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Thread: Moving the Rhod. Fire Force concept to Afghanistan?

  1. #181
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    Quote Originally Posted by davidbfpo View Post
    Infanteer,

    I posted the cited paragraph a week ago (Post No.136), I expect JMA has seen it, although it did not attract any direct response from others - especially as it came from a Marine on the ground.

    SWC debates on Afghanistan often follow a logic / pattern that puzzles me.
    Yes David I did read that and was both chewing on a response and waiting to see what others would say.

    I suppose the reason you posted that here was because of the following:

    I ask one of my brother Marines what he would do were he given this problem to solve under the historical constraints normally faced by Marine commanders fighting a small war. He replied immediately ; Q-cars, fire force and pseudo operators. Which is exactly the same thing I would say as would all of my friends who are in the business.
    I suggest that this sort of comment rises more from the frustration of current tactical approaches and RoEs in the area and the understanding of the need to adapt tactically to situation on the ground and not just carry out more of the same as in "mowing the grass" type sweep ops.

    Very seldom do "brute force and ignorance" operations work against a wily and agile foe. So I interpret that as a soldier crying out to be allowed to innovate tactically so as to defeat the Taliban (if that is the mission).

    The next point is that there is a perceived need to throw money at Nimroz Province (which is a very US approach). It will not take the locals long to figure out what intensity of Taliban activity is the right amount to loosen the purse strings to the maximum. And then when the money starts to flow the corruption will start in earnest and as such is almost self defeating.

    Then this one:

    The General sits on top of a massive military bureaucracy fighting a nasty insurgency with a coalition combat force and a dysfunctional host government. Despite this he has been able to turn his intent of getting off the FOB’s into action which is something his predecessors were unable or unwilling to do.
    ...and we shall all see how that works out in Helmand and especially in Sangin.

    Then we learn the mission for the Nimroz Province (supposedly):

    The Marines understand that the best way to accomplish reconstruction is not with large formations of combat troops and both the Governor and the other USG representatives who have surged in country with the Marines agree.
    Is reconstruction the mission?

    That brings me to a report of the Brit Paras activities in Nahr-e-Saraj (Helmand) from SkyTV last night. We were told that the Brit Paras (2 & 3) and 5 Scots cleared the Taliban out so that redevelopment can begin. A quote:

    “The Tor Ghai community has embraced the Afghan government and is keen to receive the benefits.”
    I'm sure they are and these "benefits" will come per kind favour of the US (and a little from the Brit) taxpayers. No battle for hearts and minds has been won, the locals have sold out to the highest bidder. This is a totally mercenary situation in Afghanistan... that (I must admit) is their culture.

    Then he states the obvious with this gem:

    We are spending billions of dollars we don’t have in order to accomplish a mission we can’t do because of self imposed constraints which do not reflect reality on the ground.
    Followed by a plug for the use of "contractors" as a cost effective means of defeating the Taliban (along the lines of Executive Outcomes and I suppose Blackwater - now called Xe Services). He's right... its not going to happen no matter how much cheaper it will be.

    I don't know how Free Range are operating there that they believe the Marines want to emulate them but I can assume that the Marines are frustrated at the constraints the RoEs place them under are long for the opportunity to innovate whether it is through the use of Q-cars, fire force and pseudo operators or something... anything else.

    Does anyone know how Free Range are operating there... and is what they are doing degrading the Taliban?

  2. #182
    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    Default FRI - small insight

    JMA,

    You asked:
    Does anyone know how Free Range are operating there... and is what they are doing degrading the Taliban?
    FRI do explain their non-military role in development work at the grass roots on their website, such as paying day labourers to clear ditches etc. Other schemes are under-way and are shown in articles. Funding appears to be a mixture of private, NGO and taxpayer funding.

    Degrading? From this armchair I'd say yes. I expect the FRI day rate is not as good as the Taliban pay during the fighting season. Nevertheless providing work and development can degrade the Taliban. In the blogsite there are odd mentions of how the locals watch over them and the work of other independents, notably an EOD civilian.
    davidbfpo

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    Quote Originally Posted by davidbfpo View Post
    JMA,

    You asked:

    FRI do explain their non-military role in development work at the grass roots on their website, such as paying day labourers to clear ditches etc. Other schemes are under-way and are shown in articles. Funding appears to be a mixture of private, NGO and taxpayer funding.

