There's no reason to disbelief these reports. After all, the
Abrams may be tough, but it is not invincible. And also, in GF1,
the M1 never fought in urban areas, but in ideal desert terrain
versus dug in infantry and iraqi armour, to which they used the
advantage of their technology to great effect.
In urban areas, the M1 fares less well, which is expected of almost
any tank save the Merkava. It's no surprise. While in tank country
you can almost always keep your front to the threat, in FIBUA,
there is a likelyhood that some person might mail you and RPG to
your rear. Once again, these things can only be managed so far by
current technology, the rest is up to your intelligence, tatical
coordination with supporting units and tatics. The technological
excellence of the Abrams no doubt kept crew losses to a
minimum.
Imagine if the they were using a russkie tank, which brews up at
almost any penetration.
Also, it's good to note that the downing of the Apaches is not in
any way a fault of the chopper itself, but mostly in part to poor
tatics used by their pilots. In that fateful enagement in which an
Apache attack got driven back by Iraqi armoured unit, the Americans
used very poor tatics, coming in straight without cover and
engaging the enemy staight on with almost no tatics, piecemeal,
classic cold war style. No surprise how it would end out. The after
action report for that incident didn't touch on the Apache itself,
but on how the unit underestimated their enemy and went in dumb and
blind without knowing that they were stirring up a hornet's
nest.
In fact, it was the very fact that the AH-64 is a fine piece of
engineering that these pilots survived their encounter at all. The
loss rate of american equipment is usually a reflectance on the
quality of their operators. If you have such fine tools, the finest
in the world in fact, and still duff up the job, you can't blame
the technology.
Of course, the american aversion to taking loss, the way the media
fawns over them, unlike, say the russians, make every single one of
their losses seem larger then life. But really, there's only so
much a 70 ton tank can do. It's more of how you use it then
grabbing a piece of technology and thinking you can just march into
Bagdad.
Can the Gulf War 1 stories be believed? Certainly, there is nothing
really strange about them.
Of course, if you know nuts about these units and don't really know
their real capabilites and limitations, you might read these
stories unobjectively and think that Clancy is trying, irregardless
of his all-american bias, to sell progangada and end up thinking
that the units he describes in his non-fiction works are
invincible. Not really, things are just different now.
