Military Rolls Tanks Onto St. Louis Streets

[Bawana jim]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2898711/posts

The answer is obvious, they train for what their plan is. Our military is all about practice before you go in.

[308bolt]

The cities will be the first under control in the event of martial law.

[alant]

Originally Posted by 308bolt

The cities will be the first under control in the event of martial law.

Urban areas for the most part vote D, overwhelmingly. They are also very poor places to deploy mechanized forces.

Kinda makes you wonder WTF all this is about.

Just another internet rumor being stretched into a conspiracy theory that, as usual, makes no sense.

[308bolt]

Originally Posted by alant

Urban areas for the most part vote D, overwhelmingly. They are also very poor places to deploy mechanized forces.

Kinda makes you wonder WTF all this is about.

Just another internet rumor being stretched into a conspiracy theory that, as usual, makes no sense.

Cities used to manufacturing centers, now they produce nothing other than discontent. Who do you think the FEMA camps are for? Farmers?

[alant]

FEMA camps, hahaha. Your joking again.

Can you show us some for city size population? Not for a couple of thousand people, but 50k and up.

[0302]

1500 marines were sent to the LA riots in 1992, to do a little "crowd control", it will happen again, probably this summer. why not do some preliminary training? i am surprised the usmc didn't get some at louisiana after katrina, great training opportunity.

[D P Six]

Don't worry. Our military will never hurt us.

[SWOHFAL]

Been to St. Louis and they'd have done everyone a huge favor if they shelled about 90% of it while they were there.

[SWOHFAL]

Originally Posted by alant

FEMA camps, hahaha. Your [sic] joking again.

Can you show us some for city size population? Not for a couple of thousand people, but 50k and up.

A LTC who doesn't know the difference between "you're" and "your"? Interesting....

[Story]

http://www.falfiles.com/forums/showthread.php?t=328038

[wyatt earp]

Connect the the dots........

[Story]

Those armored Army trucks you might see cruising down St. Louis highways over the next eight days are no cause for alarm, St. Louis police say.

Army reservists from the 354th military police company will be racking up highway miles around St. Louis in armored security vehicles through June 29, Lt. Col. Nathan Bond, an Army spokesman, said Thursday. The reservists will be getting classroom instruction as well as behind-the-wheel road training in how to drive the armored trucks.

About 10 trainers from the 200th military police company from Fort Meade, Md., are in St. Louis providing training to reservists based at the Army Reserve Center at 4300 Goodfellow Boulevard, Bond said. The purpose is to give reservists practice and experience driving.

Read more: http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/c...#ixzz1ygEiNn9E

[Thorack]

Story,

Good post pretty much explains it. Much easier to think its a conspiracy. Oh well.

Thorack

[Story]

Originally Posted by Thorack

Story,

Good post pretty much explains it. Much easier to think its a conspiracy. Oh well.

Thorack

Hold me. I'm scared.

[alant]

Originally Posted by SWOHFAL

A LTC who doesn't know the difference between "you're" and "your"? Interesting....

Busted! Give yourself a gold frickin' star chief.

[def90]

Interestingly I took this picture a few months back in Denver on the way to the Tanner Gun Show. This was just a block away. There were 2 of them and neither had any unit markings or identifiable marks on them.

[Story]

Originally Posted by def90

There were 2 of them and neither had any unit markings or identifiable marks on them.

Typical when they're pool/depot vehicles or haven't been issued to a unit yet.

[martin35]

As a teenager in the military there was a information system of long tenure that had two primary methods of dissemination/relating of information one was the old and honorable "sea story" based on truth exaggerated to be impressive and aggrandizing of the teller's advanced widom,,, the other was "scuttle butt" information exchanged at the crews watering station, "scuttle butt" contained all the paranoid invention and expectations that could be assembled in the most believable format, true scuttle butt could only come from the Chaplains offices.
When I was a teenager sea stories and scuttle butt were my life, but I had to give them up because that made me giggle,,,, and REAL Marines don't giggle,,, we do enjoy the occasional insane laugh though,,,, like now.

