Petraeus - Re-visiting NATO ROE in Afghanistan

[Teeps74]

Wake up troop

  I have yet to meet a local who wouldn't smile to my face and stab me in the back as soon as I turned around.  You must have had a better tour than the rest of us because IMO, we will never, NEVER win the hearts and minds of the people of Afghanistan.  Half the ANA/ANP/camp workers/terps/locals are taliban and we all know it.  We choose to smile and ignore it even though its as obvious as the nose on your face.

If your only arguement against airstrikes/atillery strikes is winning of local hearts and minds, I fear we lost that battle as soon as we steped off the plane.

But I digress.....

In the thick of it, and I am guessing that you are unaware of the tribal make up of some of the areas, and some of the Afghans will never side with the Taliban because the Taliban is the wrong tribe.

It is not near as simple as you are alluding to here. Nor is your guess of half of them being Taliban, even remotely close.

For us to be successful in Afghanistan (and God knows, given the blood of my friends spilled there I pray for success), we only have to keep the Afghans from hating us, and accepting their own government. A return to the way things were prior to 1979. Most of the Pashtun tribes are not aligned with the Taliban currently, and it would be well and good if we made efforts NOT to push them into the Taliban's arms.

 

[Drift Pin]

Drift Pin
            My post was referring strictly to your initial statement," As far as I am concerned, if an air strike will bring home more troops safely then so be it." Of which I understand as being bombed to the ground without consideration for civilian lives. Proper use of military assets is always encouraged where the need is encountered. Overkill, as far as I'm concerned is not considered an asset but can/will create an undesirable effect in the civilian population toward coalition forces.
            Knowing that, and if overkill techniques are used in this type of war, then the taliban who
take no regard of civilian lives, will use that to their advantage, thus forcing the ultimate failure of coalition forces to obtain the desired end result......democracy. 

         

I agree, Bombed to the ground is overkill and thus unnecessary. That is not what I meant if it came across as such.

I also believe that there is a better chance of hell freezing over than there is of seeing democracy in Afghanistan.  Not being negative, just calling a spade a spade.

 

[57Chevy]

Petamocto............your not going anywhere ;D  I just know it.

 

[Haligonian]

I was not saying that we should kill "all sorts of civilians" actually.  maybe you should read what I posted once more. There is a big difference between accidentally killing someone innocent from calling a strike on a legit target and strategic bombing. It is an unfortunate result of war however.  Just like blue on blue situations, you can try to mitigate it as much as possible but it still happens.  That's just how it goes.  Would I give up what is most likely our greatest advantage in a fire fight because of it?  f*** no.

If you are in a firefight with an enemy who is in a fortified location and you have the option to bring heavy fire on that position then do it.  Yes, there are times when the odd civilian may be caught in the wrong place but....well...war is hell.

Would you rather send an Infantry section into that building to clear it knowing that some of them would not make it out again?  Or would you use the assets you have available  to you to do your job?  I know in my heart I would not trade the life of one of the soldiers fighting next to me for the life of a civilian who would see me dead in a heartbeat anyway.  Your milage may vary, but I have been down that road and have seen the results with my own two eyes. (as many others on this forum have I am sure)

Taking away our ability to call down heavy fire will mean more body bags filled with Canadian soldiers and quite honestly I would take any measure necessary to avoid that outcome.  Sure, the odd Civi might get whacked but lets face it, If they had their crap sorted out the ANA would be fighting the Taliban for themselves at this point and we wouldn't have to travel half way around the Goddammed world to do it for them.

Fighting a war requires sacrifice.  We have surely made enough of our own.  If Karzai  doesn't like the way we conduct business as a professional military he can feel free to enlighten us on how it should be done.  Air strikes prevent ramp ceremonies, Nuff said.

Air strikes prevent ramp ceremonies eh? Last I checked PPE, metal detectors, dogs, and EOD were saving more lives than air strikes. How many troops have we lost in direct fire engagements?  Not many.  The main killer of course is IED's and airstrikes will not help us with those.

The way this discussion is going it seems some people seem to think that we can't use indirect or airstrikes at all. I must stress, if soldiers lives are on the line then munitions will be released!  Tgts of opportunity the limitations are much more stringent, yes, but self defence trumps the limitations. It should be noted that air assets are used daily here and the current best friend of coalition forces is the Kiowa. It's .50 cal is used daily during engagements and does a fine job, without causing excessive collateral damage.

Technoviking, sorry I hope I didn't come across as speaking down to anyone.  I'm not tracking everyone's credentials on here so I just wrote fpr am audience who may not have a high level of experience.

 

[Kiwi99]

War is war is war is war is war.  WWI...WWII...Korea...Afghanistan and so on.  Give the troops what they need to win the fight when the fight is being fought.  I agree with the fact that most of them would stab us in the back as soon as we showed it to them. From being there in 06 and again in 09, I have seen zero change in the way the population feels about us.  They simply dont care, they just want to grow their dirt.

