Moving the Rhod. Fire Force concept to Afghanistan?

[JMA]

The Soviets lost approximately a helicopter a week in Afghanistan, although I'm not sure what proportion of those were MANPADs versus other things. There's some discussion of both hiliborne operations and mujahiddin counters in Lester Grau et al, The Bear Went Over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan and The Other Side of the Mountain: Mujahideen Tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War.

Worth a little in depth study I see what exactly went down there. Remember we are looking for strikes of low level flying and landing choppers.

As I remember it, the RLI also suffered its largest single losses of the war when a SAAF Puma was hit--by an RPG 7, I think--in Mozambique in 1979, during Ops Uric/Bootlace.

Well we don't know as it flew over a hitherto unknown camp and some of their mates on only found the crash site 30 years later. Probably just a likely small arms fire. 17 dead.

None of this, of course, is a reason not to use a modified Fire Force technique in Afghanistan. However, as several have pointed out, it is important to identify how conditions may differ there from southern Africa (or, for that matter, Vietnam).

Analyse, this is what soldiers do. What's with the terrain.: no real problem if you look at how it benefits them in terms of shooting at aircraft and with what. Won't take long before a group of pilots and gunners figure up the best way to handle this. Handle this effectively in terms of the current ROE is another thing though.