Well I would hope so...
We certainly cannot allow that! Good job in crushing that undue exuberance...Originally Posted by Schmedlap
... It was one of those rare occasions in the Army where everybody was happy.Of course, we did our best to pursue other avenues to crush their enthusiasm, and succeeded spectacularly.
Did not know the Light TOE had three guns per Rifle platoon. That and enough to fill the Library of Congress are among things I didn't know. Or if I did know at one time, I forgot it -- I'm old...
I did and do know that the Army cut the number of Cooks and bought T-rats in order to fill those Light Divs *...
( * Military Trivial Pursuit factoid # 2,961)
Assuming you still had your 6 x SAW, that would have totalled 12 beltfeds to a platoon.
Doesn’t look very light to me though.
Also begs the question (had you carried them all), who would have carried the platoon M16?Only half kidding.
Nothing that results in human progress is achieved with unanimous consent. (Christopher Columbus)
All great truth passes through three stages: first it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
(Arthur Schopenhauer)
ONWARD
I'm not saying that it did. I'm just saying, we had 3 per platoon (at least that company - not sure about the rest of the BN).
Yes, the tactics for jungle warfare differ from those used in Europe and those used in North Africa.
The one fact remains constant and that is conventional foot patrols in open terrain do just not make sense. Can someone tell me what they achieve other than to provide the enemy target practice at a place and time of HIS choosing?
Armies need basic establishment and equipment tables during peacetime.
But when war breaks out surely changes should be accepted to cater for enemy and terrain?
The first "kill" in any war should be the staff officer who when asked to release extra machine guns or the like to a battalion replies that he can't because they already have what the equipment tables allow.
I don't think anyone of note fails to realize that.
Which is why most units in Iraq and Afghanistan made or make extensive use of vehicles -- lots of vehicles, usually four to six per infantry platoon -- especially issued in excess of normal allowances to generally preclude foot patrols where they are inappropriate.
OTOH, in urban areas and in some mountainous areas as opposed to generally open area, some foot movement is desirable or necessary
The problem in Afghanistan in particular is in the areas of the nation with terrain that is largely mountainous but does have occasional broad valleys. The lack of roads and a conscious and deliberate decision by the US not to use tracked vehicles means that some insertions of infantry units by truck or helicopter are going to occasionally have to cross open ground. More common is foot movement in the mountains themselves where vehicle movement is not possible.
If you have solutions to those two problems, we'd be glad to hear them...
The Weakness of Taliban Marksmanship
Nothing new, besides the interesting focus on the eyesight, but still a very good overview. Some of the Taliban's problems are also an issue for "Western" soldiers, even if less pronounced.
The overall bad shooting might be, as I said before, one of the root which causes the Taliban to focus on crew served weapons, with many supporting a few better trained, disciplined or more talented fighters. It might also promote, among other things the overall use of IEDs.Using the iron sights on an infantry rifle requires a mix of vision-related tasks. A shooter must be able to discern both the rifle’s rear and front sights (directly in front of the shooter’s face) and also see the target (as far as several hundred yards off). Then the former must be aligned with the latter. This is difficult in ideal circumstances for lightly trained gunmen; for some people with bad vision, it might be almost impossible. Over the years many officers and noncommissioned officers who train Afghan police and soldiers have said that a significant number of Afghan recruits struggle because of their eyesight. The Taliban recruit their fighters from the same population; poor vision can be expected to be a factor in their poor riflery.
Firn
Can someone define "suppression" please?
I have learnt something here, I thought the TB could shoot.
But... follow the link to the New York Times and you see a certain Captain quoted as saying: "[Bravo Company] has participated in over 200 patrols and been in countless engagements over the course of six months with actual boots on the ground... [Bravo Company] had no Marines struck by machine-gun or small-arms rounds, some really close calls but no hits."
No hits.
Question. Do the Marines include a 'crack and thump' demonstration in their basic training.
Question. Who gives the order to 'take cover' when contact is made?
I remember back almost 40 years to the section battle drills lesson and no 2 being: "Reaction to effective enemy fire" on the command 'Take Cover' - dash, down, crawl, observe sights, fire.
What is effective enemy fire? 'Enemy small arms fire which would cause heavy casualties should the section continue on its course'. 'Sections must be trained to continue the advance in spite of the noise of fire directed at someone else regardless of stray rounds amongst them.' 'It is very important that at the first sign of effective enemy fire your section does not instantaneously drop to the ground in fright as would be a natural reaction.'
(Brit Infantry Platoon in Battle c1960(I think))
Question: what is the role of the infantry?
Answer: to close with and kill the enemy (from 30-40 years ago - modern role definition likely to be be broad and vague).
How is it possible for a whole company to be 'pinned down' when they have taken no causalities?
