U.S.: Copter losses due to ground fire

[maddezmom]

BAGHDAD, Iraq - All four U.S. helicopters that have crashed in Iraq since Jan. 20 appear to have been brought down by "some kind" of ground fire but it is unclear whether this represents any new threat to U.S. aviation, the chief U.S. military spokesman said Sunday.

It was the first time that the U.S. command has publicly acknowledged that the three Army helicopters and one private helicopter were probably shot down.

~snip~

"We don't see this as a focus just on the multinational force," Caldwell said. "There's been an ongoing effort since we've been here to target our helicopters. Based on what we have seen, we're already making adjustments in our tactics and techniques and procedures as to how we employ our helicopters."

more:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070204/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_helicopters_1

[xchrom]

1. get your surge on!!!

[saigon68]

10. Count em up boys

Fuck all but nine

6 Pall Bearers

2 Road Guards

and

1 to count Cadence

[twilight_sailing]

2. I can't prove otherwise, of course,

but I have often wondered about the many choppers that have gone down there and in Afghanistan since this whole thing started. It just seemed odd to me that we would have so many go down due to mechanical difficulties. I have always suspected we were not always being told the truth about the reason they fell.

[Kagemusha]

3. Afghanistan's altitude does make machine failures more likely

with helicopters that is. It's not like the Russians had an easy time there.

The disclosure rules tend to change when something's special ops though so you may well be right about some cases. But, it is not odd, in and of itself, to have more mechanical failures... it's thin air to begin with.

[twilight_sailing]

4. Thanks

I hesitated to say anything at all about this, since I just don't know anything about it. Thin air. I'd never have thought of it. Thanks.

[liam_laddie]

11. helicopter losses

In Afghanistan, altitude may well be a factor. In the past, our supplying Stinger missiles
to the mujihadin led to intolerable losses to the Russians.
In Iraq, the sand plays as big a role. The grit degrades the leading edge of the rotor blades (spinning wings) essentially reducing lift, as well the compressor blades within the turbines. Very very nasty maintenance issue. Similar problem with any turbine-powered equipment (M-1 tanks, etc.) Even with the air filters used, it's still a serious issue as turbine performance declines.

[Kagemusha]

17. Thank you, well put.

I'm no expert on the details and you worded it well.

[tanyev]

5. Downed Choppers - Saudi Citizens Funding Shoulder Fired Rockets

Interesting thread from Friday.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=112731

[Doctor_J]

6. Duh

Wow this is really a shocker.

I'll bet by tomorrow we'll be bombarded with lies about how they were Iranian missiles.

[oneinok]

7. Tactics must change

Now that the Iraqi Freedom Fighters have learned how to shoot down helicopters the US death rate will increase. It is only a matter of time before a large missile will hit a mess hall full of US Troops.

[pampango]

8. At least you can call the guys shooting down our helicopters

"Freedom Fighters". They are indeed attacking the occupying military force.

Now those, in apparently greater numbers, who believe that attacking civilians is their patriotic duty, I would have a much harsher term for.

[brentspeak]

13. The Iraqi what????????????????

[Lithos]

15. Freedom Fighters?

Oh please.

Maybe an extremely small handful view the conflict in a way which would match your idea of "Freedom Fighters" which probably means the definition of opposing colonialization. But if you read the news, that ain't how it is working and repeating such naif notions is extremely non-helpful.

Iraq has degenerated into a civil war not between an insurgency and a colonizing power, but a VERY secular civil war between many different religious groups who feel they are empowered for whatever reason to destroy any non-conformists. Freedom isn't what most of these groups want. This is not a two sided war where the US and the current Iraqi government is on one side and the militants are on the other, rather this is the kind of war where the US is sitting in in the middle of MANY armed groups including the current Iraqi government who are taking pot-shots at each other each and every opportunity they can take. This is the tragedy that people warned Bush would happen if he chose the path he ultimately took the US down.

L-

[ohio2007]

9. Can't they announce the weapons used and where they came from?

choppers being down by "some kind" of ground fire is withholding information that should be told to the press/MSM

[catnhatnh]

12. Google "Strella 7B"...N/T

[sutz12]

14. Well, it's comforting to know they weren't brought down by the Iraqi Air Force

:sarcasm:

[SquireJons]

16. Hind Sight is 20-200

Or maybe completely blind, in this case.

A few helicopters go down in a war zone. Not too surprising really. But I've been thinking for a while that more is going on here than it appears.

The press and politicians like to compare Iraq to Vietnam, but the better comparison is Russia in Afghanistan. And what was the turning point of that adventure? Oh yes, Russian helicopters were getting shot down at alarming and unsustainable rates, thanks to covert US weapons supplies. Traditional and available weapons were not sufficient to affect Russian war policy. So the CIA got involved.

My question now is, who is supplying the Iraqi's with sophisticated enough weapons to shoot down the best US helicopters? (and take out M1 tanks as well) Russia, with some payback? China? I really doubt that improvised weapons are doing this. Someone else is involved and the US govt doesn't want to acknowledge it, just like the Soviets didn't want to admit that that the Afghani's had Stinger missiles in 1984.

[Swagman]

18. US plans new tactics in Iraq after helicopters hit

US plans new tactics in Iraq after helicopters hit

The United States military has confirmed for the first time that four helicopters that crashed in Iraq in the past two weeks were all shot down.

Major-General William Caldwell says US forces are adjusting their tactics and changing the way in which attack helicopters fly in support of Iraqi and American troops.

He says the helicopters were shot down by ground fire in four separate incidents in which 21 US servicemen and private security contractors were killed.

