Weight of Combat Gear Is Taking Toll

[ganulv]

The armor is 60% of the equation

Do the U.S. Army and Marine Corps have official doctrine on the use of body armor in jungle operations? That’s one environments where I find it hard to imagine that the benefits would outweigh the costs.

[carl]

Do the U.S. Army and Marine Corps have official doctrine on the use of body armor in jungle operations? That’s one environments where I find it hard to imagine that the benefits would outweigh the costs.

I don't know. But your comment reminds me of something that I have for a long time thought would be a good idea. The military should wargame some old situations the we know the outcome of and introduce modern elements to see what effect they would have upon the outcome. The thing that made me think of this was the Marines fighting their way out of the frozen Chosin through Red Chinese light infantry. Would they have been able to do it if the Red Chinese had had something like shoulder fired anti-aircraft missiles, something that light infantry could carry, that would have kept the Corsairs and Skyraiders off their backs?

I asked Gian Gentile once if that had ever been done and I think he said he didn't know. But it would be an extremely useful thing to do now, especially in the light of your observation.

Say we took the example of the 5307th Composite Unit (Provisional), Merrill's Marauders. That unit operated for a long time in the tropics, depended upon mobility and eventually broke down because the men were just pushed too far. If people who knew what they were about looked at the experience of that unit and added 30 pounds of body armor to each man's load, what would the result be? That would be very useful, and probably alarming, information.

You could do the same thing with all of our WWII ops in the Pacific, with the 3rd Infantry Division's ops in Sicily, even with Roger's Rangers. You could do it with LRRPs in Vietnam. Those guys had important effects on the fighting. Could they have done it with 30 pounds of body armor?

The basic premise is that the need for those types of ops will arise again and when they do could the modern Army and USMC do what they successfully did in the past.