thedrifter
12-21-06, 09:26 PM
Lessons From Iraq, Part II - August 2005 Cover Story
It's a brutal schooling, but American forces are learning how to combine new technology and old-fashioned combat skills to root out a tenacious insurgency. Former Marines Owen West and his father Bing West, who was a front-line witness to Iraq's fiercest urban battle, detail the key concept: adaptability.
BY BING WEST AND OWEN WEST
Published in the August, 2005 issue.
THE INFANTRYMEN loved to move alongside the tank. It was like going on an evening stroll in a dangerous neighborhood with a Tyrannosaurus rex. In fact, during last November's battle to retake Iraq's insurgent-held city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, the M1A1 Abrams was the favored weapon to support Marines who fought street by street and house by house. If the infantryman was the left hook, the Abrams was the haymaker.
On the fourth day of the three-week operation, one of the Marines in India Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, used the "grunt phone" attached to the rear of an Abrams to ask Master Gunnery Sgt. Ishmael Castillo to maneuver down a tight alley. With more than 80 percent of Fallujah's civilian population evacuated, every concrete house and courtyard had become a potential pillbox for insurgents firing on the Marines advancing out in the open. From his tank commander's hatch 8 ft. above the ground, Castillo could look over walls and shout warnings to the grunts on the ground.
When two insurgents lobbed grenades that bounced off the tank's armored plates and exploded harmlessly, Castillo briefly considered buttoning down the hatch, but decided against it so he could continue to warn his men. To eliminate insurgent positions at 100 ft., he began to "pivot steer," swiveling the Abrams back and forth on its treads, smashing the alley walls. With the grunts urging him on, Castillo rumbled down the dirt track, firing his 7.62mm and .50-caliber machine guns into the doors and windows of houses. When the startled jihadists began to fire blindly, giving away their hiding places, Castillo opened up with the tank's 120mm main gun.
The M1A1 was engineered for battle on the open plains of Europe, not for the narrow alleyways of an ancient Middle Eastern city. Some pundits had warned that American forces would be vulnerable in Iraq's teeming urban areas, our lumbering tanks sitting ducks for insurgents with superior knowledge of the battlefield. But the M1A1's 120mm gun, designed to take out Soviet tanks at a mile or more, proved equally effective at destroying insurgent positions at 50 ft.
Soon other tank commanders in the operation began applying similar tactics. "I fired 25 to 40 shells each day," Castillo says. "Every tank did. Each night we'd go back to the supply point, rearm, make repairs, get back in position by 3 am, catch a few hours of sleep and go at it again."
This was not the war U.S. forces had trained and planned for when they invaded Iraq in March 2003. But it's the war they got, and inside a sprawling enemy city whose alleys and rooftops were supposed to neutralize the American armor advantage, the military altered its tactics and won a resounding victory.
The conflict in Iraq has included two distinctly different combat operations. The first was the rapid seizure of Baghdad, or Operation Iraqi Freedom I (OIF I), in a military strategy called Maneuver Warfare: fast, violent action that combines armor and air power to destroy the enemy's command and control capability. But after Saddam fled in April 2003, many former officials in the Sunni areas did not consider themselves defeated. A guerrilla war began.
In OIF II, as it is called in the military ranks, American forces face an enemy employing classic insurgent tactics: ambushing American troops on the roads, intimidating fledgling Iraqi security forces, assassinating Iraqi government officials and terrorizing the population with random car bombings. There have also been pitched battles in cities, including two in Fallujah. But, led by those doing the fighting and the dying, American forces are learning some critical lessons about employing new tactics and new technology. These hard-won insights may influence how long the insurgency will last and how the United States will fight in future conflicts.
LESSON 1
Control the cities.
FIFTY YEARS AGO, the concept of guerrilla war championed by practitioners such as Mao Zedong and Che Guevara envisioned the guerrillas massing in the countryside and encircling government forces isolated in cities. In flat, open terrain like that of Iraq, guerrillas opening fire in the countryside are quickly cut down. The modern lair of the insurgent is in the cities, where more than 70 percent of Iraqis live.
