08 October 2012
Terrain is the single most important factor in combat.
During the early days of the wars, back when everyone seemed to know we had won in Afghanistan, testimonials streamed from the battle zones about how badly the deserts treated our super-gear.
Batman could only dream about the techno-wonders we complained about. But we pleaded that the high temperatures, moon dust, and that terrible Brownian Motion could be the undoing of our high tech. (Send more money.)
Yet, no Einstein was required to see that the commotion over climate and dust avoided a few important realities; Iraqis and Afghans have lived there beyond the frayed edges of history, and today their televisions, motorbikes, and cars work, despite the sand and heat. Their helicopters still fly. Their AK-47s still burp flames and hot metal. (Yes, the Taliban really did have high-performance aircraft working.)
Eventually we stopped crying about the gear. Many of our own training centers are in U.S. deserts, and we have many times fought in deserts, yet somehow we still fielded gear that we said has difficulty in deserts. (Send more money.)
The truth is that desert terrain and weather have provided the finest moments for gadget warfare. Any major defense contractor purveying the modern high-tech would want to exhibit them on the perfect stage of Afghanistan, or against the Iraqi Army, so easily detected in wide open spaces, and hit with precision weapons. Our ships did not face major threats from high-tech missiles, or even basic sea mines, which still in 2012 remain serious threats.
In Afghanistan, what looks so wonderful against a low-tech enemy in made-for-Hollywood terrain will not shine brightly in triple-canopy jungles, or even in the dense forests of Appalachians, or in the thick Florida swamps. Deserts are the last place to complain about our gear.
This dispatch is not an attempt to perturb military policy. Shelves of books already have been written by more qualified others, spanning many wars and generations. If performance is any measure, they did little good.
Yet it is vital to put some of these recent observations on paper while the memories remain fresh. These notes will not help the current military, any more than reading glasses and books will help an illiterate Afghan farmer who for seventy years has been set in his ways. But they may be of some use to rare historians, and the curious, who years later, wonder why we fumbled so in Afghanistan. These notes might be of value to some as-yet unborn commander, and provide insight to our political and military failure against enemies who easily should have been defeated.
This dispatch is not comprehensive. It represents a weekend of effort. A small donation for posterity.
With some exceptions, the Afghanistan battlefields are mostly treeless, even bald. Advanced optics of many sorts can see for miles. Today, some optics are outfitted with software to highlight potential targets. So, there you are, using a thermal imager, when a little box appears. It draws your attention away from the warm haystack, to something manlike under sparse trees. Not only does the imager enhance the eyes; it also tells us where to look, and the precise coordinates of the object of attention.
Ghor Province, Afghanistan
At night, low humidity, crystal-clear skies, and practically zero light pollution allows operators to easily identify targets.
The logistics to Afghanistan are hard, expensive, and fraught with international politics. But after the supplies land in Afghanistan—especially in the south where most fighting occurs—logistics become easy (if still wildly expensive due to aircraft and fuel costs). Much of the supplies are parachuted to minor bases, or delivered by helicopter, or by trucks, which often are destroyed. The major bases have large runways. All of our ammunition and sensitive items are flown into Afghanistan. I once flew from Kuwait to Bagram on a C-17 (costing about $200m per) with a full load of 155mm ammunition.
We have created a virtual (if small) country within Afghanistan. Our virtual country is completely electrified except at tiny outposts. Most of the troops and contractors have running hot water, sewerage systems, and on some bases, pizza delivery and laundry service. There is WiFi, cell phone service, excellent gyms and many if not most troops who deploy to Afghanistan actually gain weight. (This is untrue for combat troops, who often skinny up.) There is FedEx and DHL at the major bases. Helicopters or trucks deliver mail to minor bases.
Most Afghans have no electricity. Their villages are dark. Our bases stand out like spaceships in the night. The Afghans have asked for years why we are able to quickly electrify our bases, but cannot electrify a village just outside the wire. They only expect these things because they were promised.
