Apache Attack Helicopter Tactics of Iraqi Freedom
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- Опубликовано: 25 апр 2024
- After the failure of the air attack at Karbala by AH-64 Apache Attack Helicopters of the US Army, the tactics used had to rapidly evolve. In this video we consider the evolution of American attack helicopter tactics during Operation Iraqi Freedom
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Bernstein, Johnathan. AH-64 Apache Units of Operations Enduring Freedom & Iraqi Freedom. Osprey Combat Aircraft 57. Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2005.
Bishop, Chris. Apache AH-64 Boeing (McDonnell Douglas) 1976-2005. New Vanguard. Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2005.
Cordesman, Anthony H. Lessons of the Iraq War: Main Report. Washington D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2003.
Fontenot, Gregory, E.J Degen, and David Tohn. On Point: The United States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Fort Leavenworth: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2004.
Gautron, P A. ‘Beyond Karbala: The U.S. Army’s Approach To Apache Doctrine’. Canadian Forces College, 2013. www.cfc.forces.gc.ca/259/290/....
Newman, Richard J. ‘Ambush at Najaf’. AIR FORCE Magazine, 2003. www.airandspaceforces.com/PDF....
United States Army. ‘FM3-0 Operations’. Department of the Army, 2001. www.bits.de/NRANEU/others/amd....
US Army is once again reminded that attack helicopters are not tanks
Not with that attitude!
-A Marine
You're right.
It's a flying tank.
Yeah, it's not that simple, though. A lot of things didn't go right in the first attacks that were accounted for in the 2nd wave.
But helicopter and tank share so many letters.
I was a Crewchief in 1/227 during that battle. All 6 of our birds came back with some levels of damage with one being busted up real bad. I remember the look on our pilots' faces when they got back. Commanders who were confused at how bad the mission went. I'll never forget how bad aircraft 008 was busted. Took weeks to get it flyable again.
Hi, @maroccomo. Could you, please, send any gift to me about Apaches? I can send the address of friend of my in USA. He can bring to me here in Brazil in July. Thanks in addanced.
Hi maroccomo, every things is fine? So, could you, please, send to me any gift like about Apaches? I can send to you the address of friend of my in USA. He can bring to me in July 2024. Thanks in addanced
What, you guys didn't have 100mph tape?
@@Waltham1892 Aka "racer tape" (especially on Fuel funny cars 'back in the days' of fiberglass bodies)
Hi @maroccomo
I've heard it was a saying among the British that "When Apache flies nobody dies", referring to the insurgency's reluctance to engage convoys when Apaches were providing protection overhead.
Apache was also developed with the lessons of Vietnam and counterinsurgency in mind.
It's because when they were overhead nobody bothered shooting at us. They put everything up in the air at the apaches.
imagine if russia decided to support the taliban during the us occupation like how the us did during soviet occupation
@@1KosovoJeSrbija1 plenty of countries did support the taliban, and the Iraq forces too
@@scrubsrc4084 damn, if only those countries that supported them gave them an atgm or manpad
@1KosovoJeSrbija1 the taliban had all theor old stingers. Iran and Syria were supplying mostly ied equipment. They were after a different result, although they did hand a few over.
Always interesting to notice the vast differences in doctrine between how the Army and the Marines think of and use air power.
The Marines use helos mainly for air support of ground troops, while the Army thinks of helos as a sort of skyborne horse cavalry, operating over long distances independently.
I'm guessing this is partially due to their mission as well
There is a forced layered protection system. A very simple version of this is the infantry protects the tanks from anti tank weapons while the tank protects the infantry from threats to the infantry. Things go very wrong when crews decide to do their own thing. This happens to other forces in other conflicts as well.
@@orlock20 "Exactamundo maximus" .
"We arrive in darkness and leave in darkness" as someone who has worked 12 hour shifts most of the time I can relate. Winter is depressing as hell
An episode on what the French and British helicopters did in Libya during “unified protector” in 2011 and how successful were these night raids to unlock the situation would be a good complement to that video 👍
What were they targeting?
