[konaice]

"An ideal approach would be be to "swarm" the line of armor with multiple teams and present no fixed "front" for the armor to attack. Each firing location would immediately move, trying to stay behind cover the whole while. In urban areas this would be highly effective and was the tactic most feared by US forces. "

Yes, and US tank and Bradly crews are trained to abondon night vision upon the first flare fireing, and counter with their on flares, and lay down so much small arms and bradly fire that virtally no one could survive. Don't for a minute suppose you can imagine a scenario that someone paid full time th dream these up hasn't already figured out and war-gamed.

However, the point of my post was to point out that that the Iraqis (indeed no arab army) has the ability or discipline to fight the way you imagine on anything but a very small scale.

In fact, If the Iraqi army was given ALL the US/British weapons and the Coalition forces took the Iraqi weapons, we STILL would have beat them. It would perhaps have taken a couple more months.

[Mark Felton]

"Don't for a minute suppose you can imagine a scenario that someone paid full time th dream these up hasn't already figured out and war-gamed."

I used to be paid full-time to design night vision, and fire control systems. Designing for counter-measures and counter-counter measures was part of the process.

I did not say the Iraqi's would win using my approach. They would buy themselves more time however.

If the US troops were forced to abandon their night vision then the Iraqi's would have just achieved a "levelling" of the battlefield capability. Note: US would not necessarily need to abandon their night vision, it mostly just needs a minute or two to adjust. But in that minute there is a time window to strike and then run.

There was no indication that any Iraqi forces had any kind of rigorous training. Training is of course one of the most important factors, but success comes also with knowing the enemy capabilities (and countering them) and pressing all advantages you may have in an overwhelming fashion.

The Iraqi's could have extended the campaign by a few weeks had they fought smarter, and used even the most rudimentary military planning.

Our military certainly planned for them to fight much tougher and smarter than they did. But thankfully they fought like idiots.

Note: One of the biggest problems they had is the same as they had in Gulf War 1. They relied on the Soviet model for command and control; highly centralized, with little initiative allowed at lower levels. A major flaw.