I wonder what the good captain's kill rate was for the 'countless engagements' his company had with the TB?
Are the warning bells ringing yet?
...and I ask again (this time with tears in my eyes) what this company was doing in open ground?
I can define suppression
It's a technique, generally involving a large amount of inaccurate fire that will cause poorly trained fighters to hesitate or do dumb things. Or it's really accurate fire that kills hostiles no matter how well trained and drives them off, induces them to surrender or renders them ineffective.
Actually, suppression varies from time to time, fight to fight and place to place and it generally falls between those two poles...I suspect they're like most other groups of fighters, some can shoot, most cannot. I also suspect the most of the Enfields, Nagants and Kar98s are dying of old age and that poorly maintained AKs, never very accurate, are the majority of weapons possessed. Eyesight is probably the least of their problems. The most effective weapon they have are the PKMs and variants -- not all that accurate but a lot lead, a lot of range...I have learnt something here, I thought the TB could shoot.Dunno, probably not. I told you our training was marginal...Question. Do the Marines include a 'crack and thump' demonstration in their basic training.In well trained units -- and we do have some -- no one but well trained troops will do what's right. In poorly trained units -- and by definition, 50% are below average -- no one and everyone will dive for cover usually in the wrong place, thus the success of the IED placement by the bad guys. The VC used to plant Schu mines and bullet mines right where most people would put their foot in crossing a ditch. Good units picked up on that and never had a problem; poor ones suffered casualties.Question. Who gives the order to 'take cover' when contact is made?Good units do that. British and thus Rhodesian and South African training practice places that type of training in the institution and reinforces it frequently. The US wrongly relies on units to conduct such training, it is tedious and boring and therefor many marginal units gloss over it. Dumb, I know but there you are...I remember back almost 40 years to the section battle drills lesson...Couldn't agree more. Again, good US units..What is effective enemy fire? 'Enemy small arms fire which would cause heavy casualties should the section continue on its course'. 'Sections must be trained to continue the advance in spite of the noise of fire directed at someone else regardless of stray rounds amongst them.' 'It is very important that at the first sign of effective enemy fire your section does not instantaneously drop to the ground in fright as would be a natural reaction.'
(Brit Infantry Platoon in Battle c1960(I think))Yes. It is nicer to be vague than to advocate excessive kinetic action (whatever the heck that means...).Question: what is the role of the infantry?
Answer: to close with and kill the enemy (from 30-40 years ago - modern role definition likely to be be broad and vague).Wasn't there, can't say -- may or may not have been the whole company and we don't know what someone's definition of 'pinned down' is. What I can say is that the US Armed Forces (NOT the US public) have gotten excessively risk averse because said Forces senior leaders have assumed wrongly that the public is so concerned and have been assured (correctly) that Congress is unduly concerned about casualties (mostly on a partisan basis and dependent upon whether or not some political capital can be garnered by raising the issue...).How is it possible for a whole company to be 'pinned down' when they have taken no causalities?My warning bells went off in 1950, been downhill ever since. Only saving grace is that too many turbines and explosions with no hearing protection (can't really fight while wearing it...) have destroyed my hearing so I no longer hear the ever louder bells.Are the warning bells ringing yet?
I do however see on a daily basis the stupidity that is poor training and its results. And that's what you are really addressing; the techniques you cite we know and most get practiced by most units; slug units don't do it -- it is a training quality issue. We're poor.Nothing to cry about. Answer's simple -- they got sent there by their Battalion Commander for some reason. Whether there was an alternative or not, we don't know -- we weren't there. Sometimes one has to cross open ground, that's a military and tactical given. That's why extended order drills are just as important as action on contact drills. All the world is not bush and bush like close range contacts are not the world norm. The real issue is not that one should not ever do so, it is how one goes about it when it is necessary......and I ask again (this time with tears in my eyes) what this company was doing in open ground?
Nor do we really know what has happened much of anywhere from that shotgun NYT article which is full of a lot of foolishness. The writer is a former US Marine Officer so has enough knowledge to be dangerous in comparison to most of his media contemporaries but he's still reporting snapshots and his Editors might well have knocked out something he wrote that would be meaningful to thee and me but wasn't to said Editor or the average NYT reader.
I didn't learn anything from it I haven't seen elsewhere and in more detail.
Regrettably, I've learned it is not a good idea to form firm opinions base on reporting in the US media. Accept it as written or presented but reserve judgment until it gets corroborated by at least three preferably competing sources...
Last edited by Ken White; 04-03-2010 at 07:40 PM. Reason: Typos
I'm sure some doctrine gurus can give a more book-correct definition. My plain-English definition is that "suppression" is what you attempt to do to the enemy to get him to remain in one location and not fire back at you with "effective fire" (as you correctly defined it) that can prevent you from maneuvering upon him.
