Quote Originally Posted by Firn View Post
The key problem is that the fighting ability of the sperate squad may lack enough depth of manpower to survive a short and violent direct encounter. In Afghanistan the difficult terrain, the small manpower, the lack of helicopters, the burden of the infantry, the casuality awerness and the watchful eyes of the enemy and his supporters seem all to make the good coordination of a distributed operation difficult.

Firn
A platoon in a trap is simply a richer target than a squad in a trap.

DO went for very small teams - good for area observation, not so good for assault. A counter-ambush assault (instead of just a team in a position to chase the enemy away with firepower) would be necessary, so DO (as I understood it) would have gone too far in regard to the present problem (unless the distributed, not fixed teams unite quickly for a combined assault).

I would want the enemy on the run, not just attempt to shoot him into pieces. The latter is quite difficult.

A rout usually infects previously not discovered positions while aimed fire doesn't.


The key in the specific restrictions of AFG mountain terrain should be the adherence to a tactic known even by Xenophon: Don't march through valleys before you control the mountain tops around it.

The infantry needs to be fit and lightly loaded, so it can move along ridge lines and from top to top at least in the most dangerous area.

That's again one such point at which I doubt that heavy plate armour is a wise choice.


Oh, and most important: You shall not break contact against irregulars. Instead, you should press for their destruction once they drop their disguise and open fire. Such an aggressiveness might eradicate the small arms ambush problem in short notice.


The irregulars have the advantage of civilian disguise 99.999% of the time, but it should nevertheless be possible to defeat them without helicopter and CAS support once they drop their disguise.
More resources may be an answer to a problem, but it's no tactic. More resources is a primitive brute force approach. We assert that we're superior, so we should demonstrate it. That would improve our conventional deterrence and therefore our national security in general.