Thread: Afghanistan NATO Taliban Pakistan Jihad Madrasah Arabs Drones Raids - AfPak strategy

This topic I intend for analysis of the overview of the war on terror, especially the Western military intervention in Afghanistan, now spilling over into Pakistan with the raid to get Bin Laden and drone strikes.

What should the political and military strategy of the West be to stop the terrorist threat which has emerged from this region to threaten our homelands?

Some NATO countries are losing confidence in the Afghan mission and are pulling their forces out. The USA itself has timetabled a significant withdrawal of forces.

Is the Western political and military strategy, led by the US, correct? Can it be improved? If so how?

I intend to present my strategic consideration and proposals in this topic and I invite comments in reply and any alternative strategies and suggestions.


Reject peace talks with the Taliban - crush the enemy instead

I want to tell you all how to beat the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

So this is about "AfPak" military strategy and as well as direct advice for US, British & NATO generals, it is to inform the public so our political leaders know what can be done and what to ask of our military.

In this video in February this year, I outlined my rejection of the idea of peace talks with the Taliban, favouring a more aggressive military approach with a view to crushing the Taliban and similar like-minded jihadis.

At the end of a CBS news report in this video, I presented my strategy for crushing the Taliban and putting down their insurgency in Afghanistan which envisaged a significant confrontation with the Pakistani and Saudi states.




Here's the transcipt of what I say in that video.

"So the Deans of Jihad have dictated terms to the West, the terms they propose of the West's surrender to the Jihadis in the war on terror.

So what should the response of the West be? Should we surrender to the Jihadis, or should we fight to win?

This guy Sami ul Haq should be a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp along with his University of Jihad colleagues, his controllers from the Pakistani ISI and his financial backers from Saudi Arabia.

The US and Western allies ought to name Pakistan and Saudi Arabia as "state sponsors of terrorism".

There ought to be drone strikes on the University of Jihad. (Darul Uloom Haqqania, Akora Khattak, Pakistan)

We ought to seize control of Pakistani and Saudi TV satellites and use them to broadcast propaganda calling for the arrest of all involved in waging terrorist war against the West.

It just seems very poor tactics for our military to be risking life and limb in the minefields of Afghanistan yet at the strategic level our governments and businesses are still "trading with the enemy".

As the Star Trek character Commander Scott might have said -

"It's war, Captain but not as we know it.""

But months later, I got to thinking that a pin-prick drone strike on the University of Jihad would be insufficient and really a heavy bombing raid on the base to flatten it completely was more appropriate.

Bomb Taliban Jihadi indoctrination bases in Pakistan.

I am suggesting that our forces bomb the Taliban Headquarters known as "the University of Jihad" or Darul Uloom Haqqania, Akora Khattak, 50 kilometres (31 miles) east of the provincial capital, Peshawar.

More about the place in this BBC webpage

BBC NEWS | South Asia | The 'university of holy war'

The significance of this place is that it is the main recruitment and command centre for the Taliban which must be known to our military intelligence officers and so it is a mystery why they have not advised our generals to bomb this place before now or if they did advise our generals to bomb it why they didn't actually bomb it?

It makes no sense in a war to give the enemy headquarters a free pass and immunity from being targeted. It just makes their commanders feel untouchable which is not how we want them to feel. We want them arrested or dead or in great fear that soon they will be arrested or dead and bombing their HQ gives them that idea.

Our forces do not have ground forces close enough to use artillery to destroy this target so that leaves NATO to use its aerial power - drones and bomber planes, to bomb the target from the air.

So apart from not wanting to use nuclear weapons on such a weak target which would be over-kill, I think bombing using the very heaviest conventional bombs, MOABs or heavy bombing from B52s or C130s is appropriate.

Heavy bombing could be used to totally level such targets, or turn the target site into one huge crater field - obliterate it. Give the Jihadis a demonstration that they won't ever forget!

Then if the Taliban and Jihadi leaders relocate to a new recruitment, indoctrination and command base, blast that to pieces as well.

Our forces will have to establish air superiority over the target areas to allow not only unmanned drones but piloted heavy bombers with a much heavier bomb load to over-fly the area reasonably safely.

If and when Pakistan objects to our plans to aerial bomb these enemy indoctrination bases we should tell them that because our view is that Pakistan does not control the ground there to our satisfaction - because Pakistani police or military have not arrested and handed over the likes of the Darul Uloom Haqqania and other Taliban leaders operating on the ground for removal to Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp and not closed down the University of Jihad and other Taliban bases then the Pakistan military don't deserve control of the air space over that ground which they don't satisfactorily control.

So we can say "Sorry" if the Pakistanis don't like this violation of their sovereignty but the needs of war mean this is something we must do. We wouldn't intend to permanently deprive Pakistan of control over its air space; this would be a temporary measure until the war on terror is won.

Pakistan had their chance to arrest or kill the Taliban leaders in their Pakistan bases but now it is too late so we are going to flatten the Taliban bases in that part of Pakistan from the air and we need total air superiority over the target area in order to protect our pilots.

The Pakistan government and military has complained about drone strikes in parts of Pakistan but Pakistan has not gone to war with us about it, thankfully.

Hopefully, the Pakistanis will not want to contest air superiority with their military but if they do decide to fight to resist our air-superiority where we need it to bomb the Taliban then we must be prepared to take out all nearby Pakistani ground to air missile batteries and any air fighters they send against us to contest air superiority.

If the Pakistanis decide to fight us over control of Pakistan's air space then of course there is a risk this could escalate to all-out war if the Pakistanis really want to make a casus belli out of the sovereignty issue and the matter of us requiring to destroy the Taliban so possibly we should make it clear to the Pakistanis that the US President or the NATO supreme commander have the option to use nuclear weapons against Pakistani military bases anywhere in Pakistan if that was necessary to win an all-out war with Pakistan.

That's not our aim to escalate to an all-out war with Pakistan here but Pakistan should be careful not to escalate the situation from one where we need to go after the Taliban only into one where the official Pakistan military gets dragged into a war with us unnecessarily.

This risk of having to fight and win an all-out war with Pakistan is a lesser risk than failing to defeat the Taliban, withdrawing from Pakistan having achieved little to secure Afghanistan and thereby giving encouragement to Jihadis the world over to commit more acts of terrorism and war elsewhere in the world including in our homelands. So Pakistan should not force us to make that choice of two risky options because their defeat is preferable to our own defeat in our opinion.

Pakistan should avoid war with the West by stepping back and allowing us to destroy the Taliban in Pakistan because it is the Taliban and the Jihahis who are the true enemies of the Pakistani and Afghan people. We are the friends of the people of Pakistan and we will prove that by defeating their and our enemy, the Taliban and associated Jihadis.

Hopefully the Pakistanis will back off and let us bomb the Taliban without threat from Pakistan's air defences. We should tell Pakistan that we are doing them a favour which they will thank us for in the long run though we appreciate the embarrassment for them in the short term.

Cut off the money which pays for terrorism
Whenever we are discussing the global war on terror then the funding of Jihadis from oil-rich Arab kingdoms is going to be a big factor to consider.

This news video from 2007 identifies the deadly mix of oil-rich Arabs with a Jihadi agenda funding military training camps and jihadi indoctrination universities, colleges and schools in dirt-poor areas of Pakistan to churn out Al Qaeda fighters, brainwashed suicide bombers, and recruits for the Taliban.



Although we've got Bin Laden since that video was made, so long as the Arab oil is controlled by political jihadis they will be funding someone for their wars of terror. If the Arab oil was controlled by secular democratic governments instead of jihadist kingdoms then that source of funding for terrorism would dry up. So we ought really to be supporting regime change and revolution led by Arab secular-minded democrats and republicans.

Opium / heroin or other drug money is another source of money for terrorism which must be cut off.

There is also a very great danger that when we pay the Pakistani state for help in fighting terrorism that gives the Pakistani state a financial incentive to dishonestly help to recruit and train up the very same terrorists that they will hand over for money to the West.

For the Pakistani state, terrorism is big business. They get paid both by oil-rich Arabs for recruiting and training jihadi terrorists and they get paid by the West for arresting and handing over the very same terrorists. It is not unlike a farming operation for the Pakistanis where the cash crop is terrorists.

Stopping the money that funds terrorism - and a lot of that can be traced back to the West - after all, it's Western cash which pays for oil, drugs and support to the Pakistani state - stopping our money being used against us - will be a central factor in any successful strategy to defeat terrorism.

What should the political and military strategy of the West be to stop the terrorist threat which has emerged from this region to threaten our homelands?

Most of the little threat that there was ended ten years ago. The "war on terror" official ended about three years ago.

You are right to point out the big-oil money--it was known within a few days of 9/11. But we're as unwilling to go after those sources because they are woven and intertwined with Saudi's control of "our" (hehe) oil, and the very reasons why the West has meddled in the region and fueled resentment towards the West for nearly a century.

Originally Posted by Lynx_Fox

What should the political and military strategy of the West be to stop the terrorist threat which has emerged from this region to threaten our homelands?

Most of the little threat that there was ended ten years ago. The "war on terror" official ended about three years ago.

In the last 10 years, a lot of people have been killed by terrorist attacks, in Iraq and in Afghanistan and some of them US and British soldiers.

I don't consider it a "little threat" when my country's soldiers are killed so I wonder why you do?

Don't you notice any terrorist attack unless it happens big like on 9/11. Is anything smaller than that "little" in your book?

Then there are the terror attacks in other countries of the world where it's not usually Americans or Britons dying.

Number of non-state terrorist Incidents 2000–2008

Are those attacks "little" because they are far away from you?



From here

List of terrorist incidents, 2011 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Other years data - List of terrorist incidents - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There looks to be, on average, more than one terrorist incident happening somewhere in the world every day.

Are you turning a blind eye?

None of those events posed a threat to the Western lifestyle--not even 9/11, that's what I mean by "threat." There's always a threat of receiving a terror event, and while completely agree that's a bad thing that should be reduced, we also shouldn't loose sight that it is a
tactic used by a lesser political entity to influence politics. It's part of the tapestry of politics--like all war. Declaring war against an enemy organization is ok--declaring war against a tactic is stupid and completely misses the nuance or what's necessary to defeat the people behind the tactic or change their minds.

I don't consider it a "little threat" when my country's soldiers are killed so I wonder why you do?

That's a dead simple one....because terror is seldom if ever directed towards Soldiers--those aren't acts under the category of warfare...and if against those in uniform--identified as such and considered a legitimate form of warfare unless it violates some other rule--such as blowing up a military hospital. I never considered the IED strike on my MRAP a terror event, nor the dozen or so rocket attacks during the month or so I live on an American base in Iraq (most times I lived with the Iraqis)--we were legit military targets.

Originally Posted by Lynx_Fox

None of those events posed a threat to the Western lifestyle--not even 9/11, that's what I mean by "threat." There's always a threat of receiving a terror event, and while completely agree that's a bad thing that should be reduced, we also shouldn't loose sight that it is a
tactic used by a lesser political entity to influence politics. It's part of the tapestry of politics--like all war. Declaring war against an enemy organization is ok--declaring war against a tactic is stupid and completely misses the nuance or what's necessary to defeat the people behind the tactic or change their minds.

It's a good answer to when someone accuses us of waging a war "against Islam" to say - "no, it's not that, we respect people's religions so for us it's a war against those who employ terrorism against us, random attacks against civilians or on soldiers protecting civilians, to extort concessions or a retreat or surrender of some kind and we don't much care what the terrorists goals are" or, for short, a war on terror. It's short hand - a slogan and a good one.

I think Condi put it best here.



Well that's why she'd make a good VP for Romney.

Originally Posted by Lynx_Fox

I don't consider it a "little threat" when my country's soldiers are killed so I wonder why you do?

That's a dead simple one....because terror is seldom if ever directed towards Soldiers--those aren't acts under the category of warfare...and if against those in uniform--identified as such and considered a legitimate form of warfare unless it violates some other rule--such as blowing up a military hospital. I never considered the IED strike on my MRAP a terror event, nor the dozen or so rocket attacks during the month or so I live on an American base in Iraq (most times I lived with the Iraqis)--we were legit military targets.

Well thanks for your service. The IED threat to armoured vehicles troubled me a lot and I put my mind to thinking of secure supply routes and new designs for vehicles - all from the comfort of my home PC of course. I was no hero like you.

Em the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan didn't wear uniform but that didn't make our forces there terrorists for shooting at them.

If the terrorists or their bosses are wearing civies I am still content to blow them to hell under the laws of war.

Originally Posted by Peter Dow

I think bombing using the very heaviest conventional bombs, MOABs or heavy bombing from B52s or C130s is appropriate.

So a "MOAB" would be one of those.





Which has a blast radius of 450 feet or 137 metres.


The target area of the campus of University of Jihad looks to be about 100 metres x 100 metres. Hard to guess from the satellite photo.


Here is the Jihadis' own website for the base International Islamic University: Darul Uloom Haqqania which has a number of photographs and is helpfully in English.


Anyway a MOAB on that lot is certainly going to spoil their day and their terror-war plans.