    Degrading? From this armchair I'd say yes. I expect the FRI day rate is not as good as the Taliban pay during the fighting season. Nevertheless providing work and development can degrade the Taliban. In the blogsite there are odd mentions of how the locals watch over them and the work of other independents, notably an EOD civilian.
    I asked that because of the following piece:

    Heavily armed internationals working in Nimroz Province will probably provoke a response by local Taliban. Lightly armed experienced international stability operations guys can work all over the province without provoking a response when they work with local shura’s, village elders and district government officials.
    Bringing in heavily armed internationals may upset the delicate balance in the province rather like the Brit arrival in Sangin in 2006 did.

    Then the contractors (like FRI) are obviously not upsetting any balance to the extent where the Taliban feel the need to jerk their chain.

    Is Nimroz a hornets nest about to be upset or is it a low intensity area that needs a final push to rid itself of the Taliban?

    My money is on the former.

  4. #184
    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    Default Nimroz Province

    IIRC in an earlier FRI post reference was made to a minimal Taliban presence in Nimroz Province, although some caution was needed when using private accommodation so as not to attract attention.

    One recent post was:http://freerangeinternational.com/blog/?p=3708 and another:http://freerangeinternational.com/blog/?p=3018
    davidbfpo

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    Default Securing and Holding Rural Terrain

    Published this morning in the Journal

    Securing and Holding Rural Terrain:
    Use of Pseudo Teams and Airmobile “Very-Light” Infantry Quick Reaction Forces in Rhodesia Counter-Insurgency Operations
    by Timothy Bax and Steven Hatfill
    Last edited by davidbfpo; 08-12-2011 at 03:54 PM. Reason: Copied here as suggestion applies in Afg.

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    Quote Originally Posted by MikeF View Post
    Published this morning in the Journal

    Securing and Holding Rural Terrain:
    Use of Pseudo Teams and Airmobile “Very-Light” Infantry Quick Reaction Forces in Rhodesia Counter-Insurgency Operations
    by Timothy Bax and Steven Hatfill
    This is a good document and reflects accurately the Fireforce concept of my personal experience.

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    An interesting article, if anything for the technical aspects. These pop-up once in a while - I have a MCG article explaining a similar approach taken by a Marine outfit in Iraq that apparently worked well. A few thoughts:

    1. The article needs references. The authors are pulling out percentages of kills/contact in various conflicts and make no reference to where this information came from. How do they know that the percentages are accurate? How was the data collected? I can put up any numbers I want and say they are facts, but this doesn't make them true.

    2. There is a bit of romanticism involved with the "Fireforce Concept" - let's get away from clumsy, slow patrols and have a fast-moving, roving squad that kills anything it catches. Sounds nice, but there is nothing that says "conventional COIN tactics" are any better or worse at killing insurgents; the authors don't make a case by throwing out figures with no primary sources. History certainly doesn't back this up, as Malaya isn't a communist country and Rhodesia can only be found in 30 year old atlases. To be fair, the authors do differentiate between the tactical aspects and the sociopolitical ones, but I still find it hard to take the "these are better tactics" argument at face value.

    3. That being said, I found the authors did make numerous excellent points. Number 1 is that the hardest thing is cut-off. We studied and practiced cut-off before our deployment, but the difficulty in reality is something else. Having 4 "G-Cars" with 4-man sticks sitting in a FOB or roaming around the AO to be plunked out after a TIC occurs is an awesome idea.

    4. The second really good point from the paper is the Pseudo-Teams as the primary method of locating insurgents. Indigineous irregular forces are the best at hunting bad-guys - the experience of the South Vietnamese PRUs is another example (and Mark Moyar's book gives the figures to back the claim). The two roadblocks in Afghanistan are the lack of a integrated efforts between the Afghan Forces (ANA, ANP, NDS) and the total barrier that exists between conventional and special operations forces. It's like two armies running two wars, and if this wasn't sorted out, the chances for blue on blue would be huge. Not saying this can't be sorted out in Afghanistan, but these two impediments need big-time political muscle to sort out if you want to employ pseudo-teams with a hunter-killer element such as a Fireforce.

    5. I read somewhere, and JMA can confirm this, that the Para-dak was employed because there wasn't enough birds for G-Cars. I think putting 4-5 sticks in a CH-47 would be more flexible than trying to parachute soldiers into Afghan grapefields.

