>РЛС для засечки позиций стреляющих минометов надо еще подтянуть в боевые порядки. Пр этом кочевать можно и с 5 бойцами и Подносом. И вести нормальную контрбатарейную борьбу.
>Дмитрий Адров
Читал хронику репортера с артилерей маринов - вот открывок. Извините, переводить лень.
The tanks of Task Force Tarawa's light armor reconnaissance unit crept forward a hundred yards at a time against pockets of Iraqi infantry and secret police, nicknamed the ``black pajamas'' for their attire. The battle continued throughout the afternoon. The marine artillery unit, attempting to provide cover fire for the tanks, spent frustrated hours unable to shoot into the city for fear of hitting fellow marines.
The artillery unit's forward observer approached the city with the infantry and reported back to the marines at the unit's 18 cannons several miles south. His radio call name is Mustang, and he shouted grid coordinates all day at the top of his voice.
``Every time we move one click, tanks keep popping up,'' Mustang shouted over the radio to the command center.
The battle began shortly after dawn today when the infantry unit, codenamed Timber Wolf, approached the southern edge of the city. Several miles south, Col. Glenn Starnes, commanding officer of the artillery battalion, listened on a radio. Minutes before 7 a.m., he shouted, ``Timber Wolf is taking fire.''
But the cannons were caught off guard, scrambling into position in lines of six in the sand. Iraqi mortar fire sounded in the distance, and the colonel winced and cursed. Twenty-three minutes later, the first battery reported itself ready to fire, or, in the language of battle, ``fully in the fight.''
Radar detected the location of the mortar fire, and the cannons shot back, but with no marines yet present in the city to watch, it was impossible to tell what was hit. Mortar, while difficult to fire accurately, can be a difficult weapon to counterattack, especially in a city, where the shooter can drag it back into a home and shut the door in seconds.
``You've got to remember,'' Maj. Phillip Boggs said, ``you can hide a mortar in nothing.''
The command center is code named Nightmare. On its maps, it appeared that besides mortar, up to four tanks were shooting from behind a building.
``Waste it,'' an officer said under his breath. But that would have been too dangerous with so little information about the target. There is a line that appears on no map, between what an artillery unit believes it can safely do and what the ground troops fear falling on their heads, and with every ``denied'' spoken over the artillery radios, curses followed.
``Let's not get gun happy here,'' Major Boggs cautioned the officers under the tarp that was the command center, quickly heating under the midmorning sun. ``We are running amok. We're suppressing him, probably, but we're not killing him.''
Reports came in of a platoon-sized group of 30 or 40 black pajamas, and smaller squads of soldiers apparently from the 11th Iraqi Infantry Division. The leadership of the division reportedly surrendered to Army units the day before, but marines approaching the city found machine-gun nests in outlying dwellings, Colonel Starnes said.
They also found four Army soldiers, injured in a ditch, and called in an evacuation team. The soldiers were part of a group of about 20 that made a wrong turn in the dark before dawn, intending to skirt the city, only to be ambushed, Colonel Starnes said.
There was a puzzle. The Iraqi mortar and artillery fire missed by such large distances that the marines wondered about another motivation behind the rounds. ``I'm afraid he's trying to unmask me,'' Colonel Starnes said, worrying that his return fire could give away his position. ``I'm afraid he's trying to find out where we're at.'' But Iraqis are not believed to have the radar for that ploy. Another officer, simply guessing, suggested they might be firing on civilians.