Last November in Fallujah about 1500 insurgents fought in loose gangs of 10 to 20, relying on their knowledge of back alleys to shoot and scoot. Their plan was to repeat what the Chechens in Grozny had done to Russian troops trying to suppress insurgents in the separatist province of Chechnya: Allow armor to roll forward, then dart from building to rooftop, surround isolated units and pick them off. But American forces in Iraq thwarted that tactic. Marines advanced systematically, protecting their flanks with infantry and tanks moving in concert. When the Fallujah insurgents maneuvered en masse, they were discovered and shot down. Explosives and blast weapons proved essential: tanks, grenades, C-4, Bangalore torpedoes and rockets.
The Americans also employed overhead photomaps with a number for every city block and names for all major streets. This enabled commanders to designate phase lines--reference points drawn on maps like chalklines on a football field--to control friendly movement. There were no fatalities caused by friendly fire, despite thousands of rounds of artillery. The forces on the ground and in the air were able to identify the precise location of every house and courtyard. F/A-18s loitering at 10,000 ft., unseen from the ground, struck any building required. American forces advanced as a steamroller, with an Abrams tank supporting most rifle platoons. Gradually, the Americans pushed the insurgents south, killing hundreds in place and driving the survivors toward the Euphrates. The jihadists were so devastated that the word spread throughout the country: Do not fight the Americans in the city.
LESSON 2
Small-unit training counts for more than weapons.
THE MARINES in Fallujah faced extreme fundamentalists who holed up in houses, waiting to shoot an American before they were killed. Over the course of about 20 days, roughly 100 Marine rifle squads searched 39,000 buildings, or about 40 structures per day per squad. Every infantry squad engaged in at least one random, close-quarters firefight with suicidal fanatics armed with grenades and automatic weapons--an extraordinary testament to the courage of the American fighting man.
Marine Sgt. Timothy Connors of Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 8th Marines, survived at least a dozen firefights at distances of 10 ft. or less. Connors varied his pattern, adapting his attack to each building. "There is no one technique for house clearing," Connors says. "Sometimes I'll be noisy to draw fire, sometimes I'll sneak in. I'll feint at the front door and enter through the kitchen. Training gives you the basics. After that, you have to adapt."
The war in Iraq has transformed the military's view of which force elements are most essential on a guerrilla battlefield. Infantrymen like Connors, with their ability to stay a step ahead of their enemies, have become the prime lethal instruments in this war.
LESSON 3
Own the night.
IN THE VIETNAM WAR, the enemy moved in the rice paddies and villages at night. In Iraq, the American military owns the night. More than 200 Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) patrol the highways and city blocks, their infrared cameras picking out every dog, cat and human venturing outdoors.
The smallest UAVs, the 5-pound Dragon Eyes, are carried by infantrymen in backpacks and launched with bungee cords. These Kevlar-reinforced fiberglass planes, which have radar signatures no bigger than a bird's, hover just over rooftops, beaming real-time video to troops just blocks away. The 400-pound Pioneers usually circle at about 1500 ft., using sensors to monitor entire city blocks (see "Nowhere to Hide," POPULAR MECHANICS, Feb. 2005 cover story). The 2000-pound Predators, which operate from 5000 to 15,000 ft., combine reconnaissance with firepower: They can carry their own missiles.
Manned aircraft also prowl the skies. Above Cobra helicopter gunships circle AC-130s, four-engine battleships in the sky, equipped with huge infrared spotlights, 40mm cannons and 105mm artillery tubes. Sometimes called Basher or Slayer, the AC-130 is the single most fearsome weapon system in Iraq. When it rumbles across the black sky, insurgents stay indoors or die.
"[The assets] are a huge help for perimeter security at night," says Marine Capt. Stan Deland, who served as a company executive officer in the November battle for Fallujah. "We know what's out there and the enemy can't maneuver."
The infrared cameras are so precise that rifles can be seen in the arms of the insurgents. The aircraft crews, both airborne and at the ground readout stations, have become proficient at distinguishing between normal traffic, day or night, and insurgent activity--the way a policeman walking a beat knows his neighborhood.
"If we can work one section of a city for a week," says Lt. Col. John "Ajax" Neumann, commander of the UAV detachment in Fallujah, "we can spot the bad guys in their pickups, follow them to their safe houses and develop a full intelligence profile--all from the air. We've brought the roof down on some. Others we've kept under surveillance until they drive out on a highway, then we've vectored in a mounted patrol to capture them alive. If you're outside and you're carrying a weapon, we can pick you out."
