Hunter Box
"Hunter Box" transports in Iraq_______________
This is a picture of a "hunter box" sent by reader Grant who did two tours in Iraq, in 2005 and 2006. Pretty spiffy top design -- kind of reminds one of tessellated parapets in the days of throwing boiling oil onto the hapless peasants below. Can't say I'd like to be roving that countryside in one.
Here is the text which accompanied the photo:
Here is the text which accompanied the photo:
"It seemed that the Army didn't want to fight the war they were fighting, and were scrambling to adapt to what was going on.
"They are LMTVs with half inch plates welded to the sides with turret things like a castle on it. There was one ladder to get off on, and I didn't have much faith in the half inch steel on the sides. By the grace of God nobody ever hit us with an IED. As with all military equipment, the maximum load is "one more".
"Again, I have no idea how things are there now, since it's been a hundred years (or three) since I was in Iraq, but looking back, the things I went through make me go 'Damn. Really?'"
Don't worry, Grant -- we find ourselves going, "Damn, really?" quite a lot around here.
Labels: hunter box
posted by Lisa at 12:30 PM
21 Comments:
/facepalm
My feeling is that anytime some tool higher up has the brilliant idea that resembles that...hang on...:::christian thoughts, we must think christian thoughts:::piece of...:::christian, christian:::...rolling target platform should be...:::christian thoughts:::....*&%^% up the &*^&% with a cactus.
Quick correction- I did two six month tours, one from 04-05 and then 05 into 06, not 2003 and 2006. Sorry for the confusion.
Those things are stupid as hell, aren't they?
Grant,
on the up side- at least you'd be blown free of the vehicle in certain types of explosions., you wouldn't bounce off the inside armor plating. I bet that makes you feel better.
jim
Jesus wept. And here I thought that the Hussite armored wagon had been made obsolete by gunpowder weapons.
What the fucking fuck are these damn things? It's like an RPG gunner's wet dream.
When I first saw them, I was like "Is this some kind of joke? We're going to fit HOW many guys on that? And we're going to do WHAT if we get attacked?"
I still can't believe they never hit one with an IED while I was there. Though I do remember when they blew up the chow hall in Mosul we had to go eat on refit in full battle rattle. If we were in a tent we were ok, because tents are apparently explosion resistant.
To all,
It occurred to me last night that this vehicle could be upgraded by painting it MOSSY OAK or TREEBARK finish. Hey it works for the deer hunting blinds!!
jim
Chief, We used to wet fire on simulated moving columns-could you imagine these wagons taking a mortar round.? What about a grenade or molotov
jim
it didn't take the conflict very long before somebody went "we could use elephants, just like cyrus and hannibal!"
the part they forgot was the the romans and alexander figured out in a heartbeat how to counter the elephants. hannibal's elephants ended up being more deadly to their flanking units as the romans sent out slaves with mirrors and noisemakers to pop up out the bushes. the flashing lights, the sudden noises panicked the elephants who proceeded to trample the troops.
alexander used the classic macedonian phalanx formation, he increased the size of the sarissa to 18'. lotta dead elephants.
come to think of it, a lotta dead elephants really wouldn't hurt much right now would it?
MB and FDChief,
Your dark humor made me smile. This wagon is but one embodiment of a true tragic comedy.
."..could you imagine these wagons taking a mortar round?"Like an M-80 in a coffee can.
Boom, baby!
The friggin' Leonardo that thought these up should be detailed to ride through Monkey Jungle for an entire afternoon while the apes in the trees above are issued live demo and encouraged to lob the charges into the open pit in the back. Basket of monkey chow for the first Cheetah to lob one into Bucket Number 6.
What a fuckstory.
i think one of the things that drew my attention to the battles of the ancients was the way i saw our highly technological, exotic weaponed, college educations leading, graduate degrees commanding forces fought to a fucking standstill by some tough little fuckers wearing sandals made from the tires and pj's. i'm not saying that the vc or the nva were on the side of the fucking angels or anything close to that. the worst behaviors, the worst atrocity were lined up on their side of the ledger. i'm just saying that we went in there with the newest and shiniest 20th century equipment, shit, we invented shit just to deal with them, and they fought us to a standstill. over and over. if an arclight was called in that wiped out an entire valley in the iron triangle, they sucked it up and moved into the next couple of hills over. if we demolished an ammo or fuel dump on the trail, they built another one. if we called in the fast movers on a bridge crossing, when they rebuilt, they would rebuild the fucking bridge 6" below the surface of the water so it couldn't be seen from the air.
no matter how much science, no matter how much technology that we brought to bear upon them, after fifteen minutes it was all back to mog and og in the fucking stone age and that's where they lived so they knew how to deal.
that why i tend to smile wryly whenever i hear asshole remfs pontificating about how we "are in a new kind of war."
ain't no such critter. sooner or later it comes down to guys in boots (caligae) carrying their stuff on their backs and toting their weapons with them. i don't give a hong kong hoot if they are carrying an m-4, m-16, m1, 1918a springfield, sharps, musket, flintlock, pike, sarissa, pilum, or what the fuck else it is.
the line of grunts hasn't changed since joshua. or since gilgamesh for that matter.
i look at a piece of shit like a "hunter box" and i think about cyrus, then i think about how leonidas gave him an ass kicking that is remembered in history.
i doubt that i will ever see a new war. grant in the previous comments describes a tactical environment that reminds me of nothing less than being ordered to take an undersized, underarmed, unit out into the boonies to "farkle about smartly" and draw fire.
there were a whole lot of other ways that we could have been used. i was a big fan of lrrps going out in fours and sixes, laying really low, doing lots of sneaky slinking until we indentified large encampments. then calling in the fast movers.
using four jets to pound the shit out of a scout patrol that simply stumbled upon us in the underbrush wasn't a good application of the tools at hand to my thinking.
it isn't a good use or application of force now either.
some of the guys i've talked with coming back from iraq are describing things that sound like they have hue on their hands every day.
glad you made it home safe grant. well done.
