SFTT Editors Analyze the An Nasiriyah Ambush Report

Editor’s Note: Presented here are some interim assessments of the Army’s investigation into the ambush of the 507 Maintenance Company in Iraq on March 23, 2003, that left the unit devastated, with 11 soldiers killed and another seven taken prisoner. As additional contributors analyze the document, their conclusions will be added here.

Study Army Land Navigation Training, by Andrea West Questions Still Need Answering, by Robert L. McMahon

The Iraqi attack on the 507th Maintenance Co. was not only a tragedy, it was a massive failure to employ one of the basic tenets of the Art of War: Principles of Leadership. Here is my interim assessment after reading the draft “Attack on the 507th Maintenance Co.: An Nasiriyah, Iraq,”

Technical and Tactical Proficiency: While members of the 507th may have been technically proficient in their assigned MOS’s, the events of March 23, 2003, clearly show that the unit had no tactical proficiency.

According to the report, the 507th was only in-country 33 days before the An Nasiriyah failure. Deploying from Ft. Bliss, Tex, we can give benefit of the doubt that the 507th was acclimated to the desert environment. Upon its arrival the 507th began to “spin-up” and regain familiarity with neglected (in all likelihood) soldiering/warrior skills.

While there is nothing in the report to indicate the quality of leadership in the 507th, some of the actions described show a disturbing lack of trust and confidence within the unit.

* While the basic combat load was distributed for individual and crew-served weapons, the pyro and anti-armor weapons were consolidated and secured. My conclusion is that “fragging” – or more charitably, a lack of confidence in the unit’s ability to handle the ordnance safely – was a major concern.

Moreover, there is no mention in the report that during the 90-minute period from 0530-0700 on March 23 March, Capt. Troy Kent King should have had more than a “good idea” that his unit was lost that he, his officers or NCOs made a recommendation or decision to issue pyro and anti-armor before the situation degraded further.

* Additionally, there is no indication in the 15-page executive summary that any Frag Orders were issued given the fact that enemy contact was imminent.

* Instead of rallying his troops at an alternate point and trying to marshal a coherent defense while sending a messenger towards a friendly unit, Capt. King left his unit 10 kilometers behind while trying to evade/escape with a section of the company.

* The operations officer (S-3) of the 3rd Forward Support Battalion failed to ensure that King understood his mission and orders when he gave him a CD-ROM containing orders, route information and annotated large scale maps, according to the document.

While the commercially available Garmin/Etrex Vista GPS receiver by all accounts outperformed the military PLGR, did anyone take into account that of the shelf GPS units can be MIJI’ed (Moning, Intrusion, Jamming, Intercepted)? After all, it operates from a radio/satellite signal.

Distribution of the GPS units according to Serial 2 (page 7) was adverse and should have been broken into elements to allow backup or redundancy, same with the crew-served weapons.

Over-reliance on technology: There was no mention of the presence of a lensatic compass and Defense Mapping Agency map(s) being used to double-check or update routes during movement and to keep all vehicles updated on route or situation.

While battery problems plagued the entire force, where were the mobile communication power assets to enable vehicle power and conserve batteries? With three Humvees present, one should have acted as a “convoy messenger” to coordinate movement when the radios died.

Failure by Capt. King to ensure that his troops knew and understood the orders and mission and actions to take if friendly contact was lost and take responsibility for his men.

Failure by the 3rd FSB Battalion Commander to know his troops and their capabilities and take actions to offset weaknesses.

Failure by the stateside battalion commander of the 507th to ensure his troops were trained and had the equipment necessary to accomplish the mission.

Failure of the Army and its officer corps to provide realistic training prior to entering the battlefield and discarding the lives of the men and women under their command for the sake of political expediency.

Failure, finally, of the United States Congress and the former Clinton administration to provide the tools necessary for the constitutionally mandated common defense.

Roger Moore is a Contributing Editor of DefenseWatch. He can be reached at rmoore_dw@yahoo.com.

An initial review of the 15-page executive summary of the report, “Attack on the 507th Maintenance Co.: An Nasiriyah, Iraq,” reveals the following:

1) The 507th was part of a larger 600-vehicle convoy. The unit was separated from the main body and subsequently made navigation errors that compounded the problems.

