the report below could seem rather biased to some, draw your own
conclusions
March 30, 2003
www.iraqwar.ru
The IRAQWAR.RU analytical center was created recently by a group of
journalists and military experts from Russia to provide accurate
and up-to-date news and analysis of the war against Iraq. The
following is the English translation of the IRAQWAR.RU report based
on the Russian military intelligence reports.
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March 28, 2003, 1448hrs MSK (GMT +3), Moscow - According to the
latest intercepted radio communications, the command of the
coalition group of forces near Karabela requested at least 12 more
hours to get ready to storm the town. This delay is due to the much
heavier losses sustained by the coalition troops during the sand
storms then was originally believed. Just the US 3rd Mechanized
Infantry Division sustained more than 200 disabled combat vehicles
of various types. The 101st Airborne Division reported some 70
helicopters as being disabled. Additionally, the recently delivered
reinforcements require rest and time to prepare for combat.
At the same time the US forces have resumed attacks near
An-Nasiriya and An-Najaf since 0630hrs and are continuously
increasing the intensity of these attacks. During the night and
early morning of March 28 the Iraqi positions in these areas were
subjected to eight aerial assaults by bombers and ground attack
aircraft. However, so far [the coalition] was unable to penetrate
the Iraqi defenses.
Also during the early morning the British units begun advancing
along the Fao peninsula. Latest radio intercepts from this area
show that under a continuous artillery and aerial bombardment the
Iraqis have begun to gradually withdraw their forces toward
Basra.
First firefights between troops of the US 82nd Airborne Division
and the Iraqi forces occurred in northern Iraq in the area of
Mosula. At the same time the arrival of up to 1,500 Kurdish troops
has been observed in this area. So far it is not clear to which of
the many Kurdish political movements these troops belong. Leaders
of the largest Kurdish workers party categorically denied
participation of their troops. They believe that these may be units
of one of the local tribes not controlled by the central
authorities of the Kurdish autonomy and "ready to fight with
anyone" for money.
According to verified information, during the past 48 hours of the
Iraqi counterattacks the coalition forces sustained the following
losses: up to 30 killed, over 110 wounded and 20 missing in action;
up to 30 combat vehicles lost or disabled, including at least 8
tanks and 2 self-propelled artillery systems, 2 helicopters and 2
unmanned aerial vehicles were lost in combat. Iraqi losses are
around 300 killed, up to 800 wounded, 200 captured and up to 100
combat vehicles 25 of which were tanks. Most of the [ Iraqi ]
losses were sustained due to the artillery fire and aerial
bombardment that resumed by the evening of March 27.
First conclusions can be drawn from the war
The first week of the war surprised a number of military analysts
and experts. The war in Iraq uncovered a range of problems
previously left without a serious discussion and disproved several
resilient myths.
The first myth is about the precision-guided weapons as the
determining factor in modern warfare, weapons that allow to achieve
strategic superiority without direct contact with the enemy. On the
one hand we have the fact that during the past 13 years the wars
were won by the United States with minimum losses and, in essence,
primarily through the use of aviation. At the same time, however,
the US military command was stubborn in ignoring that the decisive
factor in all these wars was not the military defeat of the
resisting armies but political isolation coupled with strong
diplomatic pressure on the enemy's political leadership. It was the
creation of international coalitions against Iraq in 1991, against
Yugoslavia in 1999 and against Afghanistan in 2001 that ensured the
military success.
The American command preferred not to notice the obvious military
failures during expeditions to Granada, Libya and Somalia,
discounting them as "local operations" not deserving much
attention.
Today we can see that in itself massed use of strategic and
tactical precision-guided weapons did not provide the US with a
strategic advantage. Despite the mass use of the most sophisticated
weapons the Americans have so far failed to disrupt Iraqi command
and control infrastructure, communication networks, top Iraqi
military and political leadership, Iraqi air defenses. At the same
time the US precision-guided weapons arsenal has been reduced by
about 25%.
The only significant advantage of the precision-guided weapons is
the capability to avoid massive casualties among the civilians in
densely populated areas.
What we have is an obvious discrepancy between the ability to
locate and attack a target with precision-guided weapons and the
power of this weapon, which is not sufficient to reliably destroy a
protected target.
On the other hand, precision-guided munitions demonstrated their
superiority over conventional munitions on the battlefield. The
ability to attack targets at long ranges with the first shot is the
deciding factor in the American superiority in land battles.
