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Since the 90s, Jihadist assault tactics have evolved but are starting to become standardized.

Enemy strong points are first attacked by a suicide VBIED, often in succession. These are done similar to how artillery or CAS prep fires are used to create a breach. They are followed up by mechanized forces, technicals, field expedient uparmored vehicles (usually grossly underpowered), or captured vehicles (M1114 humvees, M113, and BMPs being the most available). Sometimes, depending on the distance from the assembly area, line of departure, release points, etc., to the objective, they might be dismounted and supported by gun trucks, other times they don't dismount until coming to or passing the breach. In this attack Hadji clearly planned to use an uparmored suicide VBIED to hit the target first to soften it, which appears to be a raised dirt fighting position in the Kurdish line. The fate of the SVBIED is unclear. During the short approach one of the APCs in the assault force is hit by what appears to be a guided missile (1:59) coming from the 2 o'clock. This is either from a Kurdish supporting position or else the direction of attack was off quite a bit, a possibility considering the clusterfuck nature of this operation. The guys inside the POV vehicle are fighting in the traditional three man hunter kill team, created during the Chechan War. Traditionally formed as a MG gunner, RPG gunner, and other guy who sometimes carries a sniper/DM rifle, other times assuming the role as the team leader, supporting other weapons in the team. As plainly visible, these men had never before carried out a mechanized attack of the type demonstrated; nothing is organized, the RPG gunner isn't properly supported or positioned, the MG gunner is misplaced and pretty clueless as to what his role is (sometimes he shoots, other times he doesn't, all while exposing himself to direct SAF). It wouldn't surprise me if this group of men had never actually fought together in a cohesive group before attempting this attack. Ad hoc, cobbled together, force structure, especially at the small unit level, is the rule for forces like ISIS. The plan seems to have been rehearsed with rock drills only, no actual physical walk through being done. Individual team members clearly didn't perform any sort of rehearsals themselves or training or prep/staging their equipment. This is evident by the confusion and chaos inside the vehicle as the men argue and bicker over positioning, MG ejection, locating and loading spare ammo/munitions. They seem to have a rough idea of how they were going to attack, as if they talked it out, but clearly they didn't actually work through it, nothing was where it should be, nobody was doing what they were supposed to. The knucklehead who shot the RPG should have known to lean out to the side, to stick the exhaust cone over the ass end of the truck, to avoid backblast coming back inside the vehicle. They should have rehearsed loading their grenade launcher and lighting the fuze, it was shot without the fuze apparently actually lit. At 3:24, after RPG scorches the inside of his truck and concusses his teammates, while missing the target, you can see another APC burning, at 7-8 o'clock. possibly the one from earlier that ate the ATGM. Soon after, the POV truck is also hit. The rolling is an entertaining form of IMT, the men being either too lazy or wounded to crawl away while exposing the least amount of silhouette, instead they chose to roll perpendicular to the angle of fire.
Considering they were attacking what appears to be an elevated and well defended fighting position with a huge field of fire, crossing miles of desert in open sight, in broad daylight, without any sort of smoke obscurance, I can't see how this would have succeeded without sufficient arty, mortar, or 107mm rocket support to suppress the objective long enough to be hit by the initial SVBIED attack and followed up by the mech infantry attack, a sort of approach that involves a level of cooridination ISIS, or most other local combatants are apparently unable to achieve. Arabs and other tribal cultures are natural raiders, that concept is still a defining aspect of the military traditions, speed, surprise, and violence and bravery during small scale pre-planned attacks. But combined arms support is largely beyond their ability to comprehend or implement. I would also add that there appears to be no radio communication between the assault force vehicles, especially at the end when they came to the assault position. Use of hand held ICOM radios by small unit leaders is a hall mark of ISIS and other militia style forces indiginous to the ME, that a mech force would lack it is as telling as the participants failure to execute basic soldiering skills.



Guderian and Rommel would have approved of the overall concept, but not the execution. TPU? These guys are Untrained. FAIL

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Roll away!!! Roll away!!!

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And today I learned that Abu is Arabic for Leroy.  

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And today I learned that Abu is Arabic for Leroy.  

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Man, that dude got pissed from getting hit by brass.  Not sure what he expected setting up right next to the guy with a belt fed.

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I lol'd when he said that.

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I don't watch any video that requires me to sit through 30 seconds of advertising.

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Stupid question is stupid:

Would that rebar laticework they welded on ISIS mobile have stopped RPG's etc?

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It's monkey-see,monkey-do. They see Americans do it and copy it without understanding the whole principle. Slat armor works by defeating the  fuse in RPGs. What happens is that the round passes through the slats/mesh and the body of the warhead is crushed before the piezoelectric fuse in the nose can detonate against the hull of the target. If it detonates because of the armor,the air gap helps cool and disperse the jet of the shaped warhead and it therefore is less effective.

  However,these guys have no standoff spacing so it hardly works properly. Furthermore,they just stuck some sheet steel around that M1114. That won't do much other than send more spalling their way.