Now, all these rants about schools and buildings and civilians and the such.  Who is to blame if civilains get killed in an airstrike?  Us or them?  Answer...IT DOESNT MATTER!  Even if we were totally in the right we are still the bad guys in the media repoort the next day.

The image of the great Afghan warrior culture is a myth.  Sure, theres some brave ANP/ANA types, much as there is brave Canadians/Brits/Americans.  But we also have those who shy from battle (oooh, bad me calling a spade a spade).  If a dozwn taliban go into a village with their guns etc, and that village caves to their demands, then what are we supposed to do.  These locals need to grow a set.  They bitch about the taliban, but cower when they are confronted by them.  Six taliban agains 40 in a village...do the math.

Firepower wins wars...hearts and minds=two to the chest and one to the head.  Hearts and minds campaigns has not won a single war. it creates a nation of wanter and needers.

 

[SeanNewman]

Firepower wins wars...hearts and minds=two to the chest and one to the head.  Hearts and minds campaigns has not won a single war. it creates a nation of wanter and needers.

You've been there twice but still don't understand the mission if you think it's about Afghans wanting us there with their hearts and minds.

Everything a Canadian does to make an Afghan love them is counter-productive to the mission because it would make them want us there longer and it would devalue the ANSF.

That's why it's mission sabotage for Canadians to hand out food, clothing, money, etc.  Every time we do something ourselves it demonstrates that their own country can't provide it for them, so why should they support the GIRA?

It doesn't matter if we're really the ones providing it and a block away we unload our shipment of goods into an ANP truck to distribute (granted, some of it may go missing), the Afghans need to see the ANSF and GIRA meeting their needs, not us.

So does us giving hand outs create wanters and needers like you say?  Yes it does, but that's not why you spent over a year of your life there and I feel sorry for you that nobody explained it to you better before you left.

 

[Haligonian]

Kiwi99, what do you see as the end state to this conflict?  Is it all Taliban dead?  The Taliban sufficiently attrited to concede the struggle?  I find that many who are arguing for more relaxed use of these munitions have a defeatist strain to their comments, which I don't necessarily completly disagree with as the Afghan people are indeed difficult to work with.  However nobody seems willing to come out and say "we can't win" and instead hide behind the idea that we are fighting with our hands tied. We cannot break the enemies will to fight by causing a large amount of casualties.  We have already done that.  We have killed hundreds in battles and the war continues. We must attack the enemies support by the population.

 

[57Chevy]

We must attack the enemies support by the population.

Haligonian.......you must be from somewhere in Haligonia ;D

Winning the support of the Afghan people is probably quite a difficult task. I must agree with that.
It would be quickly lost in the event of dropping bombs to weed out the insurgents, and they knowing that fact, try using it as a tactic to gain sympathetic support of the people. That is why I am not for
the "dropping bombs" scenario.
  I must say though, that I agree 110% with air support as you have mentioned, for the troops on the ground when and where it is required.

Keep up the good work and my best regards to the troops.

 

[Ralph]

It's amazing how much harder things become without 429 in effect...

 

[TCBF]

- One of the reasons we sent tanks over there was to allow accurate, lethal and effective DIRECT fire, where INDIRECT fire would otherwise have had to have been used.

- Great idea... as long as the BG controlling the tanks knows how to use them, or is willing to learn.

- Fact is, Canadian tanks should have been pulled from out of Canadian command (just as 1 Cdn Armd Bde was in Italy in WW2) and given to armies who KNOW and UNDERSTAND armour.  Instead, they sit needlessly (... deleted ...) while our American and ANA allies call in air when a direct 105 or 120 would have done the trick.

- RC South should own the tank sqn, not the Cdn task force.

 

[Teeps74]

Firepower wins wars...hearts and minds=two to the chest and one to the head.  Hearts and minds campaigns has not won a single war. it creates a nation of wanter and needers.

Am I reading this right?

I mean, I see it, but I am having a hard time believing that anyone could actually say it in the face of all known data.

 

[SeanNewman]

TCBF,

I'm not really sure what you are referring to with tanks not getting used.  I have personally seen tanks killing people (my tour was 08-09), and the best use for them seems to be the direct fire role taking out enemy behind the super-thick mud walls that are otherwise futile to fire against with conventional small arms.

Any MG seems to be useless, where a LAV has the option of piercing it a bit and then gradually opening it up with HE, but by that time anyone on the other side would likely have moved if not already hit with mach-2 frag.

Tanks on the other hand take aim at a mud wall and one round removes the wall from the ground to the top, about 2-3 metres wide...killing any sort of enemy on the other side.

