w********t
发帖数: 12853 | 1 By MICHAEL PREGENT And MICHAEL WEISS
Aug. 12, 2014 6:55 p.m. ET
The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, aka ISIS, captured hundreds of
millions of dollars of U.S. military equipment as the Iraqi Security Forces
fled the terrorist group's advance on Mosul in June. The result is that ISIS
now has some very sophisticated weapons it is using to take and hold
territory in Syria and Iraq.
Yet ISIS is not nearly so invincible as its weaponry and territorial gains
have made it seem. The terror group has clear vulnerabilities that the U.S.,
working with Kurdish Peshmerga militia and Iraqi forces on the ground, can
exploit. In particular, U.S. airstrikes can negate or degrade the terrorist
group's military capabilities and supply lines.
The first ISIS vulnerability is their weaponry. After U.S. military forces
withdrew from Iraq at the end of 2011, U.S. contractors performed
maintenance on the equipment left behind. Those contractors are no longer in
the country.
Today, we estimate that ISIS has less than a total of 30 working M1 Abrams
tanks and howitzers that are either self-propelled or towed behind trucks (
based on our knowledge of how the Iraqi army is equipped and what divisions
were in the north). These are the weapons that gave the Islamic State the
advantage over the Peshmerga in recent firefights. Yet ISIS does not have
the highly trained maintenance crews that are necessary to keep these
weapons in good working order. The same problem exists for its armored
Humvees and Mine Resistant Ambush Protected personnel carriers. Without
maintenance, these captured U.S. vehicles and weapons will break down.
Enlarge Image
Shi'ite volunteers secure the area from predominantly Sunni militants from
ISIL, in the desert region south of Baghdad in July. Reuters
The ISIS stock of Russian-made equipment, most of it confiscated from the
Syrian and more recently the Iraqi military, requires less maintenance and
can withstand the heat and the sand. The terror group has vehicle-mounted
anti-aircraft weapons like the ZPU-4 and DShK—heavy machine guns mounted on
pickup trucks. They are effective against low-flying, rotary-winged
aircraft and ground targets. But they can be tracked and destroyed by U.S.
fighter jets flying at higher altitudes.
ISIS does have some Russian-made, shoulder-fired systems that can take out
transport aircraft and helicopters, but it did not capture any equipment
with the capability to shoot down U.S. fighter jets (because the U.S. didn't
give the Iraqi Army such weaponry). The heat and image signatures for U.S.
and Russian equipment are well known to American fighter pilots and most, if
not all, of the heavy weapons systems remaining in Iraq can be easily
destroyed from the air.
The U.S. should also supply the Kurdish militias with anti-armor weapons and
heavy machine guns. These will enable the Peshmerga to destroy captured U.S
. armored vehicles and suppress ISIS fighters. The absence of such weaponry
prevented the Peshmerga from retaking Sinjar—the city that ISIS sacked in
the past 10 days, driving as many as 40,000 of its Yazidi minority
population to seek refuge atop a desolate mountain.
The Peshmerga do have an arsenal of inferior, dated Russian equipment—
mainly old battle tanks and towed-artillery pieces in the contiguous Kurdish
territories. Most of it was captured from the Saddam Hussein era. But the
Peshmerga cannot move this weaponry to Sinjar without exposing it to attack
by ISIS.
The other side of the coin is that the Islamic State's supply and support
lines from Sinjar to Mosul are open to U.S. airstrikes. Protecting the
supply lines of the Peshmerga and cutting off ISIS supply lines by U.S. air
power would enable the Peshmerga to retake ISIS-controlled territories.
The territorial gains of the Islamic State over the past three years in
Syria and the past three months in Iraq are proof that it is a formidable
enemy. Even so, photographs of jihadists driving armored vehicles or posing
triumphantly in front of Abrams tanks do not make this force equal to the U.
S. military.
The breadth of the Islamic State's presence in the open expanses of Syria
and Iraq is testimony to its prowess. But it is also testimony to its
vulnerability to destruction by U.S. F-18s.
Mr. Pregent is an adjunct lecturer at the National Defense University. He
was an adviser to the Peshmerga forces in Mosul in 2005-06 and an adviser to
the Iraqi Security Forces from 2007-10. Mr. Weiss is a columnist at Foreign
Policy and NOW Lebanon. | w********t
发帖数: 12853 | | f*******y
发帖数: 8358 | 3 道者，令民与上同意也，故可以与之死，可以与之生，而不畏危。
【在 w********t 的大作中提到】
: 我还是更喜欢谈军事. -
| w********t
发帖数: 12853 | 4 高人您的意思是 ?
【在 f*******y 的大作中提到】
: 道者，令民与上同意也，故可以与之死，可以与之生，而不畏危。
| H******C
发帖数: 700 | 5 这样的文学修养功夫真让人敬仰啊。
【在 f*******y 的大作中提到】
: 道者，令民与上同意也，故可以与之死，可以与之生，而不畏危。
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