Armored Cav: A Guided Tour of an Armored Cavalry Regiment

by Tom Clancy

  As they rounded the southern tip of the Japanese home islands and entered the Korea Strait, the convoy was met by an escort of four O.H. Perry-class frigates. Hastily mobilized from the Navy Reserve Force, they were the only available ships with medium-frequency sonars suitable for detecting enemy submarines in those shallow waters. This proved to be a wise precaution; as the convoy approached Pusan, a wolfpack of obsolescent North Korean Romeo-class submarines, lurking off Tsushima Island, was detected and annihilated by torpedoes dropped from the frigates’ helicopters before the subs could close to attack range.

  Tuesday, February 10th, 1997

  When the ships docked at Pusan’s magnificent north harbor, the first units to off-load were the 27 MLRS launchers of the 6th Battalion of the 27th Field Artillery Brigade. Back at Fort Hood, each vehicle had been loaded with a pair of ATACMS, a chubby guided missile with a 60-to-90 mile/lOO-to-150 kilometer range. The drivers and gunners, who had flown in the previous night, were already waiting on the docks to take delivery. The launchers drove off the pier and onto rail cars headed north. Next to disembark were the fifty-two attack and scout helicopters of the 3rd ACR’s 4th Squadron. They were immediately flown to Pyongtaek airfield, forty miles south of Seoul, where advance teams had set up a Forward Arming and Refueling Point (FARP).

  Wednesday, February 11th, 1997, 0700 Hours

  The next morning, pairs of AH-64A Apache and OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopters fanned out across the hills, east and west of the broad Nam Han River Valley, where the main enemy thrust southward was developing. The Kiowas, with their mast-mounted laser designators and thermal sights, could peek over the ridgelines, spot a target, and call in a supersonic Hellfire missile launched from an Apache flying miles away, concealed beyond the next line of hills. The air cav gunners concentrated on anti-aircraft systems, particularly the old but deadly S-60 towed 57mm guns and the new armored scout vehicles carrying twelve-round SA-18 missile launchers.

  As the regiment’s three other cavalry squadrons unloaded and rushed north along the Seoul-Pusan expressway, the 3rd ACR was assigned a “fire brigade” role, to plug gaps in the line and stop any enemy spearheads that broke through the ROK’s determined defense.

  Highway 327 crosses the Han River near the village of Punwon-ni; ROK engineers had blown the bridge as soon as enemy recon units approached the north bank. The fresh North Korean 820th Armored Corps and 815th Mechanized Corps, backed by a division of artillery, were ordered to cross the river in this sector and secure a bridgehead on the south bank. Though they were traveling only at night—without lights and using superb camouflage discipline to hide out from satellite reconnaissance during daylight—the enemy movement was still observed and tracked by the aero scouts of the 3rd ACR and reported to the forward command post of Colonel Rodriguez (the 3rd ACR commander) near Suwon.

  The river line was held by a division of ROK reservists that had been badly chewed up in the withdrawal from the DMZ two weeks earlier, losing most of their vehicles and heavy weapons. But they still had their entrenching tools, M16s, and a dwindling supply of TOW and Javelin anti-tank weapons. The colonel commanding the ROKs (both of the generals had been killed in action) knew his country had no more space to trade for time, and his men were determined to hold the riverbank or die in place. They were under constant bombardment by whole brigades of rocket launchers, heavy mortars, and field guns.

  Meanwhile, in the low hills northwest of the crossing point, the enemy was assembling a river-crossing force, including engineers with mobile pontoon bridging equipment, a regiment of light amphibious tanks, and a brigade of commandos with inflatable assault boats. This far south there were hardly any ice floes in the river. The NK corps commander had trained these men for years under far worse conditions. He might drown half of them in the frigid waters of the Han, but he would get a foothold on the south bank. Then he would push his reserve division across, surrounding the ROK puppets of the U.S. imperialist aggressors and opening the road to liberate Suwon. After that, he could wheel south and drive the rest of the Americans and their Korean lackeys into the sea. He imagined his T-72 command tank would be the first unit to make a triumphal entry into Pusan.