The second myth disproved by this war is the myth propagated by the
proponents of the "hi-tech" war, who believe in the superiority of
the most modern weapons and inability of older-generation weapons
to counteract the latest systems. Today the technological gap
between the Iraqi weapons and those of the coalition has reached
25-30 years, which corresponds to two "generations" in weapons
design. The primary Iraqi weapons correspond to the level of the
early 1970s. Since that time the Americans, on the other hand, have
launched at least two major rearmament efforts: the "75-83 program"
and the "90-97 program". Moreover, currently the US is in the
middle of another major modernization and rearmament program that
will continue for the next five years. Despite of this obvious gap,
Iraqi resistance has already been publicly qualified by the US as
"fierce and resilient". Analysts believe that the correlation of
losses is entirely acceptable to the Iraqis and they [ the analysts
] do not see any strategic coalition advantage in this war. Once
again this proves that success in modern warfare is achieved not so
much through technological superiority but primarily through
training, competent command and resilience of the troops. Under
such conditions even relatively old weapons can inflict heavy
losses on a technologically-superior enemy.
Two enormous mistakes made by the US command during the planning
stages of this war resulted in the obvious strategic failure. The
US has underestimated the enemy. Despite the unique ability to
conduct reconnaissance against the Iraqi military infrastructure
through a wide network of agents implanted with the international
teams of weapons inspectors, despite unlimited air dominance the US
military command has failed to adequately evaluate combat readiness
of the Iraqi army and its technical capabilities; the US has failed
to correctly assess the social and political situation in Iraq and
in the world in general. These failures led to entirely inadequate
military and political decisions:
The coalition force was clearly insufficient for a such a
large-scale operation. The number of deployed troops was at least
40% short of the required levels. This is the reason why today,
after nine days of war, the US is forced to resort to emergency
redeployment of more than 100,000 troops from the US territory and
from Europe. This, in essence, is the same number of troops already
fighting in Iraq.
The buildup and distribution of the coalition forces have been
conducted with gross neglect of all basic rules of combat. All
troops were massed in one small area, which led to five days of
non-stop fighting to widen this area. The initial attack begun
without any significant aerial or artillery preparation and almost
immediately this resulted in reduced rate of advance and heated
positional battles.
Today we can see that the US advance is characterized by
disorganized and "impulsive" actions. The troops are simply trying
to find weak spots in the Iraqi defenses and break through them
until they hit the next ambush or the next line of defense.
Not a single goal set before the coalition forces was met on
time.
During the nine days of the war the coalition has failed:
- to divide Iraq in half along the An-Nasiriya - Al-Ammara
line,
- to surround and to destroy the Iraqi group of forces at
Basra,
- to create an attack group between the Tigris and the Euphrates
with a front toward Baghdad,
- to disrupt Iraq's military and political control, to disorganize
Iraq's forces and to destroy the main Iraqi attack forces.
A whole range of problems that require their own solutions was
uncovered directly on the battlefield. Thus, combat in Iraq raised
serious concerns about the problem of coordination between units
from different services. Limited decision-making time and the
ability to detect and to engage an enemy at a great distance make
"friendly fire" one of the most serious problems of modern warfare.
For now the coalition has no adequate solution to this problem. At
one location or another every day of this war the coalition troops
were attacking friendly forces.
The second problem of the coalition is its inability to hold on to
the captured territory. For the first time since the war in Vietnam
the Americans have to deal with a partisan movement and with
attacks against their [the US] lines of communication. Currently
the coalition is rushing to form some sort of territorial defense
units for guarding its supply lines and for maintaining order in
the occupied territories.
A range of technical problems with equipment has been revealed
during the combat operations. Most operators of the M1A2 Abrams
main battle tank agree that the tank was inadequate for performing
the set combat tasks. The primary problem is the extremely low
reliability of the tank's engine and its transmission in desert
conditions. Heat from the sun, hot sand and the constantly present
hot dust in the air nearly nullified the advantages offered by the
turret-mounted thermal sights. Visibility range of these sights did
not exceed 300 meters during movement in convoy and reached up to
700-800 meters during stops. Only during cold nights did the
visibility range reach 1000-1,500 meters. Additionally, a large
number of thermal sights and other electronics simply broke down.
The tiny crystalline sand particles caused electrical power surges
and disabled electronic equipment.
This was the reason for the decision by the coalition command to
stop movement of troops at night when a contact with the enemy was
deemed likely.
The main strong side of the coalition forces was the wide
availability of modern reconnaissance and communication systems
that allowed to detect the enemy at long ranges and to quickly
suppress the enemy with well-coordinated actions of different types
of available forces.
In general the US soldiers showed sufficiently high combat
resilience. Even in the extremely difficult weather conditions the
troops maintained control structure and adequately interpreted the
situation. Combat spirit remained high. The majority of troops
remain confident in their abilities, while maintaining belief in
the superiority of their weapons and maintaining reasonable
confidence in the way the war is being fought.
