thedrifter
12-16-04, 06:28 AM
12-13-2004
Steel Plates, Sandbags and ‘Trojan Horse’ Trucks
By Philip A. Quigley
In Iraq during “Task Force Scorpion” during the summer of 2003, after my unit separated from the 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, we were relocated back to 4th LAR BN and bivouacked at FLB Dogwood, an Army logistics base 40 miles from Baghdad in the Northern Babel Province.
Of the many things my company was specifically responsible for, one of our main missions was highway protection. LAV-25’s are highly mobile vehicles. They are primarily used for providing strategic mobility, reaching and engaging threats, using tactical mobility for effective use of firepower to defeat soft and armored targets.
Because of the speed of an LAV-25, Alpha Company was mainly responsible for the highways, in particular Route Sue, Peggy, Temple, Elm, and Highway 8. During our stay in Northern Babel Province, insurgents were scoring an increasing number of soft-target hits. They attacked lightly armored and lightly armed Army logistical convoys traveling from the Northern Babel Province to Baghdad proper or Baghdad International Airport (BIAP).
With our LAV-25s patrolling the roads, there were no attacks, because you can see and hear an LAV coming from far away. The insurgents weren’t stupid enough to attack an LAV head-on with our 25mm Bushmaster cannon, even though insurgent leaders had placed a $2,000 bounty for the destruction of an LAV.
So our challenge was to outwit the insurgents in their pick-and-choose attacks.
My platoon’s Scout Team Leader was a very out-of-the-box thinking NCO and soon came up with an innovative idea. Because the attacks were being performed on Army convoys, we needed to look like the Army. So we improvised and adapted to our situation, “acquiring” two Army 5-ton trucks. We had no real armor to equip these with, so we did it the “old fashioned Marine Corps way” – we improvised.
Our Scout Team Leader arranged with an Army welder to take construction grade ¼-inch thick steel plates and weld them anywhere he could on the truck. His exact words to the welder were, “Armor this vehicle as if you were going to be riding in it.”
We were thoroughly pleased with the results upon receiving our newly armored trucks. The cab’ windows were replaced with steel plates with small vision ports cut out, the doors had steel slabs in them, and both the bottom of the cab and truck bed were steel lined. We lined the entire bottom of the cab, sides and truck bed with sandbags. Dirt is the true friend of the grunt.
This was what we called our “ghetto armor.”
We used these armored 5-tons to conduct what we called “Trojan Horse” missions against the insurgents. We concealed heavily armed scout teams inside the truck bed. They carried two M240G machine guns and two M249 light machine guns on each side, and one rifleman with an M203 grenade launcher. The idea was that when insurgents attacked an Army convoy in which our “Trojan Horse” trucks were traveling, we’d open up with both trucks and suppress the enemy while two LAV-25s that were within radio distance of the convoy would swoop in and take out the enemy threat from the rear.
These tactics proved to be effective, but hardly revolutionary. Our NCO, who knew his history, pointed out to us that these were nothing more than “gun-trucks” that the Marines had used in Vietnam. Still, the enemy did not hit soft-targets while we were running these missions because they assumed the Army had changed its convoy tactics.
They did not employ “Overwatch” (or “Guardian Angels,” as the Marines called it), so they were more prone to ambushes. The groups being hit were the “butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers” of the Army, coming to and from the logistics base and BIAP on supply runs. These were supply and logistics personnel who didn’t have any real combat skills other than defensive skills, and the insurgents were aware of it, given the obvious lack of their offensive posture.
The only disadvantage of totally encasing a vehicle in steel plates is that it makes the vehicle slower. Because of how much armor we had on the 5-tons, we had to require the convoy commander order all of his vehicles to go no faster than 40 mph. This was dangerous, but we weren’t as much concerned with IEDs as we were with the possibility of a roadside ambush.
During “Task Force Scorpion,” which operated from June through August 2003, as long as Alpha Company was responsible for the roads, there were no American highway fatalities in our operating area. We all regarded this as one of our crowning achievements. It may have been a small victory, but the Army troops sure as hell thanked us, giving Marines at FLB Dogwood full access to their limited amenities including hot chow, showers, and internet and phone access, to thank us.
The first shipment of officially armored Humvees and 5-tons finally arrived as my unit was retrograding back to Kuwait in September 2003.
The question that I have, and the soldiers and Marines serving in Iraq today all have, is , why was this problem not taken care of during the past 21 months?
As last week’s incident involving the National Guard sergeant and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld underscored, there is still a serious shortage of armor compared to the number of units and vehicles being used in Iraq. The Bush administration must do all it can to have armor-producing companies pump out production so our front-line and support troops can have the much-needed protection they deserve.
Contributing Editor Philip A. Quigley Jr. served as an enlisted Marine combat scout during Operation Iraqi Freedom, and is pursuing a post-military goal of writing about contemporary defense issues. He can be reached at HawkmanPQ@aol.com. *Send Feedback responses to dwfeedback@yahoo.com.
