Good risk aversion is making your forces unpredictable.
After a fight, if your counts are up and you have time and you have hot shots on the beat, and you have support, it may be a good idea to let them persue the last standing.
Proximity is not an issue.
Mix it up a little and you will find much more deterrence.
Good Lord, we've even got Field Manual 100-14, Risk Management, to guide us in our decision-making process. If we had had that manual 60 years ago this week when the North Koreans crossed the 38th Parallel I wonder whether Harry Truman would have done an assessment before we got involved.
Clarification
Whoops, it was on 25 June 1950, not 25 July of that year, when the Korean War began. Oh well, when I was in the artillery they taught us to run out of the FDC shouting, "Stop those rounds" when we realized we'd made a mistake.Originally Posted by Pete
There is one sure way to close with and destroy the enemy...
...by fire and maneuver. That way is through ensuring you put him on the horns of a dilemma. Call it using combined arms to "fix" him, but the result is the same. You force him to make a choice. Often it is a choice between staying and dying under the effects of HE (40mm, 60mm, 120mm, JDAM, etc.), or fleeing and facing the effects of effective and accurate direct fires.
Take away one ingredient of that recipe, and you cannot maneuver effectively, in the Afghanistan context. There is too much deadspace and terrain (to include the human terrain) that allows the enemy to move along after contact is broken.
Now, this business of close combat also involves the task of deciding if you believe it is important enough to send a troop through the door of a dark, musty mud hut, when you can exercise tactical patience, sit back, and call those knuckleheads out to you because you have them surrounded.
I've used the point made by a former Ranger on another board here before. There is nothing that important, besides an American captive, that justifies assaulting a hut/building over here. Nothing at all.
Intersting topic having done a lot of research on Fairbairn, Sykes, Biddle and others. Thank you.
I watched a documentary on Second World War wartime cameramen, and from memory, the only film taken by US Cameramen of an enemy soldier in combat was at Tarawa. The Japnese soldier darted past the an open doorway and turned his face towards the cameraman by instinct perhaps. I did some training with the police for it when in the military, but have never done real life CQB. Police forces understandably see more of it than the military, even perhaps including Afghanistan, as that is the nature of the job.
I have seen a clip that I think you are talking about. On Tarawa...but it was a small group for two-three Japanese soldiers dashing past a blockhouse, and fired upon by a group of Marines who appeared to miss.
"close enough to blow their last breaths in your face"
In May 2004, approximately 20 British troops in Basra were ambushed and forced out of their vehicles by about 100 Shiite militia fighters. When ammunition ran low, the British troops fixed bayonets and charged the enemy. About 20 militiamen were killed in the assault without any British deaths.
https://www.us.army.mil/suite/collab...?doid=14903470
(requires AKO login)
The attack was sudden and unexpected. Patrolling a notoriously dangerous area of Afghanistan, Bradley Malone and his fellow Royal Marines were caught in a fierce ambush by insurgents.
But, in a remarkable show of calm under extreme pressure, Corporal Malone led his unit in a devastating counter-attack that pitched his men into a close- combat assault.
He ordered his men to fix bayonets, and they charged their attackers in a determined, courageous onslaught that brought them into eye-to-eye contact with the Taleban. In the face of such heroism, the enemy broke and fled for their lives.
http://www.hmforces.co.uk/news/artic...-bravery-award
October 2008 : Lieutenant James 'Jim' Adamson, 24, then a platoon commander, led a bayonet charge against enemy forces that saved the lives of fellow troops while on tour in Afghanistan.
http://news.stv.tv/scotland/122673-s...nst-the-enemy/
Jus' sayin'.
A scrimmage in a Border Station
A canter down some dark defile
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail
http://i.imgur.com/IPT1uLH.jpg
WW2 close quarter enemy film
Thanks you. I rememeber it wasn't jungle and one was running with his left hand holding the rifle along him.
