Is 'Copter pilot the worst job to have??

[Tmy]

ANother blackhawk down. This time with 9 dead. It seems like helicopters crash on a weekly basis.

Do you think the death count will hurt Bush come Nov. I think so, until Saddam got caught that was a big focus of the angry at Bush crowd. I think it willbe a big problem for him this fall, its not what people expected.

I know people compare the loss of life to other wars as a way to minimize the damage. I think its apples n oranges. We are not at war in Iraq. We are friendly occupiers. Imagine if our troops in say Japan were being killed on a daily basis. Thatd be a big deal.

[Jon_in_london]

I dont know. There are lot of scary people in the US who seem to think that Bush is cooler than the other side of the pillow.

Maybe in another year or so when the young men in whellchairs become a little hard to ignore.

[Hexxenhammer]

More shocking than the almost 500 dead are the over 9,000 shipped home because of serious injury. And the fact that it's almost impossible to find statistics that give a breakdown of the kinds of wounds, injuries, and diseases that these soldiers incurred.

[Tmy]

About a year ago this was the pitch.

-Iraq has all sorts of WMD, maybe even the start of a nuke program.

-The republican guard may be tough to take out, especially in Baghdad.

-The people want to be liberated, theyll greet us as heros.

-We'll pay for the whole thing with Iraqi oil.



The republican guard and Saddams army fell alot easier than we thought, but the rest didnt turn out well at all.

[Jon_in_london]

Originally posted by Tmy
About a year ago this was the pitch.

-Iraq has all sorts of WMD, maybe even the start of a nuke program.

-The republican guard may be tough to take out, especially in Baghdad.

-The people want to be liberated, theyll greet us as heros.

-We'll pay for the whole thing with Iraqi oil.

The republican guard and Saddams army fell alot easier than we thought, but the rest didnt turn out well at all.

Heh, in fact all of those arent strictly true. Which is both good and bad.

The 9000 wounded will be much more of a problem than the 500 dead. The wounded and crippled have a habit of talking and being seen and heard while the dead dont.

There will probably be around 10,000 wounded by the time we get to one year after the whole thing kicked off. Thats a lot.

Plus, these wounded will have to be replaced and the US army is already feeling the stretch with thousands of National Guards and reservists already called up.

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by Hexxenhammer
More shocking than the almost 500 dead are the over 9,000 shipped home because of serious injury. And the fact that it's almost impossible to find statistics that give a breakdown of the kinds of wounds, injuries, and diseases that these soldiers incurred.

The press are banned from covering the flights back to the US with the dead and injured.

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by Tmy
About a year ago this was the pitch.

-Iraq has all sorts of WMD, maybe even the start of a nuke program.

-The republican guard may be tough to take out, especially in Baghdad.

-The people want to be liberated, theyll greet us as heros.

-We'll pay for the whole thing with Iraqi oil.



The republican guard and Saddams army fell alot easier than we thought, but the rest didnt turn out well at all.

That's because the lobby group from the MIC managed to get the president to forget the lesson of Vietnam, that being able to take out any military force in a direct confrontation does not guarantee success at the sovereign level.

[zakur]

My Dad worked as an engineer for the Air Force for 30+ years. He does not use the word 'helicopters.' He refers to those machines as as 'rotary-winged aircraft' or 'death traps.'

[Hutch]

Just a note on US Army Helicopters, the UH-60 Blackhawk is designed to carry troops and is less armored than the Attack Helicopter AH-64 Apache. So a hit on the Blackhawk is more likely to bring it down than the Apache.

Also to note, both helicopters carry (or are capable of carrying, I do not know what the US Army is issuing) fairly sophisticated means of detecting and countering heat-seeking missiles (i.e., Stingers) and laser tracking devices.....problem is, the opposition is not using those types of weapons, but Rocket-Propelled Grenades (RPGs) which do not react to countermeasures or jamming--another exaqmple of dumb weapons taking out smart systems.

Mind you, the Apache/Blackhawk are among the most advanced helicopters in the world and can survive damage that would KO any civilian craft (I have personally seen some of the aircraft that came back from Afghanistan and Iraq), but they were designed in the 1980's, where the US Army was still planning to fight the "AirLand Battle" Scenario in Western Europe. Fighting dispersed and modestly armed gurrellas is a mission that was not planned on. Now, if you could get all the bad guys into tanks and out in the open, or locate them 200 km away where a drop zone on their flank was available.....

Curious on where the stats for 9,000 wounded came from. That gives a killed-to-wounded ration of about 18-to-1, which seems a bit high to me--If I recall my numbers from the World Wars and Vietnam, the ratios were closer to 6-to-1, and in the American Civil War it was about 4-to-1. Just wondering.

[Chaos]

Hutch

For one thing, I guess modern medicine is better than back then, especially back in the civil war.

[Hutch]

Chaos, no argument on the medical front, but the Civil War led to approximately 600,000 deaths (total both sides) and about 1.4M wounded. Many of the deaths were due to illness rather than battle, but looking back at some numbers, the battle ratio was about 10 to 1--for example, at Antietam, about 40,000 men were casulties, about 3,500 dead and another several thousand captured, the other 32,000 were wounded.

If I remember WW II correctly (all my books are still packed), we had 450,000 dead and about 2.5M wounded, or around 5 to 1. A lot of that is accounted for by better medical treatment, as you note, but I'd still like to know where the 9,000 wounded number comes from, as based on the current death toll a number closer to 2,500-3,000 wounded would be expected.

Again, just curious, and I do concur with some of the other posters that the Government is doing it's best to keep the wounded/maimed out of the news--would be a bit embarassing if a group called Iraqi Vets against the War were to emerge...

[Jon_in_london]

Originally posted by Hutch

Curious on where the stats for 9,000 wounded came from. That gives a killed-to-wounded ration of about 18-to-1, which seems a bit high to me--If I recall my numbers from the World Wars and Vietnam, the ratios were closer to 6-to-1, and in the American Civil War it was about 4-to-1. Just wondering.

Actually the figures are closer to 3000.

http://lunaville.org/warcasualties/Summary.aspx

Also dont know where the 9000 came from.

[Ove]

I have an old (satirical)book called "How to gain power and keep it"(Danish and NOT translated i am afraid). It deals very humouristically with the various aspects of staging a coup and then keeping control when you become dictator. One of the chapters are about warfare and there was a description i thought was very fitting.

"Helicopter" : Airplane that can hang still in the air, this makes it easier for guerillas to hit it with small arms fire. It also makes it easier to locate the wreck afterwards (not strewn over half a square mile) which is very important for payment of compensation to the widow.

This was written at the time of the Vietnam War but is apparently still very much relevant.:(

[Hexxenhammer]

Originally posted by Jon_in_london


Actually the figures are closer to 3000.

http://lunaville.org/warcasualties/Summary.aspx

Also dont know where the 9000 came from. The 9,000 came from a story on NPR. They were asking people on the street in Washington DC if they knew how many had been killed in Iraq and most did (about 500). They then asked how many wounded. No one knew. In the story the 9,000 number came from some pentagon office I believe. I'll try to find a reference.

[Hexxenhammer]

Found the NPR Story. (http://www.npr.org/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=2&prgDate=7-Jan-2004)
NPR's Daniel Zwerdling reports on the number of U.S. troops wounded in Iraq. It's a number that is much higher than many think and also extremely difficult to come by. And of the close to 9,000 wounded, few details are available concerning their injuries. You can listen to the story on the site.