Operation Swarmer

[RobDog888]

Looks like a new attack is happening again, bombing near Bagdad. There saying its one of the largest attacks since 2000.

[big blue alien]

its just a show of force, bomb the hell out of the desert and it looks like your doin somethin

[RobDog888]

They were saying that they were trying to attack a stronghold of weapons and military uniforms lol. What, are they just blowing up holes in the desert? They should be bombing the border of pakistan to try to get binladen.

[MasterBlaster]

According to the Coalition Press Information Center, initial reports indicate that a number of enemy weapons caches have been captured, containing artillery shells, explosives, IED-making materials, and military uniforms. Troops also captured several people, according to CPIC.
.......
The operation, residents said, appeared to be concentrated near four villages — Jillam, Mamlaha, Banat Hassan and Bukaddou — about 20 miles north of Samarra. The villages are near the highway leading from Samarra to the city of Adwar.

yup, just a show of force So you are saying the Coalition should not bother removing these items from these nutcases?

[RobDog888]

Yes and no. They should get the weapons and resources from them and capture as many as they can, but isnt there biger issues to be more concerned with? Isnt this just overkill?

[MasterBlaster]

Yes and no. They should get the weapons and resources from them and capture as many as they can, but isnt there biger issues to be more concerned with? Isnt this just overkill?

It's an air assault. Not sure if you're familiar with how that works. Basically a bunch of Blackhawks full of troops haul arse into a village. The choppers drop to housetop level and the troops repel out. While this is happening Attack choppers fire small rockets and 50 cal guns to give them cover. The troops disperse and go about their mission. Considering there are 4 villages getting hit simultaneously you need a lot of troops to roll over whatever resistance there is using the element of suprise. Basically, catch them with their pants down. It's not like they're dropping 50,000 pound daisey cutters on someones toolshed.

If you ask me they should have been doing this every day since the war started.

[RobDog888]

Dropping the bombs may be easier and less risky and plus a cool exploding noise and effect.

You seem to have detailed knowledge on this.

Why dont they do this for other issues they had? Seems they need to be stepping up the assault since this is going on for too long now.

What the heck, lets just nuke them and if a few stray missels find there way over to Iran then thats like a bonus.

[MasterBlaster]

You seem to have detailed knowledge on this.

Why dont they do this for other issues they had? Seems they need to be stepping up the assault since this is going on for too long now.

Beats the hell out of me? My guess would be that you need very good information to plan an attack like this. It can eaisally backfire if you have bad intelligence. See Mogadishu.

[litlewiki]

i understand you are pro bush ,are u?? hugh...
or u play quake and hit man a lot !

[MasterBlaster]

i understand you are pro bush ,are u?? hugh...
or u play quake and hit man a lot !

No, Bush is a pusse and playing video games too much greatly decreases your chances of getting laid. I spen 8 years in the army so I know a little about different ways of blowing sheit up.

I have made it perfectly clear in other posts that I am not happy at all with George Bush as a president or our government in general. Both have turned into a money *****ing terd that is causing us to loose troops due to some strange fascination of appeasing a group of americans and foreign countries that have no balls.

[Shaggy Hiker]

It's an air assault. Not sure if you're familiar with how that works. Basically a bunch of Blackhawks full of troops haul arse into a village. The choppers drop to housetop level and the troops repel out. While this is happening Attack choppers fire small rockets and 50 cal guns to give them cover. The troops disperse and go about their mission. Considering there are 4 villages getting hit simultaneously you need a lot of troops to roll over whatever resistance there is using the element of suprise. Basically, catch them with their pants down. It's not like they're dropping 50,000 pound daisey cutters on someones toolshed.

If you ask me they should have been doing this every day since the war started.

Good thing we didn't ask you. Experience with fighting insurgencies has shown that going after the bad guys is not nearly as important as protecting the good guys. In Iraq, this has proven true once again. The regions comanded by generals who focused on patrols and keeping folks safe were the regions that had the greatest stability (the n is not very high, so this relationship could be insignificant). This is a potentially high-expense / low reward fight. The only reason I say potentially is that I don't know the numbers involved (not just on the ground, support and logistics focused on this mission are included).