[cowbilly]

When someone says "tanks", I'm thinking an M1A2 (or maybe a Paladin or at the very least a tracked vehicle for the novice). Calling an armored car or an up-armored wheeled vehicle a tank is kinda like calling a Ruger 1022 an MG3, big difference operationally and logistically.

I will never forget we had a Soviet BTR and some OPFOR dressed up with authentic combloc uniforms and armed with AKMs/PKMs. Long story short, they crossed a public road and some pictures were taken. A month or so later that picture showed up in a local paper suggesting the US was training Russian troops for a UN take over of the US.

Riot control is a National Guard training requirement. Training in cities is nothing new been going on since the 50s probably longer.

In reference to the Kent State picture (nevermind the strife of the period and the good relations between the military and the hippie movement), that is why we train so that does not happen again. It is also why our leaders are hesitant to issue weapons during natural disasters and only riot batons during civil unrest.

[GOVT1911]

Originally Posted by def90

Interestingly I took this picture a few months back in Denver on the way to the Tanner Gun Show. This was just a block away. There were 2 of them and neither had any unit markings or identifiable marks on them.

Yup, that is a pic of an M1117 Guardian ASV (Armored Security Vehicle), Used mostly by Military Police, but also used by a few other types. Follows along with the info Story provided about MPs training.

I had 4 in my platoon in Baghdad. OK for running Convoy Security missions, but SUCKED for patrolling small streets in the city.

[alant]

Our National Gaurd MP company received their's this spring. Uparmored HMMWV's are starting to come through the sytem as well.

[SWOHFAL]

Originally Posted by alant

Our National Gaurd [sic] MP company received their's [sic]this spring. Uparmored HMMWV's are starting to come through the sytem [sic] as well.

Do they have awards for being a "spellin' felon" too, "colonel"?

[JAB75]

Originally Posted by SWOHFAL

Been to St. Louis and they'd have done everyone a huge favor if they shelled about 90% of it while they were there.

Cleveland could benefit from this program too

-JAB75

[SWOHFAL]

Originally Posted by JAB75

Cleveland could benefit from this program too

-JAB75

No doubt, but I'd dare say it may be a little nicer than most of St. Louis.

[mitchellh]

Extremely ironic, but I took the family to Richmond last Friday, and observed aprox 10-12 LAV's cruising around the beltway on the south bound I95. Very impressive to say the least.

If I hadn't been north bound I would have snapped a few pictures.

[ronpaulFAL]

Aren't there laws that any vehicle on the road needs plates, turn signals and the like? Are those street legal?

[BUFF]

Vehicles belonging to the U.S. military are exempt from state and local vehicle equipment and registration laws. So are U.S. Postal vehicles. A lot of the post office vehicles have no plates at all, not even government plates.

[mace2364]

First of all, anyone else notice how all of these "sitings" and "troop movements" usually are taking place during late spring or summer? What happens during this time is that National Guard and Reserve units are conducting, or preparing to conduct, their two week annual training. This happens every year, and every year people go crazy with the tin foil.

Now on to some numbers that are relevant to this discussion:

At it's peak the US military had 12 million men in uniform, during WWII.
Presently we're considerably smaller(Under 2 mil if I've got it right), and the majority of the number we are, are irrelevant(for this discussion at least) support personnel.
From that number, if we reduce things down to just the Army and Marines, being that they contain the only real ground combat elements, we're down to about 750,000, give or take a bit. Now I'm not going to go to the trouble to then take the numbers down to what the actual combat power is. We'll just keep things simple and say that the entirety of these organizations is combat elements, even though the actual percentage of combat personnel to support personnel is something like 1-20 in favor of support people even in those branches.

Now, to put this into context, conventional military wisdom states that in a conventional fight, you need 3-1 odds(in your favor) to successfully attack. In a counter-insurgency campaign you need 10-1 odds. Now they do mess with that number a bit because of "force multipliers" and the like, but 3-1 odds is still the minimum.

Now if we assume that 1% of gun owners in the US would fight rather than let all this happen, that's still about 3 million people. And this number has been growing rapidly every day since the middle of 2008, according to the FBI NICS data.

