Apaches, Abrams and Burning Hostages..

[muckmaw]

A few things I've noticed over the past few days...

Anyone else disappointed in the performance of the Apache helicopter and the M1A1 Abrams tank?

Seems the Iraqi insurgents have been able to take down and apache this morning. I never thought this aircraft was so vulnerable to small arms fire. I don't thing the Iraqis have more than RPGS but I guess I was mistaken in my belief that these helicopters were more durable. And what about the Abrams? Same deal here. I thought only anti-tank weapons or armor piercing shells would do it in.

Thank god we never fought the Soviets huh?

Final thought. Seems the Iraqi's are like a child with a new toy. They found the world is outraged if the set fire to people or corpses. Shooting or stabbing is not enough to get on CNN. Now the buzz word it "Burn". First, they treathen to burn the Japanese captives...not kill, Burn alive. Now they are threatening to kill, THEN burn the American captive. They really don't understand Americans, do they? We like revenge in this country.

And whats with Al-Jazeera? Can we just change the name of this station to Allah Ackbar or something else terrorist love. I mean, this is their target audience after all.

[Mark Luper]

I was a little surprised at the suseptability of the Abrams to the RPG also.  I may not understand the power of the RPG or have a false sense of the impermiability of the Abrams.

[VOR]

I rode around in the M1 series for 7 years before I reclassed to my new job. Bear in mind that I never took fire while in one, but overall I think it's still the best thing going MBT-wise (I'll explain my opinion shortly).

For the most part the "legend" of the Abrams was born during the first Gulf war vs. Iraqi armor (T-72 being their top of the line system). We could exploit a 2km+ standoff distance vs. their stuff while in the open desert. When they would actually score a hit vs. an M1, they would fail to penetrate for a couple of reasons:

1. In "tank country" i.e. the open desert, the crew has the luxury of always facing the enemy head-on, thus placing the most effective armor forward. The frontal armor on this and many other modern Chobham equipped tanks is virtually impossible to penetrate with a direct-fire weapon.

2. The Iraqi kinetic-energy ammo in use at the time had a penetrator made of (no kidding) scrap metal instead of a heavy metal. Most likely this was due to a lack of depleted uranium/tungsten etc. There was a much greater threat from their heat ammo than their sabot round, but due to velocity the heat ammo is more difficult to effectively employ at maximum range.

The M1 is anything but invulnerable. If you know where to hit it and can get close enough with the right kind of weapon you can disable it without too much trouble just like any other tank in the world. (Pardon me for not elaborating here.) It does, however, most likely have the highest crew survivability of any MBT out there. It also has a distinct advantage over the Iraqi stuff in the areas of fire control, automotives, serviceability, lethality and detection cababilities.

As for the Apache...same thing applies within the limits of the actual amount of armor you can put on an aircraft and still expect it to fly. I saw one last year that had taken a hit from an RPG that blew the left wing stub completely off and saw another that looked like swiss cheese from the *hundreds* of small arms hits it had taken. Both were able to RTB safely without injury to the crew.

Remember when the F117 was shot down over Serbia a couple years ago? After all, it's just an airplane powered by an engine flown by a pilot. It's not like the finger of "COD" is pushing it through the skies.  

Anyway...hope this sheds a little light on the legend and brings things into perspective. Perfect? No. Better than the other guy's? Yes!

[_Schadenfreude_]

The weapon systems in question were designed for conventional open country warfare vs the Warsaw pact - in operations similar to those conditions - ie Gulf War 1, they excelled.

The weapons are currently being used for close combat in a FIBUA battle where most of their advantages of range and frontal armour arc in the case of the mbt and manouverability in the case of the AH64 are negated.

[Westy]

"The weapon systems in question were designed for conventional open country warfare vs the Warsaw pact..."

 The Warsaw Pact had even superior weapons and much better training than what is being encountered in Iraq. So if small arms and rpg's can knock down Apache's and disable M1's think of how bad they would have faired in a European Theatre of war.
 In all honesty I think the public is not getting the whole story about what the enemy has at thier disposal for weapons. In other words don't trust everything you hear and you can bank on being given propoganda to support moral- at home and the "front" - rther than the cold, hard truth.

 An example; In the first Iraq war the US kept bragging about how fantastic the Patriot missile system was working when in fact the systems results were dismal.

 Another;  the IRaqui Repub Guard was an easy rollover because they were dumb and demoralized. Yet if you read the official AAR's you can see they were anything but and that "lady luck" had quite a lot to do with saving the arses of several groups of coalition forces.

[Fishu]

Let's not either forget it's even more difficult when you can't just root out the enemy with an artillery barrage or shooting with mortars and cannons directly at the 'suspected' enemy...  or you'll danger killing lots of civilians and get bad fame (and which would lead to exponential growth of the enemies)

So the enemy has all the advantage in initiating the fight, therefore most likely most of the losses are caused in the surprises rather than direct fights.

Just like when during "the war" few apaches flew into a well planned ambush, with the result of most choppers getting damaged and one chopper lost.
...and the weapons used were simplistic.