3) As an Ordnance Maintenance Company, all they had were small arms (and one .50 cal. machine gun that quickly jammed). The troops were specifically armed with M-16 rifles and the worthless M9 Beretta 9-mm. sidearms.

4) Weapons failures in the fine sand of Iraq were not uncommon. The sand there is approximately as fine as talcum and gets into everything (and stays there).

5) Night and inclement weather compounded by communications failures and bad navigation made CAS impossible.

6) The captain commanding the company was an ordnance officer, not a combat arms officer from an infantry or armored unit. My assessment is that his warfighting skills were lacking.

Unlike the Marine Corps, not all army officers are trained to be rifle platoon leaders first. After commissioning, they go to their basic branch school which may or may not have anything to do with waging war.

Can you imagine if this had been a medical convoy led by a doctor, nurse or medical service officer? They would have run around like a bunch of ninnies and given up.

Army Ordnance Companies primarily concern themselves with first-tier maintenance support for vehicles (which they do not use). For example: their mechanics might fix the turret ring on an Abrams tank or a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, but they would not necessarily know how to deploy that tank or IFV in combat. These guys and gals also included IT specialists and other techy types, as well as supply clerks. That's the MOS Pfc. Jessica Lynch held.

These guys were notT ass-in-the-grass soldiers. Many of them probably weren't even current on M-16s. They might as well have sent Air Force technicians out there for all the infantry skill these guys and gals did not have.

Having been a grunt before I traded in my M21 for a laptop, I would hate to have to fight any kind of ground action with poorly-trained soldiers like these.

The Army’s report, “Attack on the 507th Maintenance Co.: An Nasiriyah, Iraq,” raises several important questions that need further examination so as to clearly identify the cause or causes of the ambush. Areas of interest include:

Doctrine: Did these soldiers follow established convoy and security procedures? If so then what was different in this case? Why did the doctrine not work?

* They may have been unable to recognize that they were faced with a situation that went beyond doctrine and therefore responded inappropriately;

* Was their leadership competent? Was there a sergeant ready to take charge in the company commander’s place? (Since incompetent leadership may be found in the form of an officer who just was never trained to do this kind of stuff, the leadership issue may be well above the railroad track collar device level).

* They cleaned and protected their weapons as specified and suffered widespread jamming anyway;

* Properly cleaned gear did not jam but was ineffective (the report’s words about jamming might be a cover for weapons that had no punch when needed);

* Why did their navigation devices have no backup batteries or vehicle auxiliary power cords?

In my own experience, it takes a lot of time to thrash out the conflicts in “evidence,” to penetrate the mist surrounding certain “facts,” and to determine what portions of doctrine really applied. Only then can an effective determination of where the errors lie can be made.

If the Army is to effect corrective change in the aftermath of the ambush on March 23, 2003, then its leaders must make sure they know where the error truly lies. The report is only a beginning to the effort to obtain that knowledge.

Lt. Raymond Perry USN (Ret.) is a DefenseWatch Contributing Editor. He can be reached at cos1stlt@yahoo.com

This is only speculation on my part, but as a geographer I wonder how much that “single navigation error” cited in the executive summary of “Attack on the 507th Maintenance Co.: An Nasiriyah, Iraq,” had to do with over-reliance on GPS and

I don’t know what equipment the soldiers had with them, whether just GPS gear or paper maps as well, or what method they were using to navigate. GPS is outstanding for telling you where you are in terms of coordinates, but you have to know what those coordinates mean in terms of a map.

I would pose three questions in conjunction with this incident: (1) What equipment were they using, (2) what problems were they encountering with it, and (3) were

Andrea West is a Contributing Editor of DefenseWatch. She can be reached at defensewatchvet@yahoo.com.

Four questions remain unanswered in the executive summary of report, “Attack on the 507th Maintenance Co.: An Nasiriyah, Iraq,” posted at SFTT.org.

1.) Why were there so many weapons failures, even the unit’s .50-cal. machine gun?

4.) Why wasn't an organic “combat” element attached to the company for force protection?

Robert L. McMahon is President of the Soldiers for the Truth Foundation. He can be reached at rmcmahon1@rcn.com.

