There was some news in the last couple of months about the sometimes mysterious disorders affecting some soldiers' nervous systems. I don't remember the details, but a search yielded this:

More commonly, injury occurs . . . when a wave of high pressure — a blast-wave — expands outward from the site of an explosion to damage brain and other soft tissue of its victims. Blast-wave injuries may be especially severe for personnel in confined spaces such as the interior of armored vehicles.

"As far as you, this particular Colonel might have never worked with armor"

Actually he was an Armored Colonel. Since when do Chaplains, Lawyers or Doctors command assaulting regiments? You're really overreaching here.

"Maybe he was briefed that he would be looking at the UK counterpart to the Bradley"

Maybe, if so the people who briefed him were idiots. The Scorpion is a light tank and plays a completely different role. In any case I didn't know a single soldier in my time with the armored who couldn't identify 99% of the armored vehicles in service from front or side silhouettes or from a picture ESPECIALLY not ones so common as a Scorpion and a Bradley. The zipperheads drilled on that stuff all the time.

When I was in Basic Training we had a US Marine who'd served for 5 years in the US forces in my platoon. He was a dual Canadian/US citizen and after working with the Canadian forces on an exercise he saw the difference in calibre and enrolled in the Canadian forces. He said that Canadian basic training was tougher than anything he'd gone through as a marine.

EVERY enlisted member goes through that training.

Really if you've never worked extensively with other forces what position are you in to compare?

In front of CFB Shilo there is an M109 which was LOST by American forces on exercise. For those who don't know an M109 is mobile artillery, it looks like a tank only taller. After a US exercise on a Canadian base it's common to find teepees made of M16s that have been left behind. These are not things competent soldiers do.

Drachen, I'm inclined to take offense, and I'm sure MarineGunRock will be as well.

Ive been in the service for 5 years now, and sure there are a couple soldiers here and there who are on the slow side, but to say we're barely literate and lazy? Thats just bad form. A good deal many of us soldiers have college degrees. In fact, a lot more than you would think. Thats a pretty broad generalization, and an insulting one at that.

On top of that, your talking about lazy, uneducated, barely literate troops, and you reference air to ground blue on blue. In order to fly you have to be an officer with college. Get your facts straight.

"What at hell kind of Bradley is that?" Man, oh man. That could have been meant is 20 different ways. As far as you, this particular Colonel might have never worked with armor, and was a doctor, or a layer. You don't know. Maybe a chaplain? Just because one man is uninformed as to foreign armored vehicles doesn't mean shit. Maybe he was briefed that he would be looking at the UK counterpart to the Bradley and he meant it in jest, as it resembles a Bradley, but much smaller.

The utter absurdity of your comment has my mind spinning in circles. BLECH

@Danny - the whole "if you can hear them" thing confuses me, so I wasn't talking about that. I was just saying that if you can hear them, and you are far enough away from the weapon, then yeah your going to see the rounds impact before you hear them. Same thing applies to thunder and lightning.

@Farhad - The ammo switching mechanism adds hardly any weight, just a couple pounds maybe. The weapon system I am referring to uses 2 smaller ammo bins and two feed chutes rather than one large bin and one feed chute... so really the only thing your adding is the aluminum feed chute which weight practically nothing. 2 round selection, same weapon, so the same fail safes. Room is really the only issue you would have, as that aircraft is more than powerful enough to handle a few pounds extra weight. Being able to choose between HE and DU actually adds a significant amount of functionality in the benefit's of what the rounds were designed for. HE is great against troops and wheeled vehicles, while DU is great against armored vehicles. HE is practically worthless against an armored target, while DU is very inefficient against troops and light vehicles.

>> ^Aemaeth:
Call me ignorant, but I can't imagine anything we need to fire 3000 RPM at instead of 2000 RPM. At what point is it just ridiculous?


Suppressing fire. You hear that gun, you run. There's no two ways about it. Not to mention that what it really has a stunning effect on is light armored vehicles. You don't even have two shoot at anything for a full second. Just a nice quick squeeze and a thousand rounds say, "No one is getting out of that car."

>> ^BicycleRepairMan:
Something like the M113 would be an APC. The BFV is not a carrier, but a fighting vehicle.
I dont know about this specific vehicle, but the new APC's looks more like a tank, take a look at the CV90, for example:
http://www.norvetnet.no/gfx/bilder/isaf/isaf-cv90_small.jpg

First, I offer this as evidence that I know what I'm talking about. Yes Thats me. A younger me, but me. So about as much proof as I can offer with out throwing a years worth of pictures at you.