For years, we said we had to guard Kajaki Dam because the Taliban would destroy it. Which makes no sense. The Taliban controlled the dam for years and never destroyed it; their opium farms depend on it, and they hope to have electricity from it. The Taliban had eliminated opium before we came. They outlawed the dancing boys, and executed people for raping boys and girls. Yes, they were savage. Afghanistan is savage no matter who is in charge. President Karzai supported a law that allows a man to starve his wife if she refuses sex. Afghanistan still forces girls to marry men who rape them.
We also said the Taliban will destroy the electrical posts and lines, but this also is untrue. This brief combat video was shot by me, miles down from Kajaki, in the area of Sangin, in Helmand Province.
I had just walked under and photographed this power line in enemy-controlled terrain when we came under machine-gun fire. We say that the Taliban destroy the power lines, but it is a lie: we generate the electricity, and they charge people for it, and the Taliban like electricity. The Taliban are the power company executives; we work for them. If we really wanted to damage the Taliban, we would blow up Kajaki Dam. Instead, we guard and maintain it, and slave for the Taliban who uses the water to grown their opium.
There were plenty of power lines in the area that were completely controlled by the Taliban. There are only glimpses of power lines in the video, but it is a fact that the Taliban were not destroying them. The video was a composite from different firefights; during the ambush in the open, the two Javelin missiles were used in panic. One shot hit the dirt, which at first I thought must be a hidden position. But video would prove that it was just dirt in the wide open. The second hit the generator. We had no air support because there was a bigger fight going on nearby, and we could hear and see that they needed the Apaches and the rest more than we did.
After shattering some small rocks with the first Javelin (he had two missiles), the Soldier used the Javelin thermal (CLU) and locked his gates onto the heat source from a generator. He and the Soldiers in this image were covering the half I was with, while we ran out of the giant kill zone. The Javelin man launched a top-down attack, making an impressive fireball. Nobody knew what caused the fireball until the villagers (from the place where the gunfire was coming) came to base demanding payment for the generator.
The Taliban seem to think we are their retarded little toys; they shoot us, and blow us up, and then demand we pay for their stuff, which we do. Sometimes the Taliban seem to pity us. Rich, ignorant suckers. The power lines in this dispatch are safely under complete Afghan control.
During fighting, combat air support is seldom more than a few minutes away, and helicopter resupply is so certain in Kandahar and Helmand that even a brief contact from the enemy can result in massive return fire. In this brief firefight, we saw approximately a quarter of a million dollars’ worth (depending on which price you cite) of Javelin used to destroy some rocks and a generator. This cost does not include operator training, transport to Afghanistan, and then the helicopter flight to the outpost. More return fire could have been accomplished with RPGs for maybe a hundred bucks.
U.S. and British troops on foot missions sometimes unleash just to lighten the load. Americans are far worse at this than British. Courageous helicopter pilots—at risk of being shot down—will deliver “speedball” resupply on call, and the troops on the ground are easy to find. The pilots can put the speedball at your feet. American troops in Vietnam were notorious for doing the same.
This ain’t the jungle, and the Taliban are not bristling with surface-to-air missiles, and so the airspace is relatively safe, above small-arms range. Occasionally, the enemy uses surface-to-air missiles with success, and they have learned to reasonably match our night vision gear by using cheap cameras set to night mode. We use all sorts of IR beacons that the enemy can see with simple cameras.
For us, targets are easy to identify and mark by air or ground. We even have pricey GPS-guided mortars and artillery that can hit a parked car from miles away on the first strike. Using such gear would be far more difficult in a Louisiana bayou. If we were in a jungle or swamp, the apparent thousands of Javelin missiles that we and allies have fired in Afghanistan would often be impossible to bring to bear. The Javelins are great missiles, when they work, but we use them as fly swatters.
The taxpayers are generous and we waste that generosity self-righteously, with a massive sense of entitlement, which mostly is kept hidden with good PR, and willful blindness from those who foot the bills.
To dare spare any and all expense on the troops is seen as tantamount treason. Some years ago, there was a groundswell to supply troops with inferior body armor called Dragon Skin. The rally cry was that Dragon Skin was more expensive and therefore must be better, and that the military refused to buy it because it was more expensive.