1.) Why were there so many weapons failures, even the unit’s .50-cal. machine gun? 1.) Why were there so many weapons failures, even the unit’s .50-cal. machine gun?

Use of the Army mandated cleaner-lubricate, which is inappropriate for the conditions in southern Iraq. (Combat units generally use commerically available products that are appropriate for those conditions, but which might not be so go in the Arctic or even the tropics. The Army likes "one size fits all" solutions.

2.) What caused the widespread communications breakdown?

Battery failures and lack of spares, plus lack of vehicle adapters, ie chargers like you use with your cell phone that plug into the "cigaret lighter" outlet.

3.) Why wasn't CAS used? Where were the AH-64 Apaches and A-10s?

Can't call in the CAS if your radios don't work. I doubt there were sufficient assets to provide escorts for every convoy, and especially for stragglers.

4.) Why wasn't an organic “combat” element attached to the company for force protection?

They were all up forward, and not enough other assets, such as Military Police, were in country.

What I don't understand is what Patriot missle maintenance unit was doing there in the first place. Were there Patriots moved forward at that time. Patriot is generally considered a Corps level asset, I think, something that protects your rear elements from enemy missile attack.

All this posturing about the unit being short of combat skills is probably correct as far as it goes, but folks in those units are likely kept so busy with their primary duties. Thus, no time is available even in peacetime, for combat skills refresher training. Which is of course reflective of undermaning, which is a leadership problem. But the leadership in this case is political, not military. The politico's would rather buy votes than carry out the first duty of the federal government.

Patriots are what we use to shoot down enemy missiles. At that point, we were still concerned about missile attacks, so were "leapfrogging" Patriot batteries forward in order to keep our forward elements inside their protection "umbrella". The 507th was moving up in order to provide maintenance support to the forward-most Patriots.

Woo boy. I don't know where to begin. As usual, "Soldiers" for the "Truth" has brought out every whiner who ever served a tour marking maps in the G2 shop or something. Some quick comments:

Combat service support units like this are not going to be great war fighters. As somebody pointed out, they have to spend a lot of time on their main job, whatever it is. The best they can do is defend themselves, which, under the circumstances, they did. One soldier killed nine Iraqis himself, sez the report.
The report makes it pretty clear that the soldier who tried to put the .50 into action didn't really know how. Quite probable the headspace and timing were not set properly. Most support troops have never been trained on crew-served weapons.
The report also makes clear that the navigation error was the commander's, who mismarked his map. Humans commit errors. In wartime, errors take lives. Some of these guys have bought into the armchair expert's "zero defects" nonsense. Anyway... the half of the company that wound up in this fight, followed the line on his map, not the route they were supposed to. Then, when he realised what he had done, he turned the unit around. At that point they began seeing armed Iraqis and technicals. (These were the Fedayeen Saddam elements which scoped them out for a while, and then attacked).
As far as leadership is concerned, the 1SG of the company did a decent job (and died), once things got hot. The unit had broken into three parts; one was cut off and defeated in detail (the last of three in order of march), one got away, and came back with help (the point element, with the captain aboard), and one took some hits but held out till the captain came back with tanks.
One of these writers speculates that the report's comments on weapons jamming are really "hiding" something else. That's how determined he is to get his own crank issue into the story (which I find is very common among SFTT's armchair experts). Indeed, Mr Small Arms expert was in the Navy. How bout a deal, sailor boy... you don't tell me how to shoot people, and I won't tell you how to drive boats.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

I thought something like that must have been the case. Thanks for the information.

Still, it might have been better, but logistically more difficult, to keep the maintainers and the fire units together, and provide protection for both as they moved forward. Or was that the case, in the sense that they were part of the same larger convoy which got spread out and finally separated?

I completely agree with this person. Who are these people making up these replies. What does a Navy Officer know about Army doctrine? I was assigned to the 3rd FSB for 6 years, including during the war. There is no way a combat or MP platoon could be assigned to every support unit. The maintenace soldiers did the best they could with the mission they were assigned. Unfortunatly soldiers die in combat. We have a saying in the Army, and that is stay in your lane, which means if you are not an expert or have some direct knowledge of the subject maybe you should keep your opinions to yourself.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.