    6. In a previous debate on this very thread, I questioned the appplicability of a "direct copy", such as the article suggests, of the Fireforce concept to Afghanistan. A very small, dense AO and the socio-political standing of the Afghan qala can make something like this tricky to pull off. As I said, going from Maiwand to Arghandab (covering most of the Kandahar insurgency) doesn't take long and Helmand has similar geography. Helicopters are likely to just see farmers unless they are already finding a TIC. Pursuit can be very difficult to almost impossible - I remember reading about the Koevoet (different bush war) bashing bushes and chasing spoor; you'd lose spoor pretty quickly as insurgents on the back of their bike make their way to a bazaar. As someone said previously, "context, context, context".

    7. How to take elements of this? I still think the best element is the very quick airmobile cutoff. I was kicking this around in my mind the other day. 7 Birds in a bigger FOB would work (2 x Kiowa (K-Car), 4 x Utility (G-Car), 1 x Cargo (Reserve)). The key would be having a system which allowed the G-Cars to respond to TICs and employ cut-off immediately and for the Reserve to deploy, perhaps with Afghan special police, to sweep compounds once it was determined that cut-off was affected.

    Anyways, my 2 cents.

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    Wed have to strip those Kiowa down to bare bones if we ever wanted to keep the commander aloft, and allow for a bit of armament. The power ratio of those things leave a lot to be desired, or so several pilots have told me here and there.

    I dig the prospect of using them for follow-ups in constricting and complex terrain, which limits both vehicular and even dismounted movement at time. With the right tactics, we could do some harm, but again (as you remind infanteer) it's about context and the cost of the squeeze.

    As you also mentioned, the cutoff is so difficult, and the insurgents often excel at ensuring their limited engagement window (in terms of both time and arc) is offset by well-planned egress routes that allow them to "gap it" either very quickly or efficiently as they blend into the background.
    Last edited by jcustis; 08-13-2011 at 05:37 AM.

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    In reply I will attempt to separate the historical Rhodesian Fire Force experience from any speculation on how or whether the concept could be adapted to Afghanistan or any other theatre.

    Quote Originally Posted by Infanteer View Post
    A few thoughts:
    1. The article needs references. The authors are pulling out percentages of kills/contact in various conflicts and make no reference to where this information came from. How do they know that the percentages are accurate? How was the data collected? I can put up any numbers I want and say they are facts, but this doesn't make them true.
    The country no longer exists, what documentation was left behind is probably lost, what was sent out of the country is spread out all over the show and what was taken out by individuals remains in their private hands and not in the main publicly shared.

    I have figures very similar from other sources (not published references) so effectively you are left with a take-it-or-leave-it option.

    The source of the Brit SAS figures from Malaya, I don't know, but seem to be unchallenged by those who were there or have access to the Brit archives (other questioning is ignored).

    The Rhodesian figures cited sound right to me and again have never been challenged by those in the know then (again speculative challenges are ignored). Perhaps for ease and simplicity Bax/Hatfill use the kill rate of the Jumbo Fire Force (more helicopters) as the overall average but then if they have access to the stats they could be correct. As I have it up to the end of 1976 the average kill rate was +70%. In 1977 it dropped (for a variety of reasons) to 50% or below and then from 1978 onwards with additional choppers (and other improvements) there was a steady climb up into the +80%.

    I can't think of a reason why anyone 60 years old and over would want to inflate this percentage 30 years after the fact. Can you?

    The data would have been available through the daily SITREPS issued from the various Bde/JOC/COMOPS sources which would include dare/time/place of contact, the originating call-sign, number of CTs contacted, Number of CTs killed/captured etc etc. I understand that a fair amount of this stuff is sitting in trunks in a military museum in the UK. (CT = communist terrorist)

    2. There is a bit of romanticism involved with the "Fireforce Concept" - let's get away from clumsy, slow patrols and have a fast-moving, roving squad that kills anything it catches. Sounds nice, but there is nothing that says "conventional COIN tactics" are any better or worse at killing insurgents; the authors don't make a case by throwing out figures with no primary sources. History certainly doesn't back this up, as Malaya isn't a communist country and Rhodesia can only be found in 30 year old atlases. To be fair, the authors do differentiate between the tactical aspects and the sociopolitical ones, but I still find it hard to take the "these are better tactics" argument at face value.
    How the Fire Force has been romanticised is that so few people outside a small group of Rhodesians (mainly RLI and Blue-jobs) understand what it was all about.

    The Fire Force worked in conjunction with other more 'conventional' ground forces. The FF responded in support of troops in contact (firefights/ambushes/attacks/etc) and also as a result of intel relating to a confirmed presence of a group of CTs when the FF was deployed to attack this group - on the basis of the (seemingly no old-fashioned) to close with and kill the enemy.