Originally Posted by Peter Dow

Originally Posted by Peter Dow

I think bombing using the very heaviest conventional bombs, MOABs or heavy bombing from B52s or C130s is appropriate.

So a "MOAB" would be one of those.






Which has a blast radius of 450 feet or 137 metres.


The target area of the campus of University of Jihad looks to be about 100 metres x 100 metres. Hard to guess from the satellite photo.


Here is the Jihadis' own website for the base International Islamic University: Darul Uloom Haqqania which has a number of photographs and is helpfully in English.


Anyway a MOAB on that lot is certainly going to spoil their day and their terror-war plans.

I much preferred the term " Daisy Cutter " but anyway bombing the hell out of the Jihad Uni in Pakistan is a splendid idea. Take the fight to the enemy, make them feel very uncomfortable. They are not untouchables.

Peter would you consider the possibility that the aggressive actions you recommend and the tone in which you recommend them are what helped generate the terrorist actions in the first place? Would you concede that such an action is in danger of generating even more recruits to the terrorist cause. Or do you simply lack the power of reasoned thought?

Originally Posted by Dave Wilson

I much preferred the term " Daisy Cutter "

The MOAB (22,600 lbs / 10,000 Kg) is 50% bigger than the Daisy Cutter (15,000 lbs / 6,800 Kg) which was retired in 2008 but the MOAB is a much better weapon because it is GPS guided and can hit the target.

Originally Posted by Dave Wilson

but anyway bombing the hell out of the Jihad Uni in Pakistan is a splendid idea.

Thanks Dave. In isolation it's a not bad idea to target the enemy HQ but there's a lot that's not splendid about our military involvement in Afghanistan. It's a very dangerous situation we have got ourselves into.

Wikipedia: International Security Assistance Force

The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), often called the Coalition Forces, is a NATO-led security mission in Afghanistan that was established by the United Nations Security Council in December 2001 by Resolution 1386,[1] as envisaged by the Bonn Agreement.[2] Its main purpose is to train the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) and assist Afghanistan rebuild key government institutions but is also engaged in the 2001-present war with insurgent groups.

ISAF was initially charged with securing Kabul and surrounding areas from the Taliban, al Qaeda and factional warlords, so as to allow for the establishment of the Afghan Transitional Administration headed by Hamid Karzai.[3] In October 2003, the UN Security Council authorized the expansion of the ISAF mission throughout Afghanistan,[4] and ISAF subsequently expanded the mission in four main stages over the whole of the country.[5] Since 2006, ISAF has been involved in more intensive combat operations in southern Afghanistan, a tendency which continued in 2007 and 2008. Attacks on ISAF in other parts of Afghanistan are also reported.

Troop contributors include from the United States, United Kingdom, NATO member states and a number of other countries. The intensity of the combat faced by contributing nations varies greatly, with the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada sustaining the majority of casualties in intensive combat operations, with other contributors sustaining significantly less.

You'll know all about the casualties. Many killed by road side bombs, improvised explosive devices. Our supply routes have never been properly secured - not even in Afghanistan where NATO-ISAF called the shots - to say nothing of supply routes from Pakistan or from the former Soviet countries to the north where we are at other people's mercy 100%.

This is the kind of way to secure a supply route.





but nothing like that has ever been established and Taliban have been free to plant bombs to blow up our soldiers. The Taliban, Warlords and the Pakistanis have demanded huge bribes to get our supplies through. It's an extortion racket and we've been paying people who are not our friends or reliable allies but often are our enemies, taking our money one day, killing us the next day.

Well we have more heavy air-lift capacity in Afghanistan now



so supply is not the dire problem it once was but the operation there has been incompetently run and has all the warning signs of a famous military disaster waiting to happen.

I think the planned pull out of forces before the war is won is being done for political reasons because the weak military leadership has made the price of the intervention too high.

It is not too late to rescue the mission but it needs inspired leadership and I'm the man for the job.

So can I count on your support to be elected or appointed commander in chief of the British armed forces - which would mean also kicking the Queen out of that job since she'd never come up with a splendid idea like mine?

Originally Posted by John Galt

Peter would you consider the possibility that the aggressive actions you recommend and the tone in which you recommend them are what helped generate the terrorist actions in the first place?

Well my recommendations for aggressive actions - calling for a republican revolution here at home for example - are generally ignored by the Western powers who have fought their wars their way without any input from me.

As I have explained in my last post, even when I support the broad plan - liberation of Iraq / Afghanistan - my aggressive recommendations - to seize control of Arab satellite TV for example, to establish secure supply routes - are generally ignored.

So the terrorism we have seen is nothing to do with me or my ideas. The terrorism is a response to the political goals and objectives of the terrorists' masters - mostly monarchs and military dictators - who want proxy forces to attack Western forces they perceive as undermining their rule at home, or to attack the homelands of those Western countries such as in the USA 9/11 and London 7/7.

However asking proxies to fight for the rule of military dictators and absolute monarchies would not brainwash people easily so they needed some kind of justification to inspire their people to fight their battles for them - hence the whole myth of a crusader war against Islam was invented to inspire jihadi terrorism.

Originally Posted by John Galt

Would you concede that such an action is in danger of generating even more recruits to the terrorist cause. Or do you simply lack the power of reasoned thought?

I would concede that there is a need to be proportionate and to target carefully so as to avoid collateral damage to civilians wherever possible. Without such care, yes, there is a danger of creating more enemies than you kill.

Targeting the University of Jihad, Akora Khattak

Here are the co-ordinates for Akora Khattak.
Geohack - Akora Khattak
34° 0′ 2.17″ N, 72° 7′ 18.06″ E
34.000603,72.121683

and if you look on Google Maps the co-ordinates for Akora Khattak seems to be centred right on the Darul Uloom Haqqania / University of Jihad.

That location is in a built-up area (of course the cowards would use civilian human shields) so using the MOAB is bound to do a fair amount of collateral damage to surrounding buildings and people. So the word should go out now - evacuate Akora Khattak and don't live within 5 miles of any such jihadi university otherwise you could be seriously inconvenienced.


A "MOAB" has a blast radius of 450 feet or 137 metres.
The target area of the campus of University of Jihad looks to be about 100 metres x 100 metres. Hard to guess from the satellite photo.
Here is the Jihadis' own website for the base International Islamic University: Darul Uloom Haqqania which has a number of photographs and is helpfully in English.


That said about taking care, if you successfully kill your committed enemies then that's how you lessen the danger and win the war.

I didn't quote any of that BBC webpage before but you really ought to be aware of what is going on at that jihadi indoctrination base.

The 'university of holy war'
By Haroon Rashid (October, 2003)
BBC correspondent in North-West Frontier Province

Its students and principal call it the University of Jihad (Holy War).

Last week the religious seminary of Darul Uloom Haqqania in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province turned out another class of young Pakistanis and Afghans ready to wage holy war against the enemies of their religion.
Among them was 15-year-old Afghan refugee, Javed Ullah.
"I wish to fight the infidels," he said as he left the seminary in Akora Khattak, 50 kilometres (31 miles) east of the provincial capital, Peshawar.
Javed is among 600 students who have completed studies in different fields over the past year.

I will dedicate my whole life for jihad. I will kill enemies of Islam
Minhaj Uddin, student


Wearing white turbans and dress, all the new graduates looked satisfied and seemed to brim with hope for a bright future.
I want to go back and fight the Americans," Javed said wearing a garland. "I can't wait anymore."


His Pakistani classmates had a similar desire.
"I will dedicate my whole life for jihad. It is compulsory for Muslims. I will kill enemies of Islam," said student Minhaj Uddin.


Mullah Omar's words

The whole convocation was full of slogans in support of Afghanistan's ousted Taleban regime, al-Qaeda's leader Osama Bin Laden and holy war.
Some of the banners adorning the seminary were decorated with pictures of Kalashnikov rifles and tanks.
In their speeches, teachers and religious scholars urged the students to put defending their faith before everything else.

"Being watchmen of your religion, you are naturally the first target of your enemies," said Maulana Sami ul-Haq, the principal of the seminary.

In the past, some Taleban officials, themselves graduates of the institution, have attended these convocations.
Even Taleban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar's messages have been read out.

The school's support for the Taleban has been no secret.

The principal previously sent a batch of 2,000 Afghan students back to their homeland to aid the then ruling Taleban in its fight against the warlords of the Northern Alliance.

So it is Jihadi indoctrination bases like that that have created the terrorist actions not our actions.

• If the Pakistani state won't close such places down from the ground where it can be done at less risk to civilians and property
• if the Pakistani state won't send in the police to arrest the managers and close the facility, perhaps opening it under new management with the old managers handed over to us as prisoners of war
• if the Pakistani army won't seize the base by defeating any Taliban defenders who would prevent any police arrests
• if the alternative to our intervention is Jihadi indoctrination from the university of Jihad as per usual

then we must bomb it and all jihadi bases like it if we are to win this war.

If NATO-ISAF are not secure enough in their positions in Afghanistan to withstand any surge in terrorist activity which might follow our attack on the university of jihad then this is evidence that our deployment has been insufficiently robust and not competently secured. We need to get our forces secured so that they can cope with any eventuality.

I do worry that sentiments such as yours John Galt see our involvement in Afghanistan as some kind of armed diplomacy with the jihadis where we have to negotiate so that they don't terrorise or kill us or Afghans and Pakistanis as much as they might - and that's not what our military intervention is all about, or should not be. I do worry though about calls for "Peace talks with the Taliban".

This is a war on terror and it ought be fought as such otherwise the casualties we have sustained are not worth the price for the limited goals the likes of you might have.

We did not go there for "Peace talks with the Taliban" and any such talk of peace talks is a betrayal in my opinion.

before you get too warlike
remember
culloden moor
.............
Pakistan funded and trained and supports the taliban
Pakistan will always do what they think is in Pakistan's own best interest. And, as long as they see India as their biggest threat, that means supporting islamist extreemists. Most of our supplies to Afganistan come through Pakistan, with whom we have a tenuous "friendship".
Logistically, actions within Afghanistan are damned costly...it was estimated that we pay $400. per gallon of fuel in country. Tossing bombs at the people who control our supply lines is insanity.

Originally Posted by sculptor

remember culloden moor

The better lesson from great military disasters of history for our current predicament is Dien Bien Phu.

Originally Posted by sculptor

Pakistan funded and trained and supports the taliban
Pakistan will always do what they think is in Pakistan's own best interest. And, as long as they see India as their biggest threat, that means supporting islamist extreemists. Most of our supplies to Afganistan come through Pakistan, with whom we have a tenuous "friendship".
Logistically, actions within Afghanistan are damned costly...it was estimated that we pay $400. per gallon of fuel in country. Tossing bombs at the people who control our supply lines is insanity.

Trying to fight an insurgency against a proxy (the Taliban) of a state (Pakistan) whom you have conceded controls your supply lines is indeed a militarily untenable position. But a good general would never concede control of supply routes to the enemy. We have had poor generals who got us into this mess but good generals can get us out, and win the war.

There are two ways out of that jam.

1. Use other supply routes - direct supply flight into Afghanistan & northern distribution route via the former Soviet countries.
2. Secure the Pakistani supply route. Not by caving into the Taliban and their allies in the Pakistan state with "peace talks" which let them rule Afghanistan but by smashing them so that the Taliban is eliminated and the Pakistani state comes under the control of our allies in Pakistan - those Pakistanis with a modern, liberal, democratic or secular outlook, or at least those who don't fancy living under the dictatorship of the medieval Jihadis.

So for option 2, assuming we can hold the fort with option 1 for long enough, tossing bombs at the Taliban's bases in Pakistan is exactly the militarily correct and sane course of action. Whereas surrendering to the Taliban's bases in Pakistan some unwarranted immunity from attack risks the re-emergence of global jihadi networks operating out of Pakistan, if not out of Afghanistan.

You might want to take into consideration Pakistan's nuclear weapons, and who helped them in their developement. China saw Pakistan as a proxy partner in their long animosity with India.
Let us assume that we could topple the pakistan government and military without nuclear retaliation. What then, how would you control a country with a population advantage? Could we control the activities of India or China after we attack?

We may yet get tacit approval to attack taliban bases in Pakistan, but first, we gotta sucker the taliban into doing more terrorists attacks within Pakistan.
A good strategy trumps tactics in any engagement.

Originally Posted by sculptor

You might want to take into consideration Pakistan's nuclear weapons, and who helped them in their developement. China saw Pakistan as a proxy partner in their long animosity with India.

Already considered. Bombing the Taliban is nowhere near an existential threat to Pakistan so they won't want to go nuclear.

The Taliban and jihadis in general are just a nice little earner for the Pakistani state - and they are expendable as far as Pakistani is concerned. For example, Pakistan makes a lot of money by handing over captured jihadis for Western cash. So no way would the official Pakistani state want to do any more than complain loudly and close their supply routes for a while. The Pakistani state will leave the Taliban to their fate, so long as we are careful to target specifically only the Taliban and not threaten core Pakistani interests, which we won't, not under my plan anyway.

Originally Posted by sculptor

Let us assume that we could topple the pakistan government and military without nuclear retaliation.

