Quote Originally Posted by Cavguy View Post
Not ENTIRELY true. I know we began working it when they first appeared in '03. IEDs are immensely hard to find. We did counter several rounds of IEDs successfully - Remote controlled morphed to command wire morphed to pressure plate morphed to EFP. Each time they became harder to effectively counter.
It needs to be accepted that the TB using IEDs set the pace of the war and maintained the initiative. Of course you continue to play catch-up if you insist on driving down the same roads and walking down the same routes. The IED has become to modern insurgents what the AK-47 meant to those in the 60s and 70s.

It seems that only the targeting of HVTs by special forces kept the TB unbalanced if at all.

That said, our COIN understanding didn't evolve at the same rate as our counter-IED ability. We could defeat the device but not prevent exponentially more from being placed until we changed our methods.
That is a terrible indictment of the inability of forces on the ground to adapt to local war circumstances. But that said when foot patrols became nothing more than IED sweeps at 1.5km per day then there is/was little time for anything else.

Perhaps. I haven't served in Afghanistan (yet) but will let you know next summer. I know the unit I am replacing actually allows its soldiers to ride along in the back of Afghan Police Pickup trucks on patrol. Command risk acceptance is highly, highly chain of command driven. Additionally, the unit I will be replacing does a very high amount of dismounted patrols despite being a Stryker element. As will all war accounts, MAJ Waltz (with whom I only partially disagree overall), it reflects his experience in one place at one time, and not the larger picture.
Going in blind? I raise the not so insignificant matter of operational continuity (once again).

Secondly, as far as armoured units are concerned. They should only be deployed in their role. If there is no armoured role then leave them at home, or convert them to infantry or disband them.

Damn! We never thought of that!
Maybe someone thought of using helicopters but quite obviously that didn't compute into action. Brit commanders still complain that the shortage of helicopter lift restricts them tactically.

Lets see how much of a joke you see the helicopter shortage issue as when you start losing troops unnecessarily.

Would be nice if we actually had enough helicopters. Unfortunately we don't, and won't until Iraq is finished. Iraq sucked down most of the army's Aviation asset. Until 2009-10, Iraq consumed 80% of the U.S. Army's combat forces of all kinds, while Afghanistan remained a secondary effort. We are only seeing change now.
Sorry I don't buy that. You owe it to your men to insist that you get the right tools to do the job. You should be prepared to walk if they don't.

I don't think so. He is right we need to engage the populace. The as Wilf says above, the vehicles are not the problem. The leadership in such cases is.

In any Army of 400,000 you're going to get a diversity of outcomes. 25% of your commanders will be brilliant and aggressive. 50% will do mediocre or well. and the bottom 25% will not get it or do poorly. In the aggregate, we're doing much, much better in the the tactics department. Afghanistan is finally getting the Army's full attention, and we are seeing marked improvements in performance as a result.

My BLUF is that anytime someone chimes in "all we need to do" or "if just" my BS flag goes up. Most of it has been tried. There are real constraints in the real world - equipment, time, resources, etc. that constrain the optimal solution and walks us to the possible. As resources have been added to Afghanistan you are seeing this uptick.

Ultimately, even if we had the best tactics in the world it really matters little because our strategy is wholly unrealistic. Getting exercised over tactical innovations (which will soon be countered) as "the solution" is silly. People are treating the addition of 14 tanks as some sort of strategic shift? Really? It's a tactical answer to a tactical problem in one region where the tool fits. MAJ Waltz and others are overreacting to their introduction.
So as you say even though you don't know you are going to oppose him anyway. I'm not sure I follow the mindset.

There are many ways to improve field command in a war situation. The US has enough of its own experience of this from WW2 and Korea and probably elsewhere to remove any excuses that may be thrown up for Afghanistan.

Look beyond his few words about the introduction of a few tanks to what he was saying about MRAPs. I don't agree with allowing junior commanders to turn ops into a Toyota war. He too missed the point that there are other possibilities or troop movement and insertion than vehicles and on foot.