wrbones
03-23-03, 06:53 PM
Gear, helicopters, rifles - it's all so different from Vietnam
John H. Cushman Jr. The New York Times Saturday, March 22, 2003
WASHINGTON Much has changed for the 2d Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division since it fought around Hue, Vietnam, in 1968, or even since it joined the biggest helicopter assault ever during the Gulf War in 1991.
.
The American draftees who fought North Vietnamese regulars after the Tet offensive carried loads just as heavy - a third of their body weight or more - as do the volunteers going into Iraq this time. But almost nothing the volunteers carry is the same. Helmets and helicopters, guns and missiles, radios and maps, lasers and night-vision gear, all have changed, and this unit has been at the forefront of adopting new gear.
.
Some of what the infantrymen will carry this time is customized for urban warfare, and while the military's plans for this brigade are not known, it has the ability to arrive at Baghdad's outskirts in a day or two if ordered to do so. Alternatively, the whole division, or any of its three brigades, could leapfrog farther into northern Iraq in just a few days more.
.
In Vietnam, the 2d Brigade's motto was "Ready to Go." Now, it is more succinct: "Strike."
.
Either way, its helicopter battalions are its distinctive strength.
.
The 101st Airborne uses heavy Chinooks to lift fuel and vehicles forward, Black Hawks to move the troops, Apache gunships to patrol the combat zone and knock out tanks or other targets on the ground.
.
The point of the whole operation is to move infantrymen into action. The 2d Brigade has three full infantry battalions, typically teamed with an artillery battalion, and several companies or platoons specializing in air defense, military intelligence, communications, chemical defense and the like.
.
Vietnam was the first war in which the division, famed for its parachuting feats and still jealous of its "Airborne" name, used helicopters. But only the Chinook resembles the helicopters that the 2d Brigade used in Vietnam, when its foot soldiers fought tough, round-the-clock engagements with large units of North Vietnamese, who had seized the city of Hue and had to be dislodged by Marines. The 2d Brigade fought in the surrounding fields and hamlets.
.
Back then, the outfit's attack helicopters were Cobras that strafed with rockets. The new Apaches not only carry much larger, longer-range Hellfire missiles, but since the Gulf War have been equipped with a new Longbow targeting system that can shoot the missiles at many targets simultaneously. Back in Vietnam, the troops rode into combat in Hueys, a far cry from today's muscular Black Hawk troop carriers. (One of the brigade's Black Hawks was famously shot down in Somalia, a lesson in the difficulty of urban warfare and the lingering risks of helicopter warfare generally.)
.
The Chinooks, greatly improved since then, are workhorses, some of them flown by women whose role comes as close to frontline combat as the military allows. When the division strikes, most of its aviation battalions could join forces to lift a single brigade or so forward almost halfway to Baghdad, establish a base, haul in huge amounts of fuel, control the surrounding territory and give the next brigade to arrive a staging area within striking distance of the capital.
.
In many ways, that kind of forward operating base will be a far cry from the landing zones that were the equivalent in Vietnam.
.
It will be more heavily defended, even though the division has no armor. In Vietnam, it had no vehicles at all; it now is equipped with Humvees bristling with TOW anti-tank missiles and other arms. (These, too, are carried forward by helicopter, in slings.)
.
Essentially, in Vietnam, this unit was a light infantry brigade: highly mobile, but not that heavily armed. Its platoons of 40 men or so included rifle squads carrying M-16s, backed up by a couple of M-60 machine guns; at the company level, there were 60mm mortars, and up at the battalion there were heavier mortars; as now, the brigade was linked up with 105mm artillery.
.
Those weapons have all been modernized since then - indeed, the Vietnam-era rifle was despised for having been modernized to the point that it always seemed to jam - but their general employment is still what it was then.
.
What is totally different is the command, control and communications the brigade (and its division headquarters) now uses. In Vietnam, the brigade commander, flying in a light, unarmed observation helicopter with a pilot and a radioman, would communicate entirely by voice radio, or by touching down at the front lines or at other command posts.
.