No let's not assume that because that isn't the intention of attacking the Taliban. The intention is to topple the Taliban. Period. There is no intention to change the president or prime minister or parliament of Pakistan. That's for Pakistanis to decide. Those are the democratic institutions we want to foster, and which are threatened by the Taliban, for example, even a Pakistani cabinet minister and a former Prime Minister have been assassinated by the Taliban (or by similar jihadi or militant types).

As for Taliban controllers and sympathizers in the Pakistani ISI and military high command - those who have backed the Taliban are going to lose face and influence within the military when their jihadi terrorism project goes up in smoke but there is no question of toppling the Pakistani military as our primary intention. I already made it clear that the Pakistani military would be well advised not to escalate the conflict and bring themselves to war against the West on the Taliban's behalf because, after all, Pakistan is outmatched in any all-out war with NATO.

Originally Posted by sculptor

What then, how would you control a country with a population advantage? Could we control the activities of India or China after we attack?

The purpose of the exercise is to remove the Taliban so that the people of Pakistan can control themselves, democratically.

Originally Posted by sculptor

We may yet get tacit approval to attack taliban bases in Pakistan, but first, we gotta sucker the taliban into doing more terrorists attacks within Pakistan.
A good strategy trumps tactics in any engagement.

Well there is ambiguity about the current NATO strategy - drone strikes and calls for peace talks. The drone strikes fit better into a good strategy to defeat the Taliban. The peace talks calls don't. So we need clarity.

We'll get that clarity if we get the approval of the US president and of any other NATO forces that want to help with such an attack on the Taliban's HQs. It's no big leap from using drone strikes against Taliban forward bases, hiding places for their fighters, to hitting their HQ and indoctrination base a bit further away from the border.

I think any US president who wants to win this war could easily go for this. Obama authorised the raid to get Bin Laden. He has authorised plenty of drone strikes. I think there is a good chance he would authorise a bombing raid on the Taliban's indoctrination base and HQ at Akora Khattak. If he doesn't then the war is likely to drag on until some US president does authorise such bombing raids.

Originally Posted by sculptor

We may yet get tacit approval to attack taliban bases in Pakistan, but first, we gotta sucker the taliban into doing more terrorists attacks within Pakistan.
A good strategy trumps tactics in any engagement.

Good idea.I wonder if it would be as simple as just marching soldiers through their territory and waiting for them to attack us in a public place?

Originally Posted by Lynx_Fox

None of those events posed a threat to the Western lifestyle--not even 9/11, that's what I mean by "threat." There's always a threat of receiving a terror event, and while completely agree that's a bad thing that should be reduced, we also shouldn't loose sight that it is a
tactic used by a lesser political entity to influence politics. It's part of the tapestry of politics--like all war.

That's what's so dangerous about it, though. We don't want small organizations thinking they can do this. Probabilistically it's just too likely there will be many of them, and that some of them will have contradicting demands.

If the demands contradict in a way that makes it logically impossible to satisfy both parties, then at least one of them is going to unleash its fury on us if we are unable to intimidate them.

Declaring war against an enemy organization is ok--declaring war against a tactic is stupid and completely misses the nuance or what's necessary to defeat the people behind the tactic or change their minds.

Very much agree. We need to re-frame the problem. It's not going to be as simple as blowing anyone up.

When dealing with the Soviets, we had the advantage that their military felt a responsibility to protect Soviet civilians. Terrorists appear to feel no (or very little) similar responsibility to protect Islamic civilians. So basically we have no way to deter them. We need to find one.

The best I've come up with so far is to use weapons such as light blindness, which permanently disable them without killing them. We'd need to revise the rules of warfare, though. Perhaps we could determine that such tactics are acceptable only when dealing with an enemy that purposely targets civilians, but keep the rule effective for warfare against other enemies if they honor the rules of the Geneva convention on their end?

Originally Posted by kojax

Originally Posted by sculptor

We may yet get tacit approval to attack taliban bases in Pakistan, but first, we gotta sucker the taliban into doing more terrorists attacks within Pakistan.
A good strategy trumps tactics in any engagement.

Good idea.I wonder if it would be as simple as just marching soldiers through their territory and waiting for them to attack us in a public place?

Attacking us won't do it. We gotta sucker them into attacking pakistani targets within Pakistan. Only a fool would assume that we were able to "sneak into Pakistan" to get Osama Bin Laden---we had covert help from pakistani allies high up in the military, who managed to not sound an alarm.(tacit approval) In the weeks preceeding the raid, radical islamists had indeed been bombing certain targets within Pakistan, and it seemed(to the pakistanis) that al queda was funding the radicals, so they let us take out the head of that particular snake.
Anyone remember the "agent provocateurs" used by our FBI 30-40 years ago? Likely, it would be harder to infiltrate the Taliban, than the KKK or Arian Brotherhood.

This 2-hour video is of a British TV programme which explains in great detail the role of the Pakistani state via the ISI (Inter-services intelligence) has in supporting the Taliban's war against our forces in Afghanistan.

For a greater insight into Pakistan's double-dealing then the BBC Panorama documentary "SECRET PAKISTAN", here re-posted as 2 x 1 hour parts, which presents the evidence of Pakistan's sponsoring of terrorism, is highly recommended.

SECRET PAKISTAN - Part 1 - Double Cross (YouTube)



SECRET PAKISTAN - Part 2 - Backlash (YouTube)

The requirement to defend military supply lines in war, to expect the enemy to attack and to attempt to cut any long supply lines is a basic part of classical military strategy.

If there was ever to be a sustained resistance to our invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan then any competent military strategist could have predicted that the enemy would wish to attack our supply lines in Iraq and Afghanistan and if we didn't do the correct thing according to classical military strategy and defend those supply lines then it was inevitable that the enemy would mine and ambush our undefended, or poorly defended, supply lines.

Now the US does indeed have academic military experts who do indeed know the importance of this requirement in war and have published relevant articles on the internet, such as this fine example -

Army Logistician

Supply Line Warfare by Dr. Cliff Welborn

The U.S. military has also disrupted the enemy’s supply chain to weaken its fighting capabilities. When we think of a military supply line, we often think of the logistics considerations necessary to keep our own supply chain flowing. However, just as important to military success are tactics for disrupting the enemy supply line. A defensive strategy is to protect our own supply chain; an offensive strategy is to inhibit the supply chain of our enemy. The United States has used both offensive and defensive strategies in many wars, including the Revolutionary War in the 1770s and 1780s, the Civil War in the 1860s, the Plains Indian Wars in the late 19th century, World War II in the 1940s, and the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s.

but that ancient yet essential military knowledge, that ought to be taught to every officer at every military academy, doesn't seem to be in the brains of the US, British or other NATO generals, who seem to think "patrolling" or "ever bigger MRAPs" is a better plan to try to keep our soldiers safe on otherwise undefended supply routes.

Actually, the better plan is simply establishing a secure perimeter around your supply route which is watched 24/7 from static guard posts all along the route, either side of the route, and a mobile reaction force to reinforce wherever and whenever the enemy concentrates to attack the supply route.

I've suggested in this thread a detailed plan to defend supply routes in Afghanistan but no doubt there are many variations on that theme.

Don't get me wrong, big MRAPs have their uses as a back-up if and when the enemy makes it through the defended perimeter of a supply line but there does clearly need to be a secure perimeter established in the first place otherwise your supply routes remain effectively uncleared territory and anything on the route not protected by tons of armour is simply easy meat for the enemy.

Certain items in my plan, about seizing satellites and what to bomb in Pakistan is new, specific intelligence for the war on terror and is maybe a bit much to expect on day one from our military.

But for military leaders not to know the requirement to defend supply routes, and therefore foolishly to lead our soldiers to die from enemy road side bombs and ambushes - this is unforgivable ignorance on the part of our generals, defense secretaries and Pentagon, NATO and UK MOD civilian support military "experts".

Those in charge don't seem to know the military basics. It's like the donkey-generals who led brave lion-soldiers to their deaths advancing on foot against machine gun nests as in world war 1 - all over again.

It's another famous military disaster and it is no way to win a war (even though we will likely win this war on terror eventually but at a very high cost in blood and treasure.)

Originally Posted by Peter Dow

but that ancient yet essential military knowledge, that ought to be taught to every officer at every military academy, doesn't seem to be in the brains of the US, British or other NATO generals

Wrong.

Actually, the better plan is simply establishing a secure perimeter around your supply route which is watched 24/7 from static guard posts all along the route, either side of the route, and a mobile reaction force to reinforce wherever and whenever the enemy concentrates to attack the supply route.

Not even remotely possible, let alone practicable.
When you say "better" you mean "according to my largely uninformed opinion" don't you?

Those in charge don't seem to know the military basics.

This from someone who persists in using the term classical military [whatever] instead of classic.
We no longer fight with swords vs. Carthaginians or Spartans.

Originally Posted by Dywyddyr

Originally Posted by Peter Dow

but that ancient yet essential military knowledge, that ought to be taught to every officer at every military academy, doesn't seem to be in the brains of the US, British or other NATO generals

Wrong.

Why so, duck? Or is that all you've got?

Originally Posted by Dywyddyr

Actually, the better plan is simply establishing a secure perimeter around your supply route which is watched 24/7 from static guard posts all along the route, either side of the route, and a mobile reaction force to reinforce wherever and whenever the enemy concentrates to attack the supply route.

Not even remotely possible, let alone practicable.

Sure it is, and I'll show you how. I shall post more details of my secure supply route and a possible new protection force to do the securing, coming right up.

Originally Posted by Dywyddyr

When you say "better" you mean "according to my largely uninformed opinion" don't you?

No I mean better as in actually keeping the route safe, not getting the large number of casualties of our forces while using supply roads. Because it is better to be alive and well than dead or maimed.

Originally Posted by Dywyddyr

Those in charge don't seem to know the military basics.

This from someone who persists in using the term classical military [whatever] instead of classic.

Thanks for the link to Wikipedia to define "classical". So you can link, but not read and understand, huh?

Classical ways of thinking and doingSimilarly, many ways of thinking or doing are thought of as classical. In general, these are ways which have been superseded but which are still appreciated by some, often for their relative simplicity. For example:

• Classical physics, the study of physics based on principles developed before the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics

Therefore "Classical military strategy".

Originally Posted by Dywyddyr

We no longer fight with swords vs. Carthaginians or Spartans.

No but security is almost always still based on the classical defence strategy of a secure perimeter - wall, fence, minefield etc.

My guess is that the house you are living in now is comprised of walls. Or hey, maybe you've decided to abandon classical or "conventional" perimeter security for your living space and you live without any walls, just a tent for a windbreak and you have an armoured vehicle patrolling in circles around your tent to keep you safe, to keep the burglars out?

Secure supply routes for Afghanistan. Overview from 'Warlord Inc.'

There's a lot of information here so I will start with a post presenting an overview of the issues and problems starting with this CBS news story which identifies a critical weakness in our military configuration - poorly defended supply lines whose vulnerability the enemy exploits to gain funds for its insurgency in Afghanistan.



U.S. funds our enemy Taliban's Afghan war - YouTube

CBS News: U.S. Tax Dollars Fueling Afghan Insurgency
House Investigation: Private Contractors Paying Warlords, Criminals to Get Supplies to U.S. and NATO Bases

Billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars are fuelling corruption in Afghanistan and funding the insurgency, according to a six-month investigation by the House subcommittee on National Security and Foreign affairs.

Download Warlord, Inc. Extortion and Corruption Along the U.S. Supply Chain in Afghanistan - Right-click, Save Target As ...

Hillary Clinton said -

"You know, when we are so dependent upon long supply lines, as in Afghanistan, where everything has to be imported, it’s much more difficult than it was in Iraq, where we had Kuwait as a staging ground to go into Iraq. You offload a ship in Karachi and by the time whatever it is – you know, muffins for our soldiers’ breakfasts or anti-IED equipment – gets to where we’re headed, it goes through a lot of hands. And one of the major sources of funding for the Taliban is the protection money."

– Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
Testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
December 3, 2009

Originally Posted by Peter Dow

Why so, duck? Or is that all you've got?

It's quite simple - "that ancient yet essential military knowledge" actually IS taught to every officer at every military academy.
Maybe you've heard the old military aphorism?
Amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics.

Sure it is, and I'll show you how. I shall post more details of my secure supply route and a possible new protection force to do the securing, coming right up.

Oh goody. I can't wait.
Have at it.

No I mean better

In your opinion.
Yet to be shown.

Thanks for the link to Wikipedia to define "classical". So you can link, but not read and understand, huh?

Wrong again.
Let's look at exactly what YOU have chosen to quote:

Classical ways of thinking and doing[/h]Similarly, many ways of thinking or doing are thought of as classical. In general, these are ways which have been superseded but which are still appreciated by some, often for their relative simplicity. For example:

Um, once again, you should draw the distinction.
In military terms, "classical" refers specifically to a particular period of history.

No but security is almost always still based on the classical defence strategy of a secure perimeter - wall, fence, minefield.