In four years of fighting, dozens of US helicopters have come down, some of them hit by missiles or gunfire.

But the unusually high number of helicopters lost in such a short time has raised questions about whether militants have changed tactics or are using more sophisticated weapons.

"There has been an ongoing effort to target our helicopters," Maj-Gen Caldwell told reporters in Baghdad.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200702/s1840002.htm

"We have had four helicopters shot down ... It appears they were all the result of some kind of ground fire."

[peacetalksforall]

19. Don't they also say that some of these helicopters are due to be

decommissioned (or whatever they call it).

I don't know what I can believe from them.

[ShortnFiery]

20. What can they change? Ground them all?

They can't change much, save for employing Operations Security (OPSEC) like they should have been doing all along, i.e., varying times and routes of travel.

Gee, what big changes other than GROUNDING THEM can they accomplish?

[Larkspur]

21. Remember what happened to the Soviets in Afganistan after Reagan sent the insurgents Stingers?

Osama's boys shot down Soviet aircraft at will and that led to the Soviets humiliating retreat from Afghanistan, which eventually helped bring down the Soviet Union.

Seems that the Sunni insurgency in Iraq are trying to repeat the same strategy with the United States.

[wtmusic]

22. None of the downings were the result of ground fire

but the result of being in a country where we didn't belong.

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

23. Perhaps stopping Saudi Arabia from funneling assistance of all kinds to the Sunnis.

However, we're arming Sadr's people, so that means the Sunnis need something, huh?

Oh, wait, I forgot, we ignore S.A. and focus on Iran.

MKJ

[Omaha Steve]

24. U.S. To Change Helicopter Tactics In Iraq

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/02/04/iraq/main2430500.shtml

U.S. To Change Helicopter Tactics In Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 4, 2007

(CBS/AP) The U.S. command has ordered changes in flight operations after four helicopters were shot down in the last two weeks, the chief military spokesman said Sunday, acknowledging for the first time that the aircraft were lost to hostile fire.

The crashes, which began Jan. 20, follow insurgent claims that they have received new stocks of anti-aircraft weapons — and a recent boast by Sunni militants that "God has granted new ways" to threaten U.S. aircraft.

All four helicopters were shot down during a recent increase in violence, which an Interior Ministry official said has claimed nearly 1,000 lives in the past week alone. At least 103 people were killed or found dead Sunday, most of them in Baghdad, police reported.

Maj. Gen. William Caldwell told reporters that the investigations into the crashes of three Army and one private helicopter were incomplete but "it does appear they were all the result of some kind of anti-Iraqi ground fire that did bring those helicopters down."

FULL story at link.

[Vexatious Ape]

25. It does look like a trend, and thats scary.

[knight_of_the_star]

26. They're learning how to fight us

Just wait until some of them leave Iraq and take their show on the road.

[Vexatious Ape]

28. I worry about that too.

We gave them a great training base, with live targets to boot.

[Ian David]

27. We're teaching them how to fight us over there, so they can fight us anywhere. n/t

[DemoTex]

29. If they are half as good as the NVA (and VC), it won't matter.

[PSPS]

30. "anti-Iraqi ground fire"

Maj. Gen. William Caldwell told reporters that the investigations into the crashes of three Army and one private helicopter were incomplete but "it does appear they were all the result of some kind of anti-Iraqi ground fire that did bring those helicopters down."

What is "anti-Iraqi ground fire?" Is this code for "Iranian?"

I have the best idea for how to diminish these incidents: Remove all the helicopters from Iraq, where they should have never gone in the first place.

Problem solved.

[daleo]

31. Shouldn't anti-Iraqi ground fire bring down Iraqi helicopters (not American)?

This construction is a new low in propaganda. It is also insulting to the U.S. dead, who have been scrubbed from the reference.

[underpants]

32. There are a ton of things wrong about this article or at least the things in it

Same info here
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16972735/

This sounds a lot like the "Ramadi offensive" of 2003 that Thomas Ricks details in "Fiasco"

Gen.Caldwell-okay maybe the threat hasn't increased but the results surely have.

Iran can provide whatever it wants the guy pulling the trigger is the difference and apparently there are a bunch of triggers being pulled.


The MSNBC link above includes a statement from a Saddam linked organization spokesman...they have spokesmen?? there are Saddam organizations??? that doesn't make any sense the whole point to even his most loyal element was that he was out of power 4 years ago and it was every man for himself....or have I mistaken the capitalist model?

Finally there is this

U.S. military helicopters are equipped with long-range sensors and devices to jam radar and infrared technology, but they have proven vulnerable to intense gunfire, as well as rocket-propelled grenades.

Well I hate to be a hard "results oriented" type as that often over looks the actual problem but it sounds like you and I spent some TAX MONEY on weapons systems like the missiles that Hezbollah bought that couldn't hit Isreal. I'm not saying I'm just saying.

Holy shit if you had a platoon in this situation you would get them the hell out of there....of course unless you didn't give a rip or had some other ideas for them.

I'm not saying I'm just saying

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

33. The answer is a helicopter surge.

The more choppers, the better chance they won't all be shot down.

Simple, effective. A perfect stragety courtesy the Decider.

:shrug:

[lakeguy]

34. wonder which country or countries are testing their new

weapons on us in Iraq? any guesses??

[rocktivity]

35. Candidate for this month's "You Call This NEWS?" award

The copters "appear" to have been brought down by "some kind" of ground fire? Put me down for five dollars on spitballs to win, place or show!

:eyes:
rocknation