Re: Humvee as a infantry fighting vehicle?

In article <spok81lfdf9oinui4jneek1m50ot6apb81@xxxxxxx>, Klaus Petrat says...
>
>Yesterday I saw on German TV the film "Black Hawk down". In this film
>the US used a lot of Humvees in combat situations in Somalia, with
>very bad results.
>
>These vehicles are obviously badly armoured and the mg gunner stands
>in an open hatch. My question: Doesn't the US have real fighting
>vehicles for their infantry with enough armour against - at least -
>light or medium guns and - very important - with the possiblity for
>each man inside to fire against enemies in all directions, including
>high angles?

Yes, of course we do.

We also have these things called "tanks", and when the idea is to
deliver firepower from an armored vehicle, we find them to be most
excellent. Infantry, is for when the job can't be done from the
inside of an armored vehicle, and if you find them actually fighting
from the inside of an armored vehicle, you've screwed up.

The extent to which one should prepare for screwups, which always
happen in war, vs. preparing for the mission you actually plan on
accomplishing, which we sincerely hope will happen, is debatable.


>The now obsolete German infantry vehicle Marder had an armour nearly
>like the main battle tank of that time, the Leopard I. So I was really
>surprised to see these poor guys in their ridiculous tin can Humvees.

We have the M-2 Bradley, which is more heavily armed and armored than
the Marder ever was.

But the plan is that the Bradley delivers the soldiers to the battle,
where they get out and fight on foot without even "tin can" level
protection and with the Bradley supporting them as a sort of light
tank. If the soldiers end up inside the Bradley and taking fire,
someone screwed up again. The Bradley is a hedge against that sort
of inevitable screwup.


>Finally they had - in the film - to call the Pakistanis for help, and
>they came with a real tank and with wheeled infantry fighting
>vehicles. Did they had the material, the US weren't able to buy?

They had the on-call heavy armor in Mogadishu that day. Which is what
it took to undo the screwup.

The actual *mission*, required a surprise assault on a building in a
crowded urban area. Tanks and personnel carriers can't operate inside
buildings, and they make enough of a fuss even getting close in a dense
cityscape that all hope of surprise is lost. For that sort of mission,
you need fast, light vehicles - Hummers and helicopters, for example,
with at most limited armor.

Keep in mind, Task Force Ranger conducted half a dozen or so such
raids in Mogadishu, all of them successful, all but one with no
casualties. The Pakistanis and Malaysians in Mogadishu with their
tanks and APCs, your Germans with their Marders, the divisions worth
of American soldiers with Bradleys, would have been better able to
extricate themselves from the one mission which went bad, but would
have failed in the primary mission every time.


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