    The FF was a hugely successful tactical innovation of the Rhodesians which certainly had war winning potential (had it been correctly resourced from the early days and the government been able to fund the high cost (in comparison to normal infantry operations.))

    Look at what Bax/Hatfill list as FF objectives:

    Fire- Force Objectives
    A deployed Fire-Force has two principle objectives:
    To contain and eliminate terrorists by forcing them to retain weapons and fight, thus denying them opportunity to hide weapons, assume civilian disguise, and escape.
    To deny terrorists the protective advantages of cover by thick walls, rock formations, river banks and multiple points of dispersion. This is done via ground encirclement by aggressive troops and steep-angled, heavy caliber fire from the air.
    There are two secondary objectives:
    1. To actively display to local tribal clans the strength of Government forces and thereby counter claims to the contrary initiated by insurgents.
    2. To deter tribesmen from opting voluntarily to join the ranks of terrorists through visible successes and dead terrorist bodies.
    The first two are to deny the enemy the ability to use hit-and-run tactics as the reaction to any contact will be rapid (time dependent of flying time from base or a pre-positioning location (somewhere central to the operational area and/or close to where recce troops are deployed or other troops involved in ops likely to make contact with the enemy). Important then but limited to day light as choppers had no night flying capability (1979).

    The secondary objectives serve to off-set the collateral damage of a highly kinetic FF action where civilians were 'caught in the crossfire' and/or those civilians (contact men/scouts/guides/concubines/etc) who were deemed to be 'running with the CTs' got caught up in the contact.

    The socio-political stuff did not come into it... and such considerations do not diminish from the success of the FF concept (as a tactical innovation).

    3. That being said, I found the authors did make numerous excellent points. Number 1 is that the hardest thing is cut-off. We studied and practiced cut-off before our deployment, but the difficulty in reality is something else. Having 4 "G-Cars" with 4-man sticks sitting in a FOB or roaming around the AO to be plunked out after a TIC occurs is an awesome idea.
    In the early days of FF the CTs were less aware of the importance of carefully siting their locations of temporary bases etc. Once they wised up and realised that there should be a number of different escape routes the importance of having enough G-cars to immediately close those routes (as opposed to waiting for the second wave to be lifted-in 15 min plus later) became evident. They looked towards rocky areas with caves where they could hide and escape detection or if discovered it became a major exercise to winkle them out (looking back can't for the life of me think why we did not use flame-throwers).

    At ground level the appreciation of where to place cut-off groups (stop groups as we called them) is very difficult and almost impossible to deploy in time to contain the enemy within. On arrival overhead the FF commander took over and the call sign in contact normally marked its position then sat tight while the FF did the business. (This to prevent possible blue-on-blue incidents when troops unfamiliar with FF ops get involved) In addition there were always tracking teams on standby who could be flown in (not to do CSI type crap but) to get on the spoor ASAP. Follow up troops from the unit in whose area the contact took place could also be flown in and an aggressive follow-up (including leap-frogging trackers forward to cut for spoor) could be initiated by the local unit (and assisted by the FF for as long as they were in the area).

    4. The second really good point from the paper is the Pseudo-Teams as the primary method of locating insurgents. Indigineous irregular forces are the best at hunting bad-guys - the experience of the South Vietnamese PRUs is another example (and Mark Moyar's book gives the figures to back the claim). The two roadblocks in Afghanistan are the lack of a integrated efforts between the Afghan Forces (ANA, ANP, NDS) and the total barrier that exists between conventional and special operations forces. It's like two armies running two wars, and if this wasn't sorted out, the chances for blue on blue would be huge. Not saying this can't be sorted out in Afghanistan, but these two impediments need big-time political muscle to sort out if you want to employ pseudo-teams with a hunter-killer element such as a Fireforce.
    Use only same tribe/clan in any area (local knowledge is key) for that type of work. That's obvious.

    You are 100 % correct with the latter comments.

    One of the better Rhodesian FF Commanders who commanded a FF for fully the last three years of the war (on a six weeks on ops, two weeks R&R basis) has told me he believes that the FF was the end product of a philosophy that cut through the interservice rivalry, vested interests, convention, rank, petty rule books and personal agenda’s so prevalent in the behaviour of the modern military. I agree with him and believe that this aspect if not addressed would lead to the failure of any attempt to replicate a FF derivative anywhere else.