Ok I have no idea what that vehicle is. It's not American, and probably isn't bad-ass enough to have been covered in my Armored Vehicle Recognition class.
What makes a "tank" a Tank, is the size of the barrel and rounds, not whether or not it has tracks.

And as far as road damage - No it does not damage the roads. Like I said, i used to drive that exact vehicle, and I've seen the Ambrams as well, there is no damage. Even the M88 wrecker. You'll recognize it as the vehicle that pulled down the Hussein statue. It is the largest tracked vehicle that I have seen. Get back at me later once i get my portable HD back from my buddy ill show you an M88 lifting my BFV.


The tracks are not just metal bands. Each track shoe has a track pad made of rubber. The most damage it does is leave black scuff marks everywhere in the motor pool that "Joe" has to sweep up on Friday before we could go home.

^ blankfist

sure! i'm writing the prequel as we speak. after all, deloreans are already pretty well-armored vehicles.
remember those guys at the mall parking lot? they're the bad guys, and they're still pissed about the pinball machine parts. oh, and we're getting steven seagal to play marty this time.

Over the last few years there were reports that showed the US military dropping recruitment requirements and offering waivers in exchange for military service.

Reports of the Army unable to supply sufficiently armored vehicles and other equipment against IED threats, pre and post surge. Soldiers are now familiarizing combat driving techniques using simulators because there is a shortage of M-1114s.

America does possess formidable military forces, but we are talking about soldiers on the ground currently not total combined forces; which would take into account navy and air.

Extended tours (from 12 to 15 months), with multiple returns are common, fatigue is taking it's toll. A secondary surge has already taken place to bolster troop numbers, by sending more combat brigades and extending tours for troops already in Iraq.

Troop levels would thus increase to around 200,000 by the end of this year, a record since the start of OIF. These numbers of course do not include the large number of private military contractors in Iraq, also surging in numbers, paid for by US taxpayers under contract from the DOD. Meanwhile the Army is shedding officers at an alarming rate, 44% left, the highest loss rate in 3 decades.

With regards to the Al Anbar success stories, one must remember that is only occurring because previous Sunni insurgents have turned against Al Qaeda, making US forces the most convenient allies in driving out foreign radical Islamic terrorists. The relationship is tenacious, it also means the US forces now have to bolster previous Sunni insurgents and make them components of the Iraqi government, which is filled with Shia militias who do not want minority Sunni influence.

"To bolster that case, Bush made his own surprise visit to a U.S. military base in Anbar province on Sept. 3 to tout growing cooperation between Sunni tribal leaders and American forces.

But the sheiks didn't seek out U.S. help because an additional 30,000 U.S. troops had been shipped to Iraq. Rather, the sheiks had found themselves caught between al-Qaeda extremists on one side and Shiite-dominated government forces on the other.

The Americans became the enemy and erstwhile friend, respectively, of my enemies – and thus an ally of convenience for the Sunni sheiks.

Indeed, the Anbar situation could be viewed as evidence that the political and ethnic divisions of Iraq continue to deepen – with Sunni traditionalists growing only more desperate. But these shifting sands of allegiances have become the foundation upon which Bush is building his case for open-ended U.S. military involvement in Iraq."

- How VIPs get 'Brainwashed' on Iraq by Robert Parry.

The important thing to consider is; will such success be replicated in other provinces? Will the forces join into the Shia dominated government which opposes Sunni influence? Thus how long will this commitment last. All questions to which officers within the armed forces cannot answer, because the situation is that fragile.

After posing gamely with the troops at the Al-Asad base, Bush celebrated the return of Sunni areas to the control of U.S.-armed militias-composed largely of former insurgents who have at least temporarily decided that their Shiite rivals, currently in control of the central government, are a more pressing enemy than the American occupiers. Speaking of one such group of Sunnis trained by the Americans and dubbed the “Volunteers” by their instructors, a U.S. soldier told The Washington Post, “I think there is some risk of them being Volunteers by day and terrorists by night.”

The National Intelligence Estimate reported that Iraqi goverment is precarious, violence remains high, a decrease in Baghdad violence due to sectarian cleansing. The Government Accountability Report, a congressionally mandated report, showed that the Iraqi goverment met 3, partially 4, and did not meet 11 of its 18 benchmarks. The NIE was tweaked favorably by Gen. David Petraeus, the GAO was attacked by the White House as being 'inadmissible', 'harsh' and 'locked into failure'.