Eloquent, MB.
I haven't the fraction of your military learning, but it does seem to me that for all our sophisticated weaponry, we will always be brought down to the level of our opponent. So this "new war" they like to talk of, 4GW or whatever, is naught but a version of "same as it ever was," and we get discombobulated imagining it is otherwise.
advanced weaponry....
Lisa:
I don't know that I agree totally with the generations of war, as described (I through IV) because there is a little bit of overlap. But the US army can't do 4th generation Warfare, since it has never mastered The 3rd in any consistent fashion (The whole Boyd OODA Loop thingy), and especially, (long still abandoned since Viet Nam), The granting of permission/ training for the ability of subordinate leaders in the field to "play it as it lays." Instead, they have these networked TOC's (Tactical Operation Centers), where medal hunting field grade officers try to second guess their juniors (a cardinal sin in 3GW).
G.D.,
Simply awesome! I love the medieval catapult launching device.
Fasteddiez,
Yes, outside of the John Robb aficionados, yours seems to be the consensus view. But you know, systemspunkt sounds very cool, so you want your fighting men to be just as hip.
I’m sorry if my initial tirade lit up the litany of abuses these geniuses in the back field so righteously earned.
I’m sure that the meat wagon idea was probably the best thing that could be scrounged together considering the available mat’s lying around, and the evident need for something, anything to hide behind.
It just disappoints me that for all the college educated dumb fucks who seem to plague the upper echelons of the military that some officer, somewhere along the line, would have evolved enough calcified spinal material to shit-can the corporate “Yes sir!” To think past their own career path and tell the powers that be, “my men are not going out in that rolling ten wheel target. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever!”I would have, but then again, I’m not much of a leader, nor am I, apparently, corporate soldier material, either.
Quiet mountains, hunting, fishing, is more my kind of life, not sucking up to an idiot who has the mental capacity of spider monkey guarding his fruit stash.
So, back to that vehicle, imo Grant, seriously…each and everyone of you guys should receive the distinguish service cross, and your officers… frog marched to the nearest airfield, summarily court-martialed for stupidity unbecoming of a human being, felonious idiocy unbecoming of a officer, and then dropped kicked to the nearest airplane and sent back to the US to flip hamburgers…a job their mental capacity and common sense seem predisposed for.
I'm sorry Grant, but that picture of that thing...just...it is wrong on so many different levels I just don't want to explore them anymore.
I'm honestly glad to have found a place where people have enough knowledge of the military but at the same time enough think-for-yourself-ism to really evaluate things like that. I tell most people and they are either "Well it's the Army" as if the fact I volunteered to risk my life makes it ok to waste it, or they are "I don't see what's wrong with it... it has turrets and steel plates!" to which I say "Yeah... you don't get it."
I ended up on a blog/board somewhere and I criticized the war and was told to "ruck up". When I said "Actually, I did two tours. Airborne infantry" I was called a liar. When I proved it, I was called a disgruntled shitbag.
:( made me sad lol
So I'm just happy that you all had the same reaction to that piece of shit as I did. It's a testament to hadji's laziness that they never tried to chuck a molotov cocktain in one while I was riding.
We're glad to have you, Grant -- your voice is important!
It is sad that the patriots of a more conservative stripe need retreat to cruel ad hominum attacks when argument ensues.
I remember the same thing from school days on the topic of religion. Most would not admit of a dialog as the challenge might crumble their entire fortress of faith. I always knew, if it's that shaky, ...
Grant,
I don't like the expressed attitude that-well they volunteered so if they get ........then that's just tough luck. This is the attitude that permeates societies take on what a vet happens to be.
The people you talk to on this site do put on their thinking hats since our days under helmet are over-all of us endured the same ignorance and ineptitude that you describe. All of us had friends killed/maimed and mutilated and we called it DUTY. Well so much for that.
Most of us here are old Airborne types so welcome to the stick. At your age you don't probably realize it yet but you have more hazardous duty ahead of you than you've placed behind you.
This is why I write this blog . I know that MB will second this thought. Hopefully you will become a spokesman for the silent others of your generation.
As for the attacks you've received just consider them a badge of honor. The more they smoke you then this means you are penetrating their perimeters and are placing effective fires on them. So drive on. It's actually humorous if you think about it- my tabs are 39 &40 years old and they get questioned by 20 y/o cherry boys. That's what we get for our beliefs and so be it.
If you have anything to say I'll talk to you on landline.
Welcome , once again. Write your memories down now before they fade.
Stay low and shoot low.
jim
Grant: This is variation on a theme from the Hillbilly Armor days of the early Dumbsfeld era. The USMC improvised with the same types of solutions.
Consider yourself lucky, you didn't have any of These puppies land near you....watch video.
Partial Specs are submitted. Seems the Gypos used them to great effect during the Yom Kippur set-to. Good on them, there's nothing like an exploding cigar to snap you out of your cheap, arrogant shit; I always say.
These would be handy for any revolution, doncha' think?
I met a Navy chief who got ambushed by the insurgency in one of these things. I think they used to drape blankets of kevlar off on the sides. It sounded pretty awful.
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