SO, if you add this all up, the US military would need something to the tune of 30 MILLION people to "wage war on America", with 9 million giving the minimum 3-1 odds(if this were one big conventional battle, think Gettysburg happening today, which is unlikely). This of course is much larger than the 750,000 we currently have, and even more so when you take into account the huge reductions in force that are currently taking place. And all that also assumes that all 750,000 would follow orders of that kind, which is not likely.

SO I said all that to say this: The US military alone isn't going to be doing ANYTHING of that sort. It's just too small to be used for major domestic operations. Now that doesn't mean that bad things are not possible. The opposition could always call in outside help, and we have seen federal agencies do some really nasty things in my lifetime.

But I think this is why they keep downsizing the military, specifically the Army and Marines and within those branches specifically combat forces. In doing so, they are effectively reducing the number of people trained and experienced in combat skills and tactics. After all, when joe soldier or marine(who these days likely has significant combat experience if he's an Infantryman) becomes joe civilian, what he has learned does not just go away or expire. Think about it.

I am far more concerned about the 450 Million rounds of .40 S&W that DHS just bought, as this is about half again more than what the army has purchased to replace the M855 ammunition in all the stockpiles and issue for deployment (and at the time this contract was signed we had 2 full blown wars going on).


And that whole Kent State thing is crap anyway. Consider this: most of us ignore the media these days, and have for some time, because most of what they've been putting out in my lifetime has been propaganda(some would say it was worse then). So why then do we believe that story as they tell it? It's no different then how they describe anything else.

[gunplumber]

When I first read the headline, I thought "bull - An M1 Tank treads would chew the asphalt to pieces."

Then I read armored personnel carriers and thought - "A Bradley would chew the asphalt to pieces."

Then I figured, any douche who can't tell a tank from an AFV is going to be making a lot more errors - maybe they are referring to wheeled vehicles like a LAV or a Hummer?

I've driven military vehicles up and down the California Coast on I-5 and PCH - as an individual vehicle or as part of a convoy (Camp[ Pendleton, Los Alamitos, Fort Hunter Ligget, Presidio). And I've driven military vehicles between LA and Texas - on I-10. (Los Alamitos, Ft Huachuca, White Sands, Ft Bliss). And I've driven ordnance between Eastern Oregon and the California/Nevada border (Umatilla AD, Sierra AD). No big conspiracy. Have to get soldiers between training sites and material and supplies to training sites - or the case of the ordnance, from one depot to another where it can be more safely destroyed (chem weapons furnace at Umatilla, but no above ground detonations - Sierra AD, above ground detonations ok). Logging miles is necessary part of training.

Lot of BS use of military inside the US. So far, this does not appear to be one.

[FAL freek]

Annual training for the NG I would suppose. Believe something like 60% of the armor in the U.S. Army inventory is owned by the NG.

[andresere]

Originally Posted by gunplumber

When I first read the headline, I thought "bull - An M1 Tank treads would chew the asphalt to pieces."

Actually they don't, provided it isn't like over 100 degrees and you aren't doing pivot steers. An M1A1 has 18 psi ground pressure, less than Oprah Winfrey in high heels. Mark, we used to keep some of our tanks at Umatilla and drove one from there to Pendleton down I-5. Had a "bus-crush" event. The Oregon Guard is looking at assuming Umatilla when the Army pulls out. It offers up some pretty good training areas that are hard to find in a tree hugger State.

[gobbler]

No need to worry.......it is only history repeating itself

gobbler

[gunplumber]

Good to know. We had concrete sections on the road and were only allowed to cross there (complete with "tank crossing" signs"). Most of my experience was on M60s (driver familiarization only, not school qualified) and M113s (197th). The M1s we had a Huachuca were pretty much restricted to the parking lot because of some environmental impact statement claiming that we might run over a cactus and endanger the Mexican fruit bat or some such nonsense. The M1s were transferred to the National Guard.

[jugrunner]

most tank "training I've seen was at Fort Stewart in Ga. ... ?????????

if the media say's "no need to worry" ... then don't worry 'bout it ...

[Story]

Originally Posted by FAL freek

Annual training for the NG I would suppose. Believe something like 60% of the armor in the U.S. Army inventory is owned by the NG.

They're Army Reservists, specifically Military Police.

The Armored Security Vehicle isn't the armor you're thinking of.