Ray

Digging to place the IEDs in the centre of the road is not feasible. It will leave tell tale marks.

IR pictures will give away freshly dug areas and even an IED can be detected if a sortie is flown before a land mission takes place. It is expensive.

One must watch for rubble by the side of the road or construction material. These are ideal places to hide IEDs.

Then the terrorists use these IED in tandem spaced out.

Going cross country in urban and semi urban areas is not feasible.

Ideal is carry out a road opening patrol and then picqueting the road.

__________________


"Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

HAKUNA MATATA

Big K

roadside bombs power...or should i say "roadside nuke"? what kind of explosive is this?

__________________
When i say, there will be no effect but i am not willing to remain silent.
-Fuzuli

Big K

i found it;
a 105mm round under a rock pile on the roadside, wired to a remote battery:



Big K,

This was and IED setup from back in June or July 2003. This is pre-school stuff compared to the graduate level IEDs that can be found now. A 105mm round detonated on the roadside against a Stryker might flatten 1-2 tires and scratch a tiny bit of paint off. Buried in the road, you'd have some severe concussions inside the troop compartent and probably blow an axle, but not much more.

Zhang Fei

Strykers have 105mm guns? Is this for real?

Big K

yes exactly

Stan187

The MGS Strykers do. Most don't.

IEDs come in all shapes and sides. I remeber reading about an m113 getting ripped apart and killing everyone inside a few years ago. Turns out the IED was two 152mm artillery shells strapped together. That wouldn't even have to be that close to a light troop carrier to tear it apart.

__________________
In Iran people belive pepsi stands for pay each penny save israel. -urmomma158
The Russian Navy is still a threat, but only to those unlucky enough to be Russian sailors.-highsea

Wraith601

Exactly, anything that moves can be blown up. The Strykers were very successful on their first two tours because most of the bombs were intended to hit Humvees or trucks, now that they've been there awhile they build bigger bombs.

This quotes says it well:
Some of these IEDs can kill an Abrams, does that mean the Abrams is too thin-skinned?

Also, if this bomb does that much damage with a Stryker, what do you think it'd have done to a Humvee or 5 ton? I doubt anyone would ahve walked away.

__________________
"We always have been, we are, and I hope that we always shall be, detested in France."
-Sir Arthur Wellesley

Stan187

Wraith, exactly my point. For so many Strykers knocked out, there is suprisngly low number of KIA, which I think is (possibly) a testament to the vehicle.

Bob Jones

It seems the insurgents are rapidly adapting to the terrain in which they want to fight? sorry I should have said murder, our guys, as we have seen, the power of these IEDs has increased so much, that a modern multi million, £, $, battle tank offers no protection, as for the placing of these devies whilst in Nortern Ireland in the 70s, we encountered quite a few, the IRA were assisted by the fact that culverts were built under the road, so they could pack them with fertiliser as a homemade device, run a command wire several hundred meters away and sit and wait for us to turn up, so in similar fashion, we up armoured our vehicles and the bombs got bigger, they would even place devices, we did`nt call them IEDs back then, in milk churns at the side of the road, and wait for us to pass them, similar to whats happening in Iraq now

__________________
Ex1 RTR MIB

glyn

__________________
Semper in excretum. Solum profunda variat.

BenRoethig

The question to ask is if a bradley or a M113 would have fared any better under the same circumstances.

__________________
F/A-18E/F Super Hornet: The Honda Accord of fighters.

omon

under the same circumstances pbly they would fered better, but no 2 circumstances are ever the same, even the same bomb will perform diferently if placed differently,

Shek

No. It was an absolutely catastrophic kill on the Stryker. It would have been slightly worse on a M113 since it rides closer to the ground and your don't have tires absorbing some of the blast, and a Bradley and Abrams both would have been catastrophic kills.

Remember, Diyala had been turned over the ISF, and this along with the Anbar Salvation Front is why AQI shifted their sanctuary over to Diyala. Recall that Zarqawi that killed just down the road from Baquoba this time last year.

Also, don't get too focused on dirt. Many of these huge bombs are actually buried underneath asphalt roads. They can be set there for quite a long time. Lastly, don't overestimate the capability of <150K American forces to overwatch hundreds of thousands of miles of road networks (and oh BTW, they have more to do than just secure LOCs.

__________________
"So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand." Thucydides 1.20.3

omon

does weight count? stryker being the lightest, and thinest in armor of them all, would need less energy to get damaged, and would lets say 100lb of tnt damage it more than it would abrams?

Shek

The M113 has the thinnest armor. Weight does matter, but its the distribution of armor that is most critical. I am not arguing that the Stryker is as well armored as the Bradley or Abrams; instead, what I am saying is that based on the damage to the Stryker in this case, any armored vehicle in the world would have suffered a catastrophic kill.