DU shells versus chobam armor?

I agree with you but the fusiliers were hit with mavericks.

 

Which, let us not forget, are TV-guided weapons.

 

Either tv or infra red dependant on the variant.

 

American pilots (won't speak about other troop types - don't know) are in my experience lousy at recognition anyway. At an air display one year there was a USN pilot lounging by his aircraft with the usual "go on, ask me for an autograph" attitude when a little kid went up and asked what sort of aircraft was flying above him (part of the display). 30 seconds of careful observation then, "it's a Russian Sukhoi 27 single seat fighter". Got most upset when I pointed out it was a Su-33 two-seat fighter-bomber-combat trainer, easily distinguished by there being twomen in the cockpit.
Oli

 

Lol..how did I miss this little orgy of US bashing? Blue on Blue on happens when US forces are involved..US pilots are cowards who only attack from 15,000 feet and are poorly trained, ...unable to identify foreign aircraft...trained to shoot first and ask questions later..more cowardice I suppose..
..lol...did I leave anything out?

 

We've already had a go British incompetence, French ugly aircraft, and a couple of others. Didn't want anyone to feel left out :lol:
Just to make you feel better, in 1980 I worked with a guy who was officially retired but came in now and again to do contract work.
He was an ex-Bofors crewman from '42 to '45.
I turned up at work one day with my latest airshow vist photos and he went through them. Making his identification:
"Messerschmitt" - no Ted it's a spitfire
"Messerschmitt" - no Ted it's a hurricane
"Messerschmitt" - no Ted it's a Lancaster
Good grief Ted, you were an AA gunner, how did you manage if you can't tell a Lanc from Messerschmitt?
His reply? "We had an official observer attached to the crew to do the recognition for us". We all felt better until we heard his parting remark - "But we always ignored him and shot at everything that got into range!"
Oli

 

to be fair you read so many stories of the allied fly boys shooting up everything they saw. It was us vs them, it probably felt good to be able to shoot back at them

FNG

 

Have you read Nicholas Montserrat's Three Corvettes? It's an account of his experiences commanding, surprise, corvettes in WWII. The second of the three, IIRC, was his first actual command, so to impress the crew he got them all out on deck one day in the channel and gave them an aircraft recognition lesson
"Now that is Bristol Blenheim, easily recognised by the round engines, slight dihedral on the tail and..."
"Please sir, if it really is a Blenheim it wouldn't be lining up for a bomb run like that would it?"
Crew hastily abandon lesson and get the ship out of the way, only to find that it WAS a Blenheim, but the pilot's ship recognition was crap.
Oli

 

Yeah, it's normally 'over-eager', not 'cowardice'


But anyway, even jesting on such matters can cause offence :-?

 

A term guarenteed to strike fear into the hearts of British troops in the Gulf

American air support

 

Untrue. Initially the Air units in the Gulf War kept to an operating floor of 15,000 ft. to avoid Sams and AA fire however on Jan. 31 that was lowered and the A-10s were ordered to operate and attack from 4000 to 7000 feet.
Heavy smoke and dust contributed to the misidentification of the Warriors as enemy units. Agreement was not reached regarding the cause. The US investigation implicated the British ATC Controller (wrong grid coordinates given as location of enemy column) whereas the British report blamed the incident solely on the A-10 pilots.


As is usually the case with friendly fire incidents it is easy after the fact to assign blame however the CAS mission is very difficult to perform and requires that odinance be delivered in close proximity to the friendly units. To do this effectively and never make a mistake isn't possible. Unfortunately given the firepower of todays weapons system when a mistake is made the loss of life tends to be significant.
The reason for the preponderance of such incidents occurring with US units is simple. Most serious fratricide occurs when air units attack ground units. Air superiority is always the province of the US. The vast majority of aircraft in any given war zone will be US equipment thus most blue on blue incidents will involve US aircraft.
Over 4,500 CAS sorties flown in only 100 hours of ground combat is unprecedented in modern warfare. There is nothing remotely similar to which it can be compared.