LESSON 4
Low-tech bombs are the most dangerous threat to U.S. forces.
BY FAR the most devastating and ubiquitous weapon of the insurgency is the radio-controlled Improvised Explosive Device, or IED. It is cheap and simple to make--any combination of metal (for shrapnel) and explosives armed with a blasting cap--and easy to detonate with a radio frequency generated by a garage door opener, a cellphone or other remote control. IEDs are concealed in the bloated stomachs of dead dogs, a barrel tipped at an improbable angle, a cardboard box too heavy to be blown by the wind or a car parked in an odd place.
The IED of Vietnam--the hidden land mine--was the bane of infantrymen, accounting for 20 percent of the casualties and sapping morale. A grunt never knew when he would be blown up while walking down a trail. In Iraq, where highways are the trails, the IED accounts for about 70 percent of all American casualties. It's a stunning statistic, given that gunshot wounds dominated the two biggest engagements since the fall of Baghdad--the twin battles for Fallujah and Najaf.
There are three ways to defeat IEDs: by de-arming them before they explode, by jamming their detonation frequencies and by deflecting their explosions. The main IED detector is the American soldier and Marine with sharp eyes: Approximately three IEDs are found for each one that detonates. The main technical counter-IED device is the Warlock, which jams the radio frequencies employed to detonate the devices.
Muting IED explosions--defense by better armor--has received the most attention. It burst onto the public scene when a National Guardsman in Kuwait asked Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld why his unit was forced to dig through scrap piles to armor their Humvees. When the secretary's response did not seem to show enough concern, the press savaged him. Congress leaped into the act and additional funds and production followed.
The current plan is to equip every one of the 30,000-odd military vehicles that use the highways in Iraq with adequate armor, either by bolting on 750-pound kits or taking delivery of completely refurbished M114 "uparmored" Humvees, which have 2000 pounds of extra armor. "It will make a huge difference," says a Marine battalion commander who served in Iraq. "If we'd had them [earlier], several of our IED victims would be alive."
The uparmored Humvee, however, has a downside. Increased protection means more weight and less power. In addition, the original vehicle's width and low center of gravity made it resistant to rollovers. Critics claim the increased weight of the armor and the high-speed tactics the troops have developed to avoid or flee ambushes have led to a dramatic growth in the number of rollovers. In 2004, 39 soldiers serving in Iraq died in accidents involving various types of vehicles; in the first three months of 2005 alone, 14 soldiers were killed in uparmored Humvee accidents. "We're going to have to start with a new class of vehicle and build it from the tires on up," Brig. Gen. William Catto, director of the Marine Corps Systems Command, told Congress in May.
There is, however, no technical solution to the suicide bomber. So-called Vehicle-Borne IEDs have destroyed uparmored Humvees and even mechanized fighting vehicles, proving more lethal than the roadside bomb. The remedy resides with the region's religious and political leaders.
LESSON 5
Adapt at the point of battle.
THE GREATEST SKILL of the American military is not technical; it is the ability of soldiers to adapt. Fighting insurgents is by its nature small-unit engagement. Battles are won by young enlisted men, not by generals poring over maps as in World War II. In Iraq it is the "strategic corporal," as the Marines call him, who must do everything from detective work after a bombing to building soccer fields to planning rifle attacks on the fly. It is the flexibility of these small-unit leaders that is the best hope for keeping the Iraq insurgency at bay.
Smart corporals use handheld radios and GPS devices to control movement block by block under fire, employing 10-digit grids to report where they are with an accuracy of 1 meter, permitting rapid reinforcement on the flanks while avoiding fratricide. Small-unit leaders are also the best weapons in the counter-IED battle. In the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, for example, junior Marines devised a novel way to sweep roads for explosives. Instead of racing down dangerous streets to avoid IED blasts, they drove less than 10 mph, positioning spotters on either side of their Humvees. Using rifle scopes designed to pick up men at 500 meters, the spotters scanned the sides of the road just 50 meters ahead, creeping along inside kill zones that were neutralized by their sharp eyes. If telltale wires or strange humps of dirt were discovered, the Marines often leaped out, sprinted along the side of the road and de-armed the mines themselves. Sgt. Leandro Baptista, for example, who was not trained in explosive disposal, de-armed four IEDs by hand.
