Bulldog Equipment Webbing Seat

Cooper Sling Seat

Haven't gotten a chance to test either one of them, but Im gonna try out the Bulldog Seat i think when we deploy.

John

What happened to sliding your PT mat on the sling? My butt still hurts!!

You shouldn't be sitting down anyways so why is it an issue.

Everybody and there nother has some sort of "Name Tag Defilade" BS rule in country now. If you are convoying and there are long stretches of road with no traffice, sitting down on the sling gives the gunner a break.

Just get up on the gun when anything approaches the convoy/vehicle or you se something outa place.

SOP states that at any time we are travelling over 30mph the gunner will be seated behind the shield and peek up every 30 seconds or so and scan, to help keep the gunner behind the shield for when an IED goes off.

Quoted: SOP states that at any time we are travelling over 30mph the gunner will be seated behind the shield and peek up every 30 seconds or so and scan, to help keep the gunner behind the shield for when an IED goes off.

Whoever came up with that SOP is ignorant.  As a gunner you have the widest range of view around you more than anyone else.  You should be looking around constantly, alert to anything out of the ordinary.  I was in Jordan/Iraq for the invasion from jan 03 to july 03 and rode around in a turret, with no sheild, with the 5th SFG sniper det.  Scary....... sometimes.  But if the golden BB has your name on it, it don't matter whether your hiding behind your sheild or standing up doing something useful like looking for shit.

Thats my .02...... but what do I know I was just an 18E.

Well, being the lowly E2 that I am, its not my place to question the SOP, just to adhere to it. *shrug* I agree its stupid, but its what I am ordered to do.

EDIT: This SOP worked for my company during thier deployment, which included alot of time in Baghdad, Mosul, Sadr City, and Fallujah (one of the only MP companies authorized a 1st Marine patch I'm told.) Zero fatalities during that deployment, and alot of IEDs and ambushes. Couple of them are pure luck that anyone in a given squad survived though. Told me about one where they see a 155 round in the middle of the street, so they pull backwards the prescriped distance....and later EOD found a 155 secondary device in the concrete curb. (155 encased in plaster of paris) The company will change SOP based on TTP specific to Afghanistan, but since this will be my companies first deployment to A-stan, Im sure there will be significant changes, especially considering the difference in the roads out there...might change how we utilize the uparmors....especially cause we wont have armor support out there like we had in Iraq.

Not even sure what a 18E is, except for knowing that 18 series is SF.

John

Quoted: Not even sure what a 18E is, except for knowing that 18 series is SF.

Special Forces Commo Sergeant.

He's a stud, no doubt.

Most attacks on my unit were initiated by IED and occasionally followed up with small arms fire; this has been a shift in tactics for those of you who were involved in OIF I

In OIF II, Vehicles that had "gunners up" increasingly became targeted by insurgents and casualties amongst gunners began to climb. When gunners began hunkering down the number of attacks went down and so did the casualties. The insurgents were looking for vulnerable targets such as gunners riding high in the turret.

Keeping gunners down when traveling worked well in our AOR because of the large numbers of IEDs we encountered and that fact that we "commuted" 15 km to our patrol sector. Of course MTETT dictates and other AORs require a different set of tactics.

When  we got there, we were told that to prevent attack, we needed to look like 'porcupines', namely have every rifle and their uncle sticking out the side of the vehicle. As a result, our SOP was that we'd have our armoured windows open, and rifles sticking out. I made a very quick assessment of the threat, and decided it was a stupid SOP, and ignored it, even taking flak from my CO over it:
"How are you going to shoot the enemy with the window closed?"
"I'd rather survive the IED intact first, sir"
I may be only an LT, but I like to think I'm a vaguely intelligent one.

Sure enough, we had some casualties in the task force from exactly what I feared might transpire: Troops riding with windows open and rifles sticking out windows, bomb goes off at the side of the road, fragmentation gets them in the face.

Similarly with the whole 'gunner popping up' business now. The most likely threat is not someone with an RPK or an RPG who you need to spot first. Neither, despite the publicity, is it a car bomb. It's the roadside bomb, and despite all exhortations to try to spot one ahead of time, more often than not, you won't and the first you'll know about an attack is when it blows up and pieces of bomb/shell go hurtling past/into your head. Since your vehicle is now likely armoured anyway and thus designed to stop fragmentation (from a 155mm round, in the case of an M1114) there's a much greater chance of defeating the enemy attack by 'cowering' instead of by standing proud.

For all the posturing above, the circumstances have changed between going around in unarmoured vehicles killing enthusiastic amateurs with direct fire weapons and the current situation of going around in armoured vehicles trying not to be killed by a more intelligent enemy (We've killed/captured the dumb ones by now) using asymmetrical weapons.