 

[rampage800]

Instead, they sit needlessly (... deleted ...) while our American and ANA allies call in air when a direct 105 or 120 would have done the trick.

Although I'm sure the Leo's are fast I'm not sure their responsiveness can be compared to an aircraft.

 

[SeanNewman]

Although I'm sure the Leo's are fast I'm not sure their responsiveness can be compared to an aircraft.

That's true, but if they are attached they are immediate and under the command of the local commander, vice aircraft or artillery that may take several minutes and layers of command to spool up.

(Fully understood that tanks are not available to every patrol that goes out, but on the larger-scale deliberate ops they are).

 

[Haligonian]

- One of the reasons we sent tanks over there was to allow accurate, lethal and effective DIRECT fire, where INDIRECT fire would otherwise have had to have been used.

- Great idea... as long as the BG controlling the tanks knows how to use them, or is willing to learn.

- Fact is, Canadian tanks should have been pulled from out of Canadian command (just as 1 Cdn Armd Bde was in Italy in WW2) and given to armies who KNOW and UNDERSTAND armour.  Instead, they sit needlessly (... deleted ...) while our American and ANA allies call in air when a direct 105 or 120 would have done the trick.

- RC South should own the tank sqn, not the Cdn task force.

Can you elaborate a bit more on why you think the tanks should be held by RC (S), a full two levels higher than they are currently held.

 

[Drift Pin]

Air strikes prevent ramp ceremonies eh? Last I checked PPE, metal detectors, dogs, and EOD were saving more lives than air strikes. How many troops have we lost in direct fire engagements?  Not many.  The main killer of course is IED's and airstrikes will not help us with those.

I suppose this was my bad, Replace the work airstrike with 155mm artillery strike, mortar strike, whatever the hell you want.  as long as it is indirect /aircraft fire that strikes the dammed target with lots of firepower then that was my meaning.

Yes, these STRIKES do prevent ramp ceremonies haligonian.  I believe a few of us are still here because of the A-10s that were flying on TF 1-06.  More than one occasion we avoided any direct fire engagement because we didn't have to engage the enemy directly.  That, after all is the whole point of attacking from a distance and thus the beauty of having such assets available.  I probably owe my ass to the gunners who were rocking those M777s a few times over there as well.  Why clear thru a Taliban held building when you can make it disappear?  Saved us from having to dismount and risk lives to clear a mud hut.  Since the objective was to kill everyone inside anyway it was nice to have the option of doing it the easy way.

I imagine a few well placed 1000 pounders thru the roof of a Taliban safe house or somewhere where they are making the IEDs will indirectly help with the IED problem even though the results of such are hard to see by troops lower on the totem pole like you or I. 

I can't comment on the Kiowa and how effective it is.  I have yet to see one over there

 

[Ralph]

The problem is TF 1-06 was four years ago and things are different now. They fight different, so we'd better fight different.

 

[George Wallace]

Ladies and Gents

Let's not forget that ROEs are still OPSEC, so bringing up 'actual' past, present and future ROEs may be going over the line when dicussing this topic.

 

[vonGarvin]

The problem is TF 1-06 was four years ago and things are different now. They fight different, so we'd better fight different.

They do?  Are they all left-handed now? 

How about this, we let them fight however they wish, but when they choose to, we shoot them in the face.  Repeatedly.  We fight how we fight because it works, not because they choose to go left handed or whatever.  I mean, war is simple: find, fix, strike.  Finding is the most difficult, but once you find him, just keep shooting them in the face, allowing Development and Aid to carry on. 

 

[Sprinting Thistle]

I'm not so sure placing the tank squadron under RC (S) is a good idea.  This is dated however, when the squadron first deployed to KAF, RC (S) refused to let the BG deploy them outside the wire.  They sat inside KAF for quite some time before the BG CO and the Squadron OC came up with a cunning plan.  The plan pitched to RC (S), which was commanded by the Dutch, was this:  the tank sqn needed to shake out so it would go out to Tarnak Farms, conduct a sqn training run out into the desert, leaguer up for the night, then redploy back to KAF.  The real plan, not passed to RC (S), was to leaguer to the South but close to the Panjwayi area of operations.  It was expected that the BG would be in a TIC soon enough, then the sqn would be close by, and thus it would be too easy to sell to RC (S) that the tanks should be launched into the TIC. 

Throughout the remainder of the roto, it was a constant battle between the BG Ops staff and the RC (S) staff to get the tanks to support CA BG operations.  The BG was given many tasks after MEDUSA, however just about all of them prohibited the use of the tank squadron.  Without the personal intervention, in some cases, of the BG CO, those ops would have been without tank support.  They would have sat idle in Massum Ghar.  I have no idea why the Dutch were so set against deploying the tanks.  Only General Toon Van Loon could really say.