Fire with Fire

[howard]

one of the videos i saw in the last week was one taken by the Afghanistan Al Quaida forces as they assaulted a pro/US military base in the mountains.

it was a side and frontal assault up steep slopes with automatic weapons and RPG support. they were 'owned' as the video discussion mentioned because the US called in A-10 support as the battle progressed. quite a few of the militants were killed or wounded... you could see them being carried back from the front lines by their forces.

anyway...

due to the rugged territory and hills of that war front, they move almost exclusively on foot or in small fighting forces and carry their weapons on backpacks or in hand.

might i suggest the force multiplier WE need in this is a significantly larger air surveillance presence in AWACS , "Joint STARS" , or UAV flights. this is especially needed with IR system detection of such forces as they move in the terrain at night or by day.

with our air eyes, there is no reason to ever be surprised by an attack or by an ambush. we would have seen them as they moved, deployed, and
set up for assaults.

one of the other posters here mentioned;
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'...Afghan insurgents really are ####ty tactical fighters. They have three things going for them - they know their turf, their determined and they know kill zones. Other than that, I wouldn't put them on such a lofty "small unit fighter" plane as you do. They tend to die fast and hard if they haven't beat a hasty retreat once the initial surprise comes to an end....'

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they do not have the eyes over the battlefield, they have eyes on the ground. we have an advantage there and must use it to our purpose and also to defend our forces against local 'tactical' battles with high attrition rates.
we may not know the turf, but we surely can see it.
that's a major advantage.

and knowing where the enemy is and their movements to the battle field or attack points, we can avoid kill zones and ambush situations if we use these technologies before our troops move and after they are in an area.

and another thought. the terrain in those mountains provides few relatively travel routes, even for militants on foot. these foot routes are choke points and kill zones we can use against the enemy.

[Rex Brynen]

How easily would a small foot force like this be able to operate at length in Afghanistan, where (depending on the location) it safe to presume:

• unarmed Taliban spotters mixed in with (and largely indistinguishable from) the local population, on foot or motorcycle
  
• Taliban spotters on very high ground (sometimes with vistas extending many km) equipped with some degree of optics
  
• widespread use among local Taliban units and spotters of various HF/VHF comms, plus various non-RF signals and communications methods

... or is it presumed most movement would be at night?

[Steve Blair]

Why reinvent the wheel?

Go look at how SOG was formed and fielded its teams, especially between 1967 and 1969. This was an organization that formed more or less on the fly, and conducted some amazing operations. They weren't all SF-qualified, and much of their training pipeline was improvised locally.

[JMA]

Why reinvent the wheel?

Go look at how SOG was formed and fielded its teams, especially between 1967 and 1969. This was an organization that formed more or less on the fly, and conducted some amazing operations. They weren't all SF-qualified, and much of their training pipeline was improvised locally.

Do you have a source on this SOG you can direct attention to?

[Steve Blair]

MACV/SOG is fairly well-covered by John Plaster's book and (in a more scholarly manner) by Shultz's The Secret War Against Hanoi. Wikipedia also has a decent overview here. Wilf has done some digging on them, as have I in the course of my studies. They ran recon in more isolated corners of South Vietnam, but their main focus was on the "denied areas" in Laos, Cambodia, and even parts of North Vietnam. Teams were typically a mix of US and indigenous personnel (3 US and 4+ Montagnards or Nungs with some SVN at times).

[William F. Owen]

Wilf has done some digging on them, as have I in the course of my studies. They ran recon in more isolated corners of South Vietnam, but their main focus was on the "denied areas" in Laos, Cambodia, and even parts of North Vietnam. Teams were typically a mix of US and indigenous personnel (3 US and 4+ Montagnards or Nungs with some SVN at times).

All Royalties gratefully accepted!

[JMA]

Where is jcustis? Isn't this work for the USMC Recon? (not saying that the army shouldn't get involved in this sort of thing.)

[SJPONeill]

Possibly the key to the 'eastern style' is not so much that it is 'eastern' in origin but that it is the offensive philosophy in this conflict where are forces are on the defensive...if the western world was to decide to go on the offensive, in an irregular manner, against unnamed adversaries states (insert your pet hate nation here) then perhaps we could very much operate in the manner suggested in the opening post?