  Thursday, February 12th, 1997, 0100 Hours

  Colonel Rodriguez paged down through the weather forecasts on the high-resolution color LCD screen of the Silicon Graphics BattleSpace Workstation in his M4 command track. The next morning would be foggy in the lower Han Valley, and the fog would not lift until midday. He smiled as his fingers danced across the keyboard, instantly transmitting orders over the secure satellite data link to his squadron commanders and attached combat-support units. He could have dictated the words to one of the three enlisted console operators, but everyone knew he was the fastest computer jock in the regiment, a holdover from his days at West Point.

  Back at the 4th Squadron FARP, CW-3 (Chief Warrant Officer Third Class) Jennifer Grayson worked her way through the short preflight checklist for her OH-58D helicopter. She had been through this drill 376 times, but she never took shortcuts or skipped a step. There were still some Neanderthals in the Army who thought that a woman shouldn’t be a combat helicopter pilot; thus she had always striven for “zero defects.” Her copilot, WO-1 (Warrant Officer First Class) Greg Olshanski, loomed up out of the predawn darkness carrying the DTD (Data Transfer Device), a little gadget resembling a video game cartridge. He inserted it into a socket on the crowded instrument panel, automatically loading the mission’s assigned radio frequencies, navigational waypoints, and IFF mode codes. The DTD would remain in its socket recording critical flight data from the Kiowa’s control system, for after-action review. A blank videotape was already loaded in the helicopter’s onboard video cassette recorder to capture a permanent record of every target engagement. “Our call sign tonight is Nomad Two-Seven,” said Olshanski.

  “Nomad Two-Seven,” CW-3 Grayson grunted in acknowledgment. The immediate threat to the river line was enemy armor, so the Kiowa was loaded for tank-busting, with four Hellfire missiles on the weapons pylons. Grayson missed having the .50-caliber machine-gun pod—Hellfires were too easy—and she liked to shoot up trucks and soft targets with the .50. That took some skill, and a light touch on the controls. She had both.

  Thursday, February 12th, 1997, 0400 Hours

  The imaging infrared camera on a stealth recon drone sent out during the night by the IX Corps intelligence battalion had spotted an enemy armor battalion of thirty-one tanks moving down Highway 327. With the approach of daylight, they had pulled off the road and dispersed into a narrow canyon. Grayson pulled up the thermal view on her multi-function display. The tank engines would still be warm by the time the OH-58D came into range. The North Koreans were good at camouflaging their tanks with netting, tree branches, and shrubbery; but the rear decks of those T-72s would stick out like sore thumbs to the thermal viewer in the mast-mounted sight.

  Grayson and Olshanski carefully timed their arrival at each waypoint. There was a lot of traffic in the air this morning, and most of it was flying without navigation lights or search radar to give away its position. Some of the traffic consisted of artillery shells, blindly obeying the laws of physics. Air cav planning staffs devoted a lot of effort to “deconfliction” with their field artillery counterparts, making very, very sure that friendly helicopters and friendly projectiles never tried to share the same airspace at the same instant.

  The battle of Punwon-ni. Helicopters from the 4th (Air Cavalry) Squadron of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment blunt an attempted river crossing of the Han River by the North Koreans.

  JACK RYAN ENTERPRISES, LTD., BY LAURA ALPHER

  Grayson steered the agile chopper up behind the crest of a mountain spur. The enemy tanks lay just across the ridge, their crews already bedded down, except for a few sentries nervously scanning the skyline. With a delicate nudge of the cyclic and a gentle adjustment of the collective, she rose a few feet, so that the spherical head of the mast-mounted sight, like the face of a grot
esque three-eyed robot, peered over the rocky lip of the valley. She flicked the arming switches on the Hellfire control panel, aimed, and fired. Reflexively, she closed her eyes for a second, so that her night vision would not be dazzled by the flash of the rocket motor as it came off the rail, rose in a graceful arc, and dropped directly onto a tank 2,000 yards away. Before the first round struck, the next was on the way. Then another. Within a few seconds three tanks had exploded, the lethal mixture of diesel fuel and ammunition blowing the turrets completely off the vehicles. Within a few more seconds, the startled North Korean crews of a dozen tanks had recovered and were directing bright tracer streams of 14.5mm machine-gun fire at the hilltop. But the helicopter was already hidden behind the ridgeline, calling over the Automated Target Handoff System (ATHS) for other helicopters to join in the carnage. With three missiles expended, the OH-58D was four hundred pounds lighter and would have tended to rise into full view of the alerted enemy. But as Grayson swiftly and instinctively compensated for the weight change, the chopper swooped down and to the left, evading the return fire.

