? for you Military guys..

[lovuian]

Is US forces in Iraq encountering a new insurgent anti-air weapon which is proving deadly for low-flying helicopters. It works on the same principle as the roadside bomb (IED or improvised explosive device).
Has anybody heard the Generals talk about this???

This unknown weapon is thought to account for the unexplained downing in 10 days of three American combat helicopters: A UH-60 Black Hawk over Mosul on Jan. 8 in which 8 service personnel and 4 civilians were killed; A US OH-58 D Kiowa military helicopter which crashed near Mosul on Jan. 13, killing its two pilots and an Apache AH-64 which came down north of Baghdad on June 16. Two more pilots were lost in the third crash, bringing to 16 the total of American combat personnel lost in the three attacks.





Has anybody in the military been talking about this??? Our Senators Our Congressmen???

[acmavm]

1. Obviously I'm not military but I am extremely curious where this

question comes from? Have you read of something? Improvised? Bought from a foreign government?

[awoke_in_2003]

2. Not a military guy

but are probably just shoulder fired missiles, like the stinger. God knows, between us and Russia, the black market is full of them. Why powers-that-be don't say how the helos came down is unknown to me, but my guess is that they don't want to make the "insurgency" look like an organized cause. Better to make them look like rogue, errant troublemakers. It is going to hell over there, and the administration doesn't want to admit it.

[Common Sense Party]

3. I'm NOT military, and I only know what I read about and that's

not much...

I just finished reading "Not a Good Day to Die," about Operation Anaconda (and how the top brass screwed that operation from the get-go, but I digress).

They mentioned a few times in that book about how one of Al Qaeda's favorite tricks to shoot down helicopters--ever since Mogadishu--is to fire RPGs at them, but time it so the grenade explodes in the air NEXT to the helicopter. The shrapnel has a much greater chance of destroying rotors, hydraulics, fuel lines, etc.

Chances are the Iraq insurgents have just been getting better at doing this. It might not be a "new weapon" at all. I dunno.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

4. I heard them call it a "jumping IED"

WTF?

Seriously.. I heard that term used on the newz.

I'm thinking... rocket launcher.

[lovuian]

5. Thanks guys I was wondering if there were other news out there

about it... I hope the military is working on a way to stop this...

It makes the helicoptors vulnerable and they are the supply lines and evac of our soldiers...

[Flabbergasted]

6. On the same day at DU I read seperate articles that talked

about both. More likely RPG's. An improvised launcher....Nah.

[wtmusic]

7. There are still a lot of Stinger SAM launchers floating around

from the Russo-Afghan War days...although most are probably not functional, could be some are starting to find their way into Iraq via mujahadeen.

[Spider Jerusalem]

8. The idea of an improvised weapon bringing down an aircraft...

is sheer fantasy.
More likely than not the weapon is an RPG or man-portable SAM (probably the Russian SA-7, which has been around nearly 40 years and has been manufactured in very large quantities not only in Russia but also in China, Pakistan, and Egypt).

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/missile/row/sa-7.htm

[BrotherBuzz]

9. SA-7's are believed responsible for bringing down one helicopter

SA-7's are cheap, plentiful, and crude but effective. I suspect the silly stories about bouncing IED's are just a fabrication to distract from the fact that the SA-7's are now being deployed. Insurgents are learning and adapting, and now understand downing aircraft makes bigger headlines than blowing up convoys. We will see more attacks on helicoptors in the coming weeks and I predict SA-7's will become a huge morale buster for our troops

[lovuian]

11. BrotherBuzz your seeing what I'm seeing and I also have

heard that its a double prong attack... the military convoy gets hit and then the coptor comes in to take out casualties and is getting hit... cause their expected...

This Iraq war gets uglier and uglier...

[BrotherBuzz]

12. No doubt the Iraqi fighters have studied Sun Tzu's 'On The Art Of War' ...

http://www.instantknowledgenews.com/artofwar.htm

This Iraq war gets uglier and uglier...indeed.

[ContraBass Black]

10. Didn't they bring down helicopters in Vietnam

By putting landmines in trees?

[Spider Jerusalem]

13. Something tells me that wouldn't work in Iraq.

It's not exactly what you'd call overgrown with jungle, you know. Scrub and palm trees, mostly.

[ContraBass Black]

14. I wasn't suggesting that it was done that way, just that some creativity

Might make it easy.