[jmm99]

a very quiet professional - seriously (IMO). When his recon company led the 2003 East Side charge to Baghdad (with Fox's Rick Leventhal as embed, then and now, Thank You To The 1st L.A.R.), I suspect that he would have as preferred to avoid the publicity and preserve his anonimity. Of course, his real expertise is in the area of sheep and goat husbandry.

Regards to Jon and others,

Mike

[howard]

oh i'd assume Rex that they have the simpler gear to stay in touch. and i'd assume WE'D have a full snooping ability to intercept and listen in...wouldn't you?
the com traffic would be a good thing to plot and evaluate with one of those supercomputers the government has laying idle.

find out who's talking and where they are. lay down GPS guided bombs to everyone of them at the same time is what i'd suggest.

[Fuchs]

find out who's talking and where they are.
lay down GPS guided bombs to everyone of them at the same
time is what i'd suggest.

Complication #1:
Half of the people on the phone sit on a moving motorcycle, shadowing a MRAP patrol.

Complication #2:
The others sit in villages, among civilians. You'd get one possibly quite unimportant guy with a mobile phone and kill also his family of ten.

There are reasons why the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who went to Afghanistan didn't solve the riddle yet.

[JMA]

Complication #1:
Half of the people on the phone sit on a moving motorcycle, shadowing a MRAP patrol.

Complication #2:
The others sit in villages, among civilians. You'd get one possibly quite unimportant guy with a mobile phone and kill also his family of ten.

There are reasons why the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who went to Afghanistan didn't solve the riddle yet.

The problem is that the Soviets (before) and the current US/UK approach to the war has been one characterised by the use of brute force and ignorance. Never going to work in a million years. I suggest that this thread is one about a recommended new approach where a more carefully targeted and precise tactical approach would be used.

[William F. Owen]

The problem is that the Soviets (before) and the current US/UK approach to the war has been one characterised by the use of brute force and ignorance. Never going to work in a million years. I suggest that this thread is one about a recommended new approach where a more carefully targeted and precise tactical approach would be used.

That's not an accurate statement.

Maybe true for the Soviets. They've never been very good at warfare, but the stellar opposite is true of the UK. Has the UK predominantly failed in the post 2001 context? Yes, I think it has, but this is not the historical norm.
The UK is currently going through another "Crimea."

[Fuchs]

Crimea, Khartoum, Boers, Somme, Dardanelles, Dunkirk, Western Desert, Malaya, Dieppe, Arnhem, Suez?

There's a bit more than just Crimea, Basra and Helmand on the list, Wilf!

[JMA]

[snip]

might i suggest the force multiplier WE need in this is a significantly larger air surveillance presence in AWACS , "Joint STARS" , or UAV flights. this is especially needed with IR system detection of such forces as they move in the terrain at night or by day.

with our air eyes, there is no reason to ever be surprised by an attack or by an ambush. we would have seen them as they moved, deployed, and
set up for assaults.

[snip]

Good thinking. And as part of the training and operational monitoring the commander can use UAVs to shadow the troops as they move. I would suggest that a lot could be learned from watching our own as much as we look out for the Taliban. Comes down to resources I suppose.

[carl]

might i suggest the force multiplier WE need in this is a significantly larger air surveillance presence in AWACS , "Joint STARS" , or UAV flights. this is especially needed with IR system detection of such forces as they move in the terrain at night or by day.

with our air eyes, there is no reason to ever be surprised by an attack or by an ambush. we would have seen them as they moved, deployed, and
set up for assaults.

People tend to overestimate the effectiveness of these aerial assets. The real high tech things like JSTARS do wonderous things but they are extremely expensive so there will never be very many of them. And they can't see through mountains.

The other platforms that use night or day vision cameras don't really see that much. The field of view isn't that big, relative to the size of the area you want to cover. They can be heard from the ground, which can be an advantage and a disadvantage. The bigger ones like the Predators cost more than you think and they require a surprising amount of manpower to operate. Aviation Week quoted a figure of about 120 people per Pred when everyone is included. They are much more affected by weather than a manned aircraft.

The drones are a great tool, but you will never have enough of them to provide the degree of overwatch you suggest, especially if there are a multitude of small units roaming the field.