@@MarcosElMalo2the air campaign reached a standstill because Gaddafi’s troop were hiding scattered and in cities, near schools etc. So air bombardment was not an option. They attacked any target of opportunity: tanks, armed pick-ups etc. 600 targets including 400 vehicles
It's amazing how many times general officers has to relearn the fact that attacking blind without adequate recon or intelligence and without proper support and coordination with other assets is a bad idea.
This was a great comprehensive overview of the Karbala incident and the historical context for the US Army's Apache doctrine. I had often heard about the battle and how it was a major failure for the concept of deep strikes, and this filled in a lot of the details.
War is no fun if the opponent doesn't stick to the script.
Yes. Ask the Russians
Anecdotally... I saw on a military forum that the attack helicopters are allowed to "re-key" themselves in LSCO excercises. Meaning foot soldiers would hit them with a simulated Stinger and they would reset their gear like it didn't happen. There was a certain willful blindness around apache doctrine
That’s sounds like a secular case or cases…unless someone can verify…
Sounds like something that, while it may well be true is slightly misleading.
Such exercises often are changed or parts of the results are disregarded for the rest of the exercise. This is just to maximise the benefit of the exercise. You learn very little by having men sit on their hands because they got "killed".
Afterall though many soldiers and even officers treat itvthat way, Beratung the "enemy" isn't the goal: But learning for the real deal.
As long as it is recorded and the right lessons are learned that in itself is not a problem. Though unrealistic training more generally may well be.
Red Force has a strength of 50 helicopters, but the exercise only has 40 available. So red force is allowed to recycle ten of them.
@@chrisbeer5685 ya the reactions were fairly muted. It seemed pretty normal and I think only one person replied to the comment that I am referring to... I honestly hadn't thought about it till I learned about the story of the one apache pilot who was hit by small arms
Training exercises are exercises for training, not simulations to predict the outcome of real combat.
Deep Strike doesnt work without supression of enemy air defenses. MLRS doesnt really do that well. You need fixed wing aircraft. At which point you might as well just use the fixed wing aircraft for the strike.
Exactly. Attack helicopters were originally meant to be highly mobile units that supply direct fire support at critical places on the battlefield. They were not meant to operate independently as if they are fixed-wing aircraft. Unsupported deep penetration overflying enemy territory in the open like this is a way to go trolling for ground fire.
The fixed wing don't always have the best awareness of the ground situation nor the ammo to hit lesser priority targets though, a helicopter has a very specific role. Even drones, which have supplanted attack helicopters in a lot of tasks, are better off as helicopter drones like the Firescout in those missions.
@@gabrielinostroza4989 I believe fixed and rotor wing should not be thought of as the same solution to the same problem. The helicopter should have more awareness of the ground situation because it is an organic part of the ground forces. It is a fire support vehicle that delivers direct fire on enemy units sorted by its crew, more analogous to a fast-moving armored vehicle than it is to artillery. Fixed wing air is more analogous to artillery, and is called in on targets spotted and sorted by units engaged in the ground situation.
I suspect that use of helicopter to shape the battlefield by deep strikes is a bridge too far; they should work in conjunction with ground units to plug and exploit gaps rather than be sent on independent hunting expeditions in a lethal environment.
One challenge i heard was they used the same path infiltrating and exfiltratrating, days in a row. Flying over power lines that made it easy to target the rotors. Dont know, wasnt there.
That's how the US lost so many B-52's in the final days of the Vietnam War when they were bombing Hanoi in the build up to the Paris Peace Accords. And it's the same reason they lost an F-117 Nighthawk to the Serbs in the 90's.
You'd think that the US military would have learned not to follow the same flight paths repeatedly in a combat zone.
@@TheCoolCucumber Fairly sure the US military knows that, but when the ROE's (Rules Of Engagement) provided by the politicians limit where you can fly and what you can hit it gets a bit tricky.
