FYI. I had excellent results employing the M2 Bradley in Urban COIN ops. Very flexible, right mix of firepower/armor. Was my preferred vehicle when paired with tanks and/or HMMWV's to round out the options.Originally Posted by William F. Owen
FYI. I had excellent results employing the M2 Bradley in Urban COIN ops. Very flexible, right mix of firepower/armor. Was my preferred vehicle when paired with tanks and/or HMMWV's to round out the options.
Sure. UK all swear by the Warrior ICV, but you had good results compared to what? Given what we actually now know about conflict in 21st century, would we still design ICV's today?
The same issue goes for right mix of Firepower/Armour.
M2 Bradleys and Warriors would have melted like butter if they had been subject to the hits that IDF Merkava, Puma and Achzarit were subject too - which is why the IDF now considers Namer to be the minimum level of protection.
Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"
- The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
- If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition
**Ponders**
I want to make two points: the first on the HR sub-thread, the second on the core article that started it all.
First, simply sniping pirates from a destroyer deck, while difficult, is a perfectly plausible deployment strategy for Marine snipers/scout-snipers. That, however, is not HR. It's not a question of "adequate" training, but one of "training to a level of ability necessary to accomplish the mission".
Just like sending Regular Infantry to try and conduct HR is not a good idea if you want live hostages later, sending "regular" snipers in to attempt an HR mission is a very bad idea: their job is to drill targets. Period. That's eminently acceptable for the conventional, as well as most COIN, environments but is a recipe for a PR disaster of "Heroic Merchant Captain Killed In Botched Rescue Attempt - Pundits Compare To Iran Rescue Mission" proportions.
The Marine Corps does not train for the HR mission, as it regards it as an unneeded and unwanted diversion of scarce resources and money - it's more important to train for the more-likely missions, and leave highly specialized missions to highly-specialized troops.
Can "regular" snipers (from any/all services) execute an HR mission? Probably...Maybe...Not words I would want to hear in an NSC/NCA-level meeting, with the Press Corps camping in the Press Room, and with 15 minutes to go to camera...
*~*~*~*
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On to the MotJagRegt concept:
In OIF, the 82nd ABN could have been inserted deep, to cut the roads to Syria. They might have even been able to withstand attacks from all directions long enough to be relived via the ground attack, with minimal air support in the meanwhile: the IRGC and "Saddam Fedayeen" were certainly not the Waffen SS, whatever the History Channel would like us to think.
The extraordinarily-good reasons for not doing that were touched on previously, namely that large-scale, airborne/airmobile deep insertion died at Arnhem -- and for those not paying attention the first time around, the French were kind enough to provide a refresher at Dien Bien Phu.
There was a lot of innovation in the 30's, but that was because there was so much new technology out there, no one knew what it was capable of. "War-game" theory was not well-developed at the time, more closely resembling "Strategos" than actual "combat simulation", so no one could substantively estimate what would happen when you threw "X"-unit into "Y"-mission against "Z"-force[s].
A whole slew of good people on all sides got very, very dead to figure out what those limits were.
Basically, the concept just doesn't work: either the force is heavy enough to survive on its own - meaning that it will be extremely hard to transport it to the target by air - or it will be too light to accomplish anything of substance on the ground, should it run into real opposition.
After WW2, the Army took a good, long look at the Airborne, and concluded - as someone else pointed out, via elocution by The Gavin - that deep strike by Airborne was well and truly dead -- the Army then re-focused Airborne on short-range missions, either reinforcing ground troops, acting as "first-in" attackers to meet in-coming ground troops in short order, or as "air-landed infantry", which seems to have worked fairly well, so far http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita.../airborne2.htm
On the Fallschirmjaegers: Certainly, they were some tough cookies, but all airborne forces of WW2 were a cut above conventional "mudders", at least in the early days. In the end, however, they were simply "elite infantry": you can't keep getting the drop on the other guy forever, a vital component to airborne ops, and the Germans had to learn that the hard way.
On the VDV: Take another look at those units, and the concepts behind them -- they're suicide troops. Their mission is to function as human cruise missiles, rather disturbingly like modern suicide-bombers: go deep into the enemy's underbelly, and do as much damage as possible. If they survive long enough for a ground offensive to get to them, they get 20 acres and a mule -- more than likely, they will die gloriously for the Rodina, sacrificing themselves to bog the enemy down.
Goes right back to wargaming: the VDV only survives if the air umbrella and air-bridge is maintained against an aggressive and highly PO'd enemy. Just look at how fragile the regular Russian ground-pounders in Afghanistan became after their CAS retreated before the Stinger - the muj didn't even have a single Cessna 172, but once they got ANY effective weapon to counter Russian Air - and the Russians couldn't counter that threat - the Russian war effort evaporated....the VDV are considerably lighter than the Regular Army, and don't have the communications architecture that the US SOCOM has behind it.
"Hey, Leif?! Where'd we leave the boat?"
1 photo set from last Pskov division exercise.
http://pilot.strizhi.info/photos/v/Pskov_2010/
PS can you find foreign equipment
Last edited by kaur; 05-06-2010 at 06:03 AM.
The Iveco 4 x 4? - and there was another vehicle I didn't recognise, plus a small UAV. How am I doing???
PS can you find foreign equipment
Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"
- The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
- If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition
Wilf, you are right! There was Italian Iveco.
UAV is Russian made, but I do understand that Russians have failed seriously in UAV business and intend to start production in joint stock company with Israelis.
Text under the picture says, that Pskov unit has only one buggy.
Text under the picture with ATV's says that those are trophys. If they are trophys, this means that those are Georgian ATV's that Pskov unit brought back from 2008. year war. Maybe text means that those ATV's are hijacked by scouts from OPFOR according to exercise scenario
Last edited by kaur; 05-06-2010 at 07:17 AM.
I said:
According to exercise scenario VDV recce unit ambushed OPFOR unit and continued their mission with hijacked equipment.Text under the picture with ATV's says that those are trophys. If they are trophys, this means that those are Georgian ATV's that Pskov unit brought back from 2008. year war. Maybe text means that those ATV's are hijacked by scouts from OPFOR according to exercise scenario
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