Fire with Fire

[Fuchs]

The keywords for the trees is "Osmosis".

[jcustis]

It is essentially an optical illusion. What they have done is build an ad hoc da of sorts across the Helmand River. It is more like a gate of sorts, built of earthern and wood materials which cause the water to "stack up" behind the constriction and raise the level of the water. This allows them to push water into canal inlets that wouldnormally only receive water during the months when the river is high.

The Helmand is one of the few rivers in the world that simply dissipate into the desert.

[slapout9]

It is essentially an optical illusion. What they have done is build an ad hoc da of sorts across the Helmand River. It is more like a gate of sorts, built of earthern and wood materials which cause the water to "stack up" behind the constriction and raise the level of the water. This allows them to push water into canal inlets that wouldnormally only receive water during the months when the river is high.

The Helmand is one of the few rivers in the world that simply dissipate into the desert.

Might be those Taliban Monkeys up to no good.
http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...207#post103207

[carl]

IVIaedhros:

As IntelTrooper suggested, this sounds an awful lot like the Mobile (Roving?) Combined Action Platoons from Vietnam, which is good.

I don't if I can express this question clearly, but I'll try. How much of an emphasis would your proposed unit put on pursuit? And if they were going to pursue for more than a few hours, how would they lighten their load? Body armor or no? etc.

There is a long thread about lightening the load.

[IVIaedhros]

IVIaedhros:

As IntelTrooper suggested, this sounds an awful lot like the Mobile (Roving?) Combined Action Platoons from Vietnam, which is good.

I don't if I can express this question clearly, but I'll try. How much of an emphasis would your proposed unit put on pursuit? And if they were going to pursue for more than a few hours, how would they lighten their load? Body armor or no? etc.

There is a long thread about lightening the load.

Sorry this took so long to get back to. I've been rather distracted lately with getting fat and buying obscene amounts of gear for Ranger School *sighs*.

If I had to say anything, I would say there would be a greater emphasis on pursuit simply because you're going to be more mobile and because you'd have less opportunity to use fire support. I don't think the emphasis would change much, since so far as I can tell, pursuit ATM is largely based on the situation and the commander: if they think they can successfully pursue, then they do so. Ambush, would still be the primary form of attack and if the ambush goes well, there shouldn't be anything left worth pursuing.

I haven't read the load thread yet (will definitely check it out). The two main ways that the load is lightened and therefor pursuit capability increased is through removing the standard protective equipment and relying more upon caches and such, thus less sustainment required.

[SJPONeill]

Agree re shedding protection as a means of enhancing mobility - the other area in which weight savings could be made is in shucking a good amount of the technology we rely on, same weight directly through having less to carry and indirectly in reducing the log burden on supplying the batteries etc for these systems. BUT like shedding protection, the key would be in determining the balance where less actually stops being more and starts to be really less in terms of overall capability and effectiveness.

Caching doesn't so much reduce the log burden as shift it elsewhere - someone still has to plant the caches, periodically check and maintain them and also ensure that the pursued adversary runs to where caches are...