| Topic: |
Science > Philosophy |
| User: |
"Robert Cohen" |
| Date: |
03 Aug 2005 06:32:51 PM |
| Object: |
Adapting To Enemy Tactics |
If I were General/Sec of Defense:
These damne road-planted bombs are obviously kinds of rigged or ad hoc
"mines." They must somehow be detected/neutered. There should be
bomb-sniffing animals, sensitive machines, and whatever defensive
technologies. If the U.S. is at war, then the U.S. oughta mobilize
appropriate resources. Unrelenting insurgent/guerilla tactics are
seemingly what wore-out the U.S. ultimately in Vietnam, and perhaps
somewhat similarly de-moralized the Soviets in Afghanistan & currently
perhaps in Chechneya. I did not favor nor oppose the Iraq war, and I am
not favoring nor opposing it via this note. (However, I did not vote
for Bush either time.) I am herein discussing manifestly mal-adaptive
U.S. defense tactics.
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| User: "Robert Cohen" |
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| Title: Re: Adapting To Enemy Tactics |
14 Aug 2005 04:56:42 AM |
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Defending against mentality of the Dark Ages with body armor concept
derived from the Middle Ages.
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August 14, 2005
U.S. Struggling to Get Soldiers Updated Armor
By MICHAEL MOSS
For the second time since the Iraq war began, the Pentagon is
struggling to replace body armor that is failing to protect American
troops from the most lethal attacks by insurgents.
The ceramic plates in vests worn by most personnel cannot withstand
certain munitions the insurgents use. But more than a year after
military officials initiated an effort to replace the armor with
thicker, more resistant plates, tens of thousands of soldiers are still
without the stronger protection because of a string of delays in the
Pentagon's procurement system.
The effort to replace the armor began in May 2004, just months after
the Pentagon finished supplying troops with the original plates - a
process also plagued by delays. The officials disclosed the new armor
effort Wednesday after questioning by The New York Times, and
acknowledged that it would take several more months or longer to
complete.
Citing security concerns, the officials declined to say exactly how
many more of the stronger plates were needed, or how much armor had
already been shipped to Iraq.
"We are working as fast as we can to complete it as soon as we can,"
Maj. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sorenson, the Army's deputy for acquisition and
systems management, said Wednesday in an interview at the Pentagon.
While much of the focus on casualties in Iraq has been on soldiers
killed by explosive devices aimed at vehicles, body armor remains
critical to the military's goals in Iraq. Gunfire has killed at least
325 troops, about half the number killed by bombs, according to the
Pentagon.
Among the problems contributing to the delays in getting the stronger
body armor, the Pentagon is relying on a cottage industry of small
armor makers with limited production capacity. In addition, each
company must independently come up with its own design for the plates,
which then undergo military testing. Just four vendors have begun
making the enhanced armor, according to military and industry
officials. Two more companies are expected to receive contracts by next
month, while 20 or more others have plates that are still being tested.
An important material that strengthens the ceramic plates also remains
in short supply despite a federal initiative aimed at prodding private
industry into meeting the growing demand, military officials said.
"Nobody is happy we haven't been able to do it faster," Maj. Gen.
William D. Catto, head of the Marine Corps Systems Command, said
Wednesday in the interview.
"If I had the capability, I'd like to see everybody that needs enhanced
SAPI to have it and at the rate we have now, we're going to have months
before we get the kind of aggregate numbers we want to have," General
Catto said, referring to the thicker plates, known as the Enhanced
Small Arms Protective Insert. "That's just a fact of life because of
the raw materials paucity and the industrial base."
Throughout the war, the military's procurement system has struggled to
stay ahead of the insurgency. Most notably, efforts by the Defense
Department to add armor to the Humvee - a vehicle never intended for
combat - often have been undermined by the insurgents' relentless
ability to build more powerful bombs.
Military officials say they have kept the effort to supply troops with
the stronger body armor quiet to avoid alerting the insurgency, which
they say is adept at mining news media reports for any evidence of
weaknesses in the American force. At the request of the Pentagon, The
Times has omitted from this article details that would expose
vulnerabilities in the original armor and the types of munitions that
the original plates cannot repel.
Upgrading the plates for American troops in Iraq will cost at least
$160 million, according to industry estimates.