Er "classic".
And you're wrong. Again.
Take a look at, for example, the Boer War.
Troops stationed in blockhouses ( the "secure" perimeter) outnumbered the force they were actually fighting. And didn't prevent penetration through that "secure" perimeter.
How about looking at an example of something requiring far fewer troops, and a MUCH smaller length to cover? How about an airfield?
Here's one.
Fifteen Taliban fighters who fought their way on to Helmand's main airbase destroyed six jets worth millions of pounds in an assault that was the start of a bloody weekend for Nato forces.
FIFTEEN MEN got through. And killed 2 Allied troops, wounded another 9 while also destroying six Harriers and damaging two others.

Supplying along a land route (road and/or railway) through friendly territory is easy enough. Supplying through a war-zone, or bandit country requires a military approach, something like this.

Secure supply route border defences plan diagram
(Please note the word "border" here simply means road-"side" or road-"edge" or road-"verge" or road-"wings" etc. It does not refer to the Afghanistan / Pakistan border! We are talking here mostly about defending the existing highways of Afghanistan. For some strange reason people like to obsess about the Afghan / Pakistan border and anytime you say the word "border" in any context, that's what they assume you are talking about. NOT THIS TIME BUDDY! OK? Ya'll got that?) :read:

My plan is to establish a secure wide border either side of the supply route to keep enemy mortar and rocket launcher teams out of range of the supply line.

Apparently, the Taliban are being supplied indirect fire weapons from Iran so defenders need to be prepared to expect attacks using weapons such as 120 mm heavy mortars, with a range of 6200 metres and 107 mm rocket launchers with a range of 8500 metres.

The Telegraph: Iranian weapons getting through to Taliban

Heavy weapons are continuing to stream across the Afghan border from Iran despite Barack Obama's attempts to enlist Tehran's help in fighting the insurgency, officials have said.

So regretfully there is no avoiding the requirement for compulsory purchase of land and eviction of occupiers along a 19 kilometre or 12 mile wide corridor, the whole length of the supply route.

More aggressively NATO might like to consider long-range missile attacks against Iranian weapons productions facilities in Iran to dissuade the Iranians from supplying the Taliban.

Secure border for a supply route - 19 kilometres or 12 miles wide



Secure supply route border defences plan diagram (large - 960 x 1374 pixels)

As can be seen in the diagram, the border perimeter defences are much the same whether you are securing a railway or a road.

Diagram features. Explained for secure Afghanistan supply routes.

• Dangerous ground Enemy forces such as the Taliban, Afghan warlords or Iranian proxies may be attacking the supply route from here
• Vehicle barrier - deep trench / giant boulders / steep slope - so that truck bombs cannot be driven onto the route
• STOP - Police check-point - police check civilians are unarmed and those in police or military uniform are genuine. Needs to be very robust so as to survive an enemy truck bomb.
• Barbed wire - enough to keep out people and larger animals - so more than a horse can jump or cattle can trample over
• No Pedestrians! Cleared ground Target zone for the machine gunners. A hostile intent should be assumed if an intruder is seen here and the intruder should be shot. The ground needs to be cleared of cover so that intruders can be easily spotted and cannot sneak their way past the machine gunners.
• GUN - Fortified machine gun nests / pillboxes 3 man crew. Armour should be able to withstand an RPG hit and contains one machine gun with an effective range to 1000 metres, such as PKM or better. One every 1000 metres on both borders should be manned 24/7. Binoculars, automatic rifles such as AK47 and night vision for 3. Two or more other gun positions per 1000 m on each border are normally unmanned and don't need the expense of real guns sitting there all the time. Such extra positions confuse attackers and serve as firing positions for mobile reaction teams to occupy in emergencies and who can bring additional weapons with them.
  For the on-duty-shift manned pillboxes, I suppose the better (longer effective range, heavier the bullet) a machine gun the better. At a minimum the plan needs a machine gun with a 1000 metre effective range to keep Taliban RPG out of range of the pillbox.
  Ideally I suppose a heavy machine gun (say 12.7 mm ammo, 1800 metres effective range) with its longer range would be best for stopping an advance of the enemy and would give enemy snipers and heavy machine guns at long ranges something to worry about though I think the plan would work well with a medium machine gun (say 7.6 mm ammo, 1500 metres effective range).
  The disadvantage about the heavy machine gun is it is a more difficult 2-man carry when the team decide to move it to another pillbox to confuse the enemy but the extra range and fire-power of a heavy machine gun may well be worth the carry.
  I suggest armoured sights which allow the machine-gunner to fire accurately despite incoming sniper or machine gun fire intended to suppress the pillbox.
  If a tank-crew machine-gunner can fire from inside his tank by virtue of armoured sights, without being suppressed, so should a well designed pillbox, in my opinion.
  Squad automatic weapons or light machine guns (say, 5.56 mm ammo, 900 metres effective range) would be better stored in the APC to be quickly carried into the empty pillboxes to defend an emergency attack and such lighter machine guns are also useful in the APC for responding to an attack anywhere in the secure corridor.
• Access road Where authorised traffic and people can access or leave the supply route.
• Mortar teams' ground Defender mortar teams arriving from mobile response depots should set up somewhere here to fire at the enemy in the dangerous ground. The mortar teams' ground should have features to help to win mortar duels with the enemy such as observation points on higher ground or tall structures to serve as observation towers.
• Safe building ground Somewhere relatively safe to build a heliport, runway, supply store or other facility or base.
• Supply route The road and / or railway we are defending
• Crossing Where the access road crosses a supply route railway
• Station - Railway station to load and unload supplies and people onto and off the supply trains.
• Cross-roads - A four-way junction where the access road crosses the supply road.
• Mobile reaction depot - contains single armoured fighting vehicle. This is also where the off-duty mess is so that soldiers are available to react to sustained attacks anywhere along the supply route. One every 2km. Contains additional infantry weapons and ammunition such as additional machine guns, automatic rifles, rocket propelled grenade launchers, mortars and the rest.
• Armoured personnel carrier Such as an up-armoured humvee. Most mobile reaction depots have one of those. To transport soldiers to the proximity of the enemy attack where soldiers dismount to fight.
• Infantry fighting vehicle or armoured combat vehicle. With stronger armour and able to fire on the enemy from enhanced weapons mounted to the vehicle, as well as able to perform the soldier transport role of the APC. Ideally the defenders would prefer the more powerful IFVs to the battle taxi APCs but fewer mobile reaction depots house IFVs because IFVs cost more and so fewer are available to the defenders than the lower performing APCs.

Secure supply route protection force organisation

I am proposing a dedicated force of mostly Afghan soldiers (though this could and perhaps should in the light of recent increasing green-on-blue attacks initially be set up as a force which is auxiliary to NATO-ISAF, with NATO commanders, rather than part of the Afghan National Army) to secure NATO's main supply routes through Afghanistan.

Organisation.

Ranks in increasing order of seniority -

1. Gunner
2. Master Gunner
3. Team Leader
4. Shift Officer
5. Depot Commander
6. Reaction Captain

There will be higher officer ranks yet to be specified.

Duties of the ranks.

1. Gunner - infantry soldier, serves as a member of a 3-man team which serves on one GUN - Fortified machine gun nests / pillboxes position normally for an 8-hour shift.

A Gunner performs other routine duties for an hour or two each day in addition to his 8-hour shift at the gun position at the nearest Mobile reaction depot under the supervision of his Team Leader, Shift Officer and Depot Commander at which location he has quarters in the depot mess.

A Gunner can also be called to emergency duty when required.

Gunners must be able to

• see well
• operate the machine gun
• fire accurately
• reload the machine gun,
• change the barrel on the machine gun
• use the guns' optical sights and night sights
• use the binoculars and night-vision equipment
• be comfortable in a GUN - Fortified machine gun nests / pillboxes position,
• point out where the No Pedestrians! Cleared ground is and where it ends and where allowed ground behind the gun positions is,
• understand that he is forbidden to enter onto the No Pedestrians! Cleared ground on or off duty, even if ordered to do so by anyone in his team because he may be shot if he does so,
• understand that he is ordered on and off his duty shift at the GUN - Fortified machine gun nests / pillboxes position only by his own Shift Officer and own Depot Commander and he cannot be relieved of duty by his Team Leader nor by a more senior ranking Master Gunner, nor by any other Shift Officer nor Depot Commander nor by any more senior officer whom he does not know.
• understand that while on duty he is not to surrender his personal assault rifle (such as an AK47) to any person, even to someone in his own team. Therefore his Team Leader cannot relieve him of duty nor demand that any Gunner surrender his personal weapon,
• understand that it is the Gunner's job when on duty, his job, to shoot on sight anyone on the No Pedestrians! Cleared ground coming or going, even someone dressed in Afghan army uniform, of whatever rank who could be an intruder dressed in disguise or even be a colleague who is deserting in that direction. If he is not manning the machine gun at the time he is to use his personal assault rifle to shoot the person on the No Pedestrians! Cleared ground if they are in range, but he is not to follow in hot pursuit anyone onto the No Pedestrians! Cleared ground because again he may be shot.
• understand pillbox defensive tactics as follows.
  Sadly, the Taliban are not so obliging as to try to rush a machine gun position since one machine gun could probably take them all out if they were all to charge it clambering through barbed wire over open ground.
  The pillbox machine guns would not be used for suppressing the enemy and therefore blasting away at where you thought an enemy was to keep his head down is just a waste of ammunition and overheats the guns to no good purpose.
  The tactics to be employed for the pillboxes are different from a fight on a random battlefield where both sides are evenly vulnerable to fire and so suppressive fire make some sense.
  Suppressive fire is of use on a random battlefield to keep the enemy's head down while other comrades move to get a better attacking position. Well the defenders won't be changing position. They will keep their positions in the pillbox so suppressive fire make less sense here.
  Our machine gunners should have armoured telescopic sights and therefore only bother actually firing if you have the enemy clearly in your sights and then the first shot is the one that counts.
  Some machine guns have a single-shot fire mode with telescopic sights and those are the machine guns we need. Single-shot will most likely be the mode used most often when you spot someone trying to sneak their way past the guns or if you can see a sniper or heavy machine gunner at an effective range, say 1800 metres or less for a heavy machine gun with telescopic sights, less for a lighter machine gun.
  I seriously doubt that the enemy would ever do a mass charge across open barbed wire ground which would necessitate firing on full-auto and changing barrels but if they do then fine it is their funeral.
  So yes, the gunners would need to know how to change a barrel but if they ever do, I will be questioning their tactics.
  If an enemy is blasting away from a machine gun at extreme ineffective range - 2000 metres or more at the pillbox and only the occasional round is even hitting the pillbox then even though it is tempting to return fire blasting back at the position I would not even bother returning fire because that simply gives away your position and may not hit him at extreme range anyway.
  Such distant firing is probably to lure the defender to return fire and identify which pillbox is manned, so as to know which pillbox to target with RPGs, recoilless rifles or guided missiles or distant fire could be to distract your attention and rather than fire back, grab your binoculars or night vision and see who is trying to sneak up on the position or past the guns. When you spot them and have an easy kill - then open fire, but in single-shot mode because that is all you will need.
  The tactics change if you have a well-armoured position that cannot be suppressed.
  I repeat the pillbox machine-gun is not to suppress the enemy. We want the enemy to stick their heads up and get closer to shoot at the pillbox, so the defenders can carefully target them and kill them on single-shot mode. We want the enemy to think they can sneak past the guns so we wait until they are an easy kill and only then take them out.
• perform other duties as supervised by the higher ranks.

2. Master Gunner - skills-based promoted ranks for Gunners with additional specialist skills such as

• weapons maintenance,
• binocular and night-vision maintenance,
• vehicle driving and basic maintenance - checking and maintaining tyre pressure, fuel and oil levels, etc.
• infantry fighting vehicle specialist
• mortar team skills,
• first aid,
• communications - operating telephone (landline and mobile / cell ) and radio.

Master Gunners get an appropriately and differently designed skills badge and salary increment for each specialist skill learned. So typically that would be a badge with a machine-gun icon for weapons' maintenance, a badge with an APC-icon for vehicle driving and basic maintenance and so on. A Master Gunner with more badges and skills outranks a Master Gunner with fewer badges and skills.

3. Team leader A promoted post. The most experienced and able Gunner in each team of 3 on a GUN - Fortified machine gun nests / pillboxes position.

Team leaders should have multiple specialist skills and in particular the communications specialist skills is one of the required skills to be eligible to become a Team Leader. Team leaders are always the senior ranking members in every 3-man team irrespective of badges and skills. So a Master Gunner with, say, 5 skill badges does not outrank a Team Leader with, say, only 4 skills badges.

4. Shift officer - normally on duty back at the Mobile reaction depot and in command and in radio, mobile (cell) or land-line telephone contact with 4 teams, which is 12 men, on duty for an 8-hour shift. The shift officer acts as a deputy commander for the shift for 4 GUN - Fortified machine gun nests / pillboxes and for the Mobile Reaction Depot.

The Shift Officer is also in radio, mobile (cell) or land-line telephone contact with Shift Officers in neighbouring Mobile reaction depots. The Shift Officer decides whether or not to consult the Depot commander in response to a request for assistance from any of the 4 teams under his command or to a request for assistance from a Shift Officer in a neighbouring Mobile Reaction Depot.