A young private with the Army's 69th Infantry Regiment invented a counter-IED weapon with a toy. He used a radio-controlled model car to determine whether unidentified roadside debris--for instance, a cardboard box--was trash or an IED. Using the toy's remote control from a safe distance, the soldier would ram the car into the box. If the car moved the box, then it was probably too light to contain an IED. If the box was too heavy to budge, the platoon would call in an Explosive Ordnance Disposal team with larger, slower and much more expensive robots to detonate the IED.
In Fallujah, SMAW (Shoulder-launched Multipurpose Assault Weapon) gunners became on-the-job demolition experts. These young rocketeers learned how to take down an entire building with a weapon designed to hit tanks and bunkers. SMAW gunners figured out how to hit building joints, collapsing the roofs on insurgents. On Nov. 12, Lance Cpl. Derek Fetterolf of India Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, crumbled 12 buildings in southern Fallujah with 14 rockets.
The military support structure is also working to speed up a procurement process that traditionally takes years. The Marine Corps Warfighting Lab, a cutting-edge marriage of tactics and technology, is purchasing off-the-shelf civilian gear, such as satellite phones and laser pointers, and shipping it to Iraq to plug gaps that would otherwise take months or years to fill. The lab also designs its own gear, and recently built Kevlar undershorts for Marines who stand in gun turrets atop Humvees.
America's secret weapon has always been ingenuity on the battlefield. The troops at the tip of the spear are proving that today in Iraq. On April 26, 2005, Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters, "I think we are winning." The American military has worked to keep a lid on the insurgency, buying the time needed for the Iraqi security forces to pull themselves together. Meanwhile, our forces continue to refine their technology and tactics, increasing their effectiveness in Iraq--and preparedness for future conflicts.
Bing West's fourth book, No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah, will be published in September by Bantam Books. For a Q & A with Marine Sgt. Timothy Connors, nominated for a Silver Star for his service in Iraq, go to www.popularmechanics.com/iraq
STREET SWEEPING CREWS
Illustration by CRANEDIGITAL.COM
URBAN COMBAT IN IRAQ involves unprecedented coordination between air, armor and artillery. Here's a look at some of the typical interactions between Marine infantry units and their support teams.
GROUP A
Arms Patrol
An infantry fire team patrols the street alongside an M1A1 Abrams tank. Fire teams avoid hostile fire--and the main tank gun--by keeping to the sides of the street. Tanks and infantry provide mutual cover: The Abrams draws insurgent fire away from the infantry and provides the house-clearing power of the 120mm main gun. But tanks are designed to engage other tanks in open-field combat. Their imposing size makes them an easy target in a crowded, urban environment. For protection, armored units rely on the grunts walking beside the tank to spot threats in a tank's many blind spots, and to engage hostiles the tank can't eliminate, such as insurgents firing from rooftops at an angle that is too severe for the Abrams's turret.
GROUP B
Rooftop Support
A company commander (1) oversees as many as nine squads at one time (2). Fire Support Teams (FiST), with an artillery forward officer (FO), mortar FO and a Forward Air Controller (FAC) call in and coordinate artillery, mortar and aerial support for the infantry. Two-man sniper teams (3) provide "guardian angel" protection to infantry teams.
GROUP C
Breaking & Entering
If a rocket or tank round is unavailable, Marines on foot must clear a house of insurgents. For protection, infantry enters a house with at least a four-man fire team and preferably with a larger squad. Nobody enters alone, and a strict buddy system ensures mutual cover during room searches.
GROUP D
Aerial Assets
Dragon Eye (4) and Pioneer (5) Unmanned Aerial Vehicles provide real-time intel. Combat Air Support gives infantry aerial cover. Forward Air Controllers talk directly to pilots, guiding them by lighting up targets with a laser designator, or by "talking in" a plane by visually describing the target. Air assets include Cobra gunships (6) with Hellfire missiles and rockets, F/A-18 fighters (7) with precision munitions, and the AC-130 ( , a flying gun platform, armed with a field-artillery-size 105mm howitzer--a favorite with the Marines. "Some people need recordings of running water to go to sleep," Maj. Anthony Petrucci says. "In Fallujah, all I needed was an AC-130 overhead."
