Posted on 11/12/2004 6:45:46 AM PST by TexKat
View from the gunners site in a Bradley Fighting Vehicle as 1st Platoon, Apache Troop, 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division entering Fallujah. US marines barged house-by-house through Fallujah finding anything from corpses and weapons to hostages as they battled to secure the rebel enclave after seizing almost total control.(AFP/US Army/Johancharles Van Boers)
We just received news of a friend's son who lost his life. It makes one pause to think about how easy it is for all of us to comment from our armchairs while these young men and women are so far from home. Payers to our soldiers...prayers to you and your families. Stay safe.
You're supposed to take your shoes off inside a mosque, hehehe;)
Baghdad Bob always cheers me up. Where is that moron?
I'll pray for Dean Sadek.
...or a "lay"still.
Probably a lot less than the pinheads expect. Marines are taught marksmanship skills beyond any other service in bootcamp.
Operation Phantom Fury Live Thread
Operation Phantom Fury ~~~ Day 2 ~~~ Live thread
Operation Phantom Fury---Day III---Live thread
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I have a question...
If, as the liberals claim, these terrorists are freedom fighters living in caves, eating leather, drinking their own piss, etc...
How in the name of sweet fanny adams are they able to hear a tape from their fearless leader?
Someone please come up with a good answer.
Woodstock I am sorry to hear that. I am sorry to hear when any of our sons and daughters lose their lives in this battle for freedom. Please relay my, out condolences to the family and love ones of your friend's son.
It makes one pause to think about how easy it is for all of us to comment from our armchairs while these young men and women are so far from home.
Correction: It is not easy, not in the least to watch and hear what is happening in Iraq. A lot of us either have someone or had someome and some of us will have our love ones returning to the battlefield.
It is more of concern for those that have chosen to physically fight the battle for our continued freedom and the freedom for others, it is more about the war against Islamic extremeist.
May God bless and comfort your friend. My heart weeps for them.
LOL You've got the wrong place concretebob. The battle here is in Iraq, not Afganistan. There are no caves, and all the rest of that that you posted. In Iraq they have satellite tv, cell phones, etc.
I believe that they can even get Fox News.
By JIM KRANE
Associated Press Writer
NEAR FALLUJAH, Iraq - The skies over Fallujah are so crowded with U.S. military aircraft that they are layered in stacks above the city, from low-flying helicopters and swooping attack jets to a jet-powered unmanned spy drone that flies above 60,000 feet.
Much of the focus has been on the massive U.S. ground assault to reclaim the insurgent stronghold, but the complex air war is an indication of the effort and equipment the United States has invested in winning the battle for Fallujah.
No fewer than 20 types of aircraft have been thrown into the fight, including 10 fixed-wing planes, three types of helicopters and seven kinds of unmanned drones.
"We call it the wedding cake. It's layered all the way up," said Air Force Lt. Col. David Staven, who leads the ground targeting effort on a U.S. base outside Fallujah.
Much of the air war is being directed by 10 teams of ground controllers, who moved into the city with Army and Marine fighters. The controllers call down bombing raids or rocket attacks on insurgent positions in the city, said Staven, who leads the 9th Expeditionary Air Support Operations Squadron.
"You take out the threat from the air so you don't have to get soldiers into the building to clear it on foot," said Staven. "It's better to take the enemy out from a distance than to go face to face with him."
American warplanes relentlessly pounded Fallujah over the past three days, pouring cannon fire, rockets and bombs onto the city, sometimes just blocks ahead of advancing U.S. troops.
A pair of AC-130 gunships fired their entire arsenal of ammunition on Fallujah during Monday night's assault - launching dozens of 105mm shells, hundreds of 25mm rounds and more than a hundred 40mm rounds.
"They'd just walk rounds down the street in front of the Bradley teams," said Staven, 43, of Great Falls, Mont. "They sent two gunships home with no rounds left."
On Wednesday, an Apache gunship sank five boats in the Euphrates River that the military said were used to resupply guerrillas with rocket-propelled grenades and mortar shells.
The front line strikes are directed by Air Force or Marine tactical air control teams, who carry computers and laser target designator gear in backpacks, climbing to rooftops of Fallujah and pointing out targets for Air Force, Marine and Navy attack jets.
The teams' laptop computers allow them to glean targeting coordinates from live video transmissions from unmanned spy planes droning above Fallujah.
Some teams are paired with Army or Navy special forces teams or snipers, working on the front lines and calling airstrikes within two blocks of their own positions.
The crowded airspace meant that attack jets bombarding the city Wednesday had a three-minute window to scream down and demolish targets - and then clear out - before another followed on its tail.
Strike jets fly in high-altitude "holding areas" until they are given bombing coordinates, Staven said. U.S. warplanes bombing the city include Marine F-18s and AV-8 Harriers.
The city is also being pummeled by Army Apache and Kiowa helicopters and Marine Super Cobra gunships, as well as the unmanned Predator spy plane, armed with Hellfire missiles.
There are also a slew of unmanned spy planes - including the Hunters and Pioneers - that relay targeting imagery to controllers, as well as a manned Air Force Joint STARS craft monitoring ground traffic and an observation plane that the military requested be unidentified.
At least two aircraft outfitted with "electronic warfare" equipment have flown in the battle of Fallujah, jamming cellular telephones and other communications signals, some of which can be used to remotely detonate insurgents' bombs.
On this Army base outside Fallujah, Staven leads a four-man team watching spy plane video to find mortar teams or rocket launchers and then feeding their positions to pilots flying over the city, or via chat rooms to the nearby Marine air operations center.
"This is how we're controlling the air war," Staven said, pointing to a bank of five computer screens in the dusty, crowded nerve center of the 1st Cavalry Division's base.
The constant air and artillery bombardment has to be demoralizing for Fallujah's guerrilla defenders, Staven said.
"Suddenly you see that mortar team disappear. You never heard it coming. That's got to weigh heavily on their minds," he said.
No but there are tunnels, and I can't believe they could sit still long enough to hear a pep talk.
The article below your post refers to jamming cell phone signals and radio transmissions.
I have a friend in Fallujah, with the SeaBees. I hope he's OK.
May God place His hand upon them, and keep them safe.
bookmark
Are these "foreign fighters" shoeless, so that can enter and exit their Mosques/ammo dumps, etc. quickly?
"Are these "foreign fighters" shoeless, so that can enter and exit their Mosques/ammo dumps, etc. quickly?"
LOL. No. I read on another thread that the local Sunni's don't trust the 'insurgents' and force them to leave their footwear as a security deposit for weapons. Why? Because there have been times when 'criminals' (?) identifying themselves as genuine jihad fighters have taken weapons away and sold them....life is very very complicated in the arab world....
Thanks a million for the info, Fred!
AP says those arrested are Iraqis.
How can they be so sure?
If they go back into the city, we get another chance to kill them. If we put them in a holding pen, we have to use troops and supplies to look out for them, and they'd probably be released later to make IED's and kill us.
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