5. Depot commander - in command of one Mobile reaction depot , the vehicle, weapons and everything therein. Commands the 3 Shift officers and 12 teams which totals 39 men under his command. He can declare a depot emergency, and call the off-duty shifts in the mess back on emergency duty.

The Depot Commander can order the depot's vehicle and men to attend and to defend the GUN - Fortified machine gun nests / pillboxes under attack or order mortar teams into action from the Mortar teams' ground.

In an emergency, the Depot Commander notifies his immediate superior officers, the Reaction Captains who are the reaction director and deputy reaction director assigned command responsibility for his Mobile Reaction Depot.

6. Reaction Captain

• has some command responsibility for the reactions of 8 neighbouring Mobile Reaction Depots
• is the reaction director for the central 4 depots of these 8 neighbouring depots
• is the deputy reaction director for the peripheral 4 depots of these 8 neighbouring depots.

Reaction Captains direct Mobile Reaction Depots

The diagram illustrates how the command responsibility of neighbouring Reaction Captains is organised.

Mobile Reaction Depots 1 & 2
- the reaction director is Reaction Captain C
- the deputy reaction director is Reaction Captain A

Mobile Reaction Depots 3 & 4
- the reaction director is Reaction Captain A
- the deputy reaction director is Reaction Captain C

Mobile Reaction Depots 5 & 6
- the reaction director is Reaction Captain A
- the deputy reaction director is Reaction Captain D

Mobile Reaction Depots 7 & 8
- the reaction director is Reaction Captain D
- the deputy reaction director is Reaction Captain A

Mobile Reaction Depots 9 & 10
- the reaction director is Reaction Captain D
- the deputy reaction director is Reaction Captain B

Mobile Reaction Depots 11 & 12
- the reaction director is Reaction Captain B
- the deputy reaction director is Reaction Captain D

Mobile Reaction Depots 13 & 14
- the reaction director is Reaction Captain B
- the deputy reaction director is Reaction Captain E

Mobile Reaction Depots 15 & 16
- the reaction director is Reaction Captain E
- the deputy reaction director is Reaction Captain B

This overlapping organisation ensures that emergencies which are declared at any Mobile Reaction Depot can be supported if needs be by Reaction Captains with responsibility for the depot under attack ordering neighbouring depots on either side to react to the emergency.

A vehicle is assigned to each Reaction Captain who routinely drives to visit the 8 Mobile Reaction Depots for which he has command responsibility for daily meetings with the Depot Commanders and with the other 2 Reaction Captains he shares depot command responsibility with.

The Reaction Captains can arrange to receive a salute at attention from each off-duty shift twice a week with an opportunity for the Reaction Captains to boost morale by reminding the Gunners that every Reaction Captain has 8 Mobile Reaction Depots and 320 soldiers under his command and that the 2 Reaction Captains with command responsibility for a particular depot have between them 480 soldiers under their command.

So in emergencies the Secure Supply Route Protection Force is well organised to defeat any attack the enemy dares to try against any part of the supply route. They shall not pass! (No passeran!)

The Reaction Captain has a captain's office and quarters adjacent to one of the 4 Mobile Reaction Depots for which he is the reaction director and the Depot Commander of that particular Mobile Reaction Depot also serves as the Reaction Captain's secretary to take telephone calls to the Reaction Captain's Office if he is out of his office and quarters at the time.

Being so mobile in his daily routine, the Reaction Captain must be contactable via radio or mobile (cell) telephone when he is out of his office.

In the event of a major attack, the Reaction Captain will set up a tactical command headquarters at his office to direct the battle and call for further reinforcements from neighbouring Reaction Captain's offices if required.

Staff numbers

Reaction captain's office
1 office every 4 depots

161 men

• four depots of forty men (4 x 40 = 160)
• plus the Reaction Captain (160 + 1 = 161)

Mobile reaction depot
1 depot every 2 kilometres (1.25 miles)

40 men

• three eight-hour shifts of thirteen men, (3 x 13 = 39)
• plus the Depot Commander (39 + 1 = 40)

40 men per 2 kilometres = 20 men per kilometre = 32 men per mile

Depot shift
3 shifts per depot

13 men

• four three-man gun teams, ( 4 x 3 = 12)
• plus the Shift Officer (12 + 1 = 13)

Reserves
Approximate numbers of infantry required including reserves.

For a 25% reserve of 5 reserves per kilometre, 8 reserves per mile
Force including reserves is 25 infantry per kilometre, 40 infantry per mile

For a 50% reserve of 10 reserves per kilometre, 16 reserves per mile
Force including reserves is 30 infantry per kilometre, 48 infantry per mile

Support staff
Infantry deployed in the field or on guard somewhere can require numbers of support staff (such as delivery and rubbish collection, engineers of all kinds, trainers, medical, administration, military policing etc.) which I am told can be multiples of the numbers of deployed infantry they support, depending on the support facilities offered, the quality and efficiency of the support organisation.

I believe the support staff requirements for a static guard force are somewhat different to mobile infantry advancing (or retreating) in a conventional war because the guard force's requirements for fuel and ammunition deliveries are less but a guard force may expect more in terms of base facilities - running water, electricity and so on.

I am not recommending figures for support staff because such numbers are more dependent on the infrastructure of the army and nation concerned and are independent of the details of how the infantry are deployed which is my concern here only. Numbers of support staff are to be filled in by NATO-ISAF and the Afghan government and army themselves later.

How my plan solves the issues raised in 'Warlord Inc.'

WARLORD, INC.

"In Afghanistan, the U.S. military faces one of the most complicated and difficult supply chains in the history of warfare. The task of feeding, fueling, and arming American troops at over 200 forward operating bases and combat outposts sprinkled across a difficult and hostile terrain with only minimal road infrastructure is nothing short of herculean. In order to accomplish this mission, the Department of Defense employs a hitherto unprecedented logistics model: responsibility for the supply chain is almost entirely outsourced to local truckers and Afghan private security providers.
...
Transporting valuable and sensitive supplies in highly remote and insecure locations requires extraordinary levels of security.
...
RECOMMENDATION 3

Consider the Role of Afghan National Security Forces in Highway Security.

In the future, Afghan security forces will have a role to play in road security. Proposals to reform the convoy security scheme ought to take a medium- to long-term view of the role of Afghan security forces, while developing credible security alternatives that address the immediate U.S. military logistics needs.

RECOMMENDATION 6

Oversee Contracts to Ensure Contract Transparency and Performance.

The Department of Defense needs to provide the personnel and resources required to manage and oversee its trucking and security contracts in Afghanistan. Contracts of this magnitude and of this consequence require travel ‘outside the wire.’ For convoys, that means having the force protection resources necessary for mobility of military logistics personnel to conduct periodic unannounced inspections and ride-alongs."

My plan can achieve the "Warlord, Inc." recommendations 3 and 6, not merely to stop extortion and corruption along the supply chain but to gain a further significant advance to NATO-ISAF mission goals.

I propose secure supply route border defences and a dedicated mostly Afghan protection force but, for now, auxiliary to NATO and under NATO command, to man those defences which would achieve all along the main supply routes a level of security which is similar to the security inside a military base or fort.

"Warlord, Inc." uses the NATO-ISAF parlance of "inside the wire" to refer to the security achieved within their own NATO-ISAF bases but to virtually nowhere else in Afghanistan.

It is about time NATO-ISAF and the Afghan government and military were extending that true security "inside the wire" to more of Afghanistan. My secure supply route plan would bring more of Afghanistan "inside the wire" so to speak.



The secure supply route border defences require only authorised persons living inside the secure defences.

The general population sadly may harbour enemy agents and so must be required to live outside the border defences.

Where isolated houses and small villages can be relocated to use a suitable existing supply road then that should be done with compensation for the relocated residents and landowners.

Where the settlements along the old supply route are too big to move then new roads should be built for a new supply route, by-passing those bigger settlements by at least 6 miles.

WARLORD, INC.
"II. BACKGROUND

Supplying the Troops

Afghanistan … is a landlocked country whose neighbors range from uneasy U.S. allies, such as Pakistan and Uzbekistan, to outright adversaries, such as Iran.
...
The fastest route to Afghanistan is by air. However, the lack of airport infrastructure places significant constraints on the military’s ability to rely on air transport to supply the troops. Afghanistan has only 16 airports with paved runways, and of those, only four are accessible to non-military aircraft (including contractor-operated cargo planes). Air transport is also the most costly shipping option. Thus, while air transport is available, it is limited to personnel and high-priority cargo. Only about 20 percent of cargo reaches Afghanistan by air."

Ideally then for the future, NATO-ISAF could aim to have the capacity to supply fully 100 percent of its cargo by air by increasing by 5-fold the airport infrastructure and capacity of Afghanistan, building perhaps one or two more big hub airports around the country or a few more long runways and additional cargo handling facilities at existing airports like Bagram or Kandahar - to accept the incoming international flights, such as Hercules C-130s, then from those large hub airports transfer the cargo into smaller planes to fly from new short runways at those few hub airports on to dozens of new smaller airports all around Afghanistan.

To pay for this, money can be reallocated to airport construction by rationalising some of the 200 most expensive and remote forward operating bases (FOBs) and combat outposts. Close those which cost more than they are worth - such as the redundant and strategically irrelevant FOBs along the Afghanistan / Pakistan border.

Retreat to the really important bases, build airfields for them and build secure supply route defences to and from them and that's a very strong defensive position from which to launch offensive operations against the enemy.

No longer will the legitimate military and civilian traffic require the permission of warlords to travel along Afghanistan's highways.

Securing an air base. Example - Camp Bastion / Camp Leatherneck





Bastion Airport (NATO Channel on YouTube)

Wikipedia: "Camp Bastion is the main British military base in Afghanistan. It is situated northwest of Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand Province.

It is the largest British overseas military camp built since World War II.

Ministry of Defence News. "Camp Bastion doubles in size

Camp Bastion, the lynchpin of British, and increasingly American, operations in Helmand, is a desert metropolis, complete with airport, that is expanding at a remarkable pace. Report by Sharon Kean.

Bastion exists for one reason: to be the logistics hub for operations in Helmand. Supply convoys and armoured patrols regularly leave its heavily-defended gates. They support the military forward operating bases, patrol bases and checkpoints spread across Helmand province."

Well here's another reason for Bastion to exist - to become a logistics hub for operations across Afghanistan, well beyond Helmand province.

Colonel Mathie said
"The biggest project is the airfield, a new runway and air traffic control tower. When it's finished we'll be able to put our TriStar airliners straight in here instead of going to Kandahar, allowing us to get strategic air traffic into Bastion. That will be a big development for us."

More ...

With strategic airlift capacity, think strategically. A few more runways like the new longer runway at Bastion and Afghanistan's airfield infrastructure would be sufficient for all of NATO-ISAF force supplies to reach Afghanistan by air - removing dependence and vulnerability on Pakistan's land routes and eliminating the extortion and corruption along the Afghanistan ground supply chain, as detailed in Warlord, Inc..

After supplies are landed at the few huge hub airports - Bagram, Kandahar and Bastion - cargo could be transferred into smaller airplanes using adjacent smaller runways for connecting flights out to smaller airfields associated with NATO-ISAF forward operating bases.

Whether by luck or by design Bastion is well chosen in being far from a population centre which makes it politically feasible to impose a rigorous security exclusion zone on the ground for many miles around the airport.

Controlling the ground far around a military airport is very necessary to defend the incoming aircraft against missile attack by ensuring no enemy can get close enough to launch a missile anywhere near below where the planes descend to land.

Landing at night is not a sufficient defence. Aircraft engines and their exhaust jets are very hot and infra-red shines just as brightly at night for missiles to lock on to.

We cannot assume that the Taliban will be unable to source the most advanced ground-to-air missiles. We should assume they will source such missiles and take the necessary security precautions.

So at Bastion NATO-ISAF must control the ground in a vast security perimeter out to the horizon and beyond which means closing the nearby road to Afghan traffic and providing an alternative circuitous route for civilian traffic.

I need hardly mention the military, economic and political disaster of allowing the enemy to bring down one of our big aircraft. So this must not be allowed to happen. Therefore a very wide secure ground exclusion zone around Bastion should be imposed.

In addition, I need hardly remind people of Al Qaeda's willingness to use aircraft themselves as weapons and therefore airport air defences need to be operational and alert at all times, not just when scheduled aircraft are landing.

The progress at Bastion is very promising for the whole Afghanistan mission. It shows the way ahead.

We can contemplate one day removing the constraints limiting NATO-ISAF supplies reaching Afghanistan by air. From a limit of about 20 percent now, I foresee a 100 percent supply-into-Afghanistan-by-air strategy as both feasible in principle and a desirable long term aim.

What fun!
What fantasy.
You seem to be completely ignoring, er, what's the word I'm looking for?
Oh yeah! Logistics.

Construction crews - how many, how long, how protected, how afforded?
Troops to man the blockhouses - where from? The UK, for one is already overstretched. To the point where RAF medical personnel are actually involved in patrols.