If you have been suppressed, then he has done it to you.
In my experience, nobody. If your team leader needs to tell you, then he's probably going to be annoyed. Seeing the team leader taking cover should be all the prompting that a member of that team should need. The team leader makes that decision on his own - a fairly simple decision that any rifleman can be trusted to make.
Well, if you're taking a large volume of accurate fire and it is coming from an area full of civilians then it might be wise to hunker down, look for a way to break contact, and take precautions to make sure you are not flanked. But, I think I see your point. Not many units in Iraq or A'Stan have truly been "pinned down."
Added: Looks like Ken White pressed "submit" about one second before me. I agree with his post above.
Last edited by Schmedlap; 04-03-2010 at 07:40 PM.
I don't claim to have solutions but I do have comments. When I read some of this stuff bells start ringing and lights go on.
It is pointless patrolling open ground on foot or by vehicle unless the enemy are to be found sitting in the open ground.
If one assumes that movement on foot in the open is merely to cross what the commander sees as a "danger area" and where some degree of tactical maneuver procedure is applied then OK. To sweep through open ground is plain ridiculous.
Vehicles. What good is a vehicle 'patrol' confined to a road which gives many minutes of advanced noise warning to the enemy to clear the roads and standby to fire the IEDs? Crazy.
As a 2Lt I learnt this first hand. Not by getting shot up thank heavens but through the futility of it all. (I wish I could attach images to illustrate my point). I spent days patrolling commercial farmland for signs of insurgents having being briefed off a 1:50,000 map. On the ground all the arable land was plowed and at that time fallow. The only areas of bush were rocky outcrops and low lying river lines. The rocky outcrops were in the main surrounded by open plowed land. (yes giving good vision of any approach but effectively trapping insurgents in the 'island' of bush - later during fire force operations where insurgents made such serious mistakes it resulted in a turkey shoot) the river lines likewise allowed for movement only in two directions - up stream of down stream and we always approached from upstream. I started marking up my maps with all the clear areas and bushy areas where there was some potential for a base camp and handing them in during post patrol debriefings. I was wasting my time. It was about the same time I met a young pilot in the officers mess who had recently finished and air recce course and after I told him my frustrations he told me straight out that it would take him a few hours to 'clear' what had taken me days of patrolling to achieve. I was wasting my time. I wanted to go up with him and see what he saw.
It did not take long for us to get a list of possible camps from these recce pilots and would visit them one by one with the fire force to tick them off one way or the other. The success rate got better as the pilots learnt more and especially when the next day they were taken to the sites to briefly walk the ground to convert what they saw with mark one-eyeball into the reality on the ground. Of course nowadays he could take a night flight over the area with a terminal imaging camera to take a look. It would need some interpretation to ensure we were not going to put an attack in on a herd of cattle (we did a few of those - the troopies loved them as we normally took the cow home to roast on the fire - we call it a braaivleis). So effectively blind routine foot and vehicle patrols were not only dangerous but also pretty pointless and not a productive use of resources.
We could still use the roads as the mines were not command detonated. The Pookie was a wonderful little vehicle which detected landmines. On one move at night to collect patrols along the road running West from Victoria Falls we picked up two landmines which we would otherwise have hit either on the outward journey or on the way back. I guess the insurgents sitting and watching from the North bank of the Zambezi were disappointed their efforts came to naught. Now if they were able to detonate the mines on command it would have been a different story. So if you ask me whether it is sane to travel on roads where at any place and at any time some guy with a cell phone can blow you to hell and back... it is not. You just have to make a new plan to get around.
Last edited by JMA; 04-03-2010 at 08:17 PM.
According to the Marine Corps Times General Mattis made a push to get the Marine Corps to switch to 6.8 SPC. The article discusses the use of the 5.56 SOST MK318 MOD 1 round now in use by the Corps in Afghanistan. It will be some time before we know how well the SOST round worked. I think changing to the 6,8 right now would be a huge pain the ass, but down the road when things quiet down a bit a combat cartridge should be adopted that replaces the 5.56 and 7.62x51 - 6.5 Grendel in a low recoil assault rifle. Anyways, at least Mattis is thinking outside the box and hopefully he will be in a position in the next few years (Commandant - depending on his age) to make the change for the Marine Corps. I know it is unlikely because the Corps generally piggybacks off the contracts that the army signs; and the army's willingness to change cartridges.
I read Mr. Owen's article about 5.56 and I agree as it relates to the fight right now.
It's a lot easier to score when you got the drop on somebody. Initiating contact is for all intents and purposes taking a good bead on a target and firing when ready.
One of the most frustrating things we dealt with in OIF (and by we I mean the various units I was with in Iraq) is that nearly every time we had SAF contact it was reacting. By the time we got weapons up and ready to return fire it was gone. Now most of the time it was totally ineffective, but every now and then it wasn't. Keep adding that up over time and ineffective SAF turns into well placed harassing fire.