Everything can look nice and tandy, when suddenly a truck driver pulls over, grabs RPG, fires and drives away.
Not much use of the hi-tech.
Then you can't either blast every vehicle on the road you 'suspect' the fire came from.

[Orig]

This sounds like an "I got hit by one ping and died!" AH thread.

US forces are shot at every day.  It's not just one attempt a day either, it's hundreds or thousands of attempts every day.  If even one in a thousand attempts succeeds, you get casualties.  The same goes for helicopters.  Nearly every single flight over there comes under fire of one sort or another, whether it's an 80 year old firing his WWI era rifle from his back porch, or a Syrian firing a smuggled SA-18 from the middle of a crowded marketplace.  Add up enough attempts, and some of them are going to succeed.

Loudly proclaiming the ineffectiveness of a tank and helicopter because a couple of tanks were disabled and one helicopter got shot down shows a complete lack of understanding of the nature of combat.  It's not just one guy with a gun vs. one helicopter in a dueling arena, where you can look at an isolated result and state that the loser sucks and the winner rules.

You'll probably never know what brought down that apache, but it probably wasn't just some guy with a rifle or even a single missile.  Enough directed fire can take down any military system and sometimes the troops have to expose themselves to that kind of fire in order to achieve their objective.  That's part of the nature of combat and the result of one engagement says little about the capability of either side.  It can be noted however that in the fiercest fighting we've seen in a year, fighting that started off with a wave of ambushes, fighting that spans most of the country involving well over a hundred thousand combatants, we've lost a couple dozen troops, a couple of tanks, and one attack helicopter.  The loss of any lives is tragic but an accountant might view that as not being too bad of a showing by US and allied troops.

Muckmaw, I'm not sure the Iraqi opponents would share your dim view of the Apache given the losses they're taking vs. their own record of successes.  They're shooting at every one of our helicopters and usually not succeeding in shooting them down.  That sounds like they're fairly durable to me.

[_Schadenfreude_]

If you'd like to try gaming out any small scale conflict from 1945 to 2010 try this free game.....

http://linetap.com/www/drg/SPCamo-4.htm

They do WW2 too.....

[Monk]

I was on a M1 in the first Gulf War, took numerous hits.
Outstanding weapon system.

[lasersailor184]

Think of it this way.



A helocopter is an expensive aircraft filled with tiny fragile pieces  in tight spaces that like to break if someone sneezes wrong.

[Maverick]

There is no such thing as an invulnerable weapon system, period. Get out of the arcade game mentality when considering real world weaponry.

The weapons systems are performing in an admirable fashion but anything can be defeated especially in close quarters. Try comparing the losses in equipment to what happened during WW2 and you'll find that the current systems are far better performing than anything before. Urban fighting is the worst possible situation for modern  combat systems.

As to the warsaw pact having better equipment. Pfuey. The SAME warsaw pact equipment is being used in Iraq right now. There isn't the variety that would have been available in a major European conflict but the same lighter weapons systems are being used.

[Monk]

Originally posted by _Schadenfreude_
If you'd like to try gaming out any small scale conflict from 1945 to 2010 try this free game.....

They do WW2 too.....

nice, thanks.

[_Schadenfreude_]

At the moment have Brit armoured recce squadron holding off probes of a Soviet Motor Rifle Regiment.........struggling a bit...run out of Milan's and I'm trying to fall back onto a second line of defence backed up by Striker atgms.....

[Westy]

Maverick the weapons the Warsaw pact would have used would have been far superior to what the Iraqi's are currently using.  I did not infer that it would be far superior to the US/UK's gear.
 Most of what the Iraqi's have (based on what they are using)is old and consists of simple mortars, AK's, grnd-grnd rockets, your basic mg's, basic rpg's and some infra-red type portable missiles which they have fired several of at planes near the Baghdad airport. If they had the more modern missiles (anti-air and tank) that the Warsaw pact and Soviet Union/Russia had (have) then I believe planes would be shot down and alot more tanks would be being knocked out.
 So while there are suspicions that the Iraqi's have a few pieces of modern equipment the Warsaw pact would also have had a hell of alot more of it than the Iraqui's do or did - even on the Iraqi's best day in the pre-1991 era.

[Gnslngr]

I'd like to throw my .02 in here.  I really beleive the main reason that the comache was cancled was because lawmakers and bean counters looked at its price tag and looked at the amount of helos we've lost in iraq so far and said NO FRIGGIN WAY.  The apache is a good weapons system but keep in mind we lost (and i'm quoting my dad here) somthing like 5000 helicopters in veitnam.  I think the costs for the camanchee were like 50 mil a piece (dont qote me on that please)

now as far as the abrams goes.  I was far superior to the t-72.  It faught better at night and in the open battle field.  Those mixed with air superiority and constant bombardment made the iraqi tank corps (first GW) seem like a bunch of ameturs.  

as far as WWIII w/ russia was concerned IRC the soviets have allways had 3 times as many tanks as us and the only way to defend the (cant remember the name) Gap was w/ tacticle nukes.  same concept with air defense, F-102s stayed on stand by with Genie missles around the clock for years to take out formations of badgers and bear cats.

I could be inaccurate about alot of this stuff and i'm just reciting what i've read from memory so please dont ripp me too badly