I was watching something about ISIS on the news, and about how they are almost eliminated. Thats good, but I’m curious as to what military tactics are effective against what ISIS was doing on the news.
ISIS were in a multi floor building firing out of a high floor window with AK-47s. I assume the building had a lot of non-combatants in it.
If the building were empty then you could just use mortars, rockets, artillery, etc. to just destroy the building and kill everyone in it. But I would assume the building had a lot of civilians in it. So I assume this situation comes up a lot when militaries are dealing with ISIS and other terrorist groups. They hole themselves up in buildings in urban areas and fire from windows.
How does the US military, or Israeli military, or whatever military that has an interest in protecting civilian casualties stop them? I’d assume snipers or rockets, but have no idea. All I know about war is mostly from WW2 movies. The Syrian military probably just blows up the building, killing everyone. But other militaries like the US or Israel that have an interest in preventing death and injury to non-combatants isn’t going to take that strategy. Do the US or Israel set up a sniper, wait until the ISIS fighter stands in the window and then fire? Do they use some kind of rocket that kills everything in a 20 foot radius, but doesn’t do much damage further than that?
I remember in the movie Full Metal Jacket, when this happened (I don’t think the building had people in it) they had to get inside the building and climb to the floor that had the sniper. Is that still what they do?
The most common round used by the US, Europe and Israel is 5.56mm which isn’t that good at going through many walls. Hence, assault rifles and light machineguns may still be employed.
40mm grenade launchers also can’t be expected to go through many walls.
Snipers may be used but what’s more likely to be readily available is a designated marksman which is a hybrid of a sniper and a standard rifleman. Designated marksman - Wikipedia
Having an interest in protecting civilians doesn’t mean you’ll go to any length to avoid harming them. If I remember correctly, according to the laws and customs of war, if ISIS fires from a building occupied by civilians and anti-ISIS forces use proportionate force, any civilian casualties are on ISIS.
Hate to break it to ya, but it depends on what News agency happens to be near by. Basically take it out with an airstrike and accept the civ casualties. The problem is when you have a situation with that movie theater in Moscow, I really did not see how they could have done otherwise. Major fuck up in that situation, was that they did not leave victims in a recovery position, or leave word that first responders had to do that.
So are you guessing or do you really have knowledge of this GQ question. I ask because I’ve been in combat situations and our Rules of Engagement never said “Are there news crews around?” However they usually were extremely restrictive about the possibility of civilian casualties. Certainly much more than in the past such as in WWII when they leveled French cities to get at the Germans who were there.
The Russians had a pretty novel solution using aerosol anaesthetic based on Fentanyl in a famous hostage crisis. Considering they did save the majority of the hostages I think they did pretty well against a well-organized terrorist threat.
“Novel” wasn’t the first word that came to mind given not only the amount of dead hostages but the uncertainty surrounding not only what gas was used, but how effective it was. Other than killing anyone without a mask of course.
Yeah, you need to stop relying on American & Israeli press releases and Syrian opposition propaganda videos. Americans have absolutely plastered Fallujah half a dozen times this decade and a half. And stated that no civilian casualties have occurred since “every male from 12-65 is considered a combatant, unless proven otherwise”. Ditto the Israelis. The Syrian opposition have been very sad about their “innocent civilians” who were taking potshots being killed by the SAR.
No one is innocent or angelic here (US, Syrian, Israeli and everyone else) and no one goes out of their way to kill civilians for shits and giggles.
How the military will handle it depends on a balance of how badly the position is hurting them verus the risks of destroying it.
Except that the Americans* try *to limit civilian casulties. Americans wont target a building that is known to have no military targets, while the Syrians will, just for the terror tactics.
But yeah, given a building full of civilians but also some top military targets- both sides will hit that.
The contract for that weapon has been cancelled, and there is speculation that the ones that have been fielded are going to be scrapped (though the Army just isn’t taking questions on that right now).
So what do they do? This thread is getting derailed into a discussion about ‘how serious’ western militaries are about civilian casualties. But since western nations do tend to value civilian casualties, however imperfectly, how do they deal with a situation like this?
