Cole, while interesting...
"It's not related to aviation and IEDs but the Israelis used to drag fences behind their patrolling jeeps to leave a unique pattern in the ground so anyone crossing it would leave footprints. "
the Russians found that the Afghan fighters would bury mines in the road and then 're-print' the tracks of the vehicles that had previously passed, completely disguising the location of the mine.
Following in the tracks of the previous vehicle, if not immediately afterward, is not a sound technique. There are even mines that wait for the second vehicle to pass before exploding, IOT defeat overpressure mine clearing.
Unless we had a troop and sensor density that would preclude people from emplacing IEDs in anything other than a very hasty manner, we can always expect to find more of these weapons. And it still does nothing to defeat the individual from wanting to employ them.
Tankersteve
Heh. You're neither a scout or a cavalryman...
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Originally Posted by
reed11b
That is called a LRS team, and the Army has tried to neuter and eliminate us since our creation. Now we are in BfSBs were we do what?
You're absolutely right and so is Firn:
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Large parts of Afghanistan should be almost ideal country for LRS. A good location and good spotting scopes should enable you to detect a human from as far as 20+ km...
Unfortunately, both your points are moot due to a combination of turf battles (Branch vs branch for the BfSB + USSF vs Big Army for the LRS mission), mediocre to poor training and extreme risk aversion.
Use of LRS has been severely constrained in the current operating environment by all three. There have been some notable successes but few Cdrs seem willing to take the nominal risk...
I'm unsure that's a fair assessment.
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Originally Posted by
zealot66
...I cant help but think that in 10-20 years, people are going to be studying the question of losses due to the IED and mistakes overzealous, hardcharging glory hounds ran their men into bombs instead of methodical painstaking recon and more ways to lower the body count.
In fact, I'm quite sure it is incorrect. The painstaking recon you suggest is possible and might lower the casualty count a bit -- it equally as well might not lower it. However, that 'painstaking' equals 'time' -- and time is sometimes in short supply. Mission demands quite often require efforts that are inimical to security. The History books rarely address that factor well because most of the historians don't understand it . Not to mention that soldiers are more likely to be lost by hesitant over caution than they are by aggressive maneuver.
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Booby traps in vietnam caused a ton of casualties...
Booby traps? Weren't that many, particularly after 1965. There were some but there were also a far larger number of what we today call IEDs.
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but I see that in a different light of the jungle vs more open terrain.
Jungle versus open is more than countered by short distances versus significant distance. Afghanistan is four times the size of South Viet Nam with twice the population -- and there were over 1.5M allied troops in that country at the peak. Afghanistan has less than a fourth as many Coaliton troops to cover that four times larger nation. My math skills were never good and are now quite rusty but I believe that's an exponential difference. Exponential or not, it is quite significant.
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Instead of trying more soldiering skills and intelligence, it seems that America just tries to build bigger more expensive vehicles.
Thank an ignorant news media and a venal Congress for that. The terrible thing that is an MRAP was reluctantly purchased by the Armed Forces at Congress' insistence. You can also thank that Congress for underfunding training (big hardware projects mean more jobs and more votes than does training).
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Like I said, it just aches to hear of another casualty due to IED. Didnt even get a chance to fire at the enemy.
Cannot understand why that aches. Nor am I sure that those casualties would feel a bit better if they did have a chance to fire, I don't think that makes much difference. Look at the bright side, the good news is that far fewer are dying in these wars than was true in the past (LINK)...
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I know its a painful reality of controlling the AO to be mobile and presence on the ground but There has to be an answer.
There is an answer and lacking that technique, you're doomed to have mines and IEDs planted -- kill everything that moves near your routes. I doubt you or most Americans will go for that. Even I think that's a bit far...
Life isn't easy. Bad choices can ruin your day...
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Originally Posted by
zealot66
. I think we are trying to fight a gentlemans war with barbarians. They do not honor the geneva convention or care about collateral damage. I think the only time this country truly won a war was in ww 2 when we literally took care of the problem. You can never win a PC war. The enemy laughs and shrugs and sees weakness in what we call moral strength.