Body armor arose as an issue in Iraq shortly after the invasion in
March 2003, when insurgents began attacking American troops who had
been given only vests and not bullet-resistant plates. The Army had
planned to give the plates only to frontline soldiers. Officials now
concede that they underestimated the insurgency's strength and
commitment to fighting a war in which there are no back lines.
The ensuing scramble to produce more plates was marred by a series of
missteps in which the Pentagon gave one contract to a former Army
researcher who had never mass-produced anything. He was allowed to
struggle with production for a year before he gave up. An outdated
delivery plan slowed the arrival of plates that were made. In all, the
war was 10 months old before every soldier in Iraq had plates in late
January 2004.
Four months later, the Pentagon quietly issued a solicitation for the
enhanced plates that would resist stronger attacks. At the same time,
it worked to make improvements to the vests, including adding shoulder
and side protection.
Pentagon officials said they had been hampered in their efforts by the
need to make the armor as light as possible.
"You can trace this back to the early centuries ago when they started
wearing body armor to the point they couldn't get on the horse,"
General Sorenson said. "We are doing the same sort of thing. You can
only put so much armor on a soldier to the point where they can't
move."
The new enhanced SAPI plates weigh about one pound more than the
original plates, bringing the total body armor system with vest to
about 18 pounds, military officials said.
Among the first soldiers to use the stronger armor were the military's
special forces, who are known to cut the handles off their toothbrushes
to reduce the weight of their packs.
Shortly after the Iraq war began, insurgents began attacking American
soldiers engaged in stationary tasks like directing traffic or less
arduous combat operations.
Cpl. Nicholas Roberts, 23, a marine from Colorado, was wounded last
December in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, when his armor plates failed to
deflect an insurgent's attack. He just started walking again this
summer after nine operations. In wearing the armor, he said, "you know
your risks, that it's not going to stop everything."
"Unfortunately," he added, when told about the enhanced plates, "they
didn't have that when I was in."
Among the first companies to begin making enhanced SAPI for the
military was Simula, a safety technology company based in Phoenix,
military contracting records show. It was awarded a contract in August
2004, and received a new $12 million order this month.
Armor Holdings, a company based in Jacksonville, Fla., that owns
Simula, has an exclusive contract to armor the military's Humvees. The
company stirred some concern in the Pentagon in January when it balked
at selling its legal rights to the Humvee armor, which the military
wanted so it could involve additional manufacturers.
Col. Bruce D. Jette, who directed a special unit at the Pentagon known
as the Rapid Equipping Force until he retired last fall, said the
military's reliance on small companies to make body armor succeeded in
spurring innovation. But in failing to acquire the rights to those
designs, the military may be passing up an opportunity to increase
production, he added.
Pentagon officials said the pending addition of two more vendors to the
four that are now producing enhanced SAPI would increase production to
25,000 sets of the plates a month from 20,000. Each vest requires two
plates. Worldwide, the Army would need nearly 2 million plates to
supply all 996,000 troops using body armor with the enhanced plates.
Industry officials say they are charging the military roughly $600 each
for enhanced SAPI plates, compared with $400 for the original plate.
Cercom, an advanced materials company based in Vista, Calif., began
making enhanced plates for the Pentagon this summer and said it was
working round the clock to fill its part of the military order. To go
even faster, Richard J. Palicka, Cercom's president, said it would
"need additional furnace capacity and that's expensive."
But industry and military officials say production is also constrained
by a lingering shortage of an advanced fiber used to make the plates.
The material is made by only two companies, Honeywell and DSM, a Dutch
concern. DSM, which built a new plant in Greenville, N.C., last year at
the military's urging, and Honeywell say they are continuing to step up
production. DSM said it planned to add another production line next
year.
Mike Ryan, a Honeywell executive, said his company was meeting the
demand for its version of this material, known as Spectra Shield, until
just last month when orders from plate makers surged. "There is a
learning curve here that we are trying to come up," Mr. Ryan said.
The military is still trying to assess just how well body armor is
working. Pentagon officials said Wednesday during the interview that
numerous lives had been saved. To emphasize the point, they played a
video taken recently by an Iraqi insurgent in which an American soldier
- knocked down by a bullet striking his vest - got back on his feet
unharmed and took cover.