NTM

Once the bomb has gone off, it's usually a good idea to see if you can find the trigger man and capture him.

If they decide to shoot small arms afterwards, either sit and shoot, exit the ambush site and come back around from the flank, or just charge forward into the enemy. Situation dependant on what the terrain is like, what the enemy is doing, and what you have. For example, my first ambush, we were a pure platoon of four tanks. We just sat there and shot back. (and yes, the first thing I did was duck down into the tank)

Do not mistake the policy of using armour to shield oneself as evidence of a lack of fighting spirit. It's just good sense to use the equipment we have. There's a fine line between laudable bravado and stupidity.

NTM

Arguments about gunner posture notwithstanding, seats attached to the gun mount are DEADLY.  If you plan to sit low, securing a chair or box or some such to sit on in the vehicle itself is a safer bet.

3ACRscout (I think that's screen name) can offer more details - he lost one of his guys when an IED propelled him out with the ring mount.  Everyone who stayed in the vehicle survived.

A gunner's seat attached to the mount is the "anti-seatbelt" in an IED threat environment.  Also, none of those sling seats allow much response to a rollover.

Quoted: What is your SOP when hit?  Drive through or stop and fight?  I am not blasting you but the Army now has this turtle up and run attitude and is seen by this SOP here.

As an MP our primary mission is MSR Security. We stop, and kill anyone who presents a threat, set up a cordon, and call in EOD to check out any secondary devices.

We don't run - ever - unless massively overgunned, and then its just a tactical retreat long enough for QRF and/or CAS to catch up.

On the other hand, we had a HMMWV that was flipped over by an IED, and the gunner survived because there wasn't anything stopping him from being thrown down into the vehicle. when it landed on its roof. Had he a 'fixed' mounted chair, he might well have still had his head outside and gotten crushed.

Hoplite, I guess we're just going to have to disagree on our threat/counterthreat assessments. You're a product of your earlier environment, I'm a product of my later one.

NTM

This has actually turned into a very good debate, with alot of good points for both sides - Even though i didn't intend for this to turn into a tactics discussion, it has made me think through alot of possiblities I either hadn't through through, or just didn't want to think through.

Thanks guys.

Quoted: I may be only an LT, but I like to think I'm a vaguely intelligent one.

No such animal, sorry.  

This is typical "management" thinking though, a fine example actually.  leaders (and not just officers but spineless NCO's) in the army today reflect on society, IE bring everyone back alive even if it means not doing our job.  Look how concerned the army is with "safety", hell they even have safety officers.  People get hurt, and they get killed, sad, but a fact of life.  Management has watered down training so much as to be "safe" that there is no more training value.  Better to bleed in training than die in battle (I know a bad cliche')

Run your platoon the way you want, thats your perogative (Actually you are there to sign papers your platoon sergeant should be running the platoon)  But I wouldn't let the enemy see me buttoned up like a coward (don't take it personal i'm not calling you a coward) afraid to come out and fight.  It's time we start acting and looking like a superpower again.  It's okay to be afraid.  The most scared I've ever been was when my little convoy got ambushed.  Not IED's but a real no-shit ambush with RPGs, 12.7MM, and small arms fire.  and to answer a question as posed above in another post, don't ever stop your convoy in the kill zone on an ambush.  a vehicular ambush is not the same as a boots on the ground ambush.

Don't worry, I'm not taking any of the comments personally.

Again, then, we have the whole 'perspective' argument.

I viewed my job there as to 'defeat the enemy'. The doctrinal definition of 'defeat' is different to 'destroy' or 'kill', it's more to 'make the enemy's plan fail'.

Since his primary plan is to gain political advantage caused by the death of soldiers, it can be defeated by reducing the vulnerability to his preferred form of action. (i.e. the bomb). This then leaves us the ability to carry out our -own- plan, involving the detention/killing of enemy personnel or the destruction of their ability to carry out attacks.

You are quite correct that one must take risks. I, however, chose to take risks on terms of my own choosing (such as, in my case, removing helmets/eyewear in towns) in order to better carry out my own plans, as opposed to choose risks which in my opinion merely made the enemy's plan more likely to succeed.

The job of the officer isn't only to sign papers. It's also to keep a perspective on things that the enlisted soldiers might not be so worried about. If the soldiers are raring to go, and the officer is restraining them, I think it's a far better situation than having the officer trying to push and the enlisted men holding back. The former was the situation in our case.

I also wouldn't be worried about our lot showing a lack of 'courage' to the enemy. The first time they ambushed us, it was six months before they found the courage to take us on with direct fire again. (It helps to have tanks in your platoon!). Similarly when we moved to a new AO: Once they realised we were more than willing to fight and blow things up, they left us alone, preferring to use bombs.

NTM