Quote:
Originally Posted by Panther Al
I nominate that last it as the understatement of the month. 
The 3rd, when we rolled in, from what I saw of not only Iraqi units, but Kuwaiti ones as well, could easily manhandle units three times its size, and thats without the Air Force/Navy air strikes. Send a couple of Heavy ACR's, back them with a pair of carriers in the gulf, and they would own anything they wanted. |
LOL!
I have never understood why the equipment for a ACR was never pre-loaded...it was always a Marine Brigade or an Airborne Task Force...Iraq, at one time, could field more MBTs than anyone else in the region...so expecting that a couple of light brigades would serve as much more than a speed bump always seemed the height of stupidity. After all, if the equipment is there, than all ya need is to fly the crews in, and wasn't that what was expected of the lights?
If I had been Saddam, sure as hell, the Coalition would not have been given months to build up and ship heavy divisions in and bring in air wings. After all, the last time paratroopers went toe-to-toe with an armored division, they got their asses handed to them! TOWs and Dragons are nifty little toys and they sure beat the hell out of 6-pounder antitank guns and PIATs, but like any ATGM, they have a lot of drawbacks and I would not want to see what happened when a half-way decent armordivision commander, grins and yells "GO FOR IT!"
Sitting here typing this, I have an ex-zoomie telling me about how the Air Farce won Desert Storm. If you have the time to fly in the air wings and ship the bombs and missiles in, then the ole AF can be a real decent equalizier...but if Saddam had the balls, the olnly thing he would have had to worry about would have been a couple of Carrier Air Wings initially, and if he had used his air force, then the 82nd and Marines would have fought under a neutral sky at best...and then it would have been lights against heavys....and what a fight that would have been!