US Loses Three Helicopters in Ten Days
by Ian Mosley
A recent news story reports “A U.S. Army helicopter on patrol crashed in a swampy area north of Baghdad on Monday morning, killing both crew members, U.S. authorities said. It was the third such incident this month. Witnesses said the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter was hit by a missile and came down at a farm near the village of Mishahda, 25 miles north of Baghdad. Two insurgent groups asserted responsibility for attacking the aircraft.”
Typically the military will first announce a “crash” and later announce a “shoot down” especially if there are independent witnesses. Military helicopters should rarely suffer fatal accidental crashes. The Blackhawk and Apache helicopters have twin jet engines so a single engine failure will not cause a crash landing. Whenever several helicopters are lost in a short period of time, this is strong circumstantial evidence that the aircraft were shot down.
The Iraqi rebels have apparently found a source for surface-to-air missiles. There have been a few previous times in Iraq when several helicopters were shot down within a month’s time, but three in ten days is something new. Most people don’t know America withdrew its forces from Vietnam by 1973 just as the Viet Cong were acquiring SA-7 shoulder-launched heat seeking missiles. The Vietnam War had dragged on for years when some Intelligence officer must have whispered into Nixon’s ear that our aircraft losses were about to surge. History repeated itself in Afghanistan when Ronald Reagan decided to send highly advanced Stinger missiles to Afghan rebels, making the Soviet occupation of that country untenable.
George Bush’s empire war in Iraq is about to run into a similar disaster. Helicopters are starting to fall out of the sky like flies from a bug-zapper. The Apache gunship that crashed in Iraq on Monday was the third aircraft to be downed in ten days. The AH-64 Apache went down north of Baghdad, killing its two crew.
The ABC News network said the shootdown represented “a troubling new development.” The SA-7 missile which was probably used is 33 year old technology and it was only a matter of time for Iraqi rebels to find a black market source for them. A few Stinger missiles may have wound up in Iran and been reverse-engineered. Bush will find out for sure if he decides to bomb that nation.
There were large numbers of SA-7 missiles in Saddam Hussein’s arsenal, much of which was looted after the invasion. But for reasons which remain unclear, until now the rebels used them very infrequently. A number of American copters, estimated at over fifty, have been shot down during the invasion and occupation, although the Pentagon is secretive about the actual figures. But many of these were shot down by simple ground fire on coming in to land or in taking off, to which copters are in fact extraordinarily vulnerable no matter how well armored and armed they are.
If the rebels have found a source for anti-aircraft missiles, this could be an earth-shaking development in the three year war in Iraq. American military superiority is based very firmly on AIR POWER, and absolute control of the skies. This represents a decades-long strategy of American military thinking dating back to World War Two. The Empire’s enemies are to be destroyed at long range from the air by all kinds of fancy technical gadgetry so that massive casualties can be inflicted without those politically embarrassing casualties which take place when America’s victims have an opportunity to shoot back. A war of occupation however makes close contact with the enemy unavoidable and the casualties have climbed to over 2200.
How much worse will the fight become if control of the air is challenged? Pilots will still be ordered to fly just to pretend that nothing has changed, but they may wind up flying several thousand feet higher where they are much less effective. The rebel war in Iraq will become more of a ground war. The American military still has an advantage with its massive Abrams tanks, but even these are vulnerable. One news article reports “…additional armor won’t always stop such explosives — one bomb destroyed an Abrams battle tank last month, for instance — a National Guard unit in Baghdad has added detection devices and other measures to protect its Humvees.”
It was inevitable, the Empire would have to come down out of the sky and put some boots on the ground to occupy land, in this case land bearing petroleum. We’ve seen what happens in that case, as the Iraqi rebels have inflicted serious casualties over the past three years. Americans are once again learning that war isn’t a game and there’s a little more to it than dropping bombs on defenseless people from 30,000 feet or zapping people with laser-guided weapons like it was some kind of video game. The rebels can shoot down the best helicopters and destroy the best tanks. Maybe it’s time to decide if the Empire is worth the ever-increasing cost.