Border Patrol
Michael Yon, with the Queen’s Royal Lancers in Iraq.
LTC Richard B Nixon-Eckersall described the plan to move about 40 miles to another base camp, farther out in the sand dunes, from which to patrol the Iranian border. The commander made clear that something had changed and he thought the likelihood of trouble was high. ...
There is furious debate about armored vehicles in Iraq. There was a time when our own forces were needlessly exposed and being killed by even small attacks. And so we armored up like turtles which greatly helped. But at a cost. Our vehicles break down more, and our humvees have gone from being super-agile to tortoise-like contraptions that get stuck every chance. In this environment, truly out in the boonies, agility, firepower and other qualities often far outweigh the heavy metal. Fact is, there is still a place for unarmored agility.
One armored vehicle was going with us. Although the armor on a Scimitar will stop bullets, its armor will not stop an EFP any more than a turtle shell will stop a canon ball. There is no armor in the American or British militaries that can stop an EFP. The armor can actually worsen the EFP strike because the armor will fragment and slice flesh.
This time though, the British unarmored vehicles were going to be hit not by one, but by many mines.
We loaded up and continued on the recon, and were making a “U” back toward the ambush site but we were actually on a different road. The convoy behind us was heading straight toward the 46 EFPs and two “ball-bearing bombs.”...
Read the rest. The British and the Americans are facing an open hostilities from Iran which it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge. It remains the "War in Iraq" no matter who is fighting it.
posted by wretchardthecat at 6/04/2007 08:51:00 PM
4 Comments:
Our war? Nah not enough Americans have died yet…we are waiting till they do! Tony Snow.
Fun and Games with Iran...weeeeeee. Lets wait till they get nukes.
Axis of Evil?
During the crusades the knights in their "shining" armour were fodder for the swift and agile muhajideen.
The American USMC Muhajideen take the doors off their humvees so they have clear fields of fire and it has been known to intimidate the criminals to the point they abort their ambush.
USMC, ahead of the curve as usual.
Salaam eleicum!
From the 4 Jun 07 issue of Aviation Week:
U.S. recon spacecraft have spotted a training center in Iran that is a duplicate of the governor’s compound in Karbala, Iraq that was attacked in Jan by a special ops unit that killed American and Iraqi soldiers.
Crazy -- the Western desire for shock battle with heavy infantry (and heavy cavalry) versus the Eastern desire for raiding with minimal risk seems handed down unchanged since Marathon and Thermopylae.
The Crusaders lost when the chased down the more agile and lightly armored Arab horsemen. They won when they forced them into straight up battles, which became battles of annihilation.
I suspect this pattern of desire for shock battle to destroy the enemy, and raiding that is risk-containing (you neither destroy the enemy nor are destroyed by him) will continue until there is one raid too far.
It's a mistake to think the war is anything less than global, and that there won't be more attacks. A nuked American City or three would result in the current ROE being thrown away and battles of annihilation planned and implemented.
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