Clarification/Follow-up by Dark_Crow on 01/26/07 3:26 am:
This is just not my day.
I left the following quote out of my response.

But he sounds like he is parroting something he heard that sounded good and he can't back up a lot of things he says.

Clarification/Follow-up by Closer_To_The_Heart on 01/26/07 5:29 am:
Trop-

You're right we have no guarantees even inside an Abrams tank. But I can tell you from experience from my recollection an IED is less effective against an Abrams tank than other assault vehicles. It might blow a track off but most of your worry should be concerning of an air attack or using surface missiles, etc... Also any fools (enemy foot soldiers) that think they can get close enough to use an heat incinerating grenade for example on a tank is crazy. Very seldom happens because any idiots seen within two football fields would get a face full shrapnel when spotted by our tanks. Just to let you know our tanks carry a special huge bullet-like projectiles and then the head explodes scattering thousand of razor blades and small pieces of metal against foot soldiers hundred of yards away. Only an elite special ground force could ever take on a strategy against an Abrams tank. It not so easy. You being a mother, I know it's your duty to worry. I will pray for your sons safety.

Clarification/Follow-up by tropicalstorm on 01/26/07 5:32 am:
Yeah my kids keep saying Abrams tanks are indestructable. But I know my LeeJ isn't going live in them.
My daughter's friend is in Abu Dubi and my neighbors son is a medic and was right next to the sixty soldiers that got killed the first week of December. My daughters say they most likely won't have to go to Iraq; but would.

Clarification/Follow-up by Closer_To_The_Heart on 01/26/07 5:32 am:
PS. I'll answer your concern more specific.

"BUT I say I doubt he will live there so what then!"

For the most part the tanks are being used to clear areas. When the tank operators finish their duty they park the tank and will have the infantry along side them. It's called securing a perimeter and that gives all the soldiers a better chance of survival.

Clarification/Follow-up by ETWolverine on 01/26/07 4:20 pm:
Closer To THe Heart,

You clearly have some recent experience. I thank you for your service in protecting me and my family from our enemies.

I'm interested in hearing an expert on the subject.

How are Bradleys fairing against IEDs. I know they don't have the armor of the Abrams, but are they well-enough protected to do the job? I have read about the history of the Bradley, and I've always wondered whether it's performance was worth the effort to get it made in the first place.

Second, how good is 120MM canister shot against infantry in a prepared position. Your point about canister cutting down a standing enemy in an open field is well-taken. But how well does it do in an assault against a prepared, dug-in position? (I seem to recall from some of my reading that fighting from a prepared position is a 5:1 force multiplier against an assaulting force, and 20:1 if that assaulting force doesn't have armored cav to back them up.) I'd be interested in hearing your opinion on the efficacy of such a tactic.

Thanks again for your service.

Elliot

Clarification/Follow-up by Dark_Crow on 01/26/07 6:53 pm:
The “New” weapons are… information technology and information science.

Clarification/Follow-up by ETWolverine on 01/26/07 7:24 pm:
Dark Crow, I beg to differ. There have indeed been changes in information technologies that have military application. Certainly C3 (Command Control & Communication) has improved due to better information technologies. But that is not the sole improvement we have seen in the military.

As I mentioned in my answer below, there have been improvements in the area of explosives, particularly with regard to thermobaric weapons.

There are also new metalurgical breakthroughs in weapons technologies that allow weapons to fire faster and longer without overheating.

There have been improvements in the materials used in the making of bullets and rounds (the bullet is the "head" that kills the enemy, the round is the head, the jacket and the propellant inside). New ceramic materials are being developed for body armor, as well as light-weight "shear thickening fluids" that become hard when a bullet is fired at it, also being developed for body armor.

New weapons, such as the XM29 OICW individual assault weapon are being developed for the "Land Warrior" project. Along with the OICW, new 20MM HE rounds have been developed for use in its grenade launcher. These new rounds are capable of multiple settings: contact, range-to-target, delayed fuse and contact delayed.

But the newest and best developments in military technologies have been in the area of combat psychology. These breakthroughs have allowed the military to change its training doctrine to make each soldier a more capable and efficient force multiplier. That is why it is not uncommon for a single squad or platoon of modern US soldiers to beat off entire companies of fighters from other countries. (Situations like that are not as rare as you might think.)

