Interesting look at Marja firefights and analysis by former Marine

[Crosshair]

Could have been a SMAW.

A SMAW is not guided either. The Video clearly says, to the effect of, that they fired a guided rocket and aimed it at the wrong house and killed the wrong people.

Looks like a M274 or a M-Gator with a 106mm M40 or a TOW mounted to it would have been REALLY handy to have there. Screw smoke grenades and someone miles away firing missiles at the wrong house when you can be more direct and more immediate.

[Come and take it.]

With well stored or freshly manufactured ammunition in a gun that has not weathered the corrosion to its rifling over the decades from shooting corrosive ammo, a skilled marksman could make some very impressive shots with open sights if he has a good spotter with binoculars or a primitive telescope. Bolt action battle rifles are still very effective weapons even in the 21st century.

with ammunition from half a century to a century old (that has been stored from mountian cave to high temperature desert conditions ) and through a gun with one of the most horrid rusted bores in creation it is no wonder that even an expert marksman could ever hit anything beyond a couple hundred yards.

One has to keep the quality of equipment in mind when criticizing the marksmanship skills of dirt poor insurgents.

[Ignition Override]

DanThaMan:
Yes, but they don't need to invade us. We owe them a huge part of our national debt, even just the interest on the gargantuan "loan".

They can selectively manipulate us from the other side of the planet, having just one political party, with a civilization that is 4,000 years old.
Our open media are saturated by, and our combat operations etc influenced by a few reckless quotes in a single "Rolling Stone" magazine article.

Art Eatman: You have style.

[Rob228]

I know the SMAW isn't guided, but its the most likely thing that they were carrying, just because the video said it was guided doesn't mean it was. Also, on that, if they did have a TOW with them, a wire guided missile is only as good as the guy guiding it, if he is aiming at the wrong house, its hitting the wrong house.

[austinjking]

Also, on that, if they did have a TOW with them, a wire guided missile is only as good as the guy guiding it, if he is aiming at the wrong house, its hitting the wrong house.

Agreed. A TOW is a crew served weapon and is usually attached to a Cobra, Huey, or Humvee.

[SPEMack618]

Qualifying at 500 yards with a full sized M-16A2 in range conditions is a hell of alot different than engaging a concealed target at 200 yards with an M-4 variant, regardless of the optics.

As for carrying the SMAW, or having one immediatly avaibable, those things, atleast from my fuzzy recollection of a famialirization course with one, are heavy clunky things and not something one wants to personally lug around while engaged in MOUT.

It very well could have been a Humvee mounted TOW or a Javelin fired off by a support platoon, in any case, somebody screwed up and designated the wrong building as a target.

[Come and take it.]

for the old timer bolt action battle rifle armed soldiers defense, we must remember that most urban battles developed into fragmentation grenade assaults as no one worried about the welfare of any occupants inside of buildings rooms and collateral damage.

Something that insurgents are not worried about either.

[Crosshair]

Also, on that, if they did have a TOW with them, a wire guided missile is only as good as the guy guiding it, if he is aiming at the wrong house, its hitting the wrong house.

Agreed, but it's a lot harder to screw up when you run over to the TOW or RR gunner and say, "See that house there? I want it gone." than it is to try and give directions to someone else over the radio, "OK I need you to shoot the house to the west of the smoke.......No, the one closer to the smoke......The one that is closer to where we are...........We're on the east side of the mud walls................are we even talking about the same grid square?"

Think of it along the lines of giving someone driving directions over the phone vs you sitting in the passenger seat. Over the phone is much more difficult and more prone to errors.

[Rob228]

I have seen "See that house?" Go something like this..

See that house there? Yeah, the gray one? No, next to the gray one, the light gray one... and so on.

When we assaulted through Ubaydi in 2006 quite a few of the houses got whacked with a SMAW prior to entry. They leave a bigger hole in the wall then an AT-4 (which leaves you with a nice tiny hole through a few walls before it detonates). The poor assault men using them couldn't shoot more than ten rounds a day though, as the overpressure and noise coming from the launcher is just ridiculous.

[Come and take it.]

SMAW NE is a thermobaric weapon isnt it?

[HorseSoldier]

The "NE" round is thermobaric, yes.

My guess would be it was a SMAW, going by what the USMC has in the inventory and all. As for the commentary, wouldn't be the first time someone with a military background misspoke or misidentified something.

