Posted on 05/16/2007 10:45:22 PM PDT by ASC2006
The new security plan for Baghdad is succeeding and will be expanded to other cities when the Iraqi Army gets more troops and gear, according to the land forces’ chief of Iraq’s Armed Forces.
“We have now eight divisions that are at a second-level state of readiness, meaning that they have full manpower, light weapons and some logistical capabilities, but lack heavy weapons and support units, like artillery,” the Iraqi general said.
Two more divisions should become operational in June, and their M60 main battle tanks, M113 armored personnel carriers and other mostly U.S.- and Western-built heavy weapons will arrive in the second half of the year.
“The objective is to have 10 divisions — six infantry, three mechanized and one armored — fully ready and equipped,” Ghaidan said. “The armament process has been slow, but it seems to be picking up at the moment and we hope it is complete soon.”
M60s? They were being used by the U.S in the 60s and early 70s. You'd think with their oil money, they could afford something a little more updated.
uh... don’t know if I’d give them anything too fancy. They are pretty red under all that blue.
I don't want them to advanced.
We might have to deal with them again.
I’d rather wait and see who ends up with all the goodies.
> M60s? They were being used by the U.S in the 60s and early 70s.
M60A3s were being used to plug the Fulda Gap up through the mid-80s.
The article stated M-60s.
Tanks are no threat to us nor are they a threat to Israel. Hell we have sold far better tanks to Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
How many US soldiers in the past two Gulf Wars were killed by enemy tanks? An extremely low number, because tanks in the desert against an enemy with air superiority are totally worthless.
Let’s give them quantity and if they prove to be allies,then maybe later we’ll sell them some of the quality stuff.
It’s a step in the right direction though. Hopefully they’ll be able to stand up their military and we can cycle ours out.
From Bill Roggio
“To augment these new heavy divisions and to accelerate the motorization of the light infantry divisions, the Iraqi government is in the process of purchasing somewhere between 600 to 800 U.S. made M60 tanks and over 4,000 assorted armored personnel carriers.”
http://billroggio.com/archives/2007/04/training_the_iraqi_a.php
As I said, M60s are vintage 1960s and early 70s U.S. armor.
I never said they weren’t, so I don’t understand why you would repeat yourself.
That said there has been paranoia in the Pentagon since day one of this war that a strong Iraqi Army might threaten our Saudi allies.
I remember General Gardner saying that many in the Pentagon wanted as weak an Iraqi Army as possible to protect our Saudi allies from possible future agression.
You’re kidding, right?
Was there any serious question that they’d buy Russian arms? I mean, if you can even contemplate the notion without giggling. Since they’re buying weapons with our dollars, it had to be a foregone conclusion where those contracts would go.
When the Iraqis start buying Strike Hornets, that’s when the game is on. That’s when it gets ugly. That’s when we begin arming them as a bulwark against Iran. And r all know how well that turned out last time.
The same reason you repeated what the article stated about the Iraqis getting vintage M60 tanks.
Some units of the Marine Corps were using M60’s with reactive armor panels in the first Gulf War, and used them very effectively.
I doubt they’d be getting the basic M60 model, any left in US storage are going to be more recent models. The suffixes aren’t always used, just as a report referring to an “M1 Abrams” doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a plain version from around 1980.
Far as I know, the M1A1 is not for sale. So they take our last-generation, or they take Russian tanks so old they’re Soviet, or Chinese tanks that re cheap copies of Soviet designs.
Pretty good selling point right there. The M60, especially with modern electronics, can hold up to any tanks but ours. And we’re not gonna sell tanks that can hold up to ours. That would be stupid.
“Was there any serious question that they’d buy Russian arms?”
Hell, yes.
Bremer’s origional plan wasn’t even to build an Iraqi Army. Remember Bremer envisioned a demilitarized situation like post war Japan as his model for Iraq.
His plan was to have a small National Guard type force instead of an Iraqi Army. Needless to say U.S. commanders strongly disagreed, but Bremer’s plan won out until mid 2004.
“American overseers at first never planned to reassemble much of an Iraqi army. The plan was to field a 40,000-man army, one-tenth the size of the old one, only by 2006. Iraqi troops would concentrate on tasks such as disarming land mines while U.S. troops handled the fledgling insurgency, then-senior U.S. military adviser Walter Slocombe said in June 2003.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/20/AR2005112001054.html
My statement was based on the article.
I never said they are getting vintage tanks. In fact I had no comment whatsoever on when they were built.
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