Niger: a Sahel country bumping along (catch all)

[AdamG]

Additional details for those with WaPo access.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...ffb_story.html

From my "armchair" I would not reach such a conclusion.

Seriously? From what we can both read, it sounds far from a sunny day in paradise.

As previously reported, Coalition forces have been in western Niger for awhile and suffered no causalities while engaging ISIS&friends.

This is the sequence of high points;

1) Simple in-and-out mission gets an additional tasker, which means loitering in a bad neighborhood. The "three hour tour" song from Gilligan's Island should have started playing about then.

2) Reinforcing element doesn't show up for the extended mission, Lord knows why.

3) Local headman obviously stalling the group.

4) Complex double-tap ambush, implication is that they were up against competent opponents. See Threat Assessment, above - contradiction there.

5) Contact report sounds like it took an hour??to get out after first shot. Perhaps the primary comms were eliminated in the first RPG volley, but that's bad. Very bad.

6) French air assets hauled ass to provide cover, but targets not clearly marked. There's SOPs for signaling that a danger close strike would be appreciated.

Not pointing fingers but the overall situation sounds exactly like a Charlie Foxtrot*, with four US and five Nigerian KIA.

* Previous example of a Charlie Foxtrot
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kamdesh