The reality was that Dragon Skin was far more expensive, and far inferior to competitors. After trying Dragon Skin, which some people were buying for loved ones deployed, I refused to wear it in combat, and sold mine. To the Pentagon’s credit, the procurement system worked and the military did not cave to demands to buy the inferior Dragon Skin. The system is not totally broken. There really is some fine gear in use, but the failures are maddening, and this tendency to spare no expense is often used in commission of wanton waste.
In September 2011, I made video of a nearby U.S. strike using 12 GMLRS rockets. The Soldiers had to wait for well over a day—in a very dangerous area where two friendly fatalities (1 U.S., 1 ANA) occurred over two days. Finally came the rockets. About $2 million worth. Their actual cost would be far more if counting air transportation to Afghanistan, and other enormous associated costs, such as maintenance and specialized crews. While approval for the strike was on hold in Kabul, about 120 men waited as sitting ducks. (Many were Afghan Soldiers.)
The target: probably a few hundred dollars’ worth of ammonium nitrate. There were no enemy personnel on target. There were no civilians anywhere around. The target could have been hit within half an hour with a single bomb that already was under someone’s wing. Sometimes you get the impression that the choice of weapons—which was made in Kabul, hundreds of miles away—has nothing to do with the tactical realities.
On that particular mission – there was nothing special about it other than that it will be memorialized here – given that we came in and went out by helicopters, and took a U.S. fatality and one ANA killed, and the extreme costs of wasting Soldiers’ time in Afghanistan, it is not unrealistic to guess that that strike cost at least ten million dollars, or likely far more. There is no way to account for it, but we know that we were burning money at the bonfire of insanity, including a risky nighttime resupply halfway through by CH-47.
It has been estimated that it costs about $1 million to keep a U.S. Soldier in Afghanistan for one year. Let’s make a jagged stab at accounting for that mission, including some of the support, planning, and execution that went into it. Let’s argue that 400 people spent 10 days on it, or 4,000 man days. There was pre-mission planning that lasted weeks for some. Execution. And reset. So 10 days is safe. (Not including the many aircraft that supported us.) Most of the Soldiers involved with the mission did not actually go on it; they were support. That’s about $11 million, plus the $2 million for missiles, not to mention the aircraft, and the peanuts paid as death gratuity for the killed Soldier.
For what? A few hundred pounds of fertilizer. For every dollar we cost the enemy, we probably waste thousands.
It must cost at least a billion dollars to deploy an infantry battalion to Afghanistan for a year. It is hard to imagine it costing less. And this can never account for the casualties on both sides, the worn out and destroyed gear, and the suicide bomber and opium warehouse that has grown under our perceived wisdom. The Afghans, including in most of the worst places, have continuously demonstrated that they will welcome people and protect those who are helping, and they will resist those that they see as invaders. We would do the same.
Earlier in 2011, members of 4-4 Cav were making the normal war porn video of an impending airstrike of an enemy position. The F-18 was amazingly on target. The bomb can be heard roaring in, and then it exploded in the middle of the small base, just behind our Soldiers. It’s all on video. Amazingly, none of our guys were killed, but as I recall from comments (I was not there), two or three Afghan Soldiers completely disappeared. Even more amazing was that the bomb was right on (the wrong) target, and nearly everyone survived to fight another day. This little instance is representative of the war on whole. We are bombing ourselves.
In Afghanistan, low population density of man and beast—along with predictable life patterns—creates minimal bio-distractions. Few Afghans cruise around at all hours. At night, they mostly stay home, or during certain moon phases they work their fields.
As mentioned, few villages have lights. This reduction of randomness allows our sensors to spend more quality time on easily seeable potential targets, while wasting little on chasing battlefield noise. In every way, the signal-to-noise ratio in Afghanistan strongly favors the signal. But even with that low ratio, during broad daylight in perfect conditions, we saw the Javelin fired into the dirt, and minutes later, another Javelin fired into the generator. The broad daylight strike by an F-18 strike on our own base, which never hit the news. Every time I asked about the F-18 strike, I heard “Investigation is not over yet.”
How did we put a bomb into the middle of a known and established base? Given the importance of using F-18s in Afghanistan, the investigation should not waste months of time. I never did find out what happened, other than that a giant moon crater was put into the middle of a firebase, and that months later they still were wasting time with the report.