  A voice crackled over the radio headset, “Nomad Two-Seven, this is Outlaw Four-Six, I’m about two clicks behind you with sixteen rounds. What have you got for me? Over.”

  “Roger that, Outlaw Four-Six, this is Nomad Two-Seven. We have two dozen Tango Seven-Twos at our ten o’clock, approximately two clicks out. They’re pretty stirred up right now. We can start designating targets for you in thirty seconds. Go to Mission Package Alpha Seven, over.”

  Outlaw Four-Six was an AH-64A Apache, with a full load of missiles and a 30mm automatic cannon. The two crews set all the necessary switches for an automatic handoff from the ATHS. The OH-58D would play hide-and-seek around the rim of valley, designating targets with its laser while the AH-64 stood off at a safe distance firing missiles. The first missile was already in flight toward an unlucky T-72 when the voice of Lieutenant Colonel Martin, 4th Squadron commander, broke in on the squadron command net. All units of Outlaw and Nomad troops were ordered to abort their current missions and close as rapidly as possible on a new set of target coordinates some miles to the west. An ROK scout platoon had spotted the enemy river-crossing task force moving toward the northern bank of the Han.

  “This is going to be hairy. I wish we had the .50-cal,” said Olshanski.

  “This is what we get paid for,” Grayson replied grimly, punching the new coordinates into the navigation system. To reach the assembly area where the North Koreans were preparing to force a river crossing, the air cav squadron had to run a gauntlet of small-arms fire and shoulder-launched SA-18 missiles. (Actually they were North Korean copies of the Chinese copy of the Russian SA-18. They weren’t very reliable, but there were lots of them in the air.) Flying low and dodging constantly, Grayson reached the target area and saw long columns of boxy shapes waddling down toward the riverbank through the MMS FLIR system. There were PMP pontoon bridge sections, GSP tracked self-propelled ferries, and PTS-M tracked amphibious transporters. The North Koreans had acquired (at bargain-basement prices) some of the vast menagerie of river-crossing equipment the Soviets had designed to cross the Elbe, the Rhine, the Moselle, and the Meuse (see Red Storm Rising to recap this Cold War scenario). Rugged and cleverly engineered, these vehicles had come a long way to cross this river. Grayson intended to make sure their journey had been in vain.

  There was a low ridge a hundred yards back from the south bank of the river. Grayson and a few other OH-58Ds swung in behind the ridge and began popping up to designate targets for the Apaches, which found safe firing positions a mile or two further back. The North Koreans had dug in a few batteries of ZU-23 twin 23mm anti-aircraft guns to cover the crossing site. These were first-priority targets for the Hellfire missiles. Then the columns of bridging equipment and truckloads of assault boats were raked with missiles, creating a huge smoking, burning traffic jam for almost a mile back from the river. The Apaches now closed in to complete the destruction with salvoes of unguided 2.75”/70mm rockets and bursts of 30mm cannon fire.

  Off to her left, Grayson saw a flash and a puff of dark smoke. A North Korean SA-18 struck Outlaw Four-Three squarely on the tail boom, shredding the tail rotor. The Apache spun out of control toward the frozen ground on the enemy side of the river. Fortunately, the helicopter was flying low enough that the crash looked survivable. Grayson clicked the radio transmitter to the Squadron net frequency. “This is Nomad Two-Seven. Cover me, I’m going in to pick them up, over,” she said.

  A live American helicopter crew was a prize worth taking risks for. Senior Sergeant Kim Cho-buk was a twice-decorated Hero of Socialist Struggle, a First Class Heavy Machine Gun Marksman, and acting commander of an armored reconnaissance platoon (after the Lieutenant’s BRDM scout vehicle had taken a Hellfire missile through the roof that morning). The gunsight of his one-man turret was crude; but at this range, it took little marksmanship to pour a stream of bullets into the falling Apache as it slammed into the riverbank. Kim kicked his driver between the shoulder blades and screamed at him to close in. The other BRDM in the platoon followed a hundred meters behind; and some infantry squads nearby rose from their foxholes and started running toward the downed aircraft (probably hoping the Americans had some MREs on board).