So there is more to the changes in military technologies than just improvements in information sciences. I'm not trying to play down the importance of the improvements in IT. But they are not the sole improvements we have seen... not by a long shot.

Elliot

Clarification/Follow-up by Dark_Crow on 01/26/07 10:35 pm:
Elliot
In his essay "Postmodern Terrorism," Walter Laqueur asks, "Why assassinate a politician or indiscriminately kill people when an attack on the electronic switching will produce far more dramatic and lasting results?"

If you are arguing that ultimately man’ is the great necessity, I agree, otherwise I “stick to my guns”. For, “ultimately, war will remain the domain of trained combat soldiers. Information warfare will certainly alter the basis of war, but in the end, it will always require someone to carry a rifle. As attributed to the late General George S. Patton: "The object of war is not to die for your country. The object of war is to make some other dumb son of a bitch die for his." Be it personnel or computer systems, the same holds true and will continue to do so.
Amidst all the muddiness of information warfare, one thing stands out clearly. The talents provided by professionals in information technology and information science will continue not only to be in demand, but to rise in importance. We can't pursue al-Qaeda without people who speak Arabic, and neither can we defend ourselves from electronic attacks without people who understand the technologies and methods of collecting, storing, retrieving, and analyzing information.”.
http://www.slis.indiana.edu/news/story.php?story_id=549

Clarification/Follow-up by Closer_To_The_Heart on 01/27/07 3:42 am:
Elliot,

Bradley comparison to the Abrams

This is from an article in 2005.

"Wow, on Thursday night, January 6, the Iraqi resistance detonated a roadside bomb under a US Bradley fighting vehicle as a US patrol traveled through Awad Al-Hussein.

Awad Al-Hussein is a small town located 14 miles northwest of Baghdad, 8 ½ miles east of Karma, and 7 miles west of Taji. This is the first attack I have heard of in this town, which is probably a mostly-Sunni town. The bomb completely destroyed the formidable Bradley, killing all seven US troops inside.

Well, believe it or not, that is quite an impressive feat. Bradleys get hit with roadside bombs all the time in Iraq, and much of the time the bombs don't do much damage. As you can see in the photos in the link above, the Bradley looks, feels and acts like a tank.

It has thick reactive armor outside that deflects much enemy fire. It is not uncommon in Iraq these days for multiple RPG's to pretty much bounce off Bradleys without doing a lot of damage. The guys inside get pretty rock and rolled but the RPG's don't necessarily penetrate due to the thick reactive armor.

I recall a recent article by an embedded reporter who actually had the cojones to go into Fallujah with a Bradley crew in November last year at the height of the Fallujah offensive. At various points, they were hit by one RPG after another and the effect was difficult to describe.

The reporter described it as the Bradley got bounced around in a major way, but the RPG's usually failed to penetrate the Bradley, or failed to penetrate very far into the armor. To someone inside the Bradley, the effect may seem similar to the way someone feels in a minor car accident.

The Bradley often bounced around, sometimes left the ground and landed with a crash, and it was a real wild ride for the guys inside. Not sure how they deal with that so they don't get banged up (Do they have seat belts?) but at any rate, as long as the RPG does not make it inside the Bradley, serious injuries are typically avoided.

The Mahdi Army salted Sadr City's streets with roadside bombs last August in preparation for an expected US offensive. When the offensive finally occurred, after the first day or so, the US command banned everything but Bradleys and Abrams tanks from going into Sadr City due to the extreme roadside bomb danger.

The Bradley and the Abrams are the two toughest vehicles in the US force. US forces then just drove their Bradleys and Abrams down the roads, setting off roadside bombs as they drove along - BAM BAM BAM - if you can actually imagine, it must have been quite a sight to see!

Now it is perfectly possible to penetrate a Bradley with an RPG, especially the newer RPG warheads from the former Eastern Bloc that the resistance seems to have imported from Syria in recent months. These latest-generation warheads include thermobaric warheads that are even capable of penetrating the reactive armor on the meanest US vehicles.

The older, more typical RPG warhead can also sometimes penetrate a Bradley, apparently if the RPG hits the Bradley in one of the right places (there seem to be certain places on the Bradley that are more vulnerable than others).

But even when an RPG penetrates a Bradley, it typically doesn't kill the whole crew - it may just leave one or more wounded, or may harm no one at all, or may kill one or perhaps two soldiers. That's typically the score.

