiers who come to try and rescue people wounded in a damaged vehicle) and/or with other elements like mortar and/or small arms ambushes. Being able to drive out of the initial blast zone, even if only for 100 meters or so, can save lives.

While I obviously concede that the opinions of the guys who have been there and done that should carry far more weight than my own, I don't think any light armor, tracked or wheeled, is going to fare very well against the IEDs they're using in Afghanistan now. The enemy has had a lot of time to learn (since the late 1970s, really). The IEDs they're using now are usually (a) large, or ( sophisticated (EFPs, etc), or © both. Stryker, M113, MRAP, LAVIII, whatever... I think they're all pretty much "Kevlar Coffins" in this environment. Unless you can mount your entire force in a heavy IFV like the Merkava (a practical impossibility), I think you're stuck accepting IED vulnerability. And even something as heavy as a Merkava is far from immune. Not many AFVs have a heavily armored underbelly.

I think it is a legitimate criticism, though, that the Strkyer may not have the off-road capability that is really needed in an environment like Afghanistan. The Stryker is designed to get a large number of boots to an objective, efficiently and without having to rely just on well-maintained roads -- it's perfectly capable of navigating tertiary roads or modestly rough terrain. But it doesn't have the off-road capability a fully tracked vehicle. The Stryker can carry more boots, farther, on less gas than a tracked vehicle of comparable capability weight and cargo capacity.

But a comparable tracked vehicle can probably go places the Stryker can't. And the more route options you have, the harder it is for the enemy to predict where you're going to go, which is essential for effective IED usage. A tracked vehicle with better off-road capability might avoid some hits. Certainly not all, but some.

Then again, a tracked vehicle would also be slower, and cost a lot more to maintain in theater. It's all a trade-off. The fact of the matter is, we're in the enemy's backyard and this gives them a huge advantage. I'm not sure a slightly better AFV for the situation is going to change things all that much.

Cheers,

YD

[Chops]

So, this brings up the question - Why isn't the military (NATO) using helicopters for troop and supply transport to a larger extent? Move the troops where they need to be by helicopter, and then let them patrol on foot.

I know the Taliban can bring down a helicopter with RPG's and heavy machine guns, etc... Do they have other AA capabilities?

[Alan8325]

I've been wondering why there haven't been any stories of MANPADs being used against coalition aircraft in either Iraq or Afghanistan myself. If the insurgents have RPGs, why don't they also have SA-7s or 14s?

[Yair Iny]

... heavy IFV like the Merkava (a practical impossibility), I think you're stuck accepting IED vulnerability. And even something as heavy as a Merkava is far from immune.

Agree with your point, with just a couple of notes.. Firstly, Merkava is an MBT, but you probably mean the IFVs developed on a Merkava chassis, i.e. the Namer. Secondly, and this is just to add to your point, IDF lost several Merkava tanks to IED in 2006, in fact most or all of the catastrophic losses were to IEDs and not to ATGMs. Right after the patrol was attacked and the two wounded soldiers taken by Hezbollah, Israel rushed forces into Lebanon to try and interdict them (according to their SOP Hannibal) and lost one to an IED, basically aborting the operation.

[MikeyD]

My *guess* about helicopter use is all the necessary fuel has to be trucked in - and I mean aaaall the fuel. So helo drops would be reserved for special occasions (and have then turned up in the news over the years).

How many convoys of tanker trucks would it take to keep a platoon of turbine-powered Abrams running for a single day? Abrams is another weapons system that hasn't made a showing in-theatre, I understand.

[JonS]

1500-2000lb? Um, that's bigger than the bomb that sank the USS Arizona.

Expecting anything that can move on land under it's own power to survive being hit by something that big is more than a little unrealistic.

[JonS]

So, this brings up the question - Why isn't the military (NATO) using helicopters for troop and supply transport to a larger extent?

You can't control ground from the sky. Telling the population - and the Taliban - that you're too scared to move on the ground is tantamount to surrendering. You may as well go home.

[Michael Emrys]

How does an IED weighing 2000lbs get moved around?

Does it have to be moved in one piece? (I'm not familiar with the details of IED construction.) If it can be broken down into 40 lb chunks, that's 50 man-loads. If you have a camel, a mule, or a car, you can carry bigger chunks.

Michael

[MikeyD]

1500 lbs+ of explosives would be for 'special occassions', I would expect. A U.S. aerial bomb doesn't detonate and they salvage the explosives contained therein (a common enough salvage practice during the Vietnam war). Simpler than trucking the ordnance through the Kaiber pass.