The key thing to note is the Apache helicopter was the premier Army tank killer of the _Cold War._ When the Soviets hit the Fulda Gap they had to be chased by their ZSU Anti Aircraft (AA) platforms to defend those armored and motorized regiment attacks. ZSUs that would run over mines, break down, or get attrited by NATO forces. Which meant that every hill outside Soviet main gun and most AA ranges had Apaches giving the Soviets grief with Hellfire missiles and gunfire. This made the Apache almost invulnerable. Surviving Soviet AA would never do enough damage compared to what the Apaches inflicted. The Apache was a great asset - _then._
Flash forward to the end of the Cold War and the Apache had almost no purpose. So the Army invented the “Deep Attack” to give it an offensive job. Apache formations would attack en masse into enemy territory to attack enemy ground forces. The problem? Enemy AA assets weren’t rumbling around on an open battlefield getting picked off. They could hide on the Apache ingress and egress routes. The US Army counter measure? The Suppression of Enemy Air Defense (SEAD) tactic. Basically use a massive expenditure of multiple services’ Intelligence Reconnaissance and Surveillance assets to locate all those enemy AA assets. Then use Army artillery and missile assets to attack all those enemy positions starting with close range howitzers and graduating to Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS) and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) over long distances. Of course thanks to flying right over them, enemy AA systems normally impotent vs. Apaches (like heavy machine guns) suddenly became relevant again. Also, the enemy saturated the battle space with AA decoys and fake positions. Or positioned them right on top of schools, hospitals, mosques and other sensitive areas SEAD couldn’t hit directly. It was to the point the V Corps Artillery staff had to aim $1 million ATACMs in such a way that the bomblets would splash on to an AA site next to a mosque but “probably” not the mosque itself. A missile that, properly aimed, could potentially cripple an entire tank battalion wasted on a single weapon system that might even be a decoy.
Now the irony is all these SEAD assets alone could’ve attacked enemy formations. They were for all intents unstoppable, could do it in all weather (unlike the Apaches which sandstorms would ground) and with minimal risk to personnel.
But Army Aviation and multiple military contractors had just too much leverage to let that happen.
"Exactamundo."💯
11th Regiment’s mission was a movement to contact. Technically, the mission was not a failure because they found the enemy. However, unbeknownst to 11th Regiment, the Iraqi Army had been studying Apache tactics since 1991. They even found manuals in Balad on how to defeat Apache helicopters. This, coupled with Gen 1 FLIR, old maps which led them right over occupied villages, and bad timing on the SEAD (Suppression of Enemy Air Defense) is what led to almost all the aircraft receiving significant battle damage.
I very much enjoyed your video and I gave it a Thumbs Up
Air power, when used properly, is very deadly.
Oh yay! I got in early! Thanks guys, i love your work.
Deep strikes sound like they are better suited for bombers and fixed wing attack aircraft.
Attack helicopters should not be utilized in ways where they are the frontline force. They should be used as cavalry for supporting frontline ground forces.
Or more precisely, like Dragoons: move like cavalry, but fight like infantry. The attack helo equivalent would be move like aircraft, fight like ATGM teams, i.e. using ambushes, cover, and quick withdrawal and repositioning.
@@MrHws5mp I've always wondered the Dragoons' role
So that's their role, huh? They're supposed to ride-in hard to a location / area, dismount, fight, re-constitute, mount again to search for other targets. Is that a decent description?
@@sheltr9735 Pretty much. The upside was that they were much more mobile than foot soldiers, the downside was that they had less fighting power because one man in ten had to look after the horses while the rest were fighting.
Well presented.
I appreciate that you referred to ATACMS as such and not Attack 'Ems. 🇬🇧
AyTeeAySeeEmEss?
In the summer of 1999, I was on a beach with my parents in Italy, on the Adriatic Sea region. We saw Task Force Hawk flying on the sea short distance from the beach heading north, probably going to Aviano. I remember counting more than 20 Apache with 2 or 4 Chinook. 25 years later now i know why.
"Brownout conditions" = when sand billows up on a helicopter landing and makes it impossible to see.
Constructive critique, include a date. If I'm watching an informational/historical/documentational video about a subject I just don't think the audience should have to visit wikipedia to figure out what day/month or year an event that the entire video is about had taken place.
