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 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 recoilless rifle, common in Afghanistan, will take it out instantly.
It is as if we have invented a 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.
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