With regards to your comments about losing Iraq on principle, it was never a war for us to win in any sense, it was a systematic fear mongering campaign driven by PowerPoint presentations with aerial photographs about WMDs that got us into Iraq.

After 4 years of being constantly lied to about hostilities ending, turning the corner, mission accomplished, and witnessing the daily ineptness of the way the current administration has and is handling the war we are again on the brink of giving this administration another pass on the war up to 2009 since the current surge will remain up to and until April 2008. To have President Bush then compare the Iraq war to Vietnam; As Andrew Sullivan put it:

His speech yesterday actually managed to shock. You might think that, in wartime, a president would acknowledge what no one denies is a terribly grim decision in front of us - whether to pursue a clearly unwinnable war in order to govern a clearly ungovernable country - or withdraw and redeploy in ways that will doubtless lead to even more bloodshed. But no. There is no gray here; no awful decision for the least worst option; not acknowledgment of his own moral culpability for such a disaster. There is instead an accusation that those who reach a different judgment about the course of the war are, in fact, enemies of the troops:

Our troops are seeing this progress that is being made on the ground. And as they take the initiative from the enemy, they have a question: Will their elected leaders in Washington pull the rug out from under them just as they're gaining momentum and changing the dynamic on the ground in Iraq? Here's my answer is clear: We'll support our troops, we'll support our commanders, and we will give them everything they need to succeed.

To place all the troops into the position of favoring one strategy ahead of us rather than another, and to accuse political opponents of trying to "pull the rug out from under them," is a, yes, fascistic tactic designed to corral political debate into only one possible patriotic course. It's beneath a president to adopt this role, beneath him to coopt the armed services for partisan purposes. It should be possible for a president to make an impassioned case for continuing his own policy in Iraq, without accusing his critics of wanting to attack and betray the troops. But that would require class and confidence. The president has neither.

For more I would refer you to an excellent post - Thirteen Ways not to think about the Iraq war.

Conservatives love to forget all kinds of history.

Let's forget the Bush Administration cutting troop pay and benefits, not giving them proper gear or properly armored vehicles. (We can't afford it they say while they give the top 1% rich massive tax cuts).

Let's forget Cheney explaining, on several occasions, why invading Iraq would create a quagmire. (Let's just tell ourselves that 9/11 changed everything and made all centuries old middle-eastern sectarian hatred disappear magically.)

Let's forget Bush bankrupting every company he was ever put in charge of.

Let's forget what Bush Administration members and other conservatives say week to week on TV. They change their excuse every week. The most hated "liberals" out there are the people who record a neo-con on TV twice and play both clips back-to-back.

Whoa, the Taliban had an armored vehicle? I never thought about that possibility. Then again, it's probably not surprising that a few of the old Russian vehicles left in-country can still work; put gas in it, stick a machine gun on the roof mount, and you have a relatively strong mini-tank that can cruise around and stitch up ISAF troops (until the antitank weapons come out).

Review from Autospies.com:

Celebrities, dignitaries, and the obsessively paranoid now have a new cocoon in which to wrap themselves as they travel from place to place. For them, the Mercedes-Benz S600 Guard melds V12 power and Mercedes' luxurious, quiet accommodations with the sense of security only an armored vehicle can provide.

Like the other Guard models (E and G-Class rides are also available) the S-Guard is built on its own assembly line, which lets Mercedes armor up the car as part of the original production process. As a result, they're able to build in the protective features better than any aftermarket program and still tune the car so that it doesn't lose much (if anything) in terms of handling and comfort. The 517-horsepower V12 underhood is more than capable of providing adequate thrust.

If the vehicle comes under threat, it's B6/B7 armor level is enough to stop standard military-grade small-arms fire (such as 7.62mm and 5.56mm rounds), protect against grenade shrapnel and offer protection against other explosive devices. Run-flat tires, a self-sealing fuel-tank, and an integrated fire-extinguishing system round out the Guard package. Despite all the reinforcements, the S600 Guard is visually indistinguishable from the garden-variety V12 S-Class.

From Wikipedia: "TROPHY (in Hebrew: "מעיל רוח", lit. "Wind Coat") is a protective shield system for both light and heavy armored vehicles that intercepts and destroys missiles and rockets with a shotgun-like blast just before they hit. TROPHY was developed by RAFAEL together with Israel Aircraft Industries' Elta Group. The system is known as an "active protection system" (APS). The developers claim it is a major milestone in weapons design. They would have a system like TROPHY reduce or eliminate the need for heavy armor for combat vehicles".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TROPHY_Active_Protection_System

There, that wasn't so hard, eh?