Thank you for confirming my comment with British doctrine. It must be terribly conflicting to have been trained under it, quote it often and yet have to denigrate the nation that produced it.
That's an inane and inept add-on of yours. The source does matter. The difference in the effective range of 7.62x39 and 7.62x54 rounds can and does matter...The answer is again provided -- Moving from one point to another. Sometimes that's necessary, sometimes not. We usually cannot tell from our distance which is which. I have no problem saying it's possibly not smart or required on occasion -- you seem to have a problem acknowledging that mission dictates and METT-TC can occasionally force one to do things that are undesirable. You also discount the terrain of Afghanistan and try to equate with that in your locale. It's rather different....The question needs to be asked again what are the troops doing out in the open and exposed to someone with any weapon 900m away?I can't answer your question -- nor can you. We aren't there and cannot know whether there is a reason (whether sensible or not); you just wish to be negative -- you do that well if snidely...I appreciate it touches a nerve with you Ken but your responses don't address the issue. I ask again what do these patrols wish to find out there on the open ground they walk over?
The snide factor does indeed touch a nerve; mostly because it's counterproductive and cloaks your value as a commenter. It does you no favors. The rest of the rather ill informed comment, not at allThere you go again. "we" do NOT know -- you assume. You also apparently assume there are more gunships available and that they can respond to every Platoon sized patrol from over probably around 3,000 or so platoons involved, perhaps about a quarter of which may see some activity daily. Figure 20% of them may make a minor contact -- that's a minimum 150 or so actions a day in a nation twice as large as was Rhodesia. Plus maintenance and other stuff going on like escorting MedEvac and resupply birds. Not that many gunships.... If they were there to draw fire that a few Gunships would respond to then I can understand it. But then we know this is not the case.You do that a lot; mostly because you apparently deliberately choose to ask generic questions that cannot be answered for various reasons, most frequently a lack of situational context and / or knowledge. Old and tired debating technique, that. I will point out that the Western Forces and the Afghan government forces in the fight do not have sufficient personnel strength to adequately "picket the high ground" on a constant basis (as many have repeatedly told you). More pointedly, I'll also note that you've been provided a few pictures -- and Google has many more --of the terrain there and if you're foolish enough to think that 'picketing' the high ground on a ridge that is two miles away from a valley or Village one has been directed to patrol to and conduct a search is going to do much good, you have my sympathy.I asked this question before and now I ask it again: ... but will forget that under such circumstances the requirement is to picket the high ground).That's the theory...Then we got into the supposed need to get from point A to point B. And it turns out they wanted to have a chat with the civvies in the villages.I agree with the last portion, you're correct on that. On the first part, as on the rest of your comment to which this responds, you aren't "pursuing excellence," you're merely carping -- and doing that about a war you seem to choose to deliberately misunderstand and misrepresent. Sensible and knowledgeable suggestions can aid in the pursuit of excellence, obviously ill informed or deliberately elided and notably biased sneering comments will not. Your choice...Its called the pursuit of excellence Ken. Keep questioning and keep trying to improve. The competent will continue to learn and improve and the incompetents will continue to go like lambs to the slaughter.
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