The only high noise ratio is coming from our military and civilian leadership.
A-10 Warthogs, Apaches, Predators, and others regularly patrol and fight right here, yet the enemy attacks continue: imagine this as jungle. See this image in high resolution.
In Afghanistan, few fights occur in urban areas. In rural areas, our radar and other sensors can positively detect the enemy from so many miles away that the enemy has no idea we are watching. This allows us to hit illiterate teenagers with wildly expensive missiles.
A couple years ago, I went on a mission. The day before, we’d had a sniper team watching our route to the village. Some teenagers started digging near the road and were killed. Turned out they were digging roots of some sort. The village was so remote that our side believed there was no OPSEC violation. In other words, the villagers did not know we were coming. It was said that Americans had never visited the village before. On our first house call, we accidentally shot some teenagers. Sorry about the kids. If that village was not enemy before, it became so after that.
We have outfitted ourselves and our training around fighting in wide-open spaces that completely favor us. In the jungle, the moon is seldom in favor of gadget warfare; the sun’s reflection hardly touches the ground. Even with the greatest sensors, the jungles can be black holes at night. Afghanistan deserts exaggerate our night advantages while jungles can erase them, while exaggerating enemy advantages that depend on man, not machine.
Over the past many decades, we often have fought third-world farmers. In Afghanistan, it is safe to posit that we mostly are fighting small farmers. Many of them have no idea that 9/11 ever happened. They were not our enemies before we came.
During one mission, we took over a farmer’s compound. He was farming grapes, and his harvest was out drying as raisins in the sun. Much ammunition had been fired in firefights, and we needed food and water and ammo, and when the CH-47 came that night it blew away much of his raisins. If the farmer was not the enemy before, he became so the next morning.
During another mission in the same area, there was a firefight and an enemy tracer (maybe from his brother for all we know) ricocheted into the compound into the farmer’s hay. Before it was over, the hay was destroyed. Our guys did not set the hay on fire, but it only happened because we were there. If he was not an enemy before, he became so after that.
Farmers the world around are conservative in every sense. Politically and in action. A wild-eyed farmer with a tendency to roll the dice would soon starve. Third-world farmers stick with what works.
Afghan grape farmers do not have the University of Florida showing them better ways to grow fruit. They do what their granddaddy did. They fight the same way, because it works, and even today, Afghans use the same ambush spots that have been used for generations. And if a bomb killed an American in one spot eight years ago, you can bet that that spot likely has a bomb today, and it probably killed a Russian there decades ago. A statistical analysis of bomb strikes might reveal that in some cases, the same spot killed a half dozen Americans over the years.
They use the same old tricks. A retired Marine EOD specialist recently told me that every year we lose roughly a half dozen troops to the flag trick. The Taliban plant a flag. Troops see it, they want it for a trophy, and they die.
Farmers are tuned in to the land and sky, and they don’t need ephemeris to know what the light will be like that night. In Afghanistan, our less technologically endowed enemies often mitigate our night advantages by conducting major ground attacks during advantageous lunar phases, such as around the new moon, or after the moon sets and before the sunrise.
The famous Battle of Wanat in 2008 is an example. The moon had been bright, but had set at about 1 A.M., giving the attackers time to get into position under blackness. They launched at about 0420, roughly an hour before sunrise. Common sense tactics that predate gunpowder.
Other examples of well-planned ground attacks include the 2012 strike at the Spozhmai Hotel in Afghanistan, or the horrific Mumbai attacks of 2008, over in India. These and many other major ground attacks often unfold around a new moon, or after moonset, unless there is a specific target of opportunity, or special date or anniversary. The point is that the simple enemy uses the moon for night vision, and for cover. The only wild card with the moon is the weather, but then that also affects our sensors.
We are especially in favor of anything that is mind-bogglingly expensive. Take this example of the billions of dollars wasted developing simple uniforms:
“Between 2003 and 2010, the Army spent more than $4 billion developing and producing a new camouflage uniform, the Army Combat Uniform (ACU). It decided on the camouflage pattern before testing was completed. And it began providing the uniform to troops before its Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center finished its evaluation and recommended a different pattern, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Friday.
