Quote:
Originally Posted by Stan187
You know I keep hearing that, but has anyone actually done any studies to very it? I keep hearing how people feel intimidated by soldiers in body armor and helmets more than soldiers in berets, and how people will be more intimidated by Bradleys than Strykers. Unless someone shows something more substantial than a hunch, I'm not going to blindly buy that. A Bradley that defends the civilian population and carefully picks its targets to avoid civvie casualties, methinks, will be much less menacing to noncombatans than a Stryker that peppers every moving things in sight if it gets ambushed. Similarly, a careful soldier with body armor and a helmet is logically going to be perceived as more friendly than a soldier in a beret who has an all too touchy trigger finger. I think proper conduct would matter much more than the initial awe of a tracked vehicle with guns. Not to mention that to a civilian, a big armored vehicle is a big armored vehicle, tracked or not.
|
That's something that's difficult to prove, but supposedly the British successes in Basra (compared to the restiveness of Anbar) was due in part to the Brits switching to Land Rovers and removing their Kevlar and helmets shortly after the "invasion" phase ended while the US continued patrolling aggressively in full gear and heavy armor. I've heard similar stories out of the Balkans where US troops patrolled in Bradleys and M113s while others preferred jeeps and foot sweeps.
__________________
"We always have been, we are, and I hope that we always shall be, detested in France."
-Sir Arthur Wellesley
|