    5. I read somewhere, and JMA can confirm this, that the Para-dak was employed because there wasn't enough birds for G-Cars. I think putting 4-5 sticks in a CH-47 would be more flexible than trying to parachute soldiers into Afghan grapefields.
    Correct, paras were used because of a shortage of choppers and in an attempt to bring an additional 16-20 troops into the contact quicker than having to send G-cars back to fetch more or wait for the land-tail to catch up with the deployment.

    6. In a previous debate on this very thread, I questioned the appplicability of a "direct copy", such as the article suggests, of the Fireforce concept to Afghanistan. A very small, dense AO and the socio-political standing of the Afghan qala can make something like this tricky to pull off.
    I don't think anyone would suggest a direct copy as ground (terrain) and enemy are so different and there are many technological advances available today that were not available then.
    Last edited by JMA; 08-14-2011 at 11:04 AM.

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    Council Member Fuchs's Avatar
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    The whole thing differs considerably from the German approach in WW2 (Jagdkommandos).

    The Germans attempted to do this in addition to guarding specific sites such as railway bridges and city centres, escorting trains, raiding known partisan locations and checking on railway lines:
    # small teams (nowadays they would be called LRRP) patrolled in order to find partisans
    # large platoon-sized small units (ideally led by very autonomous, unorthodox, almost undisciplined junior officers) patrolled the country for days or weeks, trying to establish contact with partisans in some advantageous way.
    The small patrols would -if they found partisans- call for the large patrols as strike forces.

    This was only a description of how it was meant to be close the end of the war; the actual counter-partisan effort in the East was mostly crude, employing men unsuitable for front service and utterly under-resourced.


    The autonomous platoon-sized patrol evolved post-WW2 into a German-Austrian infantry tactic (Jagdkampf) for conventional warfare.

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    Quote Originally Posted by jcustis View Post
    Wed have to strip those Kiowa down to bare bones if we ever wanted to keep the commander aloft, and allow for a bit of armament. The power ratio of those things leave a lot to be desired, or so several pilots have told me here and there.
    Consider this. The Rhodesian gunship had its 20mm cannon sticking out the left hand side.



    The FF Commander (FFC) sat on the seat forward of the cannon facing the port side. In a left hand orbit both the FFC and the gunner could observe the target area at all times (as could the pilot).

    Now with the 'modern' choppers weapons firing forwards it would put the commander out of the game when a target was being engaged. Perhaps a modern FF version would place the FFC in a separate chopper which has a good loiter time and maybe a small pod of rockets to be used to indicate a target to the gunships or other aircraft. Then the gunships would be role specific and remain overhead unless one at a time leaving the area to refuel/rearm.

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    Default G-cars

    The yanks have got it sorted already.



    MH-6j / AH-6j Little Bird Helicopter http://www.americanspecialops.com/images/soar/mh-6.jpg

    Well a wild comment without considering issues like lift capacity at altitude etc etc.

    It seems that a chopper able to land 4-men on a dime getting in and out quick into a small LZ is in the US system and being used for just that task.

    Seems good enough but I assume you need to dress for the weather as the chill factor sitting outside the chopper must be quite something.
    Last edited by JMA; 08-14-2011 at 07:52 PM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by JMA View Post
    I can't think of a reason why anyone 60 years old and over would want to inflate this percentage 30 years after the fact. Can you?
    I can think of a bevy of reasons. BH Liddell Hart frequently presented false or misconstrued historical data to back up his own belief on how things work. Perhaps these authors want to prove that their argument that "fireforce tactics are more effective than conventional COIN tactics".

    Perhaps not - I am in no way insinuating that they made the figures up or pulled them out of thin air; perhaps they are going with "what they know", figures that were commonly accepted as fact back during the war that have persisted until know. Other common myths like the "3:1" rule persist under the same logic.

    Fact is, nobody can say what it is because there is absolutely no reference at all to the Malayan or Rhodesian figures and the objective reader can't go off of the author's word only. There needs to be, at the very least, an explanation as too how such figures are derived or where they originated from.

    When it comes down to it, this is an interesting piece that I enjoyed but it can only be taken as a matter of historical opinion rather than a concrete historical examination of tactics.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Infanteer View Post
    I can think of a bevy of reasons. BH Liddell Hart frequently presented false or misconstrued historical data to back up his own belief on how things work. Perhaps these authors want to prove that their argument that "fireforce tactics are more effective than conventional COIN tactics".
    The difference is though that Liddel-Hart was allegedly doing it to enhance his own personal reputation. (Like his alleged prompting of German gen
    influenced by his writing)
    As the police would say there you have motive.