“In 2009, an Army study found the ACU ‘offered less effective concealment than the patterns chosen by the Marine Corps and some foreign military services, such as Syria and China,’ according to the GAO report.”
NASA sends probes to other planets for less, and NASA is not exactly known for miserly spending. In 2011, the fancy uniforms were falling apart:
Why after a solid decade of war can’t the Pentagon field britches?
This would be like putting the Curiosity down safely on Mars, only to watch a wheel fall off because someone used the wrong sized bolts, and nobody noticed. We can’t be serious about these uniforms.
People have worn clothes for thousands of years, and yet the Army sends pants to war that fall apart. This substandard uniform rips open even in favorable, dry conditions when there are perfect laundry facilities on the bases. What are we going to do in jungles with no laundry?
There was a time when the Army’s seal of approval on boots probably meant you had a great pair of boots. These days, I would ignore Army gear and head for the North Face catalogue. Outdoorsmen no longer care what the Army thinks about gear. Soldiers, when they are allowed, use civilian boots, magazines, and countless other items that are substandard in the military inventory.
Please excuse my tone. This is for posterity, which historians can read long after we all are gone.
MRAP fell off the tracks in Zabul Province. We were in a perfect ambush spot. Luckily, the enemy was not on its game this day. They must have been having tea. Also, our recovery men were quick and on their job, so they righted the truck and we got out before getting pelted with RPGs from the hills. This thing rolled over in broad daylight with no enemy in sight. Happens all the time.
Even if the camouflage uniforms were invisibility cloaks, we cannot hide. We spent tens of billions of dollars on our giant MRAP trucks, which stand as tall as African elephants. African elephants are the heaviest land animals on earth. The MRAP weighs more than three times an average adult.
Unlike agile elephants, MRAPs are like gigantic turtles that can hardly leave the roads. Sometimes they leave the roads by just falling off of them, something I have never seen happen with a car. You are just driving down the road and suddenly the MRAP rolls off because it collapses the surface.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates did a great job of bashing the system on the head and getting the MRAPs fielded in record time, but then we took it too far and used them for missions for which they were not designed, and they have replaced most other battlefield land transport for combat units.
Overloaded "jingle trucks" (so called because they jingle when driving) are more agile than MRAPs.
The Pentagon loves to tout MRAP’s bomb resistance. They better be resistant! Predicting MRAP routes is little more difficult than predicting trains. Paradoxically, by making them more bomb-resistant, we make them more bomb-prone.
Surely, it takes more explosives and effort to destroy an MRAP with a bomb, but it takes little to blow out the tires, or block it and destroy it with recoilless rifles or fire. The Pentagon only advertises the part about it withstanding the bomb, while avoiding how easily the enemy stops the MRAP, and then hits the dismounts with other bombs. That we know their tactics does not mean they stop working. The enemy knows we use airstrikes, but they still work.
Heck, nobody needs enemy to stop an MRAP. Too frequently they stop spontaneously with mechanical problems, or they get stuck in mud puddles. They are so tall that occupants sometimes get electrocuted by power lines. They are so top-heavy that they roll frequently, and so heavy that they often crumble rural roads, or flop over into irrigation ditches, where the occupants drown.
In 2010, I heard a distant explosion and turned to see the mushroom cloud. A car bomb had just hit an MRAP on a bridge, blowing the MRAP off the bridge, killing a U.S. Soldier and wounding others. Luckily they landed in a dry spot.
Bomb-resistant does not mean attack-resistant, and they are not really bomb-resistant; Iraqis could take them out with the small EFPs, but luckily the Afghans seldom use them. The 82mm rifle, common in Afghanistan, will take it out instantly.
It is as if we have invented shotgun-resistant pigeon, and we force the pigeons to walk down the roads. The pigeons can now take a shotgun blast, but they no longer can fly, so the hunter just shoots them twice and kicks them into a ditch.
British Soldier with Ghurka in jungle in Brunei
Despite that deserts favor wizardry, we somehow are managing toss out our advantages. Thick jungles, on the other hand, favor man, not machine. As one retired SAS soldier likes to say, “The jungle is the great equalizer.”
