al Asad Air Base Attack

Fox ^ | Self

[Pocketdoor]

I have been to al Asad probably 20-30+ times in 2003-2004. This just rips my heart out. I was just wondering if there were any other Freeper vets out there that have been there. Its been 20+ years since I have been there. I feel like an old man hearing about this base attack. And very pissed off.

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TOPICS: VetsCoR
KEYWORDS: 20032004; iranattacksalasad; iraq

[Pocketdoor]

We would fly in and out parts and people... (guess the other words for that).... but the supply guys there would always bring us a chow hall hot lunch. They had some of the best food in Iraq. I was always happy to go there. I think they caught Saddam out there.... around Tikrit.

[Pocketdoor]

Not Tikrit sorry.... that was down south. I cant remember the towns around al Asad.

[Gaffer]

Seems to me they’d have had a few LCMRs or AN/TPQ53 counter mortar/rocket fire radars there to warn everyone. OR even a CRAM system or two.

[Rocco DiPippo]

In 2006-7 I flew in and out there here and there. Have no fond memories of it. A few rockets being tossed into it is par for the course. It’s in Iraq, after all. . . When I was in country in the Baghdad area it was non-stop rocket and mortar action, 24/7.

[Pocketdoor]

Im not familiar with those things... but I recall Balad Airbase had counter mortars that could return fire as rounds were incoming. Problem was the enemy would hang rounds with Ice cube sting fuses.... went the ice melted the rounds would fire.... and they were long gone before we returned fire.

[Gaffer]

LCMR is a low cost CMR that can be mounted anywhere, very small. Round pill box looking things you’d see atop a vehicle of compound high point. TPQ53 is a bigger, better truck mounted version with greater range and rocket/artillery fire detections. CRAM would be something like a Phalanx gun fire system connected to either of these, IIRC.

[Gaffer]

They also used to use the ‘bent-fin’ technique on the rounds. Gives the round a nonstandard parabolic trajectory that makes source detection hard.

[Pocketdoor]

We couldn’t go to Bagdad when I was there, it was way too Hot!. A couple, few... Mortars and rockets just seemed to hit just before we landed. We had little to no ASE aircraft survivability equipment. Fixed wing C-23s. Lots of time spent low level - 25’-100’, 250’. It was the Wild West out there, and like the TV show MASH back at base.

[Zhang Fei]

A ton of things they claimed about WW2 re Japan and Germany just weren’t true, but Dubya went into the war with academic blinders on. In truth, both countries were seriously pummeled, with 5% and 12% of their populations dead at the end of the war, and most of their cities in ruins. While German cities took more punishment overall, Japan was no slouch. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were each chosen to get a dose of instant sunshine because they were among a literal handful of big Japanese cities that hadn’t had 50% of their land area turned into rubble. The postwar period was peaceful because the main Axis countries were all fought out, and beginning to feel the effects of famine.

The total Iraqi body count from the Iraqi Ministry of Health, in terms of death certificates issued throughout the invasion and insurgency, was just over 100K, mostly inflicted by the insurgents on Iraqi civilians. Just how small was that number, relative to WW2? If they had suffered casualties similar to Japan, they would have lost 1.3m out of 27m people, 10x the actual number.

The alternative to mass slaughter was a large occupation force. Based on dubious 20th century academic theories about how to make a conquered people submit, Dubya chose neither mass slaughter nor a big American presence (the 500K troops requested by Shinseki). The result was over a decade of insurgency and the retention of an Islamic mode of government.

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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Shinseki
[Shinseki publicly clashed with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld during the planning of the war in Iraq over how many troops the United States would need to keep in Iraq for the postwar occupation of that country. As Army Chief of Staff, Shinseki testified to the United States Senate Committee on Armed Services on February 25, 2003, that “something in the order of several hundred thousand soldiers” would probably be required for postwar Iraq. This was an estimate far higher than the figure being proposed by Secretary Rumsfeld in his invasion plan, and it was rejected in strong language by both Rumsfeld and his Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, who was another chief planner of the invasion and occupation.[16] From then on, Shinseki’s influence on the Joint Chiefs of Staff reportedly waned.[17] Critics of the Bush administration alleged that Shinseki was forced into early retirement as Army Chief of Staff because of his comments on troop levels;[18] however, his retirement was announced nearly a year before those comments.[19]

When the insurgency took hold in postwar Iraq, Shinseki’s comments and their public rejection by the civilian leadership were often cited by those who felt the Bush administration deployed too few troops to Iraq.[20] On November 15, 2006, in testimony before Congress, CENTCOM Commander General John Abizaid said that Shinseki had been correct that more troops were needed.[20]]

[tupac]

Yep, was there in and about 2004/2005. Frequent rocket and mortar attacks.

[iontheball]

My thought is just what the hell are we doing there on an island in a sea of Islamists that want us all dead? Worse yet our government puts Americans on this island, in harms way, and expects them somehow to survive. No one in that part of the world want us there anymore.

[McGruff]

Thank you for your service.

[fightin kentuckian]

I transitioned through there in and out of theater a couple of times. Stop beating yourself up. The entire middle east is a shit hole and we should have left too long ago. Grieve for the Americans who were hurt and killed but pray we all come home soon.

[Repeat Offender]

Small town outside the base was Baghdadi. To the north was Haqlaniyah, Haditha, K3 (the railroad town), Annah, and Rawah…..pretty much it until Al-Qa’im. Hit was to the south.

-I was at Camp Ripper for a good part of ‘04 (Ripper was where they sequestered all of us Marine grunts on Al-Asad). We were at Al Asad and Camp Fallujah.

[Chainmail]

"They also used to use the ‘bent-fin’ technique on the rounds."

Never heard of that one! Bent fins would make the round wobble and maybe even whistle and less likely to hit what you're aiming at - but the trajectory would still be parabolic.

Been in the mortar business for decades - never hear 'O that one..

[Gaffer]

No, the bent fins were specifically implemented because they DO interfere with the trajectory enough to whack out the 5 or more points those radars use to calculate the origin. I spent a few years working with LCMR testing systems and was on the EQ-36 (now AN/TPQ-53) source selection board. The shooters weren’t going for accuracy - just a hit and confusion, AND not wanting to be source located.

[Chainmail]

Still don't believe it. I was responsible for getting 25 LCMRs to the 1st Marine Division in Iraq in 2006 or so - and was involved in counterfire testing with the C-RAM folks out at Yuma. I am also a former Marine with 27 years of experience with artillery and a Mechanical Engineer responsible for developing an advanced mortar system. I have also experienced the indescribable fun of surviving various mortar attacks.

Bending fins would only affect muzzle velocity from the mortar and likely induce wobble in the trajectory - and lots of uncertainty to the eventual impact position - but that trajectory would still be parabolic and therefore, discernable to radars.

The Poppycock flag is on the field!

[paddles]

My old airfield belongs to the Taliban now.

[paddles]

My old airfield belongs to the Taliban now.