Please do a video (or series of) about Operation Anaconda in 2002. MoH 2010 covered this with its campaign. Not a Good Day to Die: The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda is a fantastic read! its such a fascinating battle in the GWOT to learn about and see how it all went downhill so fast.
Sometimes lessons are learned in blood, and sometimes lessons are _not_ learned in blood. This time, the US learned the lessons.
This reminds me Amiga Gunship 2000
10:11 Does anyone have a online link for me to read further on Operation 'Destiny Reach'? I'm trying to find it online myself but coming up empty.
I'd appreciate any help! Thanks
Where did you get the intro audio from?
Even if deep strikes aren't all that practical once the enemy adapts by avoiding massing, simply having them available and forcing the enemy to avoid massing troops can still be quite valuable. If Ukrainians had a large attack helicopter force at their disposal Russia wouldn't be able to concentrate troops that they would need to launch offensives. Simply having them and not using them can avoid suffering attacks you otherwise might.
Helicopters wouldn't stop russian from massing troops, just force them to be protected by AA. Besides artillery already provides a deterrent against massing of forces. Russians are allowed to concentrate their forces for offensive operations when Ukrainians run low on munition for the aforementioned artillery.
Just trying to connect the dots here, but is this the operation that is in the documentary "Apache Warrior."
My favourite band is Raid Against The Medin(a Devision)
Make a detail compression video between 1991 Gulf war( DESERT STORM) and 2003 operations (IRAQI FREEDOM)
WHICH OPERATION is most dangerous and difficult
✌
James Elbert "Jake" McNiece (May 24, 1919 - January 21, 2013) was a US Army paratrooper in World War II. Private McNiece was a member of the Filthy Thirteen, an elite demolition unit whose exploits inspired the 1965 novel and 1967 film The Dirty Dozen.
YES WE STILL! NEED MEN LIKE THIS.
Pretty crazy we live in a time where armored flying death boxes could be taken out by spamming anti-air from some guys with less than a high school education
Kinetic energy doesn't care how well you're educated.
You can thank the advancements in MANPADS and "dispersed" military doctrine. MANPADS like stinger and igla only cost $50k and can take down aircraft 100x their price.
@@FinaISpartan as Russia learned in Ukraine. Helicopters are not as good when every unit has an igla somewhere...
@@CZProtton those new ones they have the gator one was actually torching ukrainian tanks at will during ukrainian counteroffensive. disclaimer: i am pro-ukraine as one can be lol
I am getting a creeping suspicion that this video is not about the Native Americans.🤔
Can you please,make a more in depth video of the serbian air defenses tactics
They cover events
This is what happens
The US do something dumb and lose some stuff then they go back to the drawing board and make new stuff or change how they use the stuff
Then Russia loses a lot of stuff and goes "NUH UH" and continues to lose stuff
69 views
Nice
Combined rotary & fixed wing operations are nothing new.
JAAT, anyone? 😉
my balls been hurting lately idk why
Dude, you need to have that checked up.
check if you still have them
varicocele
WebMD: Cancer
@@z54964380 Bing: Pregnant.
I spot a few differences between the hundreds of USA Military adverts on this platform and what happened here..
Just finished reading a book on apaches called Apache Dawn but Damien Lewis. Well worth a read
I remember hearing the Godfather tell his Marines about this attack in Generation Kill as a reminder to stay frosty.
This will be the only movie to get me back in theaters. But yeah, not fixing the MCU.
What "Freedom"?
It's all about advertising. Shame the final product all over the world is only advertising, doubly so these days.
"...which was not properly communicated to the air force" facepalm
There is nothing wrong with the attack helicopter tactics of the US military the tactics along with the helicopters themselves are probably the best in the world FOR CONVENTIONAL WARFARE (as shown during the first war with Iraq) what is a problem is the the guerilla warfare tactics and doctrine of the US military it has been failing us since Vietnam
Not that it changes anything but ATACMS is pronounced A-TACK-EMS
There were Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian atrocities in the ancient Yugoslavia. In Kosovo, there were very few, and the Albanians were far worse (the Albanian Mafia is one of the worst in the world). Kosovo made the Ukrainian invasion possible. There is currently ethnic cleansing of Serbians in Kosovo. Albanians are a problem in Macedonia as well.