The modern command helicopter is an OH-58 Kiowa, which can carry Stinger or even Hellfire missiles, and is equipped with a television camera, thermal sensor and laser designator to pinpoint targets.
.
In Vietnam, of course, the brigade commander marked up a map, which he kept folded up in his pocket. By the time of the 1991 Gulf War, satellite communications were available for both voice and data, including digital maps, and the advent of Global Positioning Satellite receivers, which some soldiers purchased commercially, completely changed every soldier's sense of where he was.
.
That location changed fast on Feb. 24, 1991, as elements of the 2d Brigade joined the division's 1st Brigade in the largest helicopter assault in military history to seize a base called Cobra deep inside Iraq. Three days later, the 2d Brigade hopscotched forward again 150 kilometers (93 miles) east, setting up a base that further isolated retreating Iraqi forces in the Euphrates River Valley. That day, the cease-fire was established. (Five members of the division were killed in the war.)
.
This time, in a thrust northward, the air assault units are likely to coordinate with a heavily armored unit thrusting north on the ground. And they will move into areas that may have been scouted already by pilotless Predator and Global Hawk surveillance aircraft, a new advantage since the 1991 war and unimaginable during Vietnam.
.
Commanders and even helicopter pilots now have direct links with air force and navy fighter planes. And while "smart bombs" were first used in significant numbers in the Vietnam War, they were used only for strategic targets like bridges, not in direct support of ground troops, who could not then, as they do now, designate targets with laser beams or call in coordinates for satellite-guided bombs.
.
The foot soldiers' own eyes are better, too, especially at night.
.
The night-vision equipment used by almost every soldier today represents one of the biggest improvements in combat gear in recent years. In Vietnam, the only such thing was a starlight scope useful mainly for sentries at night, looking out for the enemy moving through the lines.
.
Now, the soldiers are equipped with two main kinds of night-vision gear: the individual binocular-style goggles, and the big, heavy thermal-imaging equipment that Apache pilots or Humvee crews use to spot the enemy.
.
for the rest of the article....
http://www.iht.com/articles/90623.html
John H. Cushman Jr. The New York Times Saturday, March 22, 2003
WASHINGTON Much has changed for the 2d Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division since it fought around Hue, Vietnam, in 1968, or even since it joined the biggest helicopter assault ever during the Gulf War in 1991.
.
The American draftees who fought North Vietnamese regulars after the Tet offensive carried loads just as heavy - a third of their body weight or more - as do the volunteers going into Iraq this time. But almost nothing the volunteers carry is the same. Helmets and helicopters, guns and missiles, radios and maps, lasers and night-vision gear, all have changed, and this unit has been at the forefront of adopting new gear.
.
Some of what the infantrymen will carry this time is customized for urban warfare, and while the military's plans for this brigade are not known, it has the ability to arrive at Baghdad's outskirts in a day or two if ordered to do so. Alternatively, the whole division, or any of its three brigades, could leapfrog farther into northern Iraq in just a few days more.
.
In Vietnam, the 2d Brigade's motto was "Ready to Go." Now, it is more succinct: "Strike."
.
Either way, its helicopter battalions are its distinctive strength.
.
The 101st Airborne uses heavy Chinooks to lift fuel and vehicles forward, Black Hawks to move the troops, Apache gunships to patrol the combat zone and knock out tanks or other targets on the ground.
.
The point of the whole operation is to move infantrymen into action. The 2d Brigade has three full infantry battalions, typically teamed with an artillery battalion, and several companies or platoons specializing in air defense, military intelligence, communications, chemical defense and the like.
.
Vietnam was the first war in which the division, famed for its parachuting feats and still jealous of its "Airborne" name, used helicopters. But only the Chinook resembles the helicopters that the 2d Brigade used in Vietnam, when its foot soldiers fought tough, round-the-clock engagements with large units of North Vietnamese, who had seized the city of Hue and had to be dislodged by Marines. The 2d Brigade fought in the surrounding fields and hamlets.
.