[MasterBlaster]

Good thing we didn't ask you. Experience with fighting insurgencies has shown that going after the bad guys is not nearly as important as protecting the good guys. In Iraq, this has proven true once again. The regions comanded by generals who focused on patrols and keeping folks safe were the regions that had the greatest stability (the n is not very high, so this relationship could be insignificant). This is a potentially high-expense / low reward fight. The only reason I say potentially is that I don't know the numbers involved (not just on the ground, support and logistics focused on this mission are included).

So you're saying that driving in large slow convoys along roads dotted with IED's in vehicles too heavy to take off road is better? That's what they have been doing. I've been to enough funerals in the last 2 years to know that way is bunk. BTW the majority of the troops hitting the ground are Iraqi troops. over 50% of 1500. That is impressive. very impressive. This is not a low reward fight. They found heavy explosives and Iraqi police and military uniforms. That is all the insurgents nneed to keep this pseudo civi war they are trying to protray going. Posing as Iraqi government troops murderinng civilians is enough bo turn this whole thing into a bigger sheit storm than it already is.

[Shaggy Hiker]

You ask it rhetorically, but the answer is actually yes. Of course, you aren't just driving around in circles, you are doing something, you just aren't mounting flashy attacks. Instead, you are out patroling in force, showing the flag, conducting small actions, local searches, etc. The insurgents aren't ghosts, and they aren't supermen. One of the many lessons learned in Vietnam (though it was never learned at an institutional level) was that the people knew who the insurgents were, and knew what they were doing. As long as the villagers feared the insurgents, they kept silent. Once they felt they could rely on the Americans (or the Iraqis, in this case), they wouldn't keep so silent, and the Viet Cong lost the area......then we pulled out and the VC went right back in, but that was our fault.

So you have to strip the insurgents of the power they have over the villagers. There are plenty of offensive minded folks who believe that this can best be done with large missions like this one. I would suggest that these folks are ignorant of the evidence for and against this tactic, and are going solely on intuition. If there was no other evidence, then intuition would be the best you could do. However, intelligent people learn from their mistakes. We have a huge amount of data to work through, and the result is that this type of action is less likely to achieve our goals than security would. Then the question is: Do you go with the proven results, or drop back on intuition, even when you have evidence that your intuition is wrong?

[MasterBlaster]

No I wasn't asking it rhetorically. I wanted to hear your opinion. The press is misleading. We have been conducting exercizes with this many troops quite often. The only difference is the transport of the troops using aircraft and the speed of attack make it interesting news. Take falluja a few months ago. We drove up and surrounded the city, lost men and vehicles along the way to IED's and ambushes. sat on the towns border for a couple days giving the insurgents time to kide weapon stockpiles and blend into the scenery. Suprise suprise hardly any weapons found and a boatload of the insurgents got away when the troops finally went in. Now take the alternative. Show up there in a moments notice, kick in an insurgents door and let him count your shells while he's sitting on the krapper reading the newspaper .Take all of his weapons and leave Iraqi cops behind so no more show up. Just floating an Idea out there, because obviously the current strategy is not working. It looks like the Generals in Iraq are figuring that out aswell.

[demotivater]

You ask it rhetorically, but the answer is actually yes. Of course, you aren't just driving around in circles, you are doing something, you just aren't mounting flashy attacks. Instead, you are out patroling in force, showing the flag, conducting small actions, local searches, etc. The insurgents aren't ghosts, and they aren't supermen. One of the many lessons learned in Vietnam (though it was never learned at an institutional level) was that the people knew who the insurgents were, and knew what they were doing. As long as the villagers feared the insurgents, they kept silent. Once they felt they could rely on the Americans (or the Iraqis, in this case), they wouldn't keep so silent, and the Viet Cong lost the area......then we pulled out and the VC went right back in, but that was our fault.

So you have to strip the insurgents of the power they have over the villagers. There are plenty of offensive minded folks who believe that this can best be done with large missions like this one. I would suggest that these folks are ignorant of the evidence for and against this tactic, and are going solely on intuition. If there was no other evidence, then intuition would be the best you could do. However, intelligent people learn from their mistakes. We have a huge amount of data to work through, and the result is that this type of action is less likely to achieve our goals than security would. Then the question is: Do you go with the proven results, or drop back on intuition, even when you have evidence that your intuition is wrong?