The Armed Forces Medical Examiner's Office which has undertaken a
number of initiatives in the Iraq war to reduce casualties, has urged
the Pentagon to have field commanders return the body armor of slain
soldiers so it can be examined along with their wounds. Earlier in the
war, the military medical corps helped spur improvements in eye
protection and set off an examination of the Army's new helmet by
studying wound patterns.
But in interviews this spring, the Medical Examiner's Office said it
was receiving only about 10 percent of the vests worn by slain
soldiers, too few to get a complete picture of the armor's performance.
Meanwhile, a burst of research is under way to develop even stronger
body armor, though some earlier efforts appear to have slipped through
the cracks. At the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Stephen D. Nunn said
his group formulated a polymer that can be added to the ceramic plates
to increase their strength. "Our material and assembly seems to perform
better than anything else I've read about," he said.
But the group's contract was limited to fortifying helicopters. When
that project ended in 2001, there was no money to extend the work to
body armor, Mr. Nunn said.
At the behest of the military, researchers are also studying how to
make body armor more resistant to explosive devices. In a recent
technical paper, one scientist, Thomas Friend, said that more work
needed to be done on analyzing the shock waves produced by these blasts
and how they interact with the body and the armor.
Some armor, he warned, could aggravate the damage from blasts by
twisting the waves as they pass through the body.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search
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| User: "Bret Cahill" |
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| Title: Re: Adapting To Enemy Tactics |
14 Aug 2005 09:09:19 PM |
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As if one is needed here is one more reason to doubt that Cheney-Rove's
is a Great Glorious War:
Technological development is always greatly enhanced by a REAL war that
involves an ENTIRE country. After a couple of years of WWII, among
other things, the nazis were building jet engines and the Americans
radar and nukes.
These were great advances in technology.
Such is not the case in Bush's quagmire which, by next summer, will
have gone on longer than the entire American involvement in WWII in
either theater.
As an astute observer pointed out, America is not at war in Iraq; only
the U. S. military.
Bret Cahill
"You tell me it is the good cause that hallows even war; I tell you it
is the good war that hallows any cause."
-- Nietzsche
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| User: "Bret Cahill" |
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| Title: Re: Adapting To Enemy Tactics |
03 Aug 2005 08:25:04 PM |
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For some reason DARPA has gone AWOL when it comes to saving lives of
service men.
I saw ONE high clearance vehicle -- a jacked up road grader -- and
nothing more.
We can do better than that.
It's not down my alley but it hardly seems like an unsolvable problem.
Even high tech could help here.
Bret Cahill
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| User: "Robert Cohen" |
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| Title: Re: Adapting To Enemy Tactics |
04 Aug 2005 07:26:04 AM |
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darpa?
defense against roadside propellent/propulsion arms ?
suicide bombers/car bombs are particularly difficult, and
short-of-another (ironic saddam style) police-state, what can be done?
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| User: "tg" |
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| Title: Re: Adapting To Enemy Tactics |
04 Aug 2005 08:28:06 AM |
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Robert Cohen wrote:
darpa?
defense against roadside propellent/propulsion arms ?
suicide bombers/car bombs are particularly difficult, and
short-of-another (ironic saddam style) police-state, what can be done?
Wow. You got it right this time. And that's what's coming, kiddies.
As for the technology: You can't adapt to the tactic because the
adaptation is self-defeating. This isn't like clearing minefields for
an assault on a fixed defensive front. If you can't move your troop in
small units, freely as needed, one of the prime goals of the insurgency
has been achieved---you are isolated in your strongpoints. So the
solution is to calculate the tradeoff in casualties against the
mission. As it has been for as long as people have had wars.
-tg
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| User: "Bret Cahill" |
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| Title: Re: Adapting To Enemy Tactics |
04 Aug 2005 04:14:08 PM |
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The mission is clear and worthwhile: Securing $40 trillion worth of
Iraqi crude from a dictatorship. Only Bush and the neocons are
naive/dumb enough not to figure THAT out.
The solution isn't impossible. First we need to wall off the oil
fields and related facilities to protect the troops and the oil.
Then to be as humane as possible we need to separate the 3 major
factions with huge walls so they don't kill each other after we pull
out.
Several hundred thousand Iraqis might relocate to live in the U. S. to
learn something about democracy. The Miami Cubans will eventually be
able to help Cuba become democratic after Fidel is dead. Maybe this
could work here.
When the Iraqis stop trying to kill everyone and start becoming
democratic we can start forking over some oil dough. In the meantime
we can keep the oil money away from any future dictators.