    Perhaps not - I am in no way insinuating that they made the figures up or pulled them out of thin air; perhaps they are going with "what they know", figures that were commonly accepted as fact back during the war that have persisted until know. Other common myths like the "3:1" rule persist under the same logic.
    For example I know that JRT Wood has stats from his time in RIC (Rhodesian Intelligence Corps) when he specifically studied Fire Force operations. I assume Bax has Selous Scouts stats to support his figures. So we are really at a take-it-or-leave-it situation.

    Fact is, nobody can say what it is because there is absolutely no reference at all to the Malayan or Rhodesian figures and the objective reader can't go off of the author's word only. There needs to be, at the very least, an explanation as too how such figures are derived or where they originated from.
    I will pass that on to the authors

    When it comes down to it, this is an interesting piece that I enjoyed but it can only be taken as a matter of historical opinion rather than a concrete historical examination of tactics.
    I suggest that the only aspect subject to query is the claim to the 80% kill rate (and then only because the source is not a published document). For the rest the history as written by Bax/Hatfill is accurate. You can take my word for that and I could probably get 100 odd people who served to sign an affidavit to that effect. Their recommendations for the application of the FF concept in today's wars is what is open to debate (not the history).

    What seems to be getting up your nose is the quote "fireforce tactics are more effective than conventional COIN tactics".

    This what they said:

    The conventional counter-insurgency tactics of foot patrols, ambushes, tracking, aerial reconnaissance and local interrogation/interdiction techniques have proven largely ineffective in locating and killing terrorists during past campaigns.
    and this:

    If the US Military is to become serious about winning the war on terror, it must abandon the shackles of past conventional tactics and become more adaptable at finding, engaging and killing an enemy that is ruthless, cunning, and fleet-footed.
    As to the first comment I agree fully (from my personal experience). The productivity/reward/results/whatever from the type of operations mentioned is low. This low productivity may have become an accepted way things are but perhaps if one sat down and calculated the number of man hours used to find and kill/capture an insurgent one would find oneself on agreement with Bax/Hatfill on this. The game changer of course is good real-time intel to act upon. What percentage of these type of ops are mounted upon hard real-time intel? What could we say here... that most are speculative and based on guess work and worked around how many call-signs are available to deploy that must be deployed rather than let them sit around the base until good intel pops up.

    So if a call-sign has a contact... eureka... you have found the insurgents. Now the trick is surely to do whatever you can to keep in contact with them so as to extract the maximum number of causalities. Now if there is a QRF (of some type) that can help you achieve this then surely you want to use them, yes? You need fresh troops and probably trackers to get right after them and keep the pressure on. The modern night imaging equipment allows all operations to continue through the night. Again more pressure.

    The idea is surely to make contact, keep contact and extract the maximum casualties in the process, yes? Helicopters (to move troops rapidly, as gunships and as an airborne command platform) can be useful in this process.

    As to the second comment it is up to the US military to respond to that.

    ...and from what I have heard these HVT hits are really very similar to a Fire Force action at night. They know where the bad guy is, the launch an airborne raid/attack against him/them... and they close with and kill him/them. Then they get into the aircraft and go home. Perhaps rather than try to adopt this from the 'bottom up' it is better to do like the Brits have done and attach a battalion (1 Para) to special forces and let them cut their teeth on easier targets and then expand the targets to any Taliban groups (not just HVT leadership) both day and night.
    Last edited by JMA; 08-15-2011 at 10:10 AM.

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    Default Time for hope?

    Just a thought on the Fire Force application in Afghanistan. What if someone is using the FF concept? Thankfully I hope that the media and others don't get the information.

    Of course any FF application will be given a PPT-friendly title and no mention made of it's origin. Especially as we might just be leaving soon!
    davidbfpo

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    Quote Originally Posted by davidbfpo View Post
    Just a thought on the Fire Force application in Afghanistan. What if someone is using the FF concept? Thankfully I hope that the media and others don't get the information.

    Of course any FF application will be given a PPT-friendly title and no mention made of it's origin. Especially as we might just be leaving soon!
    Judging from the tenor of your post do I detect that the Fire Force has a negative connotation from the past and its origin?

  17. #197
    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    Default FF negative factor?

    In reply to Mark's question:
    Judging from the tenor of your post do I detect that the Fire Force has a negative connotation from the past and its origin?
    It might, but my emphasis would be on the "inventor" claiming the new application is all their own work! A historical concept and practice updated for the contemporary tactical situation Sir.
    davidbfpo

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