So I have been thinking about what could possibly be done to protect our guys in Iraq and in other urban warfare situation. Not because I really think I have the knowhow to solve the problem- but precisely the opposite. Sometimes, to occupy spare clock cycles I tick over problem I know I can't solve. Usually its just a kill-time douring my commute to work, and sometimes I actually think of something that sounds, at least to me, like it might be worth 2 pennys. So you decide...

It seems like a major problem is that we can't really use our biggest advantages in surface warfare in urban settings. Tanks are no good because, well, even if you can get them down the street, if they open up on opposing forces... well, there goes the neighborhood.

Most technological tactical advantages that keeps our guys from ever having to get within gunfire range from the 'bad guys' is nullified by the environment. NVG, for example, can't see through a door, and even if it could all you would see is a guy that looks like everyone else.

So, you have to use mid-to-low tech light weaponry and get face to face with the enemy and, literally, spend a lot of time looking for an ambush. Doing what the DOD has spent trillions of dollars trying to avoid over the past 40 years.

From my reading, thats where the Stryker comes in. A LAV to try to restore a bit of the equipment advantage to our guys.

Except the trade off with LAVs- the armor can be defeated by many flavors of RPG, and every respectable 3rd world paramilitary wannabe has an RPG or two... so in a lot of ways they're not much better than a HumVee.

But what if we made it certain death to attack our forces in an ambush setting, with an RPG *OR* any other ballistic weapon?

Radar guided automatic counterbattery fire is an old technology- going back, I think, to the 60's. Given we can fit radars and their controlls into coffee cans that used to take up semi trailors in the 60's, why can't we employ the same technology to locate the source of incoming RPGs (or Sniper bullets, or machine gun fire) and tie it to a computer controlled grenade launcher? Have the countering HE round on its way within half a second of the shot being fired....

Yes, the bad guy get a shot, but not more than one, and pretty soon its understood by everyone that to shoot anything at an american convoy is 100% certain death.

Spoofing could be a problem. Wire a gun on a roof of a school aimed at the road and wait till a convoy rolls past- the guys in the field would have to decide when and were to safe the system or not... The small size of the bullet or rpg would be hard to refine out of the noise, but its speed and trajectory would be something to look for.

Detecting which direction the gunfire is going could be a real problem. It wouldn't be good to have it active after the first four or five seconds of a fire fight...

Assuming the Radars are sensitive and small enough, it seems more a question of computing and software... and if those are not solvable questions this week, wait for next week...

So I suppose I would love to see what the engineers would have to say about the feasability of this...

Davin L.