But it is pure nonsense to expect a hundred thousand troops who know
very little about the basics of democracy themselves who don't even
speak the language in a COMPLETELY different civilization that has
never had any history of pluralism, to occupy a country of 25 million
and have democracy and domestic tranquility break out.
Even the Israelis think it's completely nuts. They just aren't saying
anything because it would look impolite.
Bret Cahill
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| User: "tg" |
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| Title: Re: Adapting To Enemy Tactics |
04 Aug 2005 04:39:17 PM |
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The Israelis who have everyone in their country serve in the military,
and who are trying to control what---3 million, right next door, with
very good intelligence (try infiltrating a good ol Texas boy into those
Islam cells), AND CAN'T DO IT, think WE"RE CRAZY???????? What's wrong
with those people??? WE HAVE GOD ON OUR SIDE!!!!
Hmmm. No, wait, *they* have God on *their* side.
I think I'll go back to teasing out the metaphysics of time......
-tg
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| User: "Bret Cahill" |
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| Title: Re: Adapting To Enemy Tactics |
04 Aug 2005 05:42:20 PM |
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I haven't heard anything about Israelis infiltrating/impostering
Palistinians to get intelligence in any fashion although I guess it is
theoritically possible.
It would be a painful death if you were exposed.
Bret Cahill
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| User: "tg" |
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| Title: Re: Adapting To Enemy Tactics |
05 Aug 2005 05:41:42 AM |
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Oops.
-tg
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| User: "Bret Cahill" |
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| Title: Re: Adapting To Enemy Tactics |
05 Aug 2005 07:04:02 AM |
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_Intelligence Matters_ is probably the most worthwhile political book
in decades.
This doesn't mean there is a solution to the problem, however.
Bret Cahill
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| User: "shrikeback" |
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| Title: Re: Adapting To Enemy Tactics |
05 Aug 2005 10:35:19 AM |
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"Bret Cahill" <BretCahill@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1123243442.126718.140650@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
_Intelligence Matters_ is probably the most worthwhile political book
in decades.
A marketing book ghost-written for a politician is an important book in your
mind? And for Bob Graham, stealth Republican, at that.
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| User: "Bret Cahill" |
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| Title: Re: Adapting To Enemy Tactics |
05 Aug 2005 11:25:04 AM |
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No age limits, No GED or fitness requirements.
Sounds like Uncle Sam could use a young guy like you.
Bret Cahill
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| User: "Day Brown" |
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| Title: Re: Adapting To Enemy Tactics |
05 Aug 2005 04:49:04 PM |
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Robert Cohen wrote:
If I were General/Sec of Defense:
These damne road-planted bombs are obviously kinds of rigged or ad hoc
"mines." They must somehow be detected/neutered. There should be
bomb-sniffing animals, sensitive machines, and whatever defensive
technologies. If the U.S. is at war, then the U.S. oughta mobilize
appropriate resources. Unrelenting insurgent/guerilla tactics are
seemingly what wore-out the U.S. ultimately in Vietnam, and perhaps
somewhat similarly de-moralized the Soviets in Afghanistan & currently
perhaps in Chechneya. I did not favor nor oppose the Iraq war, and I am
not favoring nor opposing it via this note. (However, I did not vote
for Bush either time.) I am herein discussing manifestly mal-adaptive
U.S. defense tactics.
Yeah, but its like the war on drugs. Its not about winning the war, but
milking the efforts to fight it. If we actually won the war on
terrorism, we'd close down the CIA. The CIA needs the war.
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| User: "Robert Cohen" |
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| Title: Re: Adapting To Enemy Tactics |
09 Aug 2005 08:25:33 AM |
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re: need for bomb sniffing animals
literally thousands of dogs and cats are legally disposed of daily in
the united states, as sad/sickening/awful/heartbreaking as the
phenomenon is
welllll:
massively train/condition captured/doomed thousands of stray dogs for
bomb-sniffing duty (dimestic & foreign)
(s) KookCohen, Soon to be very blacklisted & condamned by PETA & Humane
Society
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| User: "Bret Cahill" |
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| Title: Re: Adapting To Enemy Tactics |
09 Aug 2005 01:21:38 PM |
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The only thing I can think of is a leading outrigger, an unshocked
steel wheel at the end of a long rod, on the front of all vehicles.
