Why are we suddenly losing so many helicopters in Iraq?

[northernsoul]

Help me out, militarily-knowledgeable DUers. Do the various factions that want to kill Americans suddenly have new weapons/tactics, or are we just sending more copters into more dangerous situations? It's getting to be like "Blackhawk Down" every day now.

[mcar]

1. I read somewhere that the Saudis are supplying

the Shia (or is it Sunni?) with the weaponry capable of taking down the helicopters.

Our good friends the Saudis, at it again.

[northernsoul]

5. The Saudis are supporting the Sunnis

That much, I know. I'm sure a few hundred shoulder-mounted rocket launchers are all it takes to make the Iraqi skies pretty damn unfriendly, but I'm just speaking as a regular joe with no military experience or knowledge.

[shance]

43. It really has nothing to do with the "Saudis and the Sunnis". It has to do with American

and perhaps Israeli business interests who keep stirring the hornets nests and pitting Sunnis and Shiites against one another.

[The Stranger]

9. Nice, blaming the Saudis instead of the Neocons who created all of this.

[northernsoul]

16. There's plenty of blame for both of them.

Noting that the Saudis are making a bad situation worse does not equate to excusing the ideological progenitors of this catastrophe. That's like saying that holding the position that Ferdinand Franco was facist scum is somehow failing to point out the sheer evil that was Adolph Hitler. There's plenty of moral culpability to go around.

[BoneDaddy]

22. So the Saudi's are innocent

hardly. I love the folks who just think that the idiots are just the neocons. Most of the leadership in many of the muslim states are as pathological and ideologically insane as Bush.

Read the book House of Suad. It details the relationship with the Bush and Suad families. In fact, I don't think you can separate the neo-conservative agenda from the house of Suad interests.

[Auggie]

44. Aren't the Saudis heavily invested in investment groups such as Carlyle,

that own/invest in various businesses with fat U.S. defense contracts? By helping to blow up our equipment they're making more money for themselves...

[BoneDaddy]

49. Exactly

it is all a game

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

30. It's FRANCISCO Franco. Otherwise, I agree. -nt

[northernsoul]

31. thanks for sorting me out.

I coulda swore it was 'Ferdinand'. Guess I need to go back at re-study my "Minor Villians of the Twentieth Century." Then we can get back to squabbling about major villians of the 21st century.

[Beelzebud]

17. Ummm The Saudis are aligned WITH the neo-cons....

[Raskolnik]

27. The Saudi royal family, yes. The majority of remaining Saudis, not so much.

The royal family tries to placate the U.S. and the Wahabbist clerics in Saudi Arabia.

[SOS]

36. The neocons blame their abject failure on Iran and Syria

While the Saudi's send millions in cash and weapons to Iraq.

Certainly, 100% of the blame for igniting this disaster goes to the neocons, but we must be vigilant as they try to gin up another war under phony pretenses.

[northernsoul]

29. This link discusses in further detail

http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=7864

"Take time to read this post by Noah Shachtman at DefenseTech (http://www.defensetech.org/archives/003252.html).It seems very likely that the Sunni insurgents have considerably stepped up their ability to target our helicopters.

As Josh Marshall points out here (http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/012259.php) the primary supplier of the Sunni militias is Saudi Arabia and Saudi citizens, not Iran. The Iran-backed militias are supposedly on our side, or anyhow they’re fighting alongside us. Should we invade Saudi Arabia? The answer will help to illustrate the craven disregard for reality that underlies much of our Iran war talk."

[KansDem]

50. Yeah, they discovered it's much easier to take down helicopters than it is tall buildings.

Forgive me for being so callous, but when 67% of the attackers on 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia and all Bush can do is play kissy-face with them, then I become acrimonious when I read reports like this one...

[Missy M]

2. It seems the insurgents are getting more sophisticated...

weapons from somewhere.

[Bandit]

12. Or training on how to use them

Saddam had a very good armory. He had many of the latest weapons and they were not protected nor guarded by Americans but the oil fields sure were...I suspect many of the weapons are just now getting distributed and training on their use is being conducted by ex Iraqi Soldiers...

