My comments are those of a civilian who has no practical experience in this area beyond camping and chasing juvenile deliquents down the street after jumping out of a patrol car so I expect to get torn to pieces. But...

This problem has been around for a long time. Hoplites could never catch peltasts unless they wanted to get caught or made a big mistake. Peltasts generally couldn't hold against hoplites. You needed both. Maybe we are reaching that point again. Maybe we need to develop a corps of skirmishers of some kind who would have some chance of catching or keeping up with a Taliban running up a mountain.

I think no matter how fit a heavily armored trooper is, he isn't going to match a very lightly equipped man in moving about.

If I remember correctly, one of the things used to judge increased American success againt the VC/NVA was how many contacts were initiated by them against us vs. how many were initiated by us against them. This is probably being tracked in Afghanistan. If some units are going about less heavily burdened than others, might this not affect how many contacts they started and could that be compared to other units?

Lastly, I talked to a guy once who was in the South African Army when they used to run long patrols in Namibia and Angola. The troops were given very wide latitude in deciding what they did and didn't want to carry. Would this be an option for our troops?