COST AND MANPOWER!

And, of course, your 6 miles per side goes to shit when the "bad guys" deploy 122mm Grad with 20+km range, doesn't it?
Mind you, I suppose they'll greatly appreciate having fixed unmoving targets to shoot at.
But then again "classical" warfare didn't put quite so much emphasis on manoeuvre, did it?
Have you bothered (or even considered) reading any military theory dated after Caesar died?

Pretty diagrams are all very nice, but they don't mean much.

Securing the land around Camp Bastion

I have a strategic plan for improved perimeter defences for our military bases such as Camp Bastion. I will post that strategic plan next but it requires a lot of additional fortifications which would take a long time to get approval for and then longer to build. Meantime, there is the important question of how should Bastion be defended right now? What are the best defensive tactics, given we are where we are?

UK Forces Afghanistan Blog - RAF protecting Camp Bastion, June 27, 2012

51 Squadron RAF Regiment personnel on patrol.

Number 5 RAF Force Protection Wing, .. have taken responsibility for the security of the Camp Bastion complex, one of the busiest airfields in the world with over 28,000 people working on-site. They are also responsible for patrolling the surrounding area, covering over 600 square kilometres, to prevent insurgent attacks against the airfield and its personnel.

So it matters that Camp Bastion is well defended and I want to make sure we are using the correct tactics to secure the land around any airfield camp we are defending.

So I have some new comments to make which occurred to me after seeing that photograph of our soldiers patrolling through poppy fields. I am wondering if there are poppy fields in that 600 square kilometres around Camp Bastion?

Anyway, we don't want or need any high vegetation around the air field which would allow insurgents cover to sneak close to the base, either to launch missile attacks or to plant anti-personnel mines, I.E.D.s or anything else.

Much better if the land is cleared of all tall vegetation so that it is much easier to keep clear of threats. Short grass is good.

That may mean buying out farmers who are growing crops, buying their land around the camp, compensating them but only if they are growing worthwhile crops.

If they are growing poppy fields then they don't deserve compensation in my book.

Either way there is a big job for our engineers to clear the land all around the camp of all cover useful to an enemy. So that's clearing all the 600 square kilometres which was mentioned as being patrolled by our forces.

It is a big job to keep such a large area of land free of cover and yes it is OK to hire local Afghan labour to help with keeping the vegetation down. After all, we will have put some local farmers out of living so they'll be looking for employment.

It might be an idea to have grazing animals on the land to keep the vegetation down but I would not be surprised if the Taliban shoot grazing animals if they can but if they do that's a reminder to us that the Taliban are still out there if a reminder is ever needed.

I assume in a dry land like Afghanistan that burning vegetation is easily done and that'll be the easiest way to clear the land I suspect. So I approve a "scorched earth" policy.

At night when it is not so easy to distinguish between a farmer tending his grazing animals and an insurgent pretending to be that, I suggest that the 600 square kilometres should be an exclusion zone for everyone except Camp Bastion personnel. So all local Afghan workers who clear vegetation during the day need to go back to homes outside the 600 square kilometres every night.

This is the attitude NATO - ISAF and our base security forces need to take. We need to take ownership of all the 600 square kilometres of land which we are patrolling around Camp Bastion and optimise it for security.

It would be the same outrage if the Afghan government dares to suggest that we don't take ownership of the surrounding land, don't clear the land, and should instead allow existing cover for insurgents in land surrounding Camp Bastion as it would be if the Afghan government dared to suggest that we open the doors of the airbase itself to the Taliban

Originally Posted by Dywyddyr

How about looking at an example of something requiring far fewer troops, and a MUCH smaller length to cover? How about an airfield?
Here's one.
Fifteen Taliban fighters who fought their way on to Helmand's main airbase destroyed six jets worth millions of pounds in an assault that was the start of a bloody weekend for Nato forces.
FIFTEEN MEN got through. And killed 2 Allied troops, wounded another 9 while also destroying six Harriers and damaging two others.

How timely. I was just coming to that issue.

In Afghanistan, the enemy Taliban forces have attacked supposedly well-defended bases such as Bagram and Bastion bases.

Afghanistan Attacks: Insurgents Attack Bagram Air Base

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Afghan insurgents bombarded a U.S. base and destroyed a NATO helicopter, killing three Afghan intelligence employees, officials said Tuesday. There were also NATO personnel aboard and wounded, the coalition said without providing further details.

BBC: Camp Bastion assault: Two US marines die in 'Taliban revenge'

Aircraft and buildings were damaged but Nato said its forces killed 18 of the insurgents and captured one.
...
Nato officials say insurgents used small arms, rockets and mortars in the attack on Camp Bastion which took place at about 22:00 on Friday (17:30 GMT), under cover of darkness.

Perimeter defences plan for a military base


Click for LARGER image

This diagram shows my suggested layout for the perimeter defences for a military base.

The diagram illustrates the basic plan for a small base, with no runways, and a Central Base area of diameter about 1 kilometre or 5/8th of mile.

For larger bases such as Camp Bastion with central Base area which is miles wide this plan can be adapted by making the lines of perimeter defences longer and adding more gun towers, gunners etc

Explanation of the diagram features.

Central Base - the green disc in the diagram represents the central well-defended area of the military base, or "Green Zone" where various buildings, vehicles and personnel of the base are normally situated.

Autocannon, machine gun & missile towers - the red and pink dots represent static, armoured fortifications or towers for one autocannon, machine gun and anti-tank missiles and its 3-man team of gunners which encircle the base at a distance of about 6 miles or 10 kilometres from the edge of the central Base. The spacing between adjacent gun towers is about 333 metres or 333 yards.


The Pyramid of Cestius, Rome, photoshopped into a gun tower

The idea of gun towers is to give the gunner a good view of the desert terrain which is unlikely to be completely flat and dips in the ground could otherwise provide cover for attacking mortar teams. Gun towers also enable the gunners easily to see over and beyond any obstacles in the vehicle barrier into the Threat Zone. The gun towers should be robust enough so that they could take a number of artillery shells without collapsing.

The plan calls for one team of gunners per tower serving on base. The gunners are organised into 3 duty shifts of at least 8 hours and so normally only 1 in 3 of the towers will be manned at any one time. The gunners spend their off-duty time in the central Base where their quarters are situated.

If, when and where the perimeter defences are attacked by the enemy, the off-duty gunners can be called back on emergency duty as required by their officers.

There would be a minimum of about 200 gun towers required and for each tower I propose -

• a 25mm cannon, which typically have a range out to 2.5 km / 1.5 miles with
• a 12.7mm (0.5") or 7.62mm machine gun back-up.
• anti-tank missiles, such as TOW (Tube-launched, Optically-tracked, Wire command data-link) guided missiles

The tower's weapons are mounted into some kind of swivelling gun turret, with working parts like the gun turret on top of an infantry fighting vehicle maybe.

A cost-effective option might be to buy off-the-shelf turrets which are already in mass production for vehicles like the Bradley IFV with some additional armour capped on top of it because it doesn't need to be light, just very strong against incoming mortar or artillery fire.

The one issue there might be with IVF turrets is that it really needs lower gun elevation than is standard for an IFV turret. IFV guns often don't dip below -10 degrees below the horizontal.



That's not ideal because the gun turrets are going to be much higher off the ground than they would be in an IVF and ideally the gunners ought to be able to target the ground beneath them as well as the ground hundreds of metres away.

Naval ship mounted cannons tend to dip lower, down to -20 degrees and that would be better, but naval cannons are not usually well armoured for the gunner's protection.



They do come in remotely operated versions which is an interesting option to consider.



Infantry barriers - barbed wire and anti-personnel mines to stop enemy infantry from advancing into the centre of the base.

Vehicle barriers - obstacles and anti-tank mines which prevent enemy vehicles from advancing into the centre of the base.

Reaction Force Zone - Quick reaction forces deploy in armoured vehicles from the central base into the Reaction Force Zone to fire at enemy attacking forces.

Threat Zone - A circumferential military zone around the perimeter defences where the base defenders may assume a hostile intent on the part of uninvited intruders into the Threat Zone and from where locals are forbidden and variously warned off from intruding upon. This land is occupied or leased to the military base and is closely watched using surveillance technology. Warning shots or sub-lethal rounds may be fired upon suspected innocent intruders and identified enemy forces can be fired upon to kill without warning.

The diagram represents a Threat Zone which extends to 10 miles / 16 kilometres from the edge of the central Base. The plan therefore recommends that it is inappropriate to site a well-defended base within 10 miles of an urban area or a public highway which would cause local people and local traffic to enter into the defined Threat Zone routinely making the early detection of real threats difficult to distinguish.

A large Threat Zone is desirable for security purposes because it makes for a safer perimeter defence but does add significantly to the land requirements of the base.

Some existing military bases are located close to urban areas where a large Threat Zone cannot be defined and this is likely to make such bases much less secure.

Access road Road to access the base from the surrounding road network.

STOP police control barrier Military police stop traffic wishing to enter the base and perform final checks that visitors and loads are authorised to proceed. The control barriers prevent terrorists driving off the road and prevent vehicles proceeding without permission.

The control barrier fortifications need to be very robust so as to survive an enemy truck bomb.

Trust Zone People, vehicles or buildings in the Trust Zone which is everywhere outside of the Threat Zone are assumed to be trustworthy and non-threatening in so far as the base defenders are concerned.

People in the Trust Zone are assumed to be respecting the base's security and the base defenders treat people in the Trust Zone with the same mutual respect for their own security.

Protestors
Protestors who wish to demonstrate for whatever reason their political viewpoints are allowed to approach the base as far as the Warning Line which surrounds the Threat Zone but it is the responsibility of the local authorities to ensure that protestors do not intrude into the Threat Zone without invitation otherwise a hostile intent may be assumed and defensive actions taken.

Defence force For the smallest bases, this plan calls for a defence force of three serving companies of gunners - one company for each of the 3 shifts.

One company needs at least 200 gunners and their officers so 3 companies total at least 600 gunners and their officers. In addition, military and support personnel are needed for other duties such as policing visitors, cooking, vehicle and plant maintenance engineers, medical, supplies storage & management, camp tidying up, latrine digging, reserves etc.

The defence force required would be of an infantry battalion size of perhaps of about 800 soldiers / marines and support personnel in total and so the base defence force commander would likely be ranked at Lieutenant Colonel or higher.

Split up the Afghan green force into two distinct forces -

• a national Afghan army which Afghans pay for and is commanded by the Afghan president and whichever general he/she wants to appoint. (“dark green”)

• a NATO-ISAF auxiliary force of Afghans and others, funded by the US and other NATO countries and international donors. This would be commanded by our generals. (“light green”)

The Afghan National Army, the "green" force is rotten, if not to its core then to much of the periphery. Some of the green is more like gangrene (gan-green, get it! :wink: )

The problem I see is in the disconnect between the political control (Karzai) and the funding (mostly from the USA but anyway internationally funded).

Wikipedia: Afghan National Army
The new Afghan National Army was founded with the issue of a decree by President Hamid Karzai on December 1, 2002

Karzai as the "duly" (ahem) elected president of Afghanistan is perfectly entitled to run an Afghan national army but Afghans should pay for that themselves.

Afghanistan is a poor nation and could not afford that much of an army but if they paid for it themselves, at least the Afghan national army would likely be honest, accountable to Afghans and take on limited tasks - secure the presidential palace, military headquarters and might be up to defending the capital Kabul and surrounding land, maybe.

Now the issue is this - to secure all of Afghanistan, even to secure our supply routes, we need lots of troops and it makes sense to have some kind of Afghan force to help us - but we need a bigger and better green force than the Afghans can afford to pay for. (Also why would a national Afghan force want to prioritise defending our supply routes? They wouldn't want to.)

So the West, NATO needs to pay for some green Afghan forces - that's a good idea, if, if, if, if and only if, those green forces we are paying for are auxiliary to NATO-ISAF - run by NATO-ISAF - under the control of a NATO general, maybe an American general if you could find a good one to do it.

That way we would only recruit capable Afghans into the green force we pay for and interact with daily. We'd be sure our green troops were loyal - wouldn't shoot our blue troops.

No way would we have any incentive to spend our own money on disloyal incapable Afghans in green uniform so we would not do it, if we had political and military control over our green forces, which we would have if they were called "The NATO-ISAF Afghan auxiliary force" - with no pretence of them being an Afghan national force under Karzai.

However, some idiot has come up with the idea of paying Afghans to have an army funded by us but controlled by Karzai so there is no accountability. The people in charge, deciding who to recruit, can recruit bad soldiers because they get paid more by the US for soldiers, whether they be bad soldiers or not.

Why wouldn't Karzai and this guy


Lt. Gen. Sher Mohammad Karim, Commander of the Afghan National Army

recruit junkies, thieves, murderers and agents for the Taliban into the Afghan National Army?

Why wouldn't they recruit anybody they can find into the Afghan national army if, for every soldier they can name, they get paid more US dollars?

Where's the incentive for Karzai and Karim to recruit only good soldiers? There isn't any incentive at all.

