Javelins have huge range but almost no backblast. They are, therefore, one of the very few anti-tank weapons you can fire from inside an enclosed space. Oh, it can't be real enclosed or even their minor blast will hurt like hell or kill. But if you blow out most of the back wall of a hovel, you can fire from a window with a bit of maneuvering.
There was a stand of trees, poplars, running along the northeast edge of Khuwaitla. Also common in the wetter areas. People use them for firewood. The leaves had been stripped by the autumn winds and branches were gray fingers reaching to the sky as if in supplication that spring would someday return.
They affected neither the view nor the angle of fire of the ten Javelin teams, each with eight Javelins, waiting on the outskirts of Khuwaitla.
Most of them were Nepos with a scatter of infantry to lend technical advice. More had emplaced in defense points in case it got down to infanty-infantry fighting. I didn't want it to.
The "Parthian Shot" is only part of the tactic favored by the Ugyars. Everyone thinks of the Mongols as vast hordes, men on light horses that used speed and their incredible numbers to overrun half the known world.
Most of the time, the Mongols were outnumbered. And they weren't just fast little devils, they were very good strategists and tacticians. They also weren't all "little guys on tiny ponies."
Their favorite tactic went like this.
Charge an enemy with "little guys on tiny ponies." Run away shooting.
Behind some sort of visual screen would wait much heavier guys, lancers, (note the name, people) on much bigger horses and wearing much heavier armor.
When the enemy charged the "fleeing" guys on ponies, they'd run into the guys with lances and be stopped.
In the meantime the little guys were swinging around and hitting the enemy in the flank and rear. If there were enough big lancers, they'd hit on the other flank. It was a "one, two, three" punch combination that, especially with an enemy unfamiliar with it, was lethal.
The enemy Abrams and Brads rolled down the road, pedal to the metal.
When the lead Abrams reached a klick, I gave the order to open fire.
Fucking Abrams are motherfucking tough.
When that SF unit that first proved the worth of Javelins was under attack, they faced four T-55 tanks. Now, T-55s are old stuff. They're, basically, upgraded WWII tech. Just steel armor and very little internal compartmentalization or blow-out doors. But they're tough.
A hit from a Jav took one out every time.
A hit from a Jav took out a Stryker like a tincan. Really fucked up a Bradley.
Fucking Abrams are motherfucking tough. On average it took two Javelins to get the motherfuckers to stop firing at our ass. Sometimes it was three. Hit the driver's compartment and they stopped but kept firing. Ditto the engine. Hit the ammo storage (side of the turret) and it blew up spectacularly and they were out of main gun ammo but still kept firing machine guns!
Best hit was on the turrets. Generally the tank would just turn around and run away very fast. All the guys who were shooting were dead.
Best best turned out to be "hit the turret with the ammo storage compartment open." On Abrams you're supposed to open it, pull a round, close it, load the round.
I don't know for regular tankers but we tended to lock it open in combat. So did the Iraqis. So it wasn't protected when the Jav hit the turret.
We called it "pop-top." Lots and lots of power in those Abrams rounds. When the main ammo storage went off, and the door was open, there'd be an explosion so big and fast you couldn't figure what was happening. Then you'd catch something flying through the air. The turret. Furthest one landed, I shit you not, nearly a hundred yards away from the tank. A football field. Fuckers weighed more than a big bulldozer. The explosion was enough to throw a bulldozer far enough to make a goal from the other endzone.
That's how much power.
And when the door was closed?
Fucker would still keep running.
And they weren't just sitting there to be shot. Oh, no. They were firing back. So were the Bradleys which were getting smoked at a very high rate. Rounds were crashing into and through the whole fucking village.
But Javs have very low signature. Remember, looking at the guys from a klick away, when they were just hiding in a ditch, our Scouts, who were professionals, couldn't spot the Javs firing.
The Abrams and Brads were lighting up the village but they couldn't see, well, where the fire was coming from.
They also had no clue what they were doing.
Tanks are shock weapons. You run them into an enemy, hard. They're the lance cavalry of the modern battlefield. Sure, they've got great range. But the main thing is that they've got shock weight.
The Iraqis were mostly not under effective control. Not surprising given that the group had to have organized since the Plague. And Iraqis are not, by and large, shock infantry guys. They are, mentally, raid attackers just like the Kurds.
They had been barrel assing down the road in more or less a scattered-out line when the lead tanks took fire. They spread out into the fields to fire at the village. More or less randomly. This is the tanks and the Brads which were mixed up together in no formation I could figure out.
Then, instead of just pushing forward and crashing into the damned village, they milled around on the fields firing at medium ranges.
If they'd backed way off and fired, that would have been one thing. But the stupid fuckers stayed in our engagement basket the whole time and fired from ranges where their accuracy wasn't that great.
Nelson: "Never interrupt an enemy in the process of making a grievous error."
I actually told my Abrams to back off.
But they clearly got some sort of order and started to roll towards the village. They weren't rolling fast, which was stupid, but they were rolling.
Then I told my Abrams to come in.
It was Second Platoon and a scattering of Nepos, mostly driving. The guys who had picked up enough English to be able to take commands. They'd never done real tank gunnery before. Oh, we'd fired some rounds at the vehicles in the desert, including while in movement, but they'd never engaged moving targets while moving themselves. And the Nepos? Well, they'd just recently learned to drive trucks. Now they were driving seventy-three-ton tanks and taking orders from TCs in English which they sort of understood.
To the north of Khuwaitla, at about six klicks, was the town of Tal Zallat. The road they'd taken to the north went up through Tal Zallat in a bend.
There wasn't much to Tal Zallat. Just some houses and a mosque like Khuwaitla. But the houses were big enough to drive Abrams into and disappear.
Hopefully the people got out, first.
As soon as I saw the Iraqi units starting to "consolidate" and get under some control I called the Abrams.
Down from the village they came like . . . Boy, I want to get poetic. "Like an avenging north wind" was what I was going to say. Actually, it was more like ten bouncers jumping into a big riot in a bar.
They opened fire at max range and mostly missed. But they just kept coming in a spread-out line, cannons booming from time to time and kicking up a big pall of dust.
The Iraqis were just getting the idea to drive into Khuwaitla. They couldn't drive around it because of the watercourse. But they could drive into it. They started rolling forward and all of a sudden they're getting hit from the flank.