Back then, the outfit's attack helicopters were Cobras that strafed with rockets. The new Apaches not only carry much larger, longer-range Hellfire missiles, but since the Gulf War have been equipped with a new Longbow targeting system that can shoot the missiles at many targets simultaneously. Back in Vietnam, the troops rode into combat in Hueys, a far cry from today's muscular Black Hawk troop carriers. (One of the brigade's Black Hawks was famously shot down in Somalia, a lesson in the difficulty of urban warfare and the lingering risks of helicopter warfare generally.)
.
The Chinooks, greatly improved since then, are workhorses, some of them flown by women whose role comes as close to frontline combat as the military allows. When the division strikes, most of its aviation battalions could join forces to lift a single brigade or so forward almost halfway to Baghdad, establish a base, haul in huge amounts of fuel, control the surrounding territory and give the next brigade to arrive a staging area within striking distance of the capital.
.
In many ways, that kind of forward operating base will be a far cry from the landing zones that were the equivalent in Vietnam.
.
It will be more heavily defended, even though the division has no armor. In Vietnam, it had no vehicles at all; it now is equipped with Humvees bristling with TOW anti-tank missiles and other arms. (These, too, are carried forward by helicopter, in slings.)
.
Essentially, in Vietnam, this unit was a light infantry brigade: highly mobile, but not that heavily armed. Its platoons of 40 men or so included rifle squads carrying M-16s, backed up by a couple of M-60 machine guns; at the company level, there were 60mm mortars, and up at the battalion there were heavier mortars; as now, the brigade was linked up with 105mm artillery.
.
Those weapons have all been modernized since then - indeed, the Vietnam-era rifle was despised for having been modernized to the point that it always seemed to jam - but their general employment is still what it was then.
.
What is totally different is the command, control and communications the brigade (and its division headquarters) now uses. In Vietnam, the brigade commander, flying in a light, unarmed observation helicopter with a pilot and a radioman, would communicate entirely by voice radio, or by touching down at the front lines or at other command posts.
.
The modern command helicopter is an OH-58 Kiowa, which can carry Stinger or even Hellfire missiles, and is equipped with a television camera, thermal sensor and laser designator to pinpoint targets.
.
In Vietnam, of course, the brigade commander marked up a map, which he kept folded up in his pocket. By the time of the 1991 Gulf War, satellite communications were available for both voice and data, including digital maps, and the advent of Global Positioning Satellite receivers, which some soldiers purchased commercially, completely changed every soldier's sense of where he was.
.
That location changed fast on Feb. 24, 1991, as elements of the 2d Brigade joined the division's 1st Brigade in the largest helicopter assault in military history to seize a base called Cobra deep inside Iraq. Three days later, the 2d Brigade hopscotched forward again 150 kilometers (93 miles) east, setting up a base that further isolated retreating Iraqi forces in the Euphrates River Valley. That day, the cease-fire was established. (Five members of the division were killed in the war.)
.
This time, in a thrust northward, the air assault units are likely to coordinate with a heavily armored unit thrusting north on the ground. And they will move into areas that may have been scouted already by pilotless Predator and Global Hawk surveillance aircraft, a new advantage since the 1991 war and unimaginable during Vietnam.
.
Commanders and even helicopter pilots now have direct links with air force and navy fighter planes. And while "smart bombs" were first used in significant numbers in the Vietnam War, they were used only for strategic targets like bridges, not in direct support of ground troops, who could not then, as they do now, designate targets with laser beams or call in coordinates for satellite-guided bombs.
.
The foot soldiers' own eyes are better, too, especially at night.
.
The night-vision equipment used by almost every soldier today represents one of the biggest improvements in combat gear in recent years. In Vietnam, the only such thing was a starlight scope useful mainly for sentries at night, looking out for the enemy moving through the lines.
.
Now, the soldiers are equipped with two main kinds of night-vision gear: the individual binocular-style goggles, and the big, heavy thermal-imaging equipment that Apache pilots or Humvee crews use to spot the enemy.
.
for the rest of the article....
http://www.iht.com/articles/90623.html