Ellie
It's a brutal schooling, but American forces are learning how to combine new technology and old-fashioned combat skills to root out a tenacious insurgency. Former Marines Owen West and his father Bing West, who was a front-line witness to Iraq's fiercest urban battle, detail the key concept: adaptability.
BY BING WEST AND OWEN WEST
Published in the August, 2005 issue.
THE INFANTRYMEN loved to move alongside the tank. It was like going on an evening stroll in a dangerous neighborhood with a Tyrannosaurus rex. In fact, during last November's battle to retake Iraq's insurgent-held city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, the M1A1 Abrams was the favored weapon to support Marines who fought street by street and house by house. If the infantryman was the left hook, the Abrams was the haymaker.
On the fourth day of the three-week operation, one of the Marines in India Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, used the "grunt phone" attached to the rear of an Abrams to ask Master Gunnery Sgt. Ishmael Castillo to maneuver down a tight alley. With more than 80 percent of Fallujah's civilian population evacuated, every concrete house and courtyard had become a potential pillbox for insurgents firing on the Marines advancing out in the open. From his tank commander's hatch 8 ft. above the ground, Castillo could look over walls and shout warnings to the grunts on the ground.
When two insurgents lobbed grenades that bounced off the tank's armored plates and exploded harmlessly, Castillo briefly considered buttoning down the hatch, but decided against it so he could continue to warn his men. To eliminate insurgent positions at 100 ft., he began to "pivot steer," swiveling the Abrams back and forth on its treads, smashing the alley walls. With the grunts urging him on, Castillo rumbled down the dirt track, firing his 7.62mm and .50-caliber machine guns into the doors and windows of houses. When the startled jihadists began to fire blindly, giving away their hiding places, Castillo opened up with the tank's 120mm main gun.
The M1A1 was engineered for battle on the open plains of Europe, not for the narrow alleyways of an ancient Middle Eastern city. Some pundits had warned that American forces would be vulnerable in Iraq's teeming urban areas, our lumbering tanks sitting ducks for insurgents with superior knowledge of the battlefield. But the M1A1's 120mm gun, designed to take out Soviet tanks at a mile or more, proved equally effective at destroying insurgent positions at 50 ft.
Soon other tank commanders in the operation began applying similar tactics. "I fired 25 to 40 shells each day," Castillo says. "Every tank did. Each night we'd go back to the supply point, rearm, make repairs, get back in position by 3 am, catch a few hours of sleep and go at it again."
This was not the war U.S. forces had trained and planned for when they invaded Iraq in March 2003. But it's the war they got, and inside a sprawling enemy city whose alleys and rooftops were supposed to neutralize the American armor advantage, the military altered its tactics and won a resounding victory.
The conflict in Iraq has included two distinctly different combat operations. The first was the rapid seizure of Baghdad, or Operation Iraqi Freedom I (OIF I), in a military strategy called Maneuver Warfare: fast, violent action that combines armor and air power to destroy the enemy's command and control capability. But after Saddam fled in April 2003, many former officials in the Sunni areas did not consider themselves defeated. A guerrilla war began.
In OIF II, as it is called in the military ranks, American forces face an enemy employing classic insurgent tactics: ambushing American troops on the roads, intimidating fledgling Iraqi security forces, assassinating Iraqi government officials and terrorizing the population with random car bombings. There have also been pitched battles in cities, including two in Fallujah. But, led by those doing the fighting and the dying, American forces are learning some critical lessons about employing new tactics and new technology. These hard-won insights may influence how long the insurgency will last and how the United States will fight in future conflicts.
LESSON 1
Control the cities.
FIFTY YEARS AGO, the concept of guerrilla war championed by practitioners such as Mao Zedong and Che Guevara envisioned the guerrillas massing in the countryside and encircling government forces isolated in cities. In flat, open terrain like that of Iraq, guerrillas opening fire in the countryside are quickly cut down. The modern lair of the insurgent is in the cities, where more than 70 percent of Iraqis live.