Again the US ends up funding corruption.

If a green soldier kills a blue then who gets held responsible in the chain of command?

Nobody gets held responsible.

Who should get held responsible? The US and NATO should. We should blame ourselves for paying anything for an army which we do not have any political control over.

What on earth does Panetta (and what did Gates before him) think he is (was) doing trusting this guy Karzai and his general Karim with billions of US tax-payer dollars to pay for a green army?

Why are NATO defence ministers happy with the poor leadership from NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and the NATO Supreme Allied Commander Admiral James Stavridis? Shouldn't the NATO leaders have spotted this fatal flaw in green troop organisation and tried to re-organise green forces as I suggest here, if they know what they are doing (which they don't)?

The competent answer to green on blue attacks is to split up the Afghan army into two distinct forces -

• a national Afghan army which Afghans pay for and is commanded by the Afghan president and whichever general he/she wants to appoint. (dark green)
  
  
• a NATO-ISAF auxiliary force of Afghans, funded by the US and other NATO counties and international donors. This would be commanded by our generals. (light green)

So there should be two green armies - each of a different shade of green. Karzai's dark green he would use to defend himself and his capital. Our light green we would use to defend our supply routes and to support our operations in Afghanistan generally.

Only when the Afghan economy had grown to the point that they could afford to pay for a big enough army to defend the whole country would we transfer our light green army over to Afghan national control and then we could leave Afghanistan in the hands of Afghans.

So long as we are paying for an Afghan force we must retain political control over it otherwise it fuels corruption and does little or nothing to help to fight the enemy we are trying to defeat and the green-on-blue attacks simply undermine political support for the whole Afghanistan / Pakistan mission.

Originally Posted by Dywyddyr

Thanks for the link to Wikipedia to define "classical". So you can link, but not read and understand, huh?

Wrong again.
Let's look at exactly what YOU have chosen to quote:

Classical ways of thinking and doing[/h]Similarly, many ways of thinking or doing are thought of as classical. In general, these are ways which have been superseded but which are still appreciated by some, often for their relative simplicity. For example:

Um, once again, you should draw the distinction.
In military terms, "classical" refers specifically to a particular period of history.

Oh watch out I think there's a nit you forgot to pick.

Originally Posted by Dywyddyr

No but security is almost always still based on the classical defence strategy of a secure perimeter - wall, fence, minefield.

Er "classic".
And you're wrong. Again.
Take a look at, for example, the Boer War.
Troops stationed in blockhouses ( the "secure" perimeter) outnumbered the force they were actually fighting. And didn't prevent penetration through that "secure" perimeter.

I'm not responsible for other people's plans, only my own.

My plan is actually a secure perimeter reinforced as required by a mobile reaction force which even in the event of a penetration of the perimeter at one point can overwhelm an attack by virtue of being able to reinforce any point on the route far faster than the enemy can (the defenders have superior mobility, being as the force is already arranged along a main highway).

1/3 of the force at any one time is deployed on the perimeter defences and 1/3 at the depots and 1/3 in transit between the perimeter and depots or at the depots. Therefore 1/3 to 2/3 of the force is always available to move by vehicle to reinforce any attacked point anywhere along the supply route.

I believe the military call such a strategy "defence in depth". I call it "a good plan".

Originally Posted by Peter Dow

I'm not responsible for other people's plans, only my own. I call it "a good plan".

Yes, my bad.
I apologise sincerely.
I had, until now, been under the impression that you were discussing the current, real-world problems in Afghanistan. Not the highly-idealised one that exists in your head.
The one where you can ignore all of those pesky real world factors; money, man power, logistics, that sort of shit.
I won't bother you again.
Mind you, I should have realised after glancing (between laughs) at your "catamaran MRAP" proposal.

I believe the military call such a strategy "defence in depth".

Yeah, which shows exactly how up to date you actually are.
Not. Even. Close.

Originally Posted by Dywyddyr

What fun!
What fantasy.
You seem to be completely ignoring, er, what's the word I'm looking for?
Oh yeah! Logistics.

Construction crews - how many, how long, how protected, how afforded?

We do have military engineer corps you know. They would be protected during construction by a perimeter security force of course. Affording this kind of thing is very easy particularly when my plan calls for ceasing aid payments to states which sponsor terrorism - so that's $2 billion per year to Pakistan the US can save with the cross of a pen.

Originally Posted by Dywyddyr

Troops to man the blockhouses

I prefer the terms "mobile reaction depots" and "guard posts / fortified machine gun nests" for the 2 distinct types of buildings in my plan. I discourage the use of the word "blockhouses" to avoid confusion with other plans of a Boer war era. Thanks.

Originally Posted by Dywyddyr

- where from?

The troops at lower ranks anyway come from Afghanistan or the surrounding countries. I explain this below.

This supply route protection force would have NATO officers in the higher ranks, such as Major and above and likely their own personal protection NATO guards to guard those NATO officers at sector headquarters but these are a very small fraction of the total number of troops required. Not saying that good Afghans etc can't ever get higher ranks in NASPROFOR than Reaction Captain but they'd have to be up to NATO standards. Obviously one requirement for Reaction Captain would be the ability to communicate well with the language used by his / her NATO officer superiors, as well as being able to speak the language of his subordinate troops.

Originally Posted by Dywyddyr

The UK, for one is already overstretched. To the point where RAF medical personnel are actually involved in patrols.

"Patrols" Hmm. I'm not really convinced of the centrality of patrolling to create security. The two main options in guarding things seem to me to be either it is secure and you keep the enemy out with a secure perimeter or it's not secure and you patrol it and get shot or bombed.

The "patrolling" crutch is what has got us so many troops killed. It's time for a paradigm shift away from patrolling as our one-club golf game.

Originally Posted by Dywyddyr

COST AND MANPOWER!

The cost is not intended to be any more than is being spent at present.

The plan calls for those NATO funds presently allocated to the Afghan National Army to be reallocated to the Nato Auxiliary Supply-route PROtection FORce (NASPROFOR).

The ANA is institutionally corrupt because of the lack of accountability over how the money is spent.

That doesn't mean that all the individual Afghan soldiers are junkies, thieves, rapists, absconders, lazy, clueless, illiterate, phantom-names-existing-on-paper-only, Taliban-agents, green-on-blue-trigger-happy etc - just that Karzai gets paid more for more bums-in-uniform irrespective of the actual job they do and he who pays the piper doesn't call the tune here because as a national president we don't get to fire the Afghan president if we think he is corruptly misusing our money. Our sole method to account for how our money is used is to stop paying it over to Karzai to waste in the first place.

Now I have heard various stories from various sources as to the percentage of acceptable soldiers in the ANA and therefore I can't be specific as to what percentage would shape up for a real soldiering job. My purpose here is just to explain how we make up the numbers if there is a shortfall and there may not be.

NASPROFOR

For the "Nato Auxiliary Supply-route PROtection FORce" ("NASPROFOR" ) we'd pick the cream or at least the adequate soldiers from the ANA and if that is not as many as we need for the whole length of supply route we intend to defend then we certainly don't scrape the barrel and make do with poor or worse Afghan soldiers but recruit competent mercenaries perhaps from the surrounding countries which, just to list them, are India, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran and perhaps from countries further afield too.

Other factors come into play, for example, we know NATO relations with Iran are particularly tense at the moment so Iran may be the last country to ask to contribute mercenary troops for this new force because they may execute any Iranian mercenary who served NATO loyally or pretend to go along with NATO's plan but send undercover members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to act as double agents, seeming to serve NASPROFOR but secretly allowing Iranian weapons to pass along or across the supply line to Iranian-backed terrorists to attack our supply lines, bases or indeed anything in Afghanistan they wanted to burn to the ground which may be a lot of it which has come under Western influence recently.

Consider hiring mercenaries whom we can get for the price of Afghan soldiers but who can actually do the job competently and loyally and we can get in the numbers we need to form cohesive infantry units, meaning soldiers and their officers need to be able to communicate with each other easily, at least in the lower enlisted ranks and junior officers up to rank of "Reaction Captain".

So for example, one could imagine an Uzbek-staffed NASPROFOR component manning a stretch of supply route near where the supply route approaches the Uzbek border.


So most of the manpower and most of the equipment, for example, the M2 machine guns for the guard posts on the perimeter defences are redeployed from the ANA.

Now as for the numbers of troops required for this force, I proposed, including a 25% reserve -
Force including reserves is 25 infantry per kilometre, 40 infantry per mile

So the total number of troops required depends on what length of supply route you require to defend.

So supposing the routes to be defended were something like this -



That's about 1500 miles or 2400 km of supply route which at 25 / km or 40 / mile = 60,000 infantry plus support troops.

If you only need to defend a shorter length of supply route, then it's fewer infantry whereas if you need to defend a longer length then it's more infantry required.

So instead of spending whatever it is on 200,000 ANA the plan is NATO countries reallocate that money, our own money, and spend it on the supply route protection force.

Originally Posted by Dywyddyr

And, of course, your 6 miles per side goes to shit when the "bad guys" deploy 122mm Grad with 20+km range, doesn't it?

No, it doesn't. The enemy rocket teams go to shit when NASPROFOR sector command calls in the long range artillery.

If the enemy ever dares to mount a massed rocket or artillery attack it may even be worth calling in some air power from the nearest NATO air base though it is more than likely that they'd try massing their forces just the once.

Originally Posted by Dywyddyr

Mind you, I suppose they'll greatly appreciate having fixed unmoving targets to shoot at.

Small fortified targets that they will probably miss. Also the return mortar or artillery fire is not from static positions, but can be from any suitable site in the "Mortar Teams Ground" on the plan.

Originally Posted by Dywyddyr

But then again "classical" warfare didn't put quite so much emphasis on manoeuvre, did it?

The supply route protection force mobile reaction units maneuvre much more easily than does the enemy being as they have a road to facilitate movement.

Originally Posted by Dywyddyr

Have you bothered (or even considered) reading any military theory dated after Caesar died?

Yes. Did you not read that article from Army Logistician which lists all the times the US military (that's after Caesar) has defended its supply lines against enemy attacks?

Originally Posted by Dywyddyr

Pretty diagrams are all very nice, but they don't mean much.

My diagrams mean a strong defence and I don't need a diagram to explain my strong offence. Both together, win this war. Thank you!

Originally Posted by Dywyddyr

Originally Posted by Peter Dow

I'm not responsible for other people's plans, only my own. I call it "a good plan".

Yes, my bad.
I apologise sincerely.
I had, until now, been under the impression that you were discussing the current, real-world problems in Afghanistan. Not the highly-idealised one that exists in your head.
The one where you can ignore all of those pesky real world factors; money, man power, logistics, that sort of shit.
I won't bother you again.
Mind you, I should have realised after glancing (between laughs) at your "catamaran MRAP" proposal.

I believe the military call such a strategy "defence in depth".

Yeah, which shows exactly how up to date you actually are.
Not. Even. Close.

You are outmatched duck.

Where is Obama's drawdown leading to for Afghanistan?

Could a feeling of strategic despair pervading the White House mean President Obama's drawdown plan could turn into an unseemly rout of US and other NATO-ISAF forces?

New York Times: U.S. Considers Faster Pullout in Afghanistan

President Obama, frustrated in his dealings with President Karzai, is considering speeding up troop withdrawals from Afghanistan and even leaving no American troops after 2014

WASHINGTON —

Mr. Obama is committed to ending America’s military involvement in Afghanistan by the end of 2014, and Obama administration officials have been negotiating with Afghan officials about leaving a small “residual force” behind. But his relationship with Mr. Karzai has been slowly unraveling, and reached a new low after an effort last month by the United States to begin peace talks with the Taliban in Qatar.

Mr. Karzai promptly repudiated the talks and ended negotiations with the United States over the long-term security deal that is needed to keep American forces in Afghanistan after 2014.

A videoconference between Mr. Obama and Mr. Karzai designed to defuse the tensions ended badly, according to both American and Afghan officials with knowledge of it. Mr. Karzai, according to those sources, accused the United States of trying to negotiate a separate peace with both the Taliban and their backers in Pakistan, leaving Afghanistan’s fragile government exposed to its enemies.

It looks to me like President Obama is getting some "Dark Counsel" as regards pulling out from Afghanistan.

First to explain the phrase "Dark Counsel". Have you seen Lord of the Rings? Remember King Theoden and his adviser, Grima Wormtongue, who told him he was weak, could not fight and hope to win, turned out Grima was secretly an agent for Saruman?



OK remember now? That's "dark counsel".

So who is giving Obama, "dark counsel", who is his Grima Wormtongue?

Well maybe a lady called Robin Raphel, a former agent for Pakistan, a Washington Lobbyist in the pay of the Pakisan state. Obama has taken her on into his team, in charge of non-military aid to Pakistan, that's billions of dollars worth.

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

Wikipedia: Robin Raphel
Robin Lynn Raphel (born 1947) is a career diplomat who is currently the coordinator for non-military assistance to Pakistan with the rank of ambassador.