Maybe mount a heavy unbalanced rotor on top of the steel wheel to help
set off the mines. A plow would help shove some IEDs off the road.
But if they cannot even weld some scrap metal onto their Humvees, then
they'll never do anything like that.
Bret Cahill
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| User: "Robert Cohen" |
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| Title: Re: Adapting To Enemy Tactics |
09 Aug 2005 02:13:08 PM |
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The only thing I can think of is a leading outrigger, an unshocked
steel wheel at the end of a long rod, on the front of all vehicles.
Maybe mount a heavy unbalanced rotor on top of the steel wheel to help
set off the mines. A plow would help shove some IEDs off the road.
Yes, that should be tried.
The front of an ole steam locomotive train engine pushed cows et cetera
off track.
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| User: "Bret Cahill" |
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| Title: Re: Adapting To Enemy Tactics |
09 Aug 2005 03:56:20 PM |
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There might be some little known or exotic effect that could trigger
the mines, maybe a really big magnetic field, etc., but I don't know
about it.
It's hard to get engineers from one dept. to talk to engineers from
another dept. This is a great barrier to technology.
That's why Ford got with Microsoft/Bill Gates to design crash avoiding
cars. It isn't like Ford engineers couldn't do if they were properly
motivated.
It's just that it's easier to start fresh.
Bret Cahill
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| User: "tg" |
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| Title: Re: Adapting To Enemy Tactics |
09 Aug 2005 07:22:41 PM |
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Bret Cahill wrote:
There might be some little known or exotic effect that could trigger
the mines, maybe a really big magnetic field, etc., but I don't know
about it.
It's hard to get engineers from one dept. to talk to engineers from
another dept. This is a great barrier to technology.
That's why Ford got with Microsoft/Bill Gates to design crash avoiding
cars. It isn't like Ford engineers couldn't do if they were properly
motivated.
It's just that it's easier to start fresh.
Bret, you and RC are the libertarians of hard military science. Magic
solutions for the fantasy prone.
1) Most of the devices are not regular mines detonated by proximity or
pressure from the target vehicle. Someone watches and does it with some
signal, radio, IR, wire, whatever. Countermeasures to pre-detonate them
are difficult.
2) Devices can now work from the side at some distance, using shaped
charges. So any car parked on the side of the road, or a building on a
narrow street, could destroy an armored humvee and even damage lighter
armored vehicles.
3) There are zillions of miles of road, and these guys can plant
explosives underneath the asphalt, probably by tunneling in from the
side. Remember the thing about not having enough troops??? You can't
patrol everywhere in enough force to be safe when you're stretched too
thin to even protect the airport road. Are you going to rely on your
democratic Iraqi Army allies, without even body armor, to drive SUV's
and trucks around at night to catch these people.?
This is a bad situation. Buy oil stocks.
-tg
Bret Cahill
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| User: "Bret Cahill" |
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| Title: Re: Adapting To Enemy Tactics |
09 Aug 2005 09:15:02 PM |
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< Bret, you and RC are the libertarians of hard military science.
No one will deny we are grabbing at straws -- about the best anyone can
do.
I'm not bad at pulling stuff out of my . . .
.. . .
< 1) Most of the devices are not regular mines detonated by proximity
or
< pressure from the target vehicle. Someone watches and does it with
some
< signal, radio, IR, wire, whatever.
They aren't that sophisticated. After all, why do any suicide bombings
when you can get a remote at Radio Shack for $6?
You could at least do a few remote bombing first, THEN go to Allah for
your 72 camels.
< Countermeasures to pre-detonate them
< are difficult.
Even so, someone needs to be looking at the problem. I like DARPA
funding quantum computers but they ought to be looking at this
situation as will.
< 2) Devices can now work from the side at some distance, using shaped
< charges.
I never heard anything indicating that they were that sophisticated.
.. . .
< 3) There are zillions of miles of road, and these guys can plant
< explosives underneath the asphalt, probably by tunneling in from the
< side.
More than likely they just place them in a pot hole. Are Iraqi streets
any better than U. S. streets? Are they even paved?
Are the vehicles even on the streets?
< Remember the thing about not having enough troops???
Then we need to focus on a smaller area like the oil fields and forget
about democracy in Iraq.
The whole idea was to keep oil money from a dictator anyway. Maybe we
can still do that.
Bret Cahill
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