[JackRiddler]

14. Please...

Given enough time, they're going to get better and better at what they do. They have all the intelligence advantages on the ground, above all the fact that the majority of the country, whatever their religious affiliation, want the foreign invaders GONE.

An RPG can bring down a helicopter. A bullet can do it. It's about knowing where the enemy is, and sneaking into the right position to do this.

And of course they're getting "sophisticated" weapons from a lot of places. Arms is the world's biggest market, but I expect the fastest-growing source of weaponry is the US-built pseudo Iraqi "Army" itself. Unless this conflict defies the history of "counterinsurgencies" by imperial occupiers in the last century, I have no doubt that it's fully infitrated by insurgents and the militias, and that its colonels sell US-provided arms to the very people they are supposedly fighting. This is what happened in Vietnam.

I also will not be surprised when the history of how some of the "factions in the civil war" were armed by the US specifically to cause chaos and create the civil war comes out. Not to mention the history of how many of these bombings are no doubt being done by "us" (as though anyone asked us) or "our" friends.

I also have no doubt that "networks" based in Iran are also helping to arm the Iraqi people against the foreign invaders.

Oh, I'm sorry, did I not use the proper rhetoric at any point in the above?

[SOS]

33. From Saudi Arabia

"(AP) Private Saudi citizens are giving millions of dollars to Sunni insurgents in Iraq and much of the money is used to buy weapons, including shoulder fired anti-aircraft missiles, according to key Iraqi officials and others familiar with the flow of cash. In one recent case, an Iraqi official said $25 million in Saudi money went to a top Iraqi Sunni cleric and was used to buy weapons, including Strela, a Russian shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile. The missiles were purchased from someone in Romania, apparently through the black market, he said."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/12/08/world/main2240138.shtml

[bleedingheart]

3. technology

that is what...apparently the insurgents have the technology to knock out helicopters...we have that technology too..

Apparently someone is giving it to the insurgents...or they have devised their own means of doing this.

[Dora]

4. Because the insurgency is very well-armed.

We're not fighting people who are throwing rocks. We're fighting a armed insurgency that we've trained.

[tinfoilinfor2005]

6. Because president pandora opened the gates of hell.

Time to get out.

[itsmesgd]

7. the locals are watching the chopper's patterns and are setting up and waiting for a good shot

The insurgency is becoming more organized from I have heard from a couple of guys that had returned late last year. They are becoming patient and are also becoming better equiped. I don't know where they are getting the arms, but my neighbor believes that it might be from outside the country.

[Virginia Dare]

28. Probably getting good intelligence too...

remembe, they just took down one with a bunch of brass on board.

[Jackpine Radical]

8. I assume it's some sort of hand-held antiaircraft missile

like a Soviet SAM that they've gotten a stockpile of. When you come right down to it, helicopters are pretty vulnerable aircraft. They're big, they fly low, they're fairly slow, they throw out a lot of heat for tracking...

[The Stranger]

10. Because the occupied people that live there don't want the helicopters there.

Next question.

[northernsoul]

15. Yeah, but that's been the case for ~4 years now

What has changed in the past few weeks?
I wasn't asking the question rhetorically. I want to know if this debacle has now turned some new, dark corner where we're going to be looking at losing dozens of Americans everyday.

[The Stranger]

26. If history was any indication, the last few weeks would happen eventually.

It seems to happen in every occupation and every guerilla war.

[northernsoul]

32. Creepy Soviets-in-Afghanistan Comparison:

http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=7864

"The Soviets began losing Afghanistan when bin Laden’s group started downing their helicopters. Without access to safe air transport or air support the Soviet occupiers lost an edge that an army fighting a guerilla enemy on foreign ground couldn’t afford to lose. Political realities changed slowly in the USSR, guaranteeing that the Soviet army didn’t pull out until long after any reasonable observer would understand that there was no more good in staying. By pullout time the red army lacked the resources to even retreat safely. Some units were slaughtered in the process."