I think one of the major drawbacks to the modern military is that for the last couple of generations the young “men” going into the military are NOT prepared, mentally, to do what it takes, ie kill, to win a conflict. I believe they look at it as a 9-5, decently paid, job, and are “surprised” when it’s time to put up or shut up. I was with a training brigade during the last couple of years of the Vietnam drawdown and the caliber of probably half of the inductees was so bad that after eight years in I decided to get out. I did not want to have to depend on them in a combat situation.
Wasn’t that during or right after the draft? It’s pretty well known that US force quality suffered massively from the draft, that’s why they avoid it as much as possible. I don’t think it makes sense to judge the current volunteer military off of what the partially draftee military was like 50-60 years ago.
The average American 18yo now is a fat 90 IQ mystery meat; good luck turning that into a fighting force.
Why did this fail? They made the guy driving a tractor wear a helmet so its quite obvious no one is capable.
I’m no military expert but I don’t see why you should use helicopters, unless is are a CAS mission, and even in that cenario, with so many shoulder fire weapons the risk is high.
The Army wants to exist without the assistance of the Air Force, but they cannot. They want to be the big budget branch so badly but the AF took all the cool shit and funding in the divorce.
W H Y does the US military intelligence complex never think more than one move ahead? Because OBVIOUSLY the way to counter someone countering your advanced stuff is to spam weaker units instead.
No need to overanalyze things or nuance, helicopters are low flying and relatively slow.
My god the U.S. military is embarrassing despite every advantage 😂
Hardly. The US Military cut through Iraq's defenses in '91 in under 72 hours. At the time, Iraq had the 4th largest military, 5th most powerful by equipment. In 2003, Iraq had learned a lot of those lessons and used them to their advantage. Yet despite this, the US Military still cleaned through the Iraqi Army as well as numerous insurgencies propped up all over the country.
Meanwhile, the British were struggling to handle a single city (Basra) and would eventually withdraw from the city after losing it twice. Now that is embarrassing.
Hardly. The US Military cut through Iraq's defenses in '91 in under 72 hours. At the time, Iraq had the 4th largest military, 5th most powerful by equipment. In 2003, Iraq had learned a lot of those lessons and used them to their advantage. Yet despite this, the US Military still cleaned through the Iraqi Army as well as numerous insurgencies propped up all over the country.
Meanwhile, the British were struggling to handle a single city, Basra, and would eventually withdraw from the city after losing it twice. Now that is embarrassing.
How do you figure?
It's very funny when a country can't make tanks, fighter planes or even ATGM missiles in the top 4 in the world but many people believe it😅 Don't importing countries always run out of resources the first week when a war breaks out, especially after being sanctioned and embargoed for years before the invasion?@@DirtyMikeandTheBoys69
If you think that's bad, imagine everybody else. The U.S. receives a lot of scrutiny, so it shouldn't be a wonder that folks hear about it a lot more compared to other countries. Doesn't mean they don't they have their own problems or dysfunction.
Military aircraft should belong to air forces & navies.Helicopters should only be used when there are no places to deploy/land other aircraft & to escort convoys.The USA is 1 of the few nations dumb enough to own army helicopters.
One of the few ... lol
Helicopters have specific strengths, especially in combined warfare, but that clearly escapes your knowledge.
Please do not use the word “Iraqi freedom” in videos of the invasion of Iraq. We are our many people
It's the name of the operation
but that was the OP name
@@TheIntelReportAre you convinced by this name compared to the actions and killing that occurred?
@@IRAQI_22Shut the fuck up, go cry somewhere else.
@@TheTrueNorth11Thank you for your comment, but I am not talking about myself, I am talking about the thousands of women and children who lost their loved ones because of the American and British army.
Really interesting but please stop with the AI voice.
Hi @maroccomo
It is amazing how fast the americans learned the lessons and applied them.