Last November in Fallujah about 1500 insurgents fought in loose gangs of 10 to 20, relying on their knowledge of back alleys to shoot and scoot. Their plan was to repeat what the Chechens in Grozny had done to Russian troops trying to suppress insurgents in the separatist province of Chechnya: Allow armor to roll forward, then dart from building to rooftop, surround isolated units and pick them off. But American forces in Iraq thwarted that tactic. Marines advanced systematically, protecting their flanks with infantry and tanks moving in concert. When the Fallujah insurgents maneuvered en masse, they were discovered and shot down. Explosives and blast weapons proved essential: tanks, grenades, C-4, Bangalore torpedoes and rockets.
The Americans also employed overhead photomaps with a number for every city block and names for all major streets. This enabled commanders to designate phase lines--reference points drawn on maps like chalklines on a football field--to control friendly movement. There were no fatalities caused by friendly fire, despite thousands of rounds of artillery. The forces on the ground and in the air were able to identify the precise location of every house and courtyard. F/A-18s loitering at 10,000 ft., unseen from the ground, struck any building required. American forces advanced as a steamroller, with an Abrams tank supporting most rifle platoons. Gradually, the Americans pushed the insurgents south, killing hundreds in place and driving the survivors toward the Euphrates. The jihadists were so devastated that the word spread throughout the country: Do not fight the Americans in the city.
LESSON 2
Small-unit training counts for more than weapons.
THE MARINES in Fallujah faced extreme fundamentalists who holed up in houses, waiting to shoot an American before they were killed. Over the course of about 20 days, roughly 100 Marine rifle squads searched 39,000 buildings, or about 40 structures per day per squad. Every infantry squad engaged in at least one random, close-quarters firefight with suicidal fanatics armed with grenades and automatic weapons--an extraordinary testament to the courage of the American fighting man.
Marine Sgt. Timothy Connors of Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 8th Marines, survived at least a dozen firefights at distances of 10 ft. or less. Connors varied his pattern, adapting his attack to each building. "There is no one technique for house clearing," Connors says. "Sometimes I'll be noisy to draw fire, sometimes I'll sneak in. I'll feint at the front door and enter through the kitchen. Training gives you the basics. After that, you have to adapt."
The war in Iraq has transformed the military's view of which force elements are most essential on a guerrilla battlefield. Infantrymen like Connors, with their ability to stay a step ahead of their enemies, have become the prime lethal instruments in this war.
LESSON 3
Own the night.
IN THE VIETNAM WAR, the enemy moved in the rice paddies and villages at night. In Iraq, the American military owns the night. More than 200 Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) patrol the highways and city blocks, their infrared cameras picking out every dog, cat and human venturing outdoors.
The smallest UAVs, the 5-pound Dragon Eyes, are carried by infantrymen in backpacks and launched with bungee cords. These Kevlar-reinforced fiberglass planes, which have radar signatures no bigger than a bird's, hover just over rooftops, beaming real-time video to troops just blocks away. The 400-pound Pioneers usually circle at about 1500 ft., using sensors to monitor entire city blocks (see "Nowhere to Hide," POPULAR MECHANICS, Feb. 2005 cover story). The 2000-pound Predators, which operate from 5000 to 15,000 ft., combine reconnaissance with firepower: They can carry their own missiles.
Manned aircraft also prowl the skies. Above Cobra helicopter gunships circle AC-130s, four-engine battleships in the sky, equipped with huge infrared spotlights, 40mm cannons and 105mm artillery tubes. Sometimes called Basher or Slayer, the AC-130 is the single most fearsome weapon system in Iraq. When it rumbles across the black sky, insurgents stay indoors or die.
"[The assets] are a huge help for perimeter security at night," says Marine Capt. Stan Deland, who served as a company executive officer in the November battle for Fallujah. "We know what's out there and the enemy can't maneuver."
The infrared cameras are so precise that rifles can be seen in the arms of the insurgents. The aircraft crews, both airborne and at the ground readout stations, have become proficient at distinguishing between normal traffic, day or night, and insurgent activity--the way a policeman walking a beat knows his neighborhood.
"If we can work one section of a city for a week," says Lt. Col. John "Ajax" Neumann, commander of the UAV detachment in Fallujah, "we can spot the bad guys in their pickups, follow them to their safe houses and develop a full intelligence profile--all from the air. We've brought the roof down on some. Others we've kept under surveillance until they drive out on a highway, then we've vectored in a mounted patrol to capture them alive. If you're outside and you're carrying a weapon, we can pick you out."
