Terrain Warfare: Who Fights Best Where?

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Aussiegunner1 Basra - Mike 3/5/2005 4:15:24 AM

This link has the UK forces capturing Basra on April the 7th, 2003. That is 2 days before Saddam's statue fell in Bagdad, contradicting your argument that the British took longer than the Americans to capture their objectives and hence, cost Iraqi lives. link

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jjitsu RE:Terrain Warfare: Who Fights Best Where? 3/5/2005 1:41:52 PM

desert- british desert rats, us army, israeli army mountain-Ghurkas, SAS- they were the only ones in afghanistan that could stand the hight altitude, the US requested assistance from them jungles- Ghurkas, australia, philippine scout rangers amphibious- us marines, the best in this one urban- israelis sea, under water demolition- italian navy divers, us seals, SBS

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Mike From Brielle RE:Basra - Mike 3/6/2005 3:22:06 PM

"Contrast this to the operations in Basra where the British barely beat the US Army and Marines who were attacking Baghdad several hundred miles down the road against the vast majority of what was left of the Iraqi Army while the British were leaving the civilian population in Basra (a friendly te population) to the tender mercies of the Bathist. They did this until they were able to put a JDAM through the roof of Bathist HQ (something incidentily they could have done on the first day) with the assistance I believe of a US Marine Anglico team."

Above please find what I wrote on the British attack on Basra. I did not state that the US Army or Marines beat the British to Baghdad befor the British could take Basra (could Baghdad airport be considered Baghdad?). My implication was that the British should have taken Basra a long time befor the time when the city was secured.

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Heorot RE:Basra - Mike 3/6/2005 3:42:02 PM

?My implication was that the British should have taken Basra a long time before the time when the city was secured.? The British did not ?fail? to take Basra through any lack of ability. The just didn?t need to. They encircled it, chopped off any attempts to break out and just sat there. There was no strategic need to rush in and take needless casualties. By waiting outside the city and making the occasional raid, they minimised their casualties and still took the city. As an aside, the British were the first to use the Thunder run technique later copied by the Yanks in Baghdad to demoralise the enemy.

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Mike From Brielle RE:Basra - Mike - Herot 3/6/2005 4:36:56 PM

1.) I did not use the word fail. I do think the British took to long to take the city. I don't want to turn this into an Anti-british rant but:
2.) They did allow a very large and reportedly very capable British force to be tied down by a tiny gang of Bathist thugs surronded by a hostile te population. who:
3.) Never stood a Dogs chance in Hell of "Breaking Out".

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Aussiegunner1 RE:Basra - Mike - Herot 3/6/2005 7:21:53 PM

"2.) They did allow a very large and reportedly very capable British force to be tied down by a tiny gang of Bathist thugs surronded by a hostile te population. who: 3.) Never stood a Dogs chance in Hell of "Breaking Out". Previous Comment " It was obviously decided at the time that events in the rest of Iraq were going well enough, to allow the British force to take time in Basra. In any case, do you have comparitive statistics, showing that the British method allowed the Bathists to inflict more civilian casualties to occur than the US "boots in and all" method would have, if used in Basra or when actually used in other areas in Iraq? Without it, you are really just jumping to conclusions that you can't back up.

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wjr RE:Basra - Mike - Herot 3/8/2005 12:40:57 AM

Aussiegunner1, I?m not all that current on the status of urban warfare but I would like to make a stab at defining this debate a bit. A long time ago I was taught that there is no such thing as a single type of urban warfare. Objectives and purpose guide the attacking / occupying force as to their optimum behavior. Suppressing an insurgency is entirely different than taking a city and the lesions learned ?even if they become institutional ? are very different. Further, institutional memory is a slippery thing as these lesions, if not seen again and again, eventually get lost no matter the training rigor. Such memory only lives as long as your NCO cadre remains directly experienced. Ten years compromises this and 20 years essentially kills direct knowledge. I don?t know much about your background ? for all I know you are 12 feet tall and an Aussie super commando ? but I have actually had the dubious pleasure of being involved in this sort of ugly stuff (3/5 in Hue) and it sure looked like the Corps did this job smartly and by the numbers. Losses were low (I saw somewhere the ratio was several hundred to one), the opposition was entirely suppressed and the city secured. It may have been the security of the grave but that?s the way of it. No one ever sent the Marines to commit diplomacy. Best, wjr

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Aussiegunner1 RE:Basra - wjr 3/8/2005 1:23:26 AM

Valid points to an extent on different types of urban ops, though I would point out that infantry minor tactics, the foundation of urban ops, are transferable between types of ops. I would also emphasise that I'm not suggesting the USMC are complete incompetants. In fact, from all reports they are far from it. It is just that this thread is here to answer the question of who fights best where and myself and many others tend to think that the Commonwealth model, based very strongly on indivudual skills, is the best for such an "intimate" combat environment, especially in the presence of civilians. Therefore, while the Marines did the job smartly by US standards, it probably wasn't of a standard that would be expected of a British force. It's a similar situation in some respects to the comparison between Australian and US methods in the Vietnamese jungle, with the Aussie forces manageing virtually clear their AO, without resorting to the type of firepower that the US forces did. Anyway, heres an article that highlights a lot of the concerns that various Britons had about the American methods in Falluja and elsewhere, along with something of a comparision of the two doctrines. link

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Mike From Brielle RE:Basra - Mike - Herot 3/8/2005 9:58:18 AM

"In any case, do you have comparitive statistics, showing that the British method allowed the Bathists to inflict more civilian casualties to occur than the US "boots in and all" method would have, if used in Basra or when actually used in other areas in Iraq? "

Is it your proposition that the Bathists in Basra were going to run out of Bullets or perhaps you wanted to give them a chance to reform thier ways? ;)

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Aussiegunner1 RE:Basra - Mike - Herot 3/8/2005 10:05:29 AM

"Is it your proposition that the Bathists in Basra were going to run out of Bullets or perhaps you wanted to give them a chance to reform thier ways? ;)" I wasn't the one making the proposition and that doesn't answer my question;-)

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