[Loaf]

The Black Watch is a British regiment (there is a Canadian version too). These guys are a Stryker company called "Blackwatch" - no relation.

Re heavy IEDs: I don't know about the current ones, but the first extra-large IEDs I remember reading about were made up of multiple artillery shells or multiple anti-tank mines I believe... So these figures we hear are likely estimates of the all-in weight of what is really a pile of assorted ordnance.

[Squatdog]

There's plenty of unexploded ordanance stockpiled or waiting to be salvaged for bomb use.

Also, the primary ingredient of most 'overkill' IEDs tends to be *drumroll* fertilser.

[Sgt Joch]

there was a good article on IEDs in Afghanistan a few months ago:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/world/asia/15ied.html?_r=1

This is the war in Afghanistan today, where death is measured less by the accuracy of bullets than by the cleverness of bombs. And though the Afghan insurgency’s improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.’s, are less powerful or complex than those used in Iraq, they are becoming more common and more sophisticated with each week, American military officers say.

This year, bomb attacks on coalition troops in Afghanistan have spiked to an all-time high, with 465 in May alone, more than double the number in the same month two years before. At least 46 American troops have been killed by I.E.D.’s this year, putting 2009 on track to set a record in the eight-year war.

I.E.D.’s have been even more deadly for Afghan police officers and soldiers. At the current rate, I.E.D. attacks on Afghan forces could reach 6,000 this year, up from 81 in 2003, an American military official said. In early July alone, nine Afghan police officers were killed in two bomb attacks in Logar Province, south of Kabul.

With few paved roads, Afghanistan is even more fertile territory for I.E.D.’s. than Iraq, where hard pavement often forced insurgents to leave bombs in the open. Not so in Afghanistan, where it is relatively easy to bury a device in a dirt road and cover the tracks.

“I’m not interested in the triggerman,” said Lieutenant Brown, whose team is with the Third Squadron, 71st Cavalry Regiment based here. “He’s usually some poor schlep just trying to feed his family. It’s the networks we’re after.”

American officials say those Taliban-guided networks are surprisingly layered, involving financiers, logistical experts, bomb designers and trainers. At the bottom are the bomb planters, often villagers or nomadic herdsmen paid $10 or less to dig holes and serve as spotters.

The bombs are often made with fertilizer and diesel fuel, but some use mortar shells or old mines that litter the countryside. Some bombs are set off when vehicles pass over pressure plates. Others require remote control, like a cellphone. Still others detonate with a button or a wire touched to a battery.

Though many bombs remain crude, American officers say the insurgents are cunning and relentlessly adaptive. In some cases, I.E.D.’s are used as lures to draw soldiers into booby traps.

“It’s not like Iraq,” said Tech Sgt. Richard Gibbons of the Air Force, the team expert in disarming and disposing of explosives, recalling complex situations involving four or more bombs in Baghdad. “But I do think they are getting better.”

[MikeyD]

I recall a statistic from WWII that the vast majority of casualties came from bombs, not bullets - most notably artillery and mortar fire. What do you do when you don't have the artillery infrastructure to wage war with? You plant the bombs and set them off as people pass. IEDs, the poor man's artillery support.

[Bigduke6]

I think it's more practical than that. The point for the insurgency is to kill Americans, they do that often enough, they win.

In the part of Afghanistan where there are Strykers, the Americans are most available to be killed when they are riding around in a vehicle that will win pretty much any firefight with the insurgency, but on the other hand really can't go off road very much. And since the Americans are casualty-shy and support-weapons friendly, very often, the Americans are in their Strykers.

So the task for the insurgency becomes, how do you kill Americans riding around in Strykers, that are staying mostly on the roads, and the Americans are mostly staying in the Strykers?

Seems like booby-trapping the road with a bomb big enough to kill people inside the Stryker, seems to me like a no-brainer.

I mean, what else is the Afghan insurgent going to do?

Try and overrun firebases and get waxed? Write to the US Congress calling for subsidies to high-colesterol snack foods? Infiltrate suicide sleeper agents into the US? Wait around until the Americans in the Strykers debus and deploy, and then take them on in a firefight where the Americans can call in everything from B1A1 on down, and the Pathans can call on, er, their Maker?

The concept of active patrolling by US forces is a Godsend to the insurgency, what if the Americans just stayed in their bases?