Glad to have you. it would be nice if you'd go to this LINK and add a little about yourself to that thread.
Quote Originally Posted by Marauder Doc View Post
It seems to me that, contrary to what would be intuitive, armor requirements for COIN work can exceed those of a HIC.
Exceed is perhaps not a good word but there's no denying the benefit if not 'need.'
Why were we able to conduct OIF I with so many units in unarmored vehicles, or lacking SAPI plates, then all of a sudden when we settle in to the nation building effort personal and vehicle armor become a huge issue? Why does the MBT continue to have a valuable role in stabilization operations, long after conventional wisdom would suggest that its use had reached the point of diminishing returns?
It became a huge issue because we had lost our COIN experience and knowledge and blundered about for 18 months, thus giving the opponents time to mount an intensive campaign of attacking with the tons of explosives that Saddam had deliberately scattered all over the nation for just that purpose. Those conditions may or may not ever prevail again.
For COIN I want armored everything, Abrams with TUSK upgrades, up armored HMMWV, the Strykers can come play if they've got their cages on, etc. They have to be able to shrug off a ton of hurt when they're stuck watching an intersection.
You may want to consider what real value the Tanks offer in an urban setting and contemplate their vulnerability in a city before you spend $5M a pop to buy a bunch. I'd also suggest that you take, there are many better vehicles -- the up armored HMMWV exists because it was relatively cheap and rapidly available, not because it's good for much of anything. There are a great many far better vehicles available. I'd also ask why you want to watch an intersection.
For HIC I want light and deployable. Recent HICs have been absurdly fast, measured in days. If we wanna play in those we gotta be able to get in there fast. Not maritime prepositioning fast, C-17 fast. Or else it'll be settled in the UN before we even get there.
You might also consider that the recent HIC involving the West (or Russia) have also been a major state attacking a comparatively fifth rate opponent instead of a near peer. Desert Storm was a total aberration; OIF 1 was close to being the same and the Russian incursion in Georgia was a political effort; a great FSB operation that just happened to use the Russian Armed Forces. Those are all very poor examples to use in determining what future HIC will be like. Lebanon in 2006 is probably closer than any of the others I cited.