You are of course correct in all aspects. Unfortunately, World War II was the last war we fought without adoptingng those kinds of 'civilized' constraints -- as if war could ever be civilized...
While you and I may agree on that and many others also agree, there are a number of people in this country who do not agree that Thomas Jonathan Jackson was correct as quoted by G.F.R. Henderson "War means fighting. The business of the soldier is to fight. Armies are not called out to dig trenches, to live in camps, but to find the enemy and strike him; to invade his country, and do him all possible damage in the shortest possible time. This will involve great destruction of life and property while it lasts; but such a war will of necessity be of brief continuance, and so would be an economy of life and property in the end (emphasis added / kw)."
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... Well, the Seal got enraged one night and lit the village up. There was no more problem.
Things like that happened very frequently in WW II, frequently in Korea and occasionally in Viet Nam. They are and will be exceedingly rare today.
That declining occurrence rate is a function of the type of war, increasing gentrification (word of choice for a Family Board...), sadly increasing lawyerly involvement and vastly improved communication and reportage, the so-called 'information warfare' factor. It will only continue to decrease in acceptance as an acceptable response -- until the next existential war; then the gloves will again come off. Moral of that is to avoid thses little wars, they cost more than they're worth.
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...I think one of the chief errors of the bush administration was prostrating ourselves to an imaginary border in pakistan. Who the hell is pakistan ? Who the hell were the Cambodes or Pathet Lao? track your prey, follow its spoor and kill it.
The Bush mistake was in staying to 'fix' Afghanistan and Iraq. We should've slammed in hard and rapidly, removed the problem children and left, throwing money at the UN ion the way out and yelling "Cleanup on Aisle three..."
As for borders, not that easy to ignore IF you're trying to wage 'legitimate' war -- and the Politicians who try to wage war on the cheap, ignoring Stonewall, have to use the legitimate ploy...
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Hopefully the Taliban holds up in Helmand and wants to get their martyrdom in the spring. And we should disregard a two faced Pakistan and track down every insurgent in the valley and get rid of them. There should be no safe place. It sucked the blood from us in Vietnam and its doing it now too.
In both cases, the tactical and operational environments suffer from achingly poor strategic choices. Sadly, we cannot now disregard Pakistan. Nor can we change the rules at this point. We just have to suck it up and hopefully, resolve not to try this foolishness -- stupidity, really -- again. :mad:
Taliban Claims Undetectable "Omar" IEDs in AFG
Mods - if there's someplace better for this, feel free to nudge it.
This, from IRN media:
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The Taliban in Afghanistan have built a new generation of improvised explosive devices which is not detectable, a Taliban statement has said.
The new IEDs, called "Omar", have been made by the Taliban technical experts inside Afghanistan and cost only $85 each, the statement, released on Friday, said.
According to the Taliban statement the new IEDs are not detectable by special mine-detector machines used by foreign forces based in the country.
Taliban said they have made the new remote-controlled IEDs after the US and NATO forces entered into Afghanistan special modern devices that are able to detect and neutralize ordinary IEDs made by the Taliban.
The Taliban say the new-generation IEDs have proved to be effective.
The report comes as the United States promised on Friday to provide armored vehicles, ground penetrating radar and other equipment to NATO allies to help protect their troops in Afghanistan from increasingly deadly roadside bombs ....
In the same reliability neighbourhood as IRN media, here's the Taliban's statement on that one (PDF at non-terrorist site - Scribd.com - but in Pashto).
Michael Yon, on a related track:
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Am told the enemy has started using IEDs that use no metal. As explained to me by an excellent source, when you step on the bomb, it causes two liquids to mix which then explode.
From WW I Italian box mines to
the Russian PMD series to the Schü to the VC models...:rolleyes:
A little behind the power curve
In addition to WWII's wooden mines, the use of similar so-called "Omar" IEDs by drug cartels has been in Colombia for almost 30 years !
We've got mechanical mine clearance equipment all over the world, but yet can get a few vehicles to Afghanistan ?
It's proven that these vehicles improve agriculture too - turning 25 inches of soil with each pass :cool: