I ask because the element of surprise (which is the big advantage of parachute soldiers) is just about gone from modern warfare-the incidents 9of successfull parachute operations) in WWII can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Now, 60 + years later, I have yet to see a need for these troops. First: paratroops are lightly armed, and cannot operate for more than a few days, without massive resupply operations.
Second: dropping parachute troops onto strongly-guarded positions is suicide-look at the losses that the Germans suffered in Crete (WWII) going againsts poorl;y-armed british and greek troops.
Third: parachute training is costly and must be kept current-and you need very young men-reservists won’t make it.
So, should this mode of attack be finally retired? can’t see much use for them in future wars! :eek:
A couple of things.
True, however Airborne troops have many more options for resupply than they did back in WWII. Most of them involve the helicoptor or cargo planes. They can also carry/drop weapons systems that are much smaller, lighter and more powerful than they could in the old days. They also have radio contact with close air support like Apache helicopters, fighter/bombers, gunships, etc.
I’m not familiar with that battle, however that doesn’t seem to me to be best use of paratroops. Paratroops are most effective as a rapid deployment force. Basically they serve as a blocking or harassing force until the heavy stuff can arrive.
One thing that seems to have made the parachute infantry obsolete is the helicopter. You don’t need to have thousands of parachutes scattered all over the countryside when you can deliver a battalion precisely where you want with a bunch of Blackhawk and Chinock helicopters, backed up by Apache helicopters.
The advantage parachutes have over helicopters is that they are quiet. You can HALO jump a team of SEALs someplace and no one would know they are there.
The element of surprise is mostly “gone” from modern warfare because modern warfare is mostly mechanized professional armies vs insurgents and guerillas.
Parachuting is just another delivery method. Yes, they’re lightly armed, but they’re also extremely mobile and it might be nice to be able to drop a few hundred well trained soldiers when we need a rapid response.
Marc
Air cavalry using helicopters has indeed largely replaced parachuted-dropped troops for mass attacks, but as msmith537 said, they’re still usefull for special operations.
I would put forth that the parachutes, harnesses and gear in general has advanced to such a point that using such gear, which the military currently doesn’t, with current sky-diving techniques, which the military doesn’t (except in airshows) a corps of paratroops could be very effective.
They can land on a small area on very specific intervals and be virtually invisible doing it. Imagine even 25 good skydiving terrorists wtih something like C-4 landing on the tops of a handful of different skyscrapers in any American city at night.
I imagine they could set it and be gone with a minimum of loss and cause a great deal of damage and confusion.
Such as?
Compared to what?
That has never been the point. The point of parachute drops have always been to drop into places one otherwise could not reach. Crete is an island, islands are costly to take directly no matter what method you use. What is your plan for invading Crete without using parachutists that is so much better and less costly?
Compared to what? No aspect of a modern military is cheap. During peacetime, pilots and aircrews need to fly a certain number of hours to maintain readiness anyway, and the marginal cost of loading a few people on and throwing them out during this process is minimal.
Large scale WW2 style parachute operations are not very useful in Iraq, but large scale, WW2 style anything is pretty much useless in Iraq. Parachutists are another tool in the toolbox, just like any other tool.
Helicopters have probably outmoded parachutes as a means of delivering light infantry to an assault site. Helicopters can land their units with much gretaer precision (scattering was one the banes of airborne operations) as well as provided air support, a better supply line, and a means of extraction.
In war, is anything really ever obsolete? In Afghanistan, American-backed forces went to the fight on horseback. In Africa, people kill each other with machetes, close enough to swords.
While paratroops are (perhaps) less useful in the past* there can be no doubt that they will be in use for the next few centuries.
*The thing you need to consider is the relative mobility of the defenders as opposed to the airborne troops. Can the defenders reinforce the threatened area faster than the invaders can build combat power? In some places (Africa) no, in others (Europe) yes. Airpower plays into all of this too.
Paratroops are an obsolete technique. They are too lightly armed, too few, and too poorly supplied to be of any use except in very specific circumstances. Airborne is dead…deal with it. The battlefield belongs to Armor and Infantry.