Ellie
Steel Plates, Sandbags and ‘Trojan Horse’ Trucks
By Philip A. Quigley
In Iraq during “Task Force Scorpion” during the summer of 2003, after my unit separated from the 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, we were relocated back to 4th LAR BN and bivouacked at FLB Dogwood, an Army logistics base 40 miles from Baghdad in the Northern Babel Province.
Of the many things my company was specifically responsible for, one of our main missions was highway protection. LAV-25’s are highly mobile vehicles. They are primarily used for providing strategic mobility, reaching and engaging threats, using tactical mobility for effective use of firepower to defeat soft and armored targets.
Because of the speed of an LAV-25, Alpha Company was mainly responsible for the highways, in particular Route Sue, Peggy, Temple, Elm, and Highway 8. During our stay in Northern Babel Province, insurgents were scoring an increasing number of soft-target hits. They attacked lightly armored and lightly armed Army logistical convoys traveling from the Northern Babel Province to Baghdad proper or Baghdad International Airport (BIAP).
With our LAV-25s patrolling the roads, there were no attacks, because you can see and hear an LAV coming from far away. The insurgents weren’t stupid enough to attack an LAV head-on with our 25mm Bushmaster cannon, even though insurgent leaders had placed a $2,000 bounty for the destruction of an LAV.
So our challenge was to outwit the insurgents in their pick-and-choose attacks.
My platoon’s Scout Team Leader was a very out-of-the-box thinking NCO and soon came up with an innovative idea. Because the attacks were being performed on Army convoys, we needed to look like the Army. So we improvised and adapted to our situation, “acquiring” two Army 5-ton trucks. We had no real armor to equip these with, so we did it the “old fashioned Marine Corps way” – we improvised.
Our Scout Team Leader arranged with an Army welder to take construction grade ¼-inch thick steel plates and weld them anywhere he could on the truck. His exact words to the welder were, “Armor this vehicle as if you were going to be riding in it.”
We were thoroughly pleased with the results upon receiving our newly armored trucks. The cab’ windows were replaced with steel plates with small vision ports cut out, the doors had steel slabs in them, and both the bottom of the cab and truck bed were steel lined. We lined the entire bottom of the cab, sides and truck bed with sandbags. Dirt is the true friend of the grunt.
This was what we called our “ghetto armor.”
We used these armored 5-tons to conduct what we called “Trojan Horse” missions against the insurgents. We concealed heavily armed scout teams inside the truck bed. They carried two M240G machine guns and two M249 light machine guns on each side, and one rifleman with an M203 grenade launcher. The idea was that when insurgents attacked an Army convoy in which our “Trojan Horse” trucks were traveling, we’d open up with both trucks and suppress the enemy while two LAV-25s that were within radio distance of the convoy would swoop in and take out the enemy threat from the rear.
These tactics proved to be effective, but hardly revolutionary. Our NCO, who knew his history, pointed out to us that these were nothing more than “gun-trucks” that the Marines had used in Vietnam. Still, the enemy did not hit soft-targets while we were running these missions because they assumed the Army had changed its convoy tactics.
They did not employ “Overwatch” (or “Guardian Angels,” as the Marines called it), so they were more prone to ambushes. The groups being hit were the “butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers” of the Army, coming to and from the logistics base and BIAP on supply runs. These were supply and logistics personnel who didn’t have any real combat skills other than defensive skills, and the insurgents were aware of it, given the obvious lack of their offensive posture.
The only disadvantage of totally encasing a vehicle in steel plates is that it makes the vehicle slower. Because of how much armor we had on the 5-tons, we had to require the convoy commander order all of his vehicles to go no faster than 40 mph. This was dangerous, but we weren’t as much concerned with IEDs as we were with the possibility of a roadside ambush.
During “Task Force Scorpion,” which operated from June through August 2003, as long as Alpha Company was responsible for the roads, there were no American highway fatalities in our operating area. We all regarded this as one of our crowning achievements. It may have been a small victory, but the Army troops sure as hell thanked us, giving Marines at FLB Dogwood full access to their limited amenities including hot chow, showers, and internet and phone access, to thank us.
The first shipment of officially armored Humvees and 5-tons finally arrived as my unit was retrograding back to Kuwait in September 2003.
The question that I have, and the soldiers and Marines serving in Iraq today all have, is , why was this problem not taken care of during the past 21 months?
As last week’s incident involving the National Guard sergeant and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld underscored, there is still a serious shortage of armor compared to the number of units and vehicles being used in Iraq. The Bush administration must do all it can to have armor-producing companies pump out production so our front-line and support troops can have the much-needed protection they deserve.
Contributing Editor Philip A. Quigley Jr. served as an enlisted Marine combat scout during Operation Iraqi Freedom, and is pursuing a post-military goal of writing about contemporary defense issues. He can be reached at HawkmanPQ@aol.com. *Send Feedback responses to dwfeedback@yahoo.com.
Ellie