Moving the Rhod. Fire Force concept to Afghanistan?

[Rex Brynen]

(Rex, I don't know your military experience, you may well have flown choppers at some point for all I know. I write this like you haven't forgive me.)

Thank you for writing in simple words that wouldn't confuse me. I had to look up "chopper," but found a nice book with a picture in it.



The Soviets lost approximately a helicopter a week in Afghanistan, although I'm not sure what proportion of those were MANPADs versus other things. There's some discussion of both hiliborne operations and mujahiddin counters in Lester Grau et al, The Bear Went Over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan and The Other Side of the Mountain: Mujahideen Tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War.

As I remember it, the RLI also suffered its largest single losses of the war when a SAAF Puma was hit--by an RPG 7, I think--in Mozambique in 1979, during Ops Uric/Bootlace.

None of this, of course, is a reason not to use a modified Fire Force technique in Afghanistan. However, as several have pointed out, it is important to identify how conditions may differ there from southern Africa (or, for that matter, Vietnam).