In jungles, much of our gear will not work, or only with low efficacy. So forget the gear. But our troops spend huge amounts of time training with techno-gear, and not enough time on basics. Ask ten combat troops to find north using the stars on a clear night, and most of them cannot find it. An Afghan farmer can find it in five seconds.
You will have no problem finding thousands of U.S. troops who spent weeks in expensive parachute training, at great costs, when parachuting is not part of their jobs. In our badge-hunting culture, this waste is sold around confidence building (which can as readily be done in other ways that actually increase core proficiencies). You will find no problems listening to special operations people who complain about spending so much time parachuting, when they practically never parachute into combat, wasting time on high-flying stuff instead of simple tactics. The Taliban never parachute. This is a good thing; they might buy old airplanes and parachute suicide attacks into our bases.
A jungle warfare instructor in Brunei recounted how one of our most elite commando units, from Fort Bragg, got lost in the Borneo jungle during combat tracking training. Their GPS systems did not work under the triple canopy. They reverted to the analog compass and map—something that they should be expert at—and got lost.
Jungles absorb or mask all usable electromagnetic wavelengths. How will we navigate after a cyber or other attack on our GPS system?
In Afghanistan, much of the fighting occurs in tree cover no denser than pomegranate groves, which for a point of reference, is about as thick as untrimmed orange grove or apple orchard. The MRAPs cannot go in there, and so our guys wear spine-crushing gear in sauna-like conditions. The humidity in the Afghan deserts is normally low, but under those trees the humidity and heat will knock a fit man down. Many of the jungles are like this day and night. While the enemy is less armored, he is more agile and mobile, so he has more stamina and hit-and-run power.
In Afghanistan, we sent troops into rough mountains, against men who are half mountain goat, while wearing heavy body armor. Later we abandoned outposts that earlier we had touted as crucial. After we retreated, we said they were not that important, and the Taliban staked their flags and made the videos.
Great navigation, control and situational awareness gear: But we cannot rely on this after a cyber 9/11, or electromagnetic attack, or even in a jungle.
As for the smaller whiz-bang stuff, in jungles, night vision gear (NVG) will often become worthless. Vegetation often is so close that anything that you might spot is already close enough to smell or even spit on.
Even in good conditions, thermals work only so-so in the jungle, and not all of the time, and then often only at close range. The Javelin missiles we love in Afghanistan will be outclassed by simple RPGs in the jungle. Again, by the time that something is close enough to see, you are standing on it. Or it is standing on you.
Six Harriers destroyed, two badly damaged, two Marines killed, after enemy made it by all of our sensors and onto the flight line. (This image from neighboring Kandahar Airfield; the attack was in Helmand.)
In heavy vegetation, IED jammers are not useful because the enemy cannot see far enough to use command-detonated IEDs. As in Vietnam, IEDs will mostly be victim-operated, and in many places, nearly impossible to search for with anything other than your eyes and tactical experience.
High-hot conditions are a problem for UAVs and other aircraft in Afghanistan. These things can survive only in uncontested airspace, and will be of little help in jungle.
UAVs are useless in many circumstances with thick vegetation, and whereas we are blessed with mostly clear skies over Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan, jungles are often covered with clouds. Not that the clouds matter; the optics cannot see through vegetation.
As for helicopters, the Kiowa scouts and Apache gunships that give us so much air cover in Afghanistan will be largely negated by comparison to what we got in Iraq and Afghanistan. They will not see the jungle floor under triple canopy or thick forests. Our Vietnam veterans can fill in the blanks on this. They already have in many of the books I have read.
In Afghanistan, we have worn out our less than 100 HH-60G helicopters used by Air Force “Pedro,” which at more than $40m per aircraft are strategic assets. We wore them out while they took up slack from Army Dustoff MEDEVAC, aircraft that cost about 1/4th the cost of an HH-60G. I have flown on missions with Pedro that amounted to little more than milk runs for patients who were in no danger, at bases that were secure. This would be like the Post Office delivering mail using Ferraris. The closer you look, the less sense it makes.
If the Post Office determined that it wants to raise stamp prices to $10 per letter, we would become suspicious of their spending wisdom because we know it can be done for less. But when the military does it, we cow down to their omniscience and right to our last drop of gold, and we write the check.
