Light Infantry and Afghanistan

[carl]

"I doubt it"

I suspected that would be the answer.

I have another question. I believe we, you and your comrades, learned how to ambush them in VN. Is that widely known amongst contemporary Soldiers/Marines? If not, should it be and if it were would that make a difference now? If people now knew it could be done and has been done by Americans, would they be more inclined to aspire to doing it?

Forgive my naivete in this next comment, but as a civilian, I would have hoped people would think this important just as matter of professionalism, ie "Their infantry is doing better than our infantry in this aspect of infantry warfare. We should change that."

[Fuchs]

The identification problem (how to know they're Taliban before they open fire?) and the shadowing problem (patrols being shadowed by unarmed scouts once they leave their base) also play into the ambush problem.


I personally wouldn't worry very much about the ambush problem as long as they're poor shots, though. It's pretty much movement to contact, and the contact is very weak by European standards. A competent enemy would have crushed many platoons and companies by now.

Patrols should always do their job in packs; two or three patrol squads or platoons with some spacing (like 1 km). That enables a lot of manoeuvre even after one team got fixed. It also complicates the OPFOR's intelligence job.

[Ken White]

"Their infantry is doing better than our infantry in this aspect of infantry warfare. We should change that."

Their infantry isn't really doing better, it is just radically different. Not really asymmetrically different but systemically so (they get in as many ruts and bad habits as do we...). Some of those differences are to their advantage and some are to our advantage.

It would be great if we improved our training -- and that is happening, if slowly -- and it'd be even better if we weren't so risk averse but we come from a risk averse society so that's not likely to change. All things considered, ambushes can make a splash with our ignorant media and they have some limited propaganda value but they are not going to change the course of the effort in Afghanistan. Most of the nominal shortfalls we have are societally induced and will not likely change, others are goal and perception related and may change.

Either way, they are likely to be the initiators of contact more often than are we but that will not make much difference other than in the perceptions of some. This infantry isn't really better than ours, it's not bad at all but it's not as good as ours -- it just has some non bureaucratic and home team advantages that will not change and do not need to do so...

[carl]

Ken and Fuchs:

Do you think there is a psychological aspect to this shortfall in our ops in that because of it, people are more inclined to think that the mission given or implied is less achievable? If for the last 3 years, we had initiated most of the contacts would people, both military but maybe more importantly civilian, be less inclined to think Afghan a hopeless task? Like Ken says this may mostly be important in the perceptions of some but maybe those perceptions are more important than we think.

The other side of that coin is the perception of the Taliban. If we were the ones doing the ambushing, how much would that affect their confidence and determination? If they knew that most of the time the first indication of our presence was that "sudden burst of fire", would they be so eager?

I just thought of the local villagers too. They keep score. If they see our guys always being hit from ambush and not ambushing back, it must affect their calculations.

What do you guys think?