USMC snipers exact a deadly toll from the Iraqi insurgents in Najaf

Eric Umansky alerted me in his Today's Papers column to a passage in this New York Times article describing fighting in Iraq which talks about the killing being done there. I have read a great deal about Operation Iraqi Freedom and the subsequent fights to pacify parts of Iraq such as Ramadi, Fallujah and Najaf. But when I saw this statistic about sniper kills, it really hit me that we are decisively engaged:

Fighting in Najaf has intensified sharply in the past three days, said Capt. Coby Moran, operations officer of the First Battalion of the Fourth Marine Regiment, one of three American battalions, with a total of about 3,000 troops, fighting here.

American forces are tightening their cordon around the shrine and the Old City, Captain Moran and other officers at the American base in northern Najaf said Tuesday. A Western reporter and photographer who moved through the southern half of the Old City on Tuesday morning encountered sniper fire.

Marine snipers killed 62 people on Tuesday, and an Army battalion pushed deeper into the Old City, though it remains at least a half-mile from the shrine, Captain Moran said. An Apache attack helicopter fired three missiles at mortar crews on the roof of a parking garage adjacent to the shrine, Army officers said. [emphasis added]

"We're starting to put together our plan," Captain Moran said. "We're forcing the enemy to react to us a little more, tightening the noose."

Analysis: That's a lot of killing being done by a relatively small number of Marines. I'm not entirely sure of this fact, but I think that each Marine Corps infantry battalion (like 1-4 Marines) has a scout/sniper platoon in its headquarters company. So we're really talking about 20-30 Marines -- only half of whom are actually shooters, due to the marksman/observer team concept -- killing 62 Iraqis in one day. It's possible that the Marine captain quoted in this article is counting all kills via rifle, because after all, every Marine considers himself to be a rifleman. But I don't think so; I think these are confirmed sniper kills, and this is a huge number.

I have written before that I don't think that body counts per se are a good indicator of success. However, I do think they make for a good indicator of combat intensity, and in some ways, of combat effectiveness. One point that comes through again and again in stories of engagements in Iraq is that the Iraqi insurgents simply don't understand tactical fundamentals such as cover and concealment. I have seen Al-Jazeera tapes and U.S. military tapes of engagements where Iraqi insurgents, whooped up by their buddies into a frenzy of martyrdom, literally rush out into the middle of the street to launch an unaimed RPG at U.S. forces. In nearly all the videos, they are instantaneously cut down by a few short bursts of aimed rifle and machine gun fire. No trained soldier would ever do something so stupid. But the Iraqi grunts do it again and again, almost inviting death.

The resulting lopsided casualty counts have a great deal to do with this skill imbalance. U.S. troops simply don't expose themselves to fire when it's unnecessary, and they employ fires to shield their maneuver when they move. Indeed, I would argue (based largely on Dr. Stephen Biddle's research on skill/technology issues in warfare) that this skill imbalance is the most important factor in determining the outcome of urban engagements, because of the way that urban environments degrade the usefulness of technology. We simply can't employ standoff weapons systems like tanks and Apache helicopters at 2-3 km. So we have to employ our tough young Army and Marine Corps infantrymen instead.

Some technologies -- such as commo and night-vision gear -- can make a big difference. But ultimately, it comes down to basic tactical fundamentals like fire & maneuver, effective use of cover & concealment, and the ability to hit what you shoot. It therefore doesn't surprise me that the Marine snipers are doing such deadly work in Iraq. But the numbers do give me pause, because they tell me that our Marines and soldiers are decisively engaged right now in the kind of infantry combat that grinds up men and materiel.