  Jennifer saw two enemy scout vehicles and some running dismounts break out of cover and head toward the crash site. She saw a stream of tracers as the lead scout vehicle fired. She barely noticed as Olshanski nailed the BRDM with their last Hellfire. She was concentrating on keeping a low stable hover as close as possible to the wreck, where two dazed and bleeding aviators were struggling out of their harnesses.

  Outlaw Four-One, another Apache, rolled in a few hundred meters behind Grayson. As it opened up with the 30mm cannon, the ragged line of North Korean infantry fell back, and the scout vehicle popped smoke grenades and slammed into reverse gear.

  The crash survivors staggered over to the hovering OH-58D and hooked their harnesses onto the landing skids. It looked crazy but it was a standard operating procedure for combat rescue. As she lifted off with two windblown but very grateful warrant officers dangling securely from the skids, Jennifer still wished she had a .50-cal on board.

  The Punwon-ni sector of the river line held, but that night the North Koreans secured a bridgehead further downstream, got a mechanized corps across, and pushed south to cut the expressway at Pangyo-ri, between Seoul and Suwon. If they could take Suwon and drive through to the west coast, the Seoul-Inchon metropolitan area would be cut off, with 40% of the nation’s people and most of its economic might.

  Friday, February 13th, 1997, 0630 Hours

  Aero scouts and ground-based recon units carefully pinpointed the North Korean artillery positions and command posts of the enemy divisions converging on Suwon. Just before dawn, three battalions of MLRS deployed back in Taejon fired a salvo of ATACMS. As the warheads detonated high above the battlefield, they rained cluster munitions over an area of several square miles. Virtually the only survivors were inside armored vehicles or dug in underground. The morning fog still lingered in patches over the frozen rice paddies, when 2nd and 3rd Squadrons of the 3rd ACR broke out of the foothills and tore into the flank of the North Korean 678th Mechanized Rifle Division. The M2A2 Bradley cavalry vehicles found good hull-down firing positions behind the earth embankments that separated the fields. As they picked off enemy command vehicles (conspicuous because of their extra antennas) with long-range TOW missile shots, the tanks swept forward at high speed, firing on the move at anything that fired back. Anti-tank rounds from dug-in 122mm guns glanced off the M1A2 turrets and front plates as if they had been fired by peashooters.

  A few North Korean anti-tank teams popped out of concealed foxholes to fire after the tanks passed, disabling several M1A2s with wire-guided missile shots into the thinly armored rear engine compartment. Before they could get off a second shot, most of the missile teams were spotted and cut down by machine-gun fire from the Bradleys. Meanwhile, one tank in
each platoon had been fitted with a hastily improvised dozer blade to slice through the rice paddy embankments (the original supply having been lost in a freak SCUD hit back at Pusan). A welder in the regiment’s 43rd Engineer Company had seen pictures of the “hedgerow cutters” fitted to M4 Sherman tanks in Normandy during 1944, and had thought he could improve on the idea. His captain had taken the idea to Colonel Rodriguez, who had immediately approved it. Welders don’t usually get medals, but this one would. The tankers appreciated the immediate improvement in their cross-country mobility. There’s an old saying that “speed is armor.” Now they had both.

  Sunday, March 1st, 1997

  The battle at Pangyo-ri proved to be the high-water mark of the North Korean invasion. Over the next three weeks the front stabilized along a track running from Sokcho on the east coast, through the rubble of Ch‘unch’on, and down the northern Han River line to the outskirts of Seoul.

  After suffering 50% loss rates in furious air-to-air battles during the war’s first week, the North Korean Air Force kept its surviving MiGs in their rock tunnel shelters, conceding air superiority to the Americans. U.S. Air Force B- 1s by day, and F-117As (and even a handful of B-2s) by night, kept up a steady offensive against enemy supply lines, command centers, and artillery positions. Occasional SCUD missiles caused damage and civilian casualties in the South Korean cities, but they could not stem the constant flow of fresh units and supplies. More important, the balance of terror held-the Dear Leader was not crazy enough to unleash the nuclear, chemical, and biological holocaust that slept silently in his deepest underground bunkers.