LESSON 4
Low-tech bombs are the most dangerous threat to U.S. forces.
BY FAR the most devastating and ubiquitous weapon of the insurgency is the radio-controlled Improvised Explosive Device, or IED. It is cheap and simple to make--any combination of metal (for shrapnel) and explosives armed with a blasting cap--and easy to detonate with a radio frequency generated by a garage door opener, a cellphone or other remote control. IEDs are concealed in the bloated stomachs of dead dogs, a barrel tipped at an improbable angle, a cardboard box too heavy to be blown by the wind or a car parked in an odd place.
The IED of Vietnam--the hidden land mine--was the bane of infantrymen, accounting for 20 percent of the casualties and sapping morale. A grunt never knew when he would be blown up while walking down a trail. In Iraq, where highways are the trails, the IED accounts for about 70 percent of all American casualties. It's a stunning statistic, given that gunshot wounds dominated the two biggest engagements since the fall of Baghdad--the twin battles for Fallujah and Najaf.
There are three ways to defeat IEDs: by de-arming them before they explode, by jamming their detonation frequencies and by deflecting their explosions. The main IED detector is the American soldier and Marine with sharp eyes: Approximately three IEDs are found for each one that detonates. The main technical counter-IED device is the Warlock, which jams the radio frequencies employed to detonate the devices.
Muting IED explosions--defense by better armor--has received the most attention. It burst onto the public scene when a National Guardsman in Kuwait asked Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld why his unit was forced to dig through scrap piles to armor their Humvees. When the secretary's response did not seem to show enough concern, the press savaged him. Congress leaped into the act and additional funds and production followed.
The current plan is to equip every one of the 30,000-odd military vehicles that use the highways in Iraq with adequate armor, either by bolting on 750-pound kits or taking delivery of completely refurbished M114 "uparmored" Humvees, which have 2000 pounds of extra armor. "It will make a huge difference," says a Marine battalion commander who served in Iraq. "If we'd had them [earlier], several of our IED victims would be alive."
The uparmored Humvee, however, has a downside. Increased protection means more weight and less power. In addition, the original vehicle's width and low center of gravity made it resistant to rollovers. Critics claim the increased weight of the armor and the high-speed tactics the troops have developed to avoid or flee ambushes have led to a dramatic growth in the number of rollovers. In 2004, 39 soldiers serving in Iraq died in accidents involving various types of vehicles; in the first three months of 2005 alone, 14 soldiers were killed in uparmored Humvee accidents. "We're going to have to start with a new class of vehicle and build it from the tires on up," Brig. Gen. William Catto, director of the Marine Corps Systems Command, told Congress in May.
There is, however, no technical solution to the suicide bomber. So-called Vehicle-Borne IEDs have destroyed uparmored Humvees and even mechanized fighting vehicles, proving more lethal than the roadside bomb. The remedy resides with the region's religious and political leaders.
LESSON 5
Adapt at the point of battle.
THE GREATEST SKILL of the American military is not technical; it is the ability of soldiers to adapt. Fighting insurgents is by its nature small-unit engagement. Battles are won by young enlisted men, not by generals poring over maps as in World War II. In Iraq it is the "strategic corporal," as the Marines call him, who must do everything from detective work after a bombing to building soccer fields to planning rifle attacks on the fly. It is the flexibility of these small-unit leaders that is the best hope for keeping the Iraq insurgency at bay.
Smart corporals use handheld radios and GPS devices to control movement block by block under fire, employing 10-digit grids to report where they are with an accuracy of 1 meter, permitting rapid reinforcement on the flanks while avoiding fratricide. Small-unit leaders are also the best weapons in the counter-IED battle. In the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, for example, junior Marines devised a novel way to sweep roads for explosives. Instead of racing down dangerous streets to avoid IED blasts, they drove less than 10 mph, positioning spotters on either side of their Humvees. Using rifle scopes designed to pick up men at 500 meters, the spotters scanned the sides of the road just 50 meters ahead, creeping along inside kill zones that were neutralized by their sharp eyes. If telltale wires or strange humps of dirt were discovered, the Marines often leaped out, sprinted along the side of the road and de-armed the mines themselves. Sgt. Leandro Baptista, for example, who was not trained in explosive disposal, de-armed four IEDs by hand.