It should be noted, however, that the way the war is being fought
did create a certain sense of disappointment in most of the troops.
Many are feeling that they've been lied to and are openly talking
about the stupidity of the high command and its gross
miscalculations. "Those star-covered Pentagon idiots promised us a
victory march and flowers on the armor. What we got instead were
those damned fanatics fighting for every dune and the sand
squeaking in your ass!" said one of the wounded recuperating at a
hospital in Rammstein. [ Reverse translation from Russian ]
Nevertheless, despite the sand storms the terrain favors the
coalition actions by allowing it to employ their entire arsenal of
weapons at the greatest possible range, which makes it difficult
for the Iraqis to conduct combat operations outside of populated
areas.
Overestimating the abilities of its airborne forces was a weak side
of the coalition. Plans for a wide-scale use of helicopters as an
independent force did not materialize. All attempts by the US
command to organize aerial and ground operations through exclusive
use of airborne forces have failed. Because of these failures by
the end of the fourth day of the war all airborne units were
distributed across the coalition units and used by the attacking
forces for reconnaissance, fire support, and for containing the
enemy. The main burden of combat was carried by the "heavy"
mechanized infantry and tank units.
Another serious drawback in the coalition planning was the
exceptionally weak protection in the rear of the advancing forces.
This resulted in constant interruptions in fuel supply. Tank units
sometimes spent up to 6 hours standing still with empty fuel tanks,
in essence, being targets for the Iraqis. Throughout the war
delivery of food, ammunition and fuel remains a headache for the US
commanders.
Among the US soldiers there has been a wide-scale discontent with
the quality of the new combat rations. Servicemen are openly
calling these rations "shitty." Many soldier just take the biscuits
and the sweets and discard the rest of the ration. Commanders of
the combat units are demanding from the coalition command to
immediately provide the troops with hot food and to review the
entire contents of the combat ration.
Among the strong sides of the Iraqi troops are their excellent
knowledge of the terrain, high quality of defensive engineering
work, their ability to conceal their main attack forces and their
resilience and determination in defense. The Iraqis have shown good
organization in their command and communication structures as well
as decisive and and well-planned strategy.
Among the drawbacks of the Iraqi forces is the bureaucratic
inflexibility of their command, when all decisions are being made
only at the highest levels. Their top commanders also tend to stick
to standard "template" maneuvers and there is insufficient
coordination among the different types of forces.
At the same time commanders of the [Iraqi] special operations
forces are making good use of the available troops and weapons to
conduct operations behind the front lines of the enemy. They use
concealment, show cunning and imagination.
The first strategic lessons of the war
[ Lessons of the war in Iraq are discussed here with a focus on a
possible similar war between Russia and the US ]
The main of such lessons is the ever-increasing significance of
troop concealment as one of the primary methods of combat.
Concealment and strict adherence to the requirements for secrecy
and security become strategic goals of the defending forces in the
view of the US reliance and that of its allies on precision-guided
weapons, electronic and optical reconnaissance as well as due to
their use of tactical weapons at the maximum possible range
afforded by these reconnaissance methods. Importance of concealment
is being seen in Iraq and was clearly demonstrated in Yugoslavia,
where the Yugoslav Army preserved nearly 98% of its assets despite
the three months of bombing. Within our [Russian/European] battle
theater concealment methods will offer us [the Russian army] an
enormous advantage over the US.
The second lesson of this war is the strategic role of the air
defenses in modern warfare as the most important service of the
armed forces. Only the complete air dominance of the coalition
allows it to continue its advance toward Baghdad and to achieve the
critical advantage in any engagement. Even the short interruption
in air support caused by the sand storms put the US and British
troops in a very difficult situation.
Elimination of the air defenses as a separate service branch of the
[Russian] Armed Forces and its gradual dissipation in the Air Force
can be called nothing else but a "crime". [This statement refers to
the recent unification of the Russian Air Force (VVS) and the Air
Defense Force (PVO) and the secondary role of the air defense force
within this new structure.]
The third lesson of the war is the growing importance of combat
reconnaissance and increased availability of anti-tank weapons
capable of engaging the enemy at maximum range. There is a
requirement on the battlefield for a new weapon system for small
units that would allow for detection of the enemy at maximum
distance during day or night; for effective engagement of modern
tanks at a range of 800-1000 meters; for engagement of enemy
infantry at a range of 300-500 meters even with the modern personal
protection equipment possessed by the infantry.
(source: iraqwar.ru, 03-28-03, translated by Venik)
