COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us

Some in congress are questioning its future on the modern battlefield.

Remember what George C. Scott said in the movie "Patton?" He said that fixed positions are monuments to the stupidity of man.

So is a purely defensive approach to vehicle armor.

Even the most heavily armored Humvees may be inadequate to protect U.S. troops from ever-changing insurgent tactics, the Marine Corps' second-ranking general told lawmakers Tuesday. New vehicle designs, however, would take years to develop.

The House Armed Services Committee questioned Gen. William Nyland, assistant commandant of the Marines, about how long it has taken to get armored Humvees into the field. Nyland said hundreds of new armored Humvees and armor kits to upgrade standard Humvees have been put to use or are en route to Iraq.

However, the roadside bomb attacks that have killed and wounded hundreds have forced the Pentagon to consider alternatives to the Humvee, he said. "If this is the threat of the future, the long-term utility of the Humvee has to be questioned," he said. "We have to take continued steps to find what will defeat this kind of a threat."

Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., who has a son who served in Iraq, said the Marines should have moved faster to increase vehicle armor when insurgents began devising more powerful roadside bombs using triple-stacked mines, 155mm artillery shells and "shaped charges," which concentrate the force of an explosion. Nyland told Hunter the final batch of vehicle armor upgrades will be in Iraq by December.

Look: You will NEVER be able to defeat everything the enemy throws at you. There's been an armor/projectile contest going on ever since Zog the Caveman tried to club someone through a buffalo hide. The defense always loses in the end.

There will NEVER be an armored humvee kit that can defeat a triple-stacked mine, because a properly emplaced triple-stack will simply remove the vehicle and the driver from the county.

Ditto with a good shaped charge from a 155. Look, the 155 has a lethal radius of hundreds of meters. Slapping some extra sheet metal on the side of a humvee is not going to defeat a 155 blast from the side of the road 10 feet away.

But it CAN defeat a frag grenade, a 60mm mortar shell, and all manner of home-made improvised explosive devices. It can defeat small-arms fire, and thereby make a combined-arms attack much less inviting to the enemy.

You will never have a perfectly surviveable system. And you cannot turn Humvees into tanks. You will bankrupt the country.

No one ever gave a tip to me when I was buttoned up. I never had an interaction with an Iraqi in an armored Humvee with the doors closed and the windows up. (We didn't have grenade screens in those days. Heck, most of my Humvees had CANVAS doors, if they had doors at all.!)

Part of the solution is going to lie not in making our vehicles invincible. You CAN'T make it invincible to a triple stacked anti-tank mine.

So don't even try.

Rather, the real solution to defeating this measure is not going to lie with the vehicles at all, but outside them.

Dismount.

Get into the communities. Leverage Iraqi contacts.

Yes, we're doing that already, as much as we can. But these knuckledragging trogs in Congress are focusing on the wrong things. And the ignorant press is dragging us along with them, and damaging the war effort, by pulling us into a defensive mentality.

The insurgency will not be defeated by putting an extra armor on our vehicles. The insurgency will be defeated by dismounts. Dismounts out there engaging with the Iraqi people and collecting real-time intelligence.

And THAT is the effort the Media should focus on. THAT is the effort that Congress should focus on.

Where is all the heat forcing colonels to jump through their asses to develop HUMINT? There isn't much. All anyone wants to hear about is armor this, and armor that.

Fuck the armor. Get out and clobber the enemy, and let HIS sorry ass wish he had more armor.

Get back on offense. Close with and destroy the enemy.

The Army and USMC are on the offense in Al Anbar. When are Congress and the media going take up an overwatch position and lay down supporting fire?

Splash, out

Jason