[U.S.SFC_RET]

To some of those who cannot even know and I am not talking about those who are wearing or wore the uniform.
Armchair quarterbacks. You can dissect it all you want. I am never impressed with those who want to "grade".
If you never walked in their shoes..
If you don't understand what those guys over there go through on a day to day basis and you watch a video...

[TPAW]

Back in the day when I was beating the bush in Vietnam we didn't act so casual when contact was made. We puckered up real tight, like a frogs
a_ _ hole, and that's water proof!

[Crosshair]

Back in the day when I was beating the bush in Vietnam we didn't act so casual when contact was made. We puckered up real tight, like a frogs
a_ _ hole, and that's water proof!

I showed the video to a Vietnam vet I know and he was screaming at the screen. He was shocked that we would have such "amateurs" out in a combat zone that just "dally around like they're waiting for the school bus.". (His words, not mine.) He did wish that there was a more complete view of the surrounding terrain to get a better view of what was going on, but to him, needlessly exposing themselves like that was inexcusable.

Perhaps the VC were better shots or something.

[Double Naught Spy]

Perhaps the VC were better shots or something.

The VC probably were. They certainly had more actual snipers. Engagements tended to be a lot closer as well. And of course, our soldiers didn't have much protection beyond fragmentation vests. Then again, why would you not fully use cover when you know people are shooting at you, even if they aren't very good?

[johnwilliamson062]

I like to think that if there was ever an invasion on American soil.. everyone on TFL would be MAJOR thorns in the emeny's a$$

The Taliban would have no chance against American rifleman. End of story.

I see. I thought he meant because we would all spend our time on internet forums flooding their intel networks with worthless banter concerning things other people were doing.

Back in the day when I was beating the bush in Vietnam we didn't act so casual when contact was made. We puckered up real tight, like a frogs
a_ _ hole, and that's water proof!

He was shocked that we would have such "amateurs" out in a combat zone that just "dally around like they're waiting for the school bus.". (His words, not mine.)

How many tours did guys do in Vietnam? Some of these guys are on what, their fifth? Maybe more.

[SPEMack618]

Gentlemen, if Afghanistan was my war, then Vietnam was Pop's war, and WWII was Grandpa Eli's war. Each of them was different waged against a different enemey, with different weapons. Hell, Grandpa carried a BAR, Pop's preferred an Ithaca 37, and I carried an M-4A1/M-203.

Gentlemen, we weren't there, we can't judge accurately what it was like or what they did wrong.

[rc601962]

Did you guys know the marines are defending the opium fields and helping grow the opium in Afghanistan? It is also no coincidence that President Karzai's brother runs the illegal drug trade in the country. This is nothing new. The CIA ran drugs into the USA during Iran/Contra and Vietnam. It is how they finance a large portion of their black budget.

They are using our Patriotism against us.

Don't believe me about the drugs - see for yourself. The marine admits it on national TV.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wN75TiDSc1Q

[Crosshair]

Poppies, Marijuana, Corn, yea they're growing it all over there while they tell us we can't.

[johnwilliamson062]

Did you guys know the marines are defending the opium fields and helping grow the opium in Afghanistan? It is also no coincidence that President Karzai's brother runs the illegal drug trade in the country.

Well, sort of. In most parts of the world natural opiates are legal for medical use. In the US we pretty much use really expensive synthetic opiates. Much of that "illegal" drug trade isn't all that illegal.

[Retired15T]

As far as the various drug fields over there, if we were to start burning all their illegal to us crops and bombing their buildings where they process it, the whole of Afghanistan would turn against the United States. It's their #1 export. You can't mess with it without turning not only the locals against you, but like I said, the whole country to include the gov't. You will get your ass kicked. Just ask the Russians.

As far as how the Marines were conducting their operations, most of you don't "get it" that the bad guys over there absolutely suck. Especially over the first six years. They are just now starting to get better. When you have rounds coming at you, you can tell from the sound they're making if they are aimed well or not. I only heard four rounds that came anywhere even close to them and even then, the last two were the only ones that would make me duck and I'm not Infantry or Marines. Just an Army helicopter crew chief. A bad guy behind solid cover spraying and praying, which is EXTREMELY common, doesn't warrant you dropping behind cover and having no eyes on the general direction it's coming from. When you have zero cover to leap and bound through, you stick to what little cover you have. Otherwise, you will get your ass kicked. Also, very few of the Marines were actually exposing themselves to direct fire. Even the Squad leader, who appeared to be in the open much of the time, wasn't. He is behind that earthen wall most of the time.