That is a myth. Despite having the most powerful cannon ever installed in an aircraft even sustained fire will not cause the aircraft to stall.

 

Whie serving in the Gulf in 1991 I was in a communications unit providing the Intel required before any aircraft took off, here I do know what I am taking about.

Shortly after the gulf conflict the A10 pilots were given the task of showing their skills in tank recognition. 4 simulated tanks were set up 2 red and 2 grreen, they had to attack the red tanks and guess which they hit.

 

Ummm, because you asked the question - I'd say green, oh sorry GP, grreen :lol: (Hey my spilling mistooks will come, I'm on my thord can of Caffrey's and it's 03:20 here - making the most of the beer my sister bought me )
Don't tell pilots me can't tell red from green? :roll: I thought you needed brains to be able fly a plane.
Oli

 

Yesssss straight through the green tanks.

 

Still don't believe that Chobam is useless after a couple of hits, if that was true than they would have spend ALOT of money in new kind of armor, because aror that breaks after 2 hits kinda sucks and isn't good AT ALL!
(btw, only the Brits got Chobam armor, all other countries copied it and named it somehwat else...)

 

As far as I know the only countries that uses this (imo stupid thing...) ''shoot first and ask questions later'', the Dutch army soldiers are trained to first indentify an object/target or whatever...and than make a decision, this in a matter of seconds, probably the US army doesn't care much about friendly-fire or innocent civillian casaulties...if they do than they should train there troops to FIRST IDENTIFY THAN MAKE A DECISION...

About the A-10:

On every video I have seen it shooting at tanks with its GAU-8 it is coming DOWN in an angle (nose pointed somewhat downwards) and it is shooting either the high sides of a tank or the top, as far as I could see they rounds just punched holes in the armor...They speed of the rounds is just amazing, that combined with the high rate of fire (couple of thousend rounds a minute) makes it a very lethal anti-tank weapon imho.

 

GP wrote:

The change order of Jan 31 is a matter of record, not an opinion.
The "floor" prior to that time was 10-15,000 feet. The British leaders(Air Chief Marshall Sir Patrick Hine...CINC of British forces Sir Peter de la Billiere..Air Vice Marshall William Wratten) concurred with that decision after losing 4 Tornadoes had forced the RAF to cancel the low level runway interdiction mission that they were assigned(the Italians also lost several Tornadoes during similar missions).
In any case the medium altitude floor was only used prior to the beginning of the ground war.
It's a mystery to me how someone who claims to be in a postion of responsibilty during the time and conflict in question could fail to be aware of these facts.

Where did you obtain this information and what exercise are you referring to?

 

Jeffrey wrote:

One of several posters on this forum who persist in making unsubstantiated, uninformed and outright false slurs against US military forces despite admitting to having zero knowledge on the subject.
Why make such statements when you have no data to support them?

 

I can't comment on the fly boys lack of target identification. But I can imagine at modern speeds, height and with the adrenaline flowing a lot of APC's and tanks look the same.

Friendly fire was an accepted face of war previously and only in the last 20 or 30 years have people started to complain more about it. In reality it's a far less common event than before and has little overall effect on battles and casulty figures. Still thats little consalation if you or your relative was the victim.

As for the ground troops, large percentages of the US troops in Iraq (both times) and other places are not permanent, full time soldiers but reservists. Whilst there training is no doubt very good by general standards it will not be as good as a typical western career soldier including those in the US services. I'm also led to believe that the US have a far more liberal attitude to firearm discharge and ammo usage and are not as exact as other countries with bullet counting. This encourages the fire first attitude which is sometimes shown.

I do feel that it is unfair to overly critise the US for friendly fire and I'm sure that statiscally they are not much worse than other countries. It's just the US fire more bullets and fight more battles than any one else.

But I have to admit it is fun to US bash!

FNG.

 

Lol..When you put it that way I don't resent it (much).