Few are the problems that cannot be solved by a suitable application of concentrated firepower.
Or he's out of his mind pissed off that he's risking being shot to walk across the battlefield screaming at someone to get down so he doesn't get hit.
Schmedlap hit it in that the modern Army dismounted teams are trained enough to know when to get down and/or find cover without being told.
There are references above to companies being pinned down. I'm not sure from what war those references are from, because the US Army (and I'm thinking the Marines also) haven't maneuvered companies in a situation to be pinned down in a very long time.
Few are the problems that cannot be solved by a suitable application of concentrated firepower.
From studies of guerilla warfare, and speaking to them (jungle warafre), harrassing fire is a good option, and booby traops a better one. Getting into a fire fight/brass up/ whatever term you use generally sees the professional army win, as they have the back up to destroy your means of escape.
Using harassisng fire or booby traps by the time the other professional units arrive; you have hidden your weapon and gone back to farmng, sleeping, doing whatever; left the arae, or hiding. Only the most highly trained units near an area that is booby trapped without pioneer/engineer support.
A marksman is even more effective but the beaten zone of a PK/PKM is not to be sneezed at.
Watch those bells, us old guys have tinnitis and you may hear something that wasn't.
Comment away, that's why we're hereUh. Well, yeah. I think we can all agree with that. However, one may have to cross open ground on foot or by vehicle to get from one's current location to the possible location of the evil enema. What then?It is pointless patrolling open ground on foot or by vehicle unless the enemy are to be found sitting in the open ground.Well, we can agree on that. That answers my question and trashes your objection, though...If one assumes that movement on foot in the open is merely to cross what the commander sees as a "danger area" and where some degree of tactical maneuver procedure is applied then OK. To sweep through open ground is plain ridiculous.Of course it is. What does one do, however, if one has to move a convoy down such a road for resupply purposes because of a lack of any other way to resupply a location deemed tatically necessary..
Vehicles. What good is a vehicle 'patrol' confined to a road which gives many minutes of advanced noise warning to the enemy to clear the roads and standby to fire the IEDs? Crazy.Wish it were that simple. While I certainly agree with your statement and I'm sure many folks in Afghanistan also agree, there are times when one has to cross open areas; there are times when one has to travel on roads that are highly probably going to have mines or IEDs. It does the people that have to do those things little good to tell them or the world that it's insane -- they know that. War is insane. However, if you have to fight one do your very best and learn from your experience -- just do not presume that your experience in one war translates well to others. Every war is different. While there are timeless tactical principles that can generally be applied, there are no guarantees that they can always be applied. Or that they'll always work. It is also dangerous to assume from fragmented reporting and a position of less than full knowledge that what appears to have happened actually did happen; often the actuality is totally unlike the initial reports...As a 2Lt I learnt this first hand...So if you ask me whether it is sane to travel on roads where at any place and at any time some guy with a cell phone can blow you to hell and back... it is not. You just have to make a new plan to get around.
Worst thing about wars is not everyone will do it your way. Troops learn that, so they adapt and cope -- just like you did. These kids aren't stupid, they, like you did, are doing what they have to do the best way they can.
Thou, Zhou,
are a master of understatement!
What would be the typical purpose of a vehicle patrol?
Few roads all in the valleys littered with IEDs...
There may be cases where for inexplicable reasons a resupply has to take place via road in a high IED risk area and that takes one back to the Portuguese in Mozambique and their monthly resupply runs which were normally at walking pace and experienced an ambush or a mine incident virtually every time. Like lambs to the slaughter.
I do agree to a large extent that the military has a 'duty of care' towards their men. I believe that the families of troops killed by IEDs should explore their legal options...
Last edited by JMA; 04-04-2010 at 12:11 PM.
Yes exactly, every war is different and that is why historical establishment and equipment tables from some past war, doctrine strategy and tactics from some past wars and all predicated on a very different enemy in very different terrain conditions should be carefully scrutinised and radically changed if necessary.
Simply forcing troops to reinvent the wheel themselves with experience paid for in blood is not in my opinion an intelligent approach nor morally, ethically or even legally defensible.
It is seldom up to the 'kids' to change things that lies with the generals and the colonels. The question is how many 'kids' must die before the generals and the colonels to ring the changes?
By any definition open ground is classed as a 'danger area' which requires tactical maneuver and the positioning of troops/weapons in positions ready to provide covering/supporting fire immediately they be needed. In any war, in any terrain, in any theater it is surely poor/weak/incompetent leadership not to select lines of advance so as to avoid 'danger areas' and if unavoidable to use appropriate tactical maneuver to prevent troops being caught in open ground by enemy fire.
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