Final Protective Fire

Thursday, January 09, 2003

 

Debka once again shows the low quality of its "reports" with a report titled "Road to Baghdad Goes Through Tel Aviv". There is a lot of nonsense in this piece mixed with some obvious observations but what I found expecially hilarious was:

The US is expected to launch the coming war against Iraq with parachute drops on Baghdad, together with commando landings in the city from the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers.

This is hilarious because the age of parachute drops into combat zones ended a long long time ago. Further, Debka refers to the 101st as "101st Airborne Division". The 101st is only called "Airborne" for historical purposes, it is an "Air Assault" division ( better called "Airmobile" as it is helo-borne ) and isn't a parachute formation.

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds was kind enough to forward an email from a Ranger fan taking me to task for saying that the day of parachute drops into combat zones was ended. Included were several links to the Ranger website with descriptions of Ranger operations in Grenada, Panama and Kuwait City. While I don't wish anyone to misconstrue my remarks as being at all critical of the immense courage of the Rangers in those operations, there is room to criticize the military rationale for those operations. ( Some argue that its possible to misunderstand why the Panama operation was successful ). But the key is that I'm bit by my own sloppy prose. My intention was to state that the kind of operation implied by DEBKA's silly article, reminiscent of others' discussion of an "inside-out" strategy, is long retired. Indeed we will see small units, Rangers and Joint SpecOps, placed by airborne drop during the upcoming war, ( although they won't be from 101st which is as I mentioned organized for helicopter operations). We will not see brigades of the 82nd Airborne nor the 101st arrive in Baghdad by parachute atop Republican Guard mechanized divisions ala Eben Emael or Crete. There are two reasons for that. The first is the most obvious; the dangers of flying a large formation of air transport aircraft into the teeth of a real anti-aircraft network. The second is just as important; the lessons of more than a half-century ago that airborne forces cannot survive long against regular forces with the airborne's light equipment and slender logistics.

But as I said, the sloppy prose was my fault and I am corrected.

Robin 2:22 PM