Agree mostly. However, I believe it is better/safer/more advantageous to push him over his emotional tipping point and get him to withdraw/flee where he can become food for gunships and troops deployed in static cut-off positions. Having to winkle out enemy remnants who have decided to fight to the death can become hugely stressful and downright dangerous.
We are back to that old concept (from where I come from) where you find them, encircle them, flush them, pursue them and then kill them.
Yes, the Afghanistan context. You got to do what you have to to prevent them from making a clean break. How you do it there depends on a number of factors.Take away one ingredient of that recipe, and you cannot maneuver effectively, in the Afghanistan context. There is too much deadspace and terrain (to include the human terrain) that allows the enemy to move along after contact is broken.
I suppose this is an example of how warfare in Afghanistan is of a limited nature?Now, this business of close combat also involves the task of deciding if you believe it is important enough to send a troop through the door of a dark, musty mud hut, when you can exercise tactical patience, sit back, and call those knuckleheads out to you because you have them surrounded.
I've used the point made by a former Ranger on another board here before. There is nothing that important, besides an American captive, that justifies assaulting a hut/building over here. Nothing at all.
You must help me here Jon. Why is it so dangerous for a troop to follow the explosion of a bunker bomb through a door of a "musty old hut"? I would suggest that the biggest risk in so doing is that the building may collapse on him.
(Note: As I think I have stated somewhere here before why don't you fly in a flamethrower team when faced with this situation? Do you still have them somewhere? Man we could have done with those things in the cave situations we faced.)
Even if you do one or two rooms as an example eventually some troop is going to have to go into each room to ensure that everyone who was in there has in fact surrendered, yes?
Further we note that the Taliban are pretty smart at adapting their tactics to exploit the ROE and other restrictions ISAF self impose. They want to keep civvies around them knowing that ISAF don't want to add to the civvie body count. They send kids to do things knowing that they either won't be shot or will have the critical advantage when facing ISAF forces (who correctly) would not knowingly kill a child. Now can we add hiding out in huts knowing that troops will not ordinarily go in after them?
Where everyone comes from, or should - FIND, FIX, STRIKE, EXPLOIT. - Core Functions. Explicitly written down by Ferdinand Foch in about 1911, as a guide to campaign planning, but actually applicable at all levels.
IMO, core functions are the most under used and misunderstood conceptual tool for tactics ever to exist.
Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"
- The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
- If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition
I'm not sure I follow the terminology here. What does "if your counts are up" mean?
Why allow them to break contact and melt away (only to attack you another day)?
So proximity is an issue. One should strive to maintain contact and pursue the enemy killing as many as you can along the way. After all that is why you are there, yes?
The support and reserves should come from a QRF and be led by tenacious officers who will not just give up the chase so that the troops can return to base for a hot meal and a cold drink.
Why you should aggressively seek to maximise the kill rate per contact is to do what you should be doing anyway and that is to close with and destroy the enemy and secondly to prevent the enemy from building up their combat experience.
What could be mixed up a little is not whether to pursue the enemy but variations on how that pursuit would take place.
Last edited by JMA; 07-22-2010 at 11:46 AM.
RE: Red Rat
Red Rat,
To clarify, by limited war I am refering to "a war whose objective is less than the total defeat of the enemy" and not a definition linked to resources applied. So I agree with your assesment that risk aversion plays a critical role in how today's conflict are being waged.
Red Rat:
Agree; as Clausewitz stated:I think that the character of any given conflict is the product of the societies involved in that conflict.
JMA:...the aims a beligerant adopts, and the resources he employs, must be governed by the particular characteristics of his own position; but they will also confrom to the spirit ofthe age and to its general character.
Again, we need to differentiate between war and warfare. A limited war will have an impact on military operations and actions at the tactical level. One needs to look no further than the current conflict.I am a little concerned that concepts like limited and unlimited war are being applied to company, platoon and section level activities. How does one limit the violence of a company or a platoon attack?
Once in contact with the enemy how does the type of warfare the politicians have imposed affect the tactical options available at company, platoon and section level?
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