Maybe we should remind the "resistance fighters" that we have the W48 155 MM Nuclear artillery shell
Posted on 12/11/2004 10:14:03 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
FORWARD OPERATING BASE KALSU, Iraq — This is a graveyard for Humvees, the final resting place for the hulking vehicles felled by insurgents' roadside bombs.
In a parking lot, the U.S. military's most common personnel carriers lie flattened with noses down in the mud. Their metal carcasses are barely recognizable. Tires have been splayed to the sides or blown away entirely. Shrapnel has burst holes in unprotected parts of the vehicles, as if they were tinfoil.
The nine mangled Humvees here have been destroyed by what the military calls improvised explosive devices, or IEDs.
"Now this one here, you can see the IED tore the whole back end off the vehicle. It's just gone," said Sgt. Patrick Parchment of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, which operates south of Baghdad.
"The front is sitting cock-eyed. And that's steel," he said, showing a visitor another severed vehicle.
The blasted remains do not inspire optimism about the fate of the Marines who had been riding in them. Sixteen Marines of the 24th have died since arriving here in July; 259 have been wounded. The majority of the casualties were caused by IEDs, as Marines must daily brave a gantlet of roadside bombs on highways and dirt roads that cut through farms.
The Marines and Army have almost 20,000 Humvees in Iraq, according to the Pentagon. But a quarter of the vehicles do not have proper armor.
The problem came into focus this week when a Tennessee National Guardsman told Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that troops had to forage for scrap metal to weld to their vehicles for protection. The confrontation, at a U.S. base in Kuwait, triggered an uproar and raised questions about whether the Pentagon was doing enough to provide safety equipment ..........
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
I think this is a lot bigger than Rumsfeld...
I saw $150,000 for the armored version.
I believe that an Israeli Merkava Tank [70+ tons]was disabled by an IED last year and that is one of the most heavily armoured Tanks in the world.
The solution is to hunt down the bombers and kill the bad guys.
Everything you've stated is well within the realm of possibility; no doubt about it. However, vehicular patrolling in an urban environment - even in a heavily armored vehicle - is exceedingly dangerous. More heavily armored vehicles, including the M-2 and M-3 Bradleys, M-1 Abrams, etc. are intended for operations in a more open environment where they can engage targets out to 2-plus kilometers. There are certainly methods that could be used to make the HUMVEE more survivable in the event of a close-proximity explosion; however, nothing is going to protect the crew/patrol from a properly planned and coordinated ambush with heavy, crew-served weapons or the detonation of a large explosion near the vehicle; armor plating might protect the crew from shrapnel, but it won't protect them from being tossed about the interior of the vehicle like rag dolls. (For obvious reasons, they don't wear seatbelts.) Like all military operations, there is a fine balance between safety of the personnel, tactical effectiveness, and accomplishment of the mission; every commander agonizes over those decisions and every soldier and marine on the ground understands that balance to some degree.
There was a post a couple of days ago pointing out that most of the IEDs were fired by RF using cell phone, grarage door controls, etc. It strikes me that a simple procedure would be to jam those devices by broadcasting at those frequencies. IMHO Are there any EE out there?
That link is about defeating the RPG....see the documents on the armorflap keyword list, for scattered discussion about defeating the IED RF scheme....
A 155 or 152 will damage ,if not destroy, almost anything in the inventory. Big bullets with lots of filler . A HMMMV is a light truck, ergo, not a tank. An RPG , which is designed to nail a tank ,will detroy any HMMMV. The armor issue is a distraction.
enlightenment.... it should be.....
It's a freaking jeep, not a tank.
Bingo! It's a JEEP, people!
Can you image WWII soldiers saying their Jeeps were not armored? That the canvas sides were not real effective against anything?
If a Humvee is not protecting its occupants, maybe that vehicle is not appropriate for that area. Maybe we should be using an M-1?
Maybe we should remind the "resistance fighters" that we have the W48 155 MM Nuclear artillery shell
Muttly WANT !
Sadly, (IMO) it appears that we still don't know what to go to a guerrilla war with.
L0L simmer down big fella!
...oh Santa...!......
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