Plan A.
It is better to destroy submarines in port. That is much easier than trying to find them when they're in the sea...
Plan B.
Ya always have to have a plan B at a minimum. If major strategic raids are deemed not acceptable and / or if Pakistan does not move more rapidly, then:
Do not go to the cities; Afghans are essentially and psychologically a rural people.
Do not try to force a 'nation.' Let the Afghans sort it out but give them a sensible time limit -- say three years -- to come up with what they want to do and who is included in the governmental entities. That entails accepting their solution and not trying to get what we want (and quite probably do not need).
Continue to equip (sensibly but more rapidly) Afghan forces, continue the training regimen about as it is.
Decrease wheeled traffic by using deploying, contracting * and using more aircraft (including armed helicopters and A-10s).
Do not deploy more troops, remove some that are there. Train and equip those that are to stay to operate in platoon and even squad ** packets with nearby and rapidly available CAS plus rapid reinforcing Co size elements on strip alert. There must be interoperation with Afghan forces for several reasons to include their lead frequently but it will also be desirable in certain areas for us to have the sole responsibility for the AOR due to demographic / tribal constraints on the Afghan forces.
Lastly and more importantly -- pay more for development workers and Afghan national forces (and tribal or other 'militias') than the opposition is paying. For over seven years only SF and the CIA have had enough sense to do that.
If we're serious about fixing it, we can train up a force, Army GPF, Marines, SOCOM immaterial or combined (with a single chain of command). The air effort can rotate, it does not need the continuity and local knowledge required for the ground effort. Tell the ground force they'll train hard for almost a year then serve three years in Afghanistan or until we leave sensibly whichever is first -- and they'll not deploy again for a minimum of five years. You wouldn't get a whole lot of volunteers but you'd get enough. You'd have to pay them well but that would be cheaper than what we're now doing. Yeah, I know...
The personnel pogues and TJAG said what?
* developing and using local capability in the process.
** Yes, that can be done IF the troops are well trained and carry sensible loads. Yes, that means no Armor. Yes. I know we won't do that -- but he asked...
Being prudent, I also have a Plan C -- whatever the Think Tank crowd du jour gens up.
All the foregoing, BTW and smileys not withstanding is a totally serious and considered answer to the question.
Any option selected must consider that 'clear and hold' is the best operational technique (it is not a strategy) but that neither NATO nor we can provide enough troops to do that; that Afghanistan cannot afford an Army large enough to do that and that the time to even approach getting the numbers to apply that technique is probably in excess of ten years; that even if Afghanistan could train and deploy an adequate number of troops to use that technique they would merely be training future insurgents as they had to release large numbers of said troops due to an inability to pay them.
That's a big sentence. It's a big problem. Realism bites...
Bookmarks