The following is from the London Times and concentrates on the three line Abrams tank and Bradley infantry fighting vehicle companies:

Lt Col Twitty had positioned himself at Objective Larry as the best place from which to control the battle. Instead, the commander known to his men as "the black John Wayne", had to co-ordinate three separate firefights while also taking his turn at the hatch of a Bradley infantry-fighting vehicle, blazing away at swarms of attackers with his 25mm cannon.

"They were coming at us like bees," said Lt Col Twitty, from South Carolina. "We would kill one lot and then more would appear. It was the most amazing thing."

At 11am, four hours into the fight, Lt Bowers warned that smoke from burning vehicles was making it impossible to see the attackers. "We can't identify anything until it's 300-400 metres away," he said over the radio. "By then they are right on top of us."

And

The troops at Objective Moe met equally fierce resistance. "We had four tanks, 10 Bradleys and seven personnel carriers," said First Sgt Jeff Moser, 35, from Detroit. "Just about every vehicle took three or four RPG hits. They were everywhere. They were even firing from the mosque.

"We fought all day and night and took out about 300 [enemy soldiers]. They would come on foot in waves, three at a time. It was almost comical. These guys would be trying to dodge 25mm high-explosive rounds from the Bradleys, which take out everything in a five-metre radius."

There was also a connection to the battles in Mogadishu:

Sgt Major "Blackhawk Bob" Gallagher, a former special forces solder and veteran of the infamous "Black Hawk Down" mission in Somalia, quickly lived up to his other nickname, the "Metal Magnet". An RPG exploded nearby, causing a shrapnel wound to his ankle, to add to the collection begun in Mogadishu - bullet wounds in both arms and shrapnel in his back. Sgt Major Gallagher, 40, remained standing and carried on firing, ignoring the medics bandaging his legs.

Let's put this in perspective. An American service company was ambushed not once, but several times in on a road in close urban combat. It was pinned down in penny packets that were not mutually supported. They were operating under rules of engagement that required warning shots before engagement and the smoke from burning vehicles cut line of sight to 300-400 meters. When the smoke cleared, there were 300 dead Iraqi paramilitaries in front of the support company made up of mechanics, clerk-typists, staff officers & NCOs for two dead Americans.

Compare that to the performance of conscript Russian armored forces in the first battle for Grozney in Chechnya where a Russian Motorized Rifle Regiment was wiped out with 95% of its 150 armored vehicles destroyed.

Or to the results of "Blackhawk Down" in Mogadishu where 18 American Special Forces died at the hands of the Somali Aideed clan.

The difference was the heavy crew served weapons, particularly the .50 caliber machine guns, on the trucks and M113 tracked vehicles, on-call artillery and the extra ammunition vehicles could carry compared to what the Rangers and Special Forces could carry on their backs. While the Special Forces were much better trained in close combat than the 3-15th's Support Company, they just did not have enough sustained crew served weapon firepower and mobility to break contact like the the 3-15th did.

Firepower kills. If our Special Forces in Mogadishu had the AC-130 gunship support the local commander had asked for and was denied by then Secretary of Defense Les Aspin, many of those 18 dead Special Forces operators would be alive today.

One last note, The US Army's Stryker LAV's would not have survived in this fire fight that the lead mechanized company in 3rd Battalion 15th Infantry did. Bradley's and Abrams are much more heavily armored and their tracks and those of the M113 personel carriers are impervious to small arms fire that would tear apart a Stryker's "run flat" tires.