Even though the Bradley is a formidable critter, there have been criticisms recently that it is not as heavily-armored as it was supposed to have been when it was made. That is, the battlefield has pointed out some of the weaknesses in the Bradley's reactive armament.

For instance, the Bradley apparently lacks reactive armor on its underside, and the US Abrams M1-A1 Battle Tank may be fairly weak there also. The underside is apparently an Achilles Heel for both the Bradley and the Abrams. But both vehicles are still very tough to defeat.

A commenter who noted that "a 40-pound shaped charge can blow the turret off a main battle tank" may be stating a fact, but it still seems that if it were this simple, the guerrillas would be able to do it more often. I think there are more factors in the equation "How to Kill an Abrams" than: 40-pound shaped charge versus turret.

The formidable US Stryker, a newest-generation AV, seems to be even harder to deal with than the Bradley, in spite of the torrent of criticism leveled at the Stryker lately. But even the Stryker can be breached. For instance, see this video of an (apparently recent) resistance car bomb attack by Iraqi Al Qaeda in Mosul that pulverized a Stryker and killed some US troops.

See also this photo of a Stryker destroyed by a roadside bomb in Samarra on December 13, 2003. Though the Stryker was obliterated, only 1 US soldier was wounded, oddly.

One of the worst attacks on a Bradley so far in the guerrilla phase of the war was a huge roadside bomb west of Taji on January 17, 2004 at 7:45 AM. Here is an account of that attack from my notes at the time, based on a number of news reports:
7:45 AM: Roadside bomb attack on a US patrol searching for roadside bombs west of Taji. The bomb hit the lead vehicle in the patrol, a Bradley armored vehicle, flipping the 60,000 lb. vehicle high in the air, ripping its gun turret apart and setting it on fire.

Three US soldiers, Pfc. Cody J. Orr, Spc. Larry E. Polley, Jr. and Sgt. Edmond L. Randle, along with two Iraqi ICDC (a now-defunct Iraqi security organization) soldiers, all riding in the back of the Bradley, were killed, and two more US troops, the commander and driver of the Bradley, were wounded.

The bomb was made of two 155mm rounds along with other explosives. Three guerrillas fleeing in a truck were detained and bomb-making materials were found on them.

A number of young men in the area were also rounded up, probably at random. A crowd of Iraqis celebrated around the destroyed vehicle afterwards. Our prayers to Messrs. Orr, Polley and Randle and those close to them.
As you can see, five out of the seven troops on board were killed, the remaining two were wounded, and the Bradley was toast. Yet two US troops survived (But no one knows how bad their wounds were). Reports at the time were impressed by the super-blast of this powerful bomb."


120MM

After seeing shrapnel embedded into a tree 300 yards plus away most people don't chance the possibility that a second load could be on the way. That ratio is probably based on superior ground forces that have good weapons. That's less the case thus far in this war. The enemy only gets lucky once in awhile. By comparison, let's say ground assualt vehicle vs helicopters and planes, I think check the stats, we probably have lost more people due to our own aircraft mishaps and/or being shot down.

Clarification/Follow-up by ETWolverine on 01/29/07 2:40 pm:
Closer,

Thanks for the info on the Bradley and the efficacy of cannister shot. Its helpful.

As for weaknesses in the Abrams and the Bradley, everything has weaknesses. The undersides of most armor is weak because adding additional armor drives up the weight cost and lowers speed. Since speed is essential in modern warfare, a sacrifice had to be made somewhere, and the underside is the obvious location for it... that being the least likely spot to be hit in combat. The joints of the turrets and straight "up the pipe" of the main gun are other weak spots, but tough to get a good hit on. Not impossible, though. I would assume that visual slits are also weak points, you can only armor a hole for seeing outside the vehicle so much before there is no longer a hole. Treads/wheels are weak points on any armor, and force the vehicle to stop advancing, but don't necessarily kill the vehicle's fighting power... a stopped tank still has its guns and can be used in the indirect fire role.

Its nice to know that after all the trouble it took to get the Bradley designed and built it has turned out to be worth it.

I have to admit that I am one of the critics of the Sryker. I don't see any purpose to an AV that does the same job as the Bradley but not as well, weighs more, moves slower, costs more to maintain and isn't as well protected. I'm glad that those using the Stryker are finding it to be effective enough, but frankly, its not one of my favorite pieces of equipment on the American TOE. And a friend of mine who is a Major in an armored cav division agrees with me.

Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions.

Elliot