The area they were taking fire from had much more cover and concealment than what those Marines had. There was a strong crosswind as well. Most of the outgoing fire was to suppress enemy fire so Marines could reposition beyond the wall. In any situation where it's unlikely your situation is going to allow you to directly engage and destroy the enemy, you will hear squad leaders telling their men to conserve ammo. Behind those buildings and walls where the incoming fire originated, there could be five or fifty men. So you don't advance on an unknown force and risk your men unless there's a specific goal or target of value to be had with an immediate expiration date. Otherwise, you allow the enemy, who hardly EVER has supporting elements and limited ammo, food, water and medical supplies, to exhaust themselves and their expendables. When their fire is typically ineffective at best, you get them to fire you up as often as possible. This reveals intelligence to you such as numbers, types of weapons, how well trained they are and so on. Not to mention it exposes their positions (hopefully) and it can also lead to them running out of ammo. When you are taking fire in the desert and the wind is blowing, you have two things working against your accurately pinpointing the origination. If the wind is blowing, there's ALWAYS a light "mist" of fine sand blowing from 0-36 inches above the ground. Also, in the heat of the day, the convection of heat from the ground creates heat waves. Both of these things makes it difficult to pinpoint your enemy. But when you have buildings and such two hundred meters out, and to me it looked further than that, and the enemy is constantly changing his position over there, it's pretty friggin hard to tag them.

A Vietnam Vet commenting on how a desert battle is fought isn't exactly going to get me stirred up. In Vietnam, they lost over 60,000 men and women over the course of 12 years or so. We have lost a tad above 5k in this one so far. Significantly different and that difference isn't made up of better medical evacuation and technology alone. It's also better tactics, better intelligence and better men. Vietnam had a drafted force for the most part. These guys in the desert are there voluntarily. You can bet your ass they took their training and their tactics more seriously than a drafted person would, which also translates to fewer casualties on our part. But make no mistake about it. The amount of enemy dead in the Middle East is a horrifying number. The rate of 12 for every one of ours was used when I was last over there and even then, that was considered very conservative and was reported as such for various reasons. Also, the environment in Vietnam was HUGELY different and against a much more sophisticated and disciplined force. I would go out on a limb and personally say that IMHO, the guys in Vietnam had it a lot worse than we do in the Middle East. But at least, for the most part, they only HAD to serve one tour.

Civilian deaths are unavoidable, but I'm not too sure why they happened in that particular instance. They shouldn't have from what I can see and know just from the video.

<start sarcastic remarks>
But I'm really glad to see that many of you think you could do better if you were over there since you've got such strong comments about how the Marines performed in that video. Maybe you should sign up and get your ass over there and show them how it's done. <end sarcastic remarks>

[RimfireChris]

/\ +1

[Crosshair]

As far as the various drug fields over there, if we were to start burning all their illegal to us crops and bombing their buildings where they process it, the whole of Afghanistan would turn against the United States. It's their #1 export. You can't mess with it without turning not only the locals against you, but like I said, the whole country to include the gov't. You will get your ass kicked. Just ask the Russians.

Which just shows the idiocy of prohibition, but that's an argument for another time.

[HorseSoldier]

Opium poppies are about the only cash crop that will grow in most parts of Afghanistan. I've got a pretty hard time with the idea of telling a guy his wife and kids have to starve at that end of things because people abuse drugs at this end. Even hard core junkies here in the US live better than a lot of Afghans.

A Vietnam Vet commenting on how a desert battle is fought isn't exactly going to get me stirred up. In Vietnam, they lost over 60,000 men and women over the course of 12 years or so. We have lost a tad above 5k in this one so far.

And as the article in question points out, the numbers lost to enemy gunfire specifically in Afghanistan since we arrived there look like an average single month in Vietnam.

[Crosshair]

Opium poppies are about the only cash crop that will grow in most parts of Afghanistan. I've got a pretty hard time with the idea of telling a guy his wife and kids have to starve at that end of things because people abuse drugs at this end. Even hard core junkies here in the US live better than a lot of Afghans.
Yet the DEA tells farmers here in North Dakota that they can't grow hemp to feed themselves and their families. Government Hypocrisy at it's most blatant.

Again it's a clear demonstration the illogical nature of prohibition. Prohibition gave us the 1934 NFA act and quite a bit of gun control laws. Either burn their fields or enact legalized regulation in the US. Even if we do get a stable government, in a decade we'll be back spraying poison on those fields and destabilize the very country we tried to put together.