A young private with the Army's 69th Infantry Regiment invented a counter-IED weapon with a toy. He used a radio-controlled model car to determine whether unidentified roadside debris--for instance, a cardboard box--was trash or an IED. Using the toy's remote control from a safe distance, the soldier would ram the car into the box. If the car moved the box, then it was probably too light to contain an IED. If the box was too heavy to budge, the platoon would call in an Explosive Ordnance Disposal team with larger, slower and much more expensive robots to detonate the IED.
In Fallujah, SMAW (Shoulder-launched Multipurpose Assault Weapon) gunners became on-the-job demolition experts. These young rocketeers learned how to take down an entire building with a weapon designed to hit tanks and bunkers. SMAW gunners figured out how to hit building joints, collapsing the roofs on insurgents. On Nov. 12, Lance Cpl. Derek Fetterolf of India Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, crumbled 12 buildings in southern Fallujah with 14 rockets.
The military support structure is also working to speed up a procurement process that traditionally takes years. The Marine Corps Warfighting Lab, a cutting-edge marriage of tactics and technology, is purchasing off-the-shelf civilian gear, such as satellite phones and laser pointers, and shipping it to Iraq to plug gaps that would otherwise take months or years to fill. The lab also designs its own gear, and recently built Kevlar undershorts for Marines who stand in gun turrets atop Humvees.
America's secret weapon has always been ingenuity on the battlefield. The troops at the tip of the spear are proving that today in Iraq. On April 26, 2005, Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters, "I think we are winning." The American military has worked to keep a lid on the insurgency, buying the time needed for the Iraqi security forces to pull themselves together. Meanwhile, our forces continue to refine their technology and tactics, increasing their effectiveness in Iraq--and preparedness for future conflicts.
Bing West's fourth book, No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah, will be published in September by Bantam Books. For a Q & A with Marine Sgt. Timothy Connors, nominated for a Silver Star for his service in Iraq, go to www.popularmechanics.com/iraq
STREET SWEEPING CREWS
Illustration by CRANEDIGITAL.COM
URBAN COMBAT IN IRAQ involves unprecedented coordination between air, armor and artillery. Here's a look at some of the typical interactions between Marine infantry units and their support teams.
GROUP A
Arms Patrol
An infantry fire team patrols the street alongside an M1A1 Abrams tank. Fire teams avoid hostile fire--and the main tank gun--by keeping to the sides of the street. Tanks and infantry provide mutual cover: The Abrams draws insurgent fire away from the infantry and provides the house-clearing power of the 120mm main gun. But tanks are designed to engage other tanks in open-field combat. Their imposing size makes them an easy target in a crowded, urban environment. For protection, armored units rely on the grunts walking beside the tank to spot threats in a tank's many blind spots, and to engage hostiles the tank can't eliminate, such as insurgents firing from rooftops at an angle that is too severe for the Abrams's turret.
GROUP B
Rooftop Support
A company commander (1) oversees as many as nine squads at one time (2). Fire Support Teams (FiST), with an artillery forward officer (FO), mortar FO and a Forward Air Controller (FAC) call in and coordinate artillery, mortar and aerial support for the infantry. Two-man sniper teams (3) provide "guardian angel" protection to infantry teams.
GROUP C
Breaking & Entering
If a rocket or tank round is unavailable, Marines on foot must clear a house of insurgents. For protection, infantry enters a house with at least a four-man fire team and preferably with a larger squad. Nobody enters alone, and a strict buddy system ensures mutual cover during room searches.
GROUP D
Aerial Assets
Dragon Eye (4) and Pioneer (5) Unmanned Aerial Vehicles provide real-time intel. Combat Air Support gives infantry aerial cover. Forward Air Controllers talk directly to pilots, guiding them by lighting up targets with a laser designator, or by "talking in" a plane by visually describing the target. Air assets include Cobra gunships (6) with Hellfire missiles and rockets, F/A-18 fighters (7) with precision munitions, and the AC-130 ( , a flying gun platform, armed with a field-artillery-size 105mm howitzer--a favorite with the Marines. "Some people need recordings of running water to go to sleep," Maj. Anthony Petrucci says. "In Fallujah, all I needed was an AC-130 overhead."
Ellie