Crafty yes, but just as likely to be because the friendly forces are "switched off" or just plain dumb, yes?
Surely you must understand that if you reduce your use of roads by 70, 80, 90% then the rate based incidence of road based IEDs must reduce commensurately, yes?I find the claim of support helicopters to be a bit of a red herring. IEDs aren't necessarily confined to highways where Coalition vehicles move - a large percentage of IEDs I witnessed (first or second hand) targeted dismounted patrols. Unless a Chinook is going to drop me off 800 meters from the COP to the village, I don't think it's going to make a huge dent in IED casualties.
Veterans of Northern Ireland should be real familiar with this....
Why drop you off as far as 800m from the village? Use smaller choppers and get the troops right up close. Which will drop the off road IED risk by how much?
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