:scared:

[bobthedrummer]

11. We are also losing many non-coms and officers, not by chance n/t

[AnneD]

13. Not enough turn around time...

with less time between deployments-repairs are rushed through. Also conditions are brutal there. Sand and grit are everywhere. It doesn't take an engineer to tell you what grit can do to an engine. And then there are the weapons that can take em down. Our guys are sitting ducks.

[stonecoldsober]

18. The Iranians, of course.

Which is another reason why we should get the hell out.

[Hippo_Tron]

46. No, no, we just need to secretly carpet bomb Cambodia

Err, I mean Iran...

[Tesha]

19. Enemy getting better, crews getting tired, helicopters getting older. (NT)

[ProfessorGAC]

20. I Heard Last Week On CSPAN. . .

. . .that the military is saying they're coming down due to ground fire.

However, in that same article read on WJ, a colonel so-and-so, said that despite it was the last 8 in a row, he didn't know if there was a pattern. (Yep! That's what he said!)

Now, we're at 9 in a row and the top brass can't figure out if that's a pattern.

The troops are sitting ducks.
The Professor

[justiceischeap]

21. Maybe it's just being reported more

Now that it's "okay" to criticize the war.

[Carl21014]

23. I used to schedule salvage operations...

I was a scheduler for the Navy salvage ships that would retrieve Marine Helicopters off the bottom of the ocean. I can't speak for the ones confirmed to be shot down. But if the military says they just crashed I believe them.

Based on experience at least one a quarter just drop out of the sky for no reason at all, and thats in peace time training ops. Add the wear of constant war time ops in a desert area thats hard on parts and they break alot.

[KenHodson]

24. Game Theory 101

In a nutshell it would be rarer if the rate these were gunned down was static.

[wakeme2008]

25. One thing is AGE

the one we lost today was from the Vietnam War Era...

:shrug: Maybe missles or just old age.

[mzteris]

34. reminds me of something that may be important.

In 'Nam we started having a lot of problems with our helicopters going down. My dad (who was a weapon's expert) figured out that it was inferior shell casings being used in the helicopter's own weapons that were deteriorating too quickly and spraying the helicopters as soon as it came out of the barrel.

I helped him circle the 'bullet holes' in the b/w photos of some the helicopters that didn't crash but had been 'strafed'; and then helped to put together the packets for the briefing.

With all the corners being cut - I'm just wondering if something similar *could* be happening now.

:shrug:

[northernsoul]

35. Well, we know there are massive maintenance problems

But I think that some of those copters that went down weren't gunships, but were be just being used for transfer operations. Your dad sounds like a smart guy.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

37. incompetence.

:shrug:

[northernsoul]

38. Incompetence has been a problem for a long time

n/t

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

39. Just about six years now.

[LSK]

40. suddenly??? you might want to ask Tammy Duckworth about that

[northernsoul]

42. we're losing a lot more a lot faster than we used to

IIRC, Ms. Duckworth's copter went down during the initial invasion when we were actually fighting an organized army - I could be wrong about that, though.

[LSK]

45. she was shot down in late 2004

On November 12, 2004, Tammy was co-piloting a Black Hawk helicopter north of Baghdad when a rocket-propelled grenade struck the cockpit of her aircraft and exploded. Focused on the safety of her crew, Tammy was determined to land the helicopter not realizing she had been severely injured and that the other pilot was already at the controls. It wasn't until the helicopter landed that she passed out. Ten days later, when she woke up at Walter Reed Memorial Hospital in Washington, D.C., she learned that the explosion would cost her both legs and had shattered her right arm. It has been a long road to recovery, but Tammy is optimistic and determined to continue to serve.

http://www.tammyduckworth.com/bio/Bio.html

[northernsoul]

47. Thanks for the info

This goddamn war has been going on for so long it's hard to remember what crappy thing happened when.

[leftofthedial]

41. personally I blame the Snickers ad

and the violence inherent in the system

[JackBeck]

48. Because we're arming and training those who are attacking us.