I remember in the book ‘inside delta force’ Eric Haney talked about how in Lebanon, shooters would surround themselves with children before firing, knowing western forces wouldn’t fire back. So he and other delta force operatives would set up sniper positions and target the shooter. But in that situation, you have to know day(s) in advance where a shooter is going to pop up. That isn’t realistic in urban combat where someone can just start firing from a window. He mentioned waiting a few days before the shooter showed up, but realistically that wouldn’t happen in most situations, where a sniper could just hang out in a garbage pile for 3 days, waiting for a shooter to show up.
At least in the documentary Restrepo, the Captain there valued the lives of his men enough to ask for airstrikes on civilian houses. Sometimes an officer back at headquarters would ok it, sometimes not. In one of the Navy seal autobiographies (forgot which one), they talk about unloading a Bradley into the windows of a building the bad guys were shooting from.
It’s war and I have the impression that most U.S. Army field officers are going to prioritize their own men over possible civilians. If the bad guys are shooting from a building, they’re going to ask for all the firepower higher commanders will give them. I’ve read this can mean that if it’s a building in the middle of town, the jets overhead won’t have 2000 pound bombs, just 500. This means the explosion will be smaller and more focused, killing less civilians - but if any are close by, they’re going to get hit. The decision to limit the jets to smaller bombs and to run requests for airstrikes through a central command center where they will have detailed maps of where they think civilians are (and where friendly forces are) are a way to limit the casualties.
In the chaos of war, it’s entirely possible the officer commanding the unit that is actually being fired upon and the pilot of the plane won’t actually know there’s civilians in the building. But even if they know they are there, under some circumstances they’re going to ask to have the place leveled.
During the Osama Bin Laden mission, Bushra Abrar’s wife allegedly jumped on top of her husband, protecting him from bullets. The seals state they shot through her to kill him.
With Bin Laden, one of the options was to just use a cruise missile to destroy the entire building. But because that would look bad (since it was full of family members) that was one reason they decided against it and went with a commando raid.
Also I am wondering if the military just uses RPGs or something like that that have a 20 foot or 20 meter spread, and fire it into the apartment that the terrorists are located at. That’d have less casualties than destroying the entire buildling.
“You know full well that you are to fight against a cunning, brave, well-armed, and cruel enemy. When you encounter him, know this: no quarter will be given. Prisoners will not be taken. Exercise your arms such that for a thousand years no Chinese will dare to look cross-eyed at a German. Maintain discipline. May God’s blessing be with you, the prayers of an entire nation and my good wishes go with you.”
That could be read as The Boxers will give no quarter nor take any prisoners, which was true.
Israel has seen some success with self-propelled automatic anti-aircraft guns - basically a gatling gun on an APC. It’s a very accurate weapon that can get a very large number of heavy bullets to a target in a very short time, and has been used to take out whole stories of apartment buildings.
One of the tools being developed (and possibly already deployed) is the selectable yield weapon. These are conventional explosives that can have the explosive yield adjusted prior to use - this allows a single guided weapon to do anything from clear a room to level a building.
I cannot find it now, but I recall an article in the Daily Mail talking to a Typhoon pilot who had used this in Afghanistan - the missile was probably a Brimstone, with a two-stage warhead. The second stage detonation could be disabled, so the first-stage shaped charge (intended for armour penetration) could be used to target gunmen in one corner of a compound without blowing the entire area to rubble. I did find additional references to even more controllable explosive designs in development, usable in a wide range of munition types.
It depends on the RoE. During the initial invasion of Iraq troops had more autonomy to react and shoot when put in direct danger. Later the RoE tightened to a point that shoot/don’t shoot orders came from very high up the chain. If at that point they would most likely let the bad guys go. RoE isn’t doctrine it’s situationally based. It will shift as the tactical and strategic situation changes. The RoE is not going to be determined at the local level. In many cases it’s set at the 4 star or SECDEF level.