Road-side bombs again. We need a secure perimeter for the supply roads
Road-side bombs again guys and it's an attack that works for the Taliban just because we haven't secured the few main highways we must use by building a secure perimeter around the road - barbed wire, guard posts, minefields - and thereby keeping the enemy far away from the road at all times.Bombs Kill 3 NATO Troops, 9 Afghans
By AMIR SHAH Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan April 30, 2013 (AP)
Roadside bomb attacks in Afghanistan killed three NATO service members and nine Afghans on Tuesday, officials said, clear evidence that the insurgents' annual spring offensive is underway.
The service members died in southern Afghanistan, the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan said in a brief statement that provided no other information.
In another attack in the south of the country, a roadside bomb in the Shah Wali Kot district of Kandahar province killed three civilians and wounded five, said Jawed Faisal, a spokesman for the provincial governor.
The Taliban and other insurgent groups make heavy use of roadside bombs. They are among the deadliest weapons in the Afghan war for civilians.
In the north, in Archi district in the province of Kunduz, a roadside bomb killed two people, including a local police commander who had been credited with reducing the number of insurgent attacks in his area, said Abdul Nazar, a local council member.
Commander Miran and his driver were killed and two other police officers were wounded when the car they were driving toward Kunduz City was destroyed by a bomb hidden on the road, said Nazar. Like many Afghans, Miran only used one name.
On Tuesday evening, a roadside bomb exploded in Uruzgan province in central Afghanistan, killing four civilians in a car and wounding two, said police spokesman Fareed Ayal.
Instead, our generals have for years stuck with the same old bad patrolling plan and so the enemy just watches the road and after one patrol has passed and before the next patrol arrives, the enemy times it correctly to sneak up to the road and lay their road-side bombs.
The enemy can sneak up to the road so easily because they don't have to cross a minefield, they don't have to penetrate barbed wire and there isn't guard posts with guards with machine guns watching over the land either side of the road 24/7, defending the approaches to the road the whole length of the road.
Then the next patrol or some other vehicle later on comes along the road and gets blown up by the road-side bomb we failed to stop the enemy planting in the first place.
Here's what my solution to create a secure perimeter for the supply roads might look like.
Secure supply route border defences plan diagram (described in full in posts #4, #5 & #6)
Can you see how that brings the road "inside the wire"? That's a plan that could work to keep the main highways safe to use.
Mine is not a plan for the small side-roads far away from the highways. We don't have to use these side-roads to supply our main bases. We should only have our main bases next to the main supply roads. We should not have isolated bases which are difficult to supply. We need to abandon those isolated bases in bandit territory and fight the enemy there using air-power, aerial bombing, drones, attack helicopters, airborne raids and so on. There's no need to drive to those out-of-the-way hideouts the enemy has.
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