Armored Cavalry at 73 Easting

The battle of 73 Easting in the 1991 Persian Gulf War demonstrates the power of armored cavalry. I want our armored cavalry regiments back in the Army.



The Bradley is actually the M3 cavalry version, FYI.

I've gone on about our ersatz cavalry regiment that the 2nd Cavalry Regiment is becoming. Feh. In an era of great power competition, give me our armored cavalry regiments back.

And here's my essay on the value of heavy armor in general that the Persian Gulf War should have taught us. Stand-To! even linked to it (but TDD? It's TDR, thank you). But the lesson has trouble sticking.

Although now that conventional warfare is back center stage for the Army, that eternal hope of defeating the iron triangle of choosing 2 out of 3 of lethality, survivability, and strategic mobility will end--for a while.

While the 73 Easing episode speculates that pressing for regime change in 1991 would have prevented the 2003 war, I'm not so sure about that.

At best in 1991 we would have had an insurgency against Iran-sponsored Shias without the Sunni jihadi terrorists that developed--and which Saddam encouraged in Iraq between those wars--over the next decade.

But maybe jihadis would have flocked to Iraq in 1991 just as they did in 2003. Still, maybe a counter-terrorist war in Iraq starting in 1991 would have meant al Qaeda didn't seek refuge in Afghanistan and we wouldn't have endured 9/11.

And it is hard to say how the Iraqi Shias exposed to Iranian influence would have reacted to our troops moving in force into Iraq to stay in 1991 as we did in 2003.

And would Americans have stayed in Iraq to defeat jihadis and Saddam dead-enders without the shock of 9/11? Would a retreat have inspired al Qaeda even more than our retreat from Somalia a few years after the Persian Gulf War?

Hard to say.

But there are unintended consequences. Always. But a good one is that by waiting for regime change until 2003 we gained the advantage of making sure our troops didn't face chemical weapons attacks as I'm sure we would have endured in 1991; and in 2003 we had the advantage of 12 years of our military advancing while the Iraqi military rotted under sanctions.

Also, the battle may be the most examined battle in history with actual data culled from the battlefield and fully simulated. I wonder if we regret that post-Cold War decision a bit given that in an age of  great power competition our potential battlefield enemies have probably gained access to that ability to game our conventional combat capabilities.

All I can say about my history with the war is that my unit was scheduled to go to the Middle East. But those orders vaporized. And as a signal soldier, I never would have seen an enemy let alone get shot at in that war. Coming down with some exotic Middle Eastern ailment would have been the only risk I would have faced. Which is serious enough for those who suffered that in the nearly three decades since that war, of course.