And irregulars, and electronics guys who can zap you in the keyboard and kids with pointy sticks, and CNN and everyone else. As you study war, you see it as spectrum.
The battlefield may belong to armor and infantry but these days not that many “wars” are fought on battlefields. May I point out the U.S. has the armor and infantry in Iraq. The same could be said in Vietnam.
Around 28 years ago, I reckoned that Armour is pretty useless, I’ll certainly agree that Infantry is the most versatile form of force.
The Israeli Paratroops use helicopters, as do, I understand most others.
In some ways it is a semantic argument, ‘Para’ has got divorced from ‘chute’.
Marines ( or in UK parlance Commando ) have little to do with ships.
Mostly, I guess, it is a regimental thing, probably a good idea.
I agree with the comments above of helicopters supplanting paradrops as a way of precisely placing troops in otherwise hard to get to places. However paradrops do have a range advantage over helicopters. The troops can be deployed much further away and the staging/takeoff point can be much further behind friendly lines, which all helps with logistics and rapid deployment.
I believe a paradrop was used to capture an Iraqi airfield in the opening stages of the invasion of Iraq. A long way behind the lines, not into a heavy pitched battle with opposing armour or other heavy infantry units, reasonable chance of resupply and not much chance of a heavy counter attack and it denied the Iraqi forces the use of the airfield during the opening stages and was potentialy a distraction to the Iraqi forces.
Can’t see helicopters having the range there and armour and infantry would have taken a long long while to get there.
What, we can edit now?
I really should check out ATMB now and then. The escalation of my post count will really slow now.
Regretfully ,inspite of my S.F/airborne background Ihave to agree,H.A.L.O and H.A.H.O are purely the preserve of S.F. though there are in the British army ultra low opening 'chutes(almost like stepping from plane to ground) but other means fill the gap now quite easily.
My only last gasp defence of basic military parachute training is its self testing/character building role.
Remember that foot drill was an actual military tool when it was introduced ,designed to make bodies of men move uniformly on the battlefield,NOT a method of instilling discipline in new recruits or making for smart parades .But it is still used worldwide by military forces .
It would be nice if basic parachuting could fill some sort of slot like this but unfortunately Isuspect its far too expensive.
I’m no general, but I’d say that a couple things that large-scale airborne operations have over helicopter-borne operations are speed and scale.
A H-47 helicopter (Chinook) carries 33 troops at 143 knots.
A C-130 carries 64 paratroops at about 250 knots.
A C-17 carries 102 paratroops at about 450 knots.
The cargo capacities are probably similarly different.
In other words, the number of sorties to land a say… battalion force at a bridgehead, crossroads or other typical airborne target is much smaller- you could possibly do it in less than 10 aircraft if you were using C-17s, but you’d take at least 21 Chinooks to transport the same number of men.
That’s the advantage of airborne forces over helicopter borne ones- you can get lots of them where you want them, relatively fast. And, they generally have heavier equipment than helicopter borne forces to boot.
Such as delivering a small group of big dudes with guns silently. Remember helicopters do make a ton of noise.
Securing an airfield for one.
Deploying a group of snipers behind enemy lines, maybe? They can drop in pairs, and you could spread dozens of pairs over the country without making dozens of landings. Any sort of small black-ops mission might consider using parachutes.
Another advantage is that you can place troops in areas that might be difficult to reach in helicopters; in 2003, the US dropped the 173 Airborne into Kurdish Iraq to help support Kurdish forces. Parachutes were a better choice than helicopters because Turkey did not give permission for US troops to use Turkish bases, though the Turkish government did allow Americans to fly over Turkish airspace. The H-47 helicopter bump cited has a range of about 1200 miles, the C-130 has a range of about 2300 miles, and the C-17 has a range of about 2800 miles. Put in practical terms, the H-47 can deploy troops from Washington DC to Chicago and still return to the base it lifted off from. The C-17 can deploy troops from DC to Denver and return.
Paratroops would also be a good way to take a target that is particularly poorly defended and reach that target before the enemy can reinforce. A poorly guarded airport or bridge might be a good example.
While I’ll grant that large-scale paradrops as a major method of troop deployment may be obsolete, paratroops still fill an important niche in the military.