We send the Dustoff helicopters on MEDEVAC missions, often requiring Apache escort, simply because we refuse to remove the Red Crosses and put machine guns on the Dustoff birds. This causes MEDEVAC delays, and requires more fuel and helicopter support when we are perpetually short of helicopters in Afghanistan, and fuel can cost literally hundreds of dollars per gallon. At that price, how much does it cost to even start an Apache?
Our Army lies, claiming that it must wear the Red Crosses in accordance with the Geneva Conventions, when anyone who is tracking on the facts knows this is untrue, and in fact that we perpetually violate the GC in our method of use of the Red Cross. We are as guilty as the enemy for using ambulances to deliver military resupply. Don’t let anyone kid you on that. We go nuts when the enemy uses ground ambulances to deliver supplies during combat, yet we do the same with helicopters. If we simply remove the Red Crosses and add guns, all tactical, legal, and moral obligations would be met, and we would save lives and money.
UAV at Kandahar Airfield
Under jungle canopy, the satellites are not entirely useless: they can help predict the weather, and help with communications. But you still need a line-of-sight gap in jungle canopy, and it must align with a satellite or relay aircraft.
In jungles, tactical communications will be impaired. Even during broad daylight, a company commander can have a hard time controlling his platoons, and platoon leaders struggle to control their squads. The jungle can be so thick that just a short distance away, friendly forces will be invisible even in daylight.
Jungles abhor American gadget warfare, and strongly favor people who live there.
UAVs cannot spot or laser-designate targets that are under jungle canopy
In the open spaces of Afghanistan, highly trained snipers with whiz-bang stuff can kill enemy a mile away. Deep in the jungles, a far shot might be fifty meters.
Personal weapons: the lasers and gadgets stuck to rifle rails are deadweight with batteries. They get caught in endless wait-a-minute vines. It can be better to strip off the gadgetry, and to use iron sights, but many of our troops these days are no longer comfortable with iron sights.
In the jungle, many tactical firefights will be at close range, as they are in urban combat of Iraq, and as they were in Vietnam jungles. It will often be hard to see targets even in broad daylight. Gun gadgets offer serious advantages in Afghanistan, as they did in Iraq, but in jungle, surgical accuracy can be less important than reliability and power.
Stryker in Kandahar Province, 2010.
Who has the real advantage? The guys riding elephants, or the guys riding horses?
Most IEDs in Afghanistan are made using these ubiquitous yellow jugs.
Despite all our new gadgetry, Americans should be under no illusions about America’s ability to fight in the jungles and swamps of Africa, Asia or anywhere. If anything, we are less capable now than ever before.
While our young people are playing video games, their young counterparts in jungles and deserts around the globe can navigate using the stars, the sun, or the flight of birds. They can go for months without comfort and never notice, because they are comfortable. They look poor, and they may seem uneducated, but these people are part of the terrain. To underestimate them is to die.
We have heard the lies that we never lost a tactical engagement in Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan. This goes against all common sense, and simple experience for those who truly fought there. We lost tactical engagements every week—and in fact probably every day—when IEDs destroy elephant trucks and wound and kill troops and the enemy gets away cold.
We lost nearly an entire Marine squadron of Harriers, just weeks ago. The idea that we do not lose tactical engagements in Afghanistan is fantasy island. How did we lose an entire war, as in Vietnam, without losing a single battle? It’s all a lie.
But Americans in denial will say of Vietnam, “That was just a policing action.” Vietnam was a war that left about 60,000 Americans dead, along with perhaps a million others, and demonstrated fully that America could be defeated on the battlefield, which contributed to our current war in Afghanistan.
For our part, instead of using our gear to accentuate the use of basic tactics, we use it as a crutch to replace basics, and it is obviously not working.
After thousands of years, terrain remains the single most important factor in combat. We drifted away from the basics, bought into the wow factor, and are being beaten by farmers using tactics as old as war.
Read the complete post at http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/michaelyon-online/~3/S1F8Wu87FTM/all-the-kings-horses-some-notes-from-a-weekend-of-thought.htm
Posted
Oct 08 2012, 07:02 AM
by
Michael Yon - Online Magazine