25mm Cannon

[Manedew]

25mm

Isn't it a bit big to disable a vehical inb on a checkpoint .. seems like somethign that would be used to destroy , not disable... what do you fellas think .. most of you know more about cannon's than the average Joe.  

Destroy first ask questions later...? Couldn't they shoot the tires out with thier m16's?

I imagine I don't have to tell you what i'm talking about ... but I'll find a link later if some of you don't know; but GTG now.

[Hangtime]

dunno. we can second guess the situation all we want.

won't give us a reset.

[davidpt40]

I would guess the troops are a bit itchy since 5 special forces troops were killed by a car bomb, and a reporter was killed also in a similar incident.

[funkedup]

Here's the article.
AFAIK 5.56 won't stop a truck consistently.  Shooting out tires is Hollywood BS.
M2 has only 7.62 mm and 25 mm.
Looks like the CO ordered a warning shot, then a 7.62 disabling shot, and then told them to "stop" the vehicle when there was no response.  The forward platoon apparently didn't acknowledge his requests in real time, but they said they did indeed fire the warning shot.

By William Branigin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 1, 2003; Page A01
NEAR KARBALA, Iraq, March 31 -- As an unidentified four-wheel-drive vehicle came barreling toward an intersection held by troops of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, Capt. Ronny Johnson grew increasingly alarmed. From his position at the intersection, he was heard radioing to one of his forward platoons of M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicles to alert it to what he described as a potential threat.
"Fire a warning shot," he ordered as the vehicle kept coming. Then, with increasing urgency, he told the platoon to shoot a 7.62mm machine-gun round into its radiator. "Stop [messing] around!" Johnson yelled into the company radio network when he still saw no action being taken. Finally, he shouted at the top of his voice, "Stop him, Red 1, stop him!"
That order was immediately followed by the loud reports of 25mm cannon fire from one or more of the platoon's Bradleys. About half a dozen shots were heard in all.
"Cease fire!" Johnson yelled over the radio. Then, as he peered into his binoculars from the intersection on Highway 9, he roared at the platoon leader, "You just [expletive] killed a family because you didn't fire a warning shot soon enough!"
So it was that on a warm, hazy day in central Iraq, the fog of war descended on Bravo Company.
Fifteen Iraqi civilians were packed inside the Toyota, officers said, along with as many of their possessions as the jammed vehicle could hold. Ten of them, including five children who appeared to be under 5 years old, were killed on the spot when the high-explosive rounds slammed into their target, Johnson's company reported. Of the five others, one man was so severely injured that medics said he was not expected to live.
"It was the most horrible thing I've ever seen, and I hope I never see it again," Sgt. Mario Manzano, 26, an Army medic with Bravo Company of the division's 3rd Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment, said later in an interview. He said one of the wounded women sat in the vehicle holding the mangled bodies of two of her children. "She didn't want to get out of the car," he said.
The tragedy cast a pall over the company as it sat in positions it had occupied Sunday on this key stretch of Highway 9 at the intersection of a road leading to the town of Hilla, about 14 miles to the east, near the Euphrates River. The Toyota was coming from that direction when it was fired on.
Dealing with the gruesome scene was a new experience for many of the U.S. soldiers deployed here, and they debated how the tragedy could have been avoided. Several said they accepted the platoon leader's explanation to Johnson on the military radio that he had, in fact, fired two warning shots, but that the driver failed to stop. And everybody was edgy, they realized, since four U.S. soldiers were blown up by a suicide bomber Saturday at a checkpoint much like theirs, only 20 miles to the south.
On a day of sporadic fighting on the roads and in the farms and wooded areas around the intersection, the soldiers of Bravo Company had their own reasons to be edgy. The Bradley of the 3rd Battalion's operations officer, Maj. Roger Shuck, was fired on with a rocket-propelled grenade a couple of miles south of Karbala. No one in the vehicle was seriously injured, but Shuck had difficulty breathing afterward and had to be treated with oxygen, medics said.
That happened after a column of M1 Abrams tanks headed north to Karbala in the early afternoon and returned a couple of hours later. Throughout the day, Iraqis lobbed periodic mortar volleys at the U.S. troops, and Iraqi militiamen and soldiers tried to penetrate the U.S. lines. Later, U.S. multiple-launcher vehicles fired rockets to try to take out the mortar batteries as AH-64 Apache helicopters swooped low over the arid terrain in search of other enemy gun emplacements.
It was in the late afternoon, after this day defending their positions, that the men of Bravo Company saw the blue Toyota coming down the road and reacted. After the shooting, U.S. medics evacuated survivors to U.S. lines south of here. One woman escaped without a scratch. Another, who had superficial head wounds, was flown by helicopter to a field hospital when it was learned she was pregnant.
Johnson said afterward that he initially suspected the driver might have been a suicide bomber, because he did not behave like others who approached the intersection.
"All the other vehicles stopped and turned around when they saw us," he said. "But this one kept on coming." Two days earlier, four 3rd Infantry Division soldiers were killed when a suicide bomber detonated explosives in his car at a checkpoint.
Lt. Col. Stephen Twitty, the 3rd Battalion commander, gave permission for three of the survivors to return to the vehicle and recover the bodies of their loved ones. Medics gave the group 10 body bags. U.S. officials offered an unspecified amount of money to compensate them.
"They wanted to bury them before the dogs got to them," said Cpl. Brian Truenow, 28, of Townsend, Mass.
[In Washington, the Pentagon issued a statement saying the vehicle was fired on after the driver ignored shouted orders and warning shots. The shooting, it said, is under investigation. According to the Pentagon account, the vehicle was a van carrying 13 women and children. Seven were killed, two were injured and four were unharmed, it said, without mentioning any men.]
To try to prevent a recurrence, Johnson ordered that signs be posted in Arabic to warn people to stop well short of the Bradleys guarding the eastern approach to the intersection. Before they could be erected, 10 people carrying white flags walked down the same road. They were seven children, an old man, a woman and a boy in his teens.
"Tell them to go away," Johnson ordered. But he reconsidered when told that the family said their house had been blown up and that they were trying to reach the home of relatives in a safer area.
"They look like they pose no threat at this time," one of the Bradley platoons radioed.
Johnson, a former Army Ranger who parachuted into Panama in 1989, fought in the 1991 Persian Gulf War and rose through the ranks, relented. He ordered his troops to tell the old man that the group could walk around the Bradleys.

