Roadside Bombs & IEDs (catch all)

[slapout9]

I brought up the subject of the Howze Board because Slapout had said that air cavalry was implemented for Vietnam; Willf added his thoughts on air mobility.

I said implemented....It was invented in about 1947 by General James Gavin and was original to be called the "Sky Cavalry Division".
If you can fins a copy of Airborne Warfare by Gavin you will see a drawing of what looks like a Chinook Helicopter offloading what looks like a half track for WW2.

I will try and find some links laterbut they are out there.

[slapout9]

Pete and all go to this thread that I started awhile back to find out what we really need to defeat IED's


http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...9251#post49251



Also shows what the Army Air Cavalry should have for VTOL intead of Osprey thingy.

[Pete]

I was under the impression that Special Forces became its own branch mainly so its personnel wouldn't be discriminated against by their primary branches--perhaps the Aviation branch was brought into being for the same reason. At a Hail and Farewell in Germany as a lieutenant I sat next to the father of one of our lieutenants. He was an unassuming guy and I asked him whether he'd been in the Army, and he said yes, he'd retired as a major. Callow youth that I was, I wondered what he had done to screw up and only go that far. It was several years later when I was out of the Army that I read that Major Clyde J. Sincere of Special Forces had been awarded the DSC for his performance in a firefight in Vietnam.

Before First Manassas Thomas Jackson fought his first engagement as a brigade commander not far from where I live in the vicinity of Martinsburg. My impression of the "foot cavalry" aspect of his operations is that it was something he had learned before the Civil War as a light artilleryman. The modern field artillery has the acronym RSOP for reconnaissance, selection, occupation of position. Jackson had his mapmaker Jed Hotchkiss and he also had his staff make him tables of distances between various points in the Valley. Thus he was planning the routes of march of his command with the same attention to detail that an artilleryman uses to plan the movements of his battery.

[Ken White]

There was discrimination but much of it was simply that the guys were supposed to alternate SF or Flying tours and normal branch assignments and many (but not all) did not want to do normal branch assignments. This caused hair pulling by the Branch 'managers' and usually ended up antagonizing everyone involved...

Sincere was a Mike Force guy and later SOG, long time airborne head, When Creighton Abrams died and Fred Weyand became the Chief of Staff in 1974, the Army underwent a purge of the 'Airborne Mafia' -- a lot of old parachute hands were either told to retire or given really poor assignments from which the only escape was to retire -- many did. That purge went from LTGs down into the enlisted ranks; I was flatly told I had too much overseas time, too much airborne time, too much troop unit time and that I'd never again get an airborne Assignment, would go to TRADOC -- which I'd avoided for 25 plus years and that would be followed by a reserve component advisory job -- unless I wanted to go ahead and retire. So, a lot of good folks were retired too early. Abrams wasn't nearly as anti-airborne and SF as he's been painted; Weyand OTOH was really not a fan...

Ah, wonderful Martinsburg. Many fond memories from training at Camp Dawson a few times. Yep on TJJ -- Hotchkiss was a distant relative, mutual several Greats Grandparent was a Co Cdr in the Continental Line at Cowpens among other places and later got a land grant in Kentucky. TJJ got more brevet promotions for bravery in the Mexican War than anyone else and he was prone to put his guns where others would not...

Speaking of guns, best Arty thing I ever saw was two M110s firing simultaneous direct fire at 350m at an unsuspecting column of troops...

[Tracker275]

Well, I was all into this thread and wanting to participate as far as the last post by TYR, however...immediately after he posted, this thread went to pieces. I wasn't able to really see where anything was going very clearly after that, because there were a few posts that were more meant for PM conversation vs. open forum.

If this thread would like to continue in the direction that I believe the originator intended, I think that the time that TYR put into a response is well worth reading and restarting from that point. There was a lot of good information that TYR placed in there that answers a lot of questions about what would be ideal for the Afghanistan theater. Much of what he and I stated appears to be tied together real closely, and what I noticed is that although both Iraq and Afghanistan are pretty much two completely different war zones, there are many similarities. However, I'm not seeing the lessons learned within both theaters being looked at very closely by senior leadership.

[Ken White]

Well, I was all into this thread and wanting to participate as far as the last post by TYR, however...immediately after he posted, this thread went to pieces. I wasn't able to really see where anything was going very clearly after that, because there were a few posts that were more meant for PM conversation vs. open forum.

That's one way to do it, others may have a different take. Best solution it seems would be to just ignore the digression and say what you think is important.

If this thread would like to continue in the direction that I believe the originator intended.

I think he got his question answered and left...

I think that the time that TYR put into a response is well worth reading and restarting from that point...and what I noticed is that although both Iraq and Afghanistan are pretty much two completely different war zones, there are many similarities. However, I'm not seeing the lessons learned within both theaters being looked at very closely by senior leadership.

I suspect the last point is due to their recognition that the real answer to the original query is very much dependent on the old METT-TC factors (and, in this case, ALL of those factors) and what else is going on in the theater or area. That is, there are so many variations that the question could be discussed for a great many years with continually evolving answers. That and the fact there is no best answer...

You and Tyr both had good points, so did several others who apparently digressed from the thread and some who did not digress also had good ideas and comments. Discussion boards are like that. The bad and the good all roil together.