[Suave]

Note to self: if I'm driving and I come along a checkpoint manned by soldiers and armored fighting vehicles, stop .

[Mini D]

In regards to the 25mm Cannon question...

If a vehicle is aproaching you want to have the ability to make it stop, not just kill the engine or hit the driver.

MiniD

[mason22]

anybody ever watch cops? always some fool on there without tires sparkin' down the road on their rims.

[Wlfgng]

yep.  too many people get their ideas about reality from TV.. damned shame

ok, there's always The Man Show which tells it like it is, but other than that....    

[funkedup]

Another thing that occured to me:
Do we know for sure that the reporter can tell a 25 mm from 7.62 mm?  They are mounted coaxially on the M2 and maybe he got confused as to which was firing.  Pure speculation on my part.  But I have seen reporters make much bigger mistakes.

[Manedew]

my point is about putting down a road strip to pop tires or shooting at tires(which might work to pop) ... which would warn as opposed to kill with that huge cannon .. depends on a lotta things you & I don't know, ... just asking why such a big gun?

and of course i'm going to question the War ... I never wanted war


--
Just saw your last mesg. funked... maybe they did mistake it ... that's what article I read said .. 25mm ..wouldn't ask if it was somethign smaller .. maybe his mess up?

[Raubvogel]

If was at that checkpoint and I saw a vehicle barreling down on my soldiers after what happened last week, I would put the lives of my soldiers first and foremost on my priority list.

This is an infantry unit, not the LAPD. We don't regularly carry spike strips in our Bradleys.

[Wlfgng]

I guess my point, is that if one is in such a situation...

 having been warned repeatedly for weeks to avoid coalition troops,
 having seen the fighting (and all that includes),   and the fact that this 'area' was full of soldiers, guns, vehicles, etc
 I think it'd be a farily basic reaction for anyone driving through, or toward, such and 'area' to be a bit more alert and cautious than shen on your typical drive home from work.

 So when signs, shouts, warning shots, didn't work ,
coupled with the fact that recent similar situations ended with a suicide bomber killing soldiers, I don't see how a tack-strip would change the situation.  

These are desperate acts carried out by fanatical people.
Very difficult to 'reason' with them and proceed with war in a 'civilized' fashion... which in of itself is a joke.. civilized war.. ha

it sucks that civilians have died and will die,
it sucks that the Iraqi regime have placed so many military targets and threats to the coalition troops next to Iraqi civilians making the threat to them unnecessarily extreme,
 it sucks that we're in this war at all,
it sucks that we were attacked by terrorists
and it sucks that they're still attempting more of the same and need to be dealt with.

[Wlfgng]

We don't regularly carry spike strips in our Bradleys.

if the libs have their way you will be....    doh

[Monk]

I would hate too have been there, trying to decide what to do in a split second.