She was appointed by President Clinton as first Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, a newly created position, where her tenure was highly controversial. Regularly throughout her career, Raphel was described as being "warm" to totalitarian and military regimes, such as the the military governments in Pakistan, and conversely "cool" towards human rights considerations.

Her tenure as Assistant Secretary for Near East and South Asian Affairs was marked by perceived hostility towards India and Afghanistan, and "warmth" towards Pakistan and the Taliban, as was extensively documented by the media.

Famously, Raphel was hostile towards the Northern Alliance including its leader Ahmed Shah Massoud who she personally pressured to yield to the Taliban.

Raphel openly promoted the complete Taliban takeover of all of Afghanistan, until the events of 9/11. Some scholars believe that her perceived "favoritism" towards Pakistan and the Taliban indirectly, if peripherally, contributed to causing 9/11.

One commonly-cited factor was her aggressive promotion of Unocal's proposal for the Afghanistan Oil Pipeline, which would have required the defeat of the Northern Alliance.

As to U.S. relations with India, the largest and most prosperous state in the region, her tenure was marked as the the "darkest chapter since the Indo-Pakistan War of 1971".

Upon her dismissal from the Assistant Secretary position by President Clinton and her transfer to the backwater post of Ambassador to Tunisia, U.S. relations with India were reported to have "improved overnight".

She also served as a member of the Iraq Reconstruction Team during the Bush administration. She retired from the state department in 2005 after 30 years of service.

She soon became a lobbyist for Pakistan at Cassidy & Associates, a Washington lobbying firm that was employed by the Government of Pakistan at an annual retainer of $1.2 million.

Raphel has been the senior Vice President at the National Defense University in Washington.

The Obama Administration appointed Robin Raphel as a member of the team of the late Richard Holbrooke, the Special Representative to the Af-Pak region.

Raphel is the enemy within. I would not let this woman within a mile of the White House, but there again, I'm not King Theoden, I mean, President Obama.

I honestly think at times people think Obama is a moron. Why wouldn't he be aware of potential self interest from a lobbyist and it seems far more likely he is pulling the strings than the other way round. The guy is inteligent and knows what he wants to do and uses the people he gives power to to get it done, the idea that someone could come into the White House and play him and his entire staff for fools seems far fetched to say the least.

Originally Posted by Ascended

I honestly think at times people think Obama is a moron. Why wouldn't he be aware of potential self interest from a lobbyist and it seems far more likely he is pulling the strings than the other way round. The guy is inteligent and knows what he wants to do and uses the people he gives power to to get it done, the idea that someone could come into the White House and play him and his entire staff for fools seems far fetched to say the least.

"pulling the strings"?

Obama is only pulling the strings of one hand of "puppet Pakistan" and he does so paying a very heavy price of billions of US tax-payer dollars in military and non-military aid and IMF bailouts paid to Pakistan.

It may appear to Obama and to you that he controls one hand of "puppet Pakistan" but with that hand the puppet reaches into Uncle Sam's wallet and takes billions of dollars for itself, and that's something the puppet wants to do anyway and then with that hand it has waved through supply logistics to Afghanistan along Pakistan's roads, which is no great effort and well worth the billions of dollars. So who is controlling who, as far as that publicly acknowledged Pakistani hand of "help" to the US is concerned?

Meanwhile, "Pinocchio Pakistan", has no strings at all on his other hand with which Pakistan sponsors Al Qaeda terrorism and a Taliban Afghan insurgency which has killed thousands of Americans.

Considering Disney's Pinocchio, while he is the most famous puppet with no strings, Pinocchio is a very agreeable and pleasant puppet with no strings and I really don't want to post an image of Pinocchio here that would do us a disservice by presenting entirely an inappropriate face for the enemy we face in Pakistan.

Think more of a murderous "Chuckie Pakistan" when you assume that Obama must be pulling Pakistan's strings.


Chuckie Pakistan

For a greater insight into Pakistan's double-dealing then the BBC Panorama documentary "SECRET PAKISTAN", here re-posted as 2 x 1 hour parts, which presents the evidence of Pakistan's sponsoring of terrorism, is highly recommended.

SECRET PAKISTAN - Part 1 - Double Cross (YouTube)



SECRET PAKISTAN - Part 2 - Backlash (YouTube)

Pakistan will do what Pakistan feels is in Pakistan's best interest.
If we are dumb enough to think otherwise, we have earned the right to be dissapointed.

Who does Pakistan fear------India
What can Pakistan's people do to counter the numerical superiority of India-----encourage crazy islamists, so they can have jihad if they have to fight India. China most likely literally gave nuclear technology to Pakistan because of Pakistan's animosity toward India. If Pakistan is lucky enough to play one side against another while making a tidy profit in the bargain, why would they not do this?

Once we understand the motivations of others, we will be better equiped to optomize the good that we can do for each other.
So too with countries. (It has been said that "countries have no friends" , just assets)
that aside,
ignoring reality does not make it go away.

in analysis, there is always confusion between tactics and strategy
If you want to really know the other guy
clear the dichotomous mind fog and walk a mile in his shoes.

Originally Posted by sculptor

Pakistan will do what Pakistan feels is in Pakistan's best interest.
If we are dumb enough to think otherwise, we have earned the right to be dissapointed.

This topic considers how we in the West can change our current foolish, dangerous and self-defeating policies with respect to Pakistan so that we begin to severely disappoint those in the secret Pakistani state who have sponsored terrorists to do 9/11 and kill our soldiers in Afghanistan, how we prove them wrong when they thought it was in their interests to kill our people.

The current stupid and self-defeating Western policy seems to be satisfied with disappointing only Bin Laden and not disappointing Pakistan for its secretive acts of terror and war against us. On the contrary, Pakistan has been rewarded, not disappointed, with billions of dollars of military and economic aid from the West.

The current policy the world has adopted to dealing with Pakistan is very dangerous for the world because it sends entirely the wrong lesson to Pakistan - "secretive acts of war on the world can extort money from the world".

Now if President Obama and Prime Minister Cameron and other world leaders imagine that their craven and cowardly surrender to Pakistan's secretive acts of war and extortion will placate and appease Pakistan, that somehow Pakistan will turn over a new leaf, out of the kindness of their hearts then it is those dumb world leaders and the people who voted them in who will be disappointed in the long run as Pakistan's secretive acts of war escalate in ferocity and its extortionate demands grow ever more greedy.

It was exactly the same with Hitler. The world tried appeasing him first too. It didn't work with Nazi Germany and it won't work with jihadi Pakistan I predict.

So enjoy it while it lasts Pakistan because whilst you may get fat off the doves, there are hawks circling.

Pakistan fears India.
Pakistan will always do what Pakistan thinks is in Pakistan's best interest.
Should Pakistan ever have to fight India, they would want millions of crazy jihadist behind them or out in front with bombs.
Anyone who is surprised by Pakistan's actions ain't really been paying attention.

Originally Posted by sculptor

Who does Pakistan fear------India
What can Pakistan's people do to counter the numerical superiority of India-----encourage crazy islamists, so they can have jihad if they have to fight India. China most likely literally gave nuclear technology to Pakistan because of Pakistan's animosity toward India. If Pakistan is lucky enough to play one side against another while making a tidy profit in the bargain, why would they not do this?

Once we understand the motivations of others, we will be better equiped to optomize the good that we can do for each other.
So too with countries. (It has been said that "countries have no friends" , just assets)
that aside,
ignoring reality does not make it go away.

in analysis, there is always confusion between tactics and strategy
If you want to really know the other guy
clear the dichotomous mind fog and walk a mile in his shoes.

China and India have behaved responsibly in the world and can count on a real convergence of interests with the West and other world partners.

The same cannot be said about Pakistan which has behaved extremely irresponsibly. China does not want to wreck its very profitable relationship with the West by getting dragged down with any association with Pakistan's secretive acts of war.

If and when the hawks take power in the West and finally come for Pakistan's jihadists they shouldn't count on being rescued by China. Perhaps Saudi Arabia is a more reliable axis for the Pakistani jihadists since Saudi Arabia already funds Al Qaeda and the Taliban and thus has even more to lose with a war on terror showdown.

Pakistan at least can expect to survive the war on terror as a country because it is nominally now democratic and a republic. Saudi Arabia as an absolute monarchy has few merits constitutionally' it's not a constitution a conquering West would look kindly upon and Saudi Arabia's existence as a kingdom would be more at risk in the war on terror, I would have thought.

Talking about India and hawks ...

Originally Posted by Hindustan Times

State sponsors of terror have to clean up their act, says Condoleezza

The leadership of countries that practice “embedded terrorism” – state sponsored terrorism – have to be told they must “clean up”, said former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit. The US policy towards state sponsors of terrorism, she said, which includes Pakistan, has been to say “you don’t have an option” about dealing with this terrorism.



Former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice speaks during the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit 2013 in New Delhi.


Rice, who delivered the keynote address at the summit’s second day, said one has to be nuanced in responding to state-sponsored terror. Pakistan is a country that turns a blind eye to groups within its borders who practice terrorism, Rice noted. But their system can be mobilised to take action against terrorists with the right pressure and persuasion.


“I came here after the Mumbai attacks and then told (former) Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari: what has happened here is clearly unacceptable and Pakistan is responsible,” said Rice. She admitted this does not work quickly. “This is a long-term problem, it can’t be turned around quickly but over decades.”


Rice, one of the authors of the Indo-US nuclear deal, said that the Indo-US relationship “was without limits” because the two countries shared both common interests and values.


She listed some of the interests she saw shared by India and the US: a world safe from terrorism, stability in South and Central Asia, energy security, preserving an international system based on rule of law.

For the full story visit the Hindustan Times website via this link
'State sponsors of terror have to clean up their act' - Hindustan Times


Video recalling the visit of Condoleezza Rice to India after the Mumbai terrorist attack.



Condoleezza Rice is like a provost of the whole world! Condi handed over the provost job at Stanford University to one of her helpers long ago, though she still works as a professor at Stanford.

I do wish Condi would not be so patient with Pakistan though. I don't think the world can afford to wait decades for Pakistan to put its own house in order. I don't think the Pakistani politicians are strong enough when faced with an obstinate Pakistani state which sees some purpose in sponsoring terrorism.

I would like in future to hear of Condi recommending that the world take a much tougher approach with Pakistan, an "iron fist" approach, so to speak, led by the US and its NATO allies, and hopefully with India's support, to force Pakistan more quickly to confront the state sponsors of terrorism - generals and former generals of the Pakistani military who dictate military policy behind the scenes in Pakistan.

This could involve suspending aid to Pakistan, international arrest warrants for those state-sponsors of terror Pakistani generals and former generals, raids like the raid to get Bin Laden but against those in the Pakistani state who were sheltering Bin Laden, assassination missions against those terror generals and former generals, more drone attacks, targeted missile or bombing air raids, seizing control over Pakistan's satellite broadcasting to call for the arrest of all involved in sponsoring terror and so on.

I would not heed any complaints from the Pakistani state which is not putting its own house in order. I would not be impressed by any threats Pakistan made about blocking supplies into Afghanistan. We would like the honest people in the Pakistan military to take action against those in the Pakistani military, such as the ISI, who have long been dishonest sponsors of terrorism.

The world needs to pressure Pakistan to make the reality that for the honest Pakistani military it will be an easier course of action to confront their dishonest comrades than daring to confront the rest of the world about any actions we take to raise the pressure on Pakistan.

I would even be prepared to raise military tensions to a level that was last seen in the Cuban missile crisis with US forces on high military alert.

No I would not like to see a nuclear war which would hurt many Pakistani civilians. We love the people of Pakistan but it is in their interests for someone to take a tough stance against the state sponsors of terrorism in Pakistan because that terrorism is, as often as not, turned against the people of Pakistan with their own politicians and leaders being targeted.

The exact measures to be taken are not really my point. Those are up for discussion and modification as required.

My real point is the pressure on Pakistan needs to be stepped up 100 fold by the West led by the US and NATO and with the support of India. No more softly, softly.

This would be my advice to our dearly beloved Condoleezza Rice. No-one inspires me more than she. No-one is better placed to decide on what is good advice and what is not. I trust her judgement but I want her to hear my advice.

Originally Posted by sculptor

Pakistan fears India.
Pakistan will always do what Pakistan thinks is in Pakistan's best interest.
Should Pakistan ever have to fight India, they would want millions of crazy jihadist behind them or out in front with bombs.
Anyone who is surprised by Pakistan's actions ain't really been paying attention.

Yes but Nazi Germany feared the Jews who turned out to be the least of the Nazis' enemies.

Likewise with Pakistan, India is likely to be the least of Pakistan's problems in the long run. India putting in a word for mercy for the people of Pakistan is what is most likely to spare Pakistan getting nuked by the West.

It doesn't matter to the West why Pakistan has created all those jihadis waging war on us. What matters is 9/11, the other acts of terror and the deaths of our soldiers at the hands of those terrorists created by Pakistan.

So Pakistan will be held accountable whatever its "real reasons". Real reasons are something to mention at the war crimes trials just before we hang Pakistan's terror-sponsoring leaders. It should be very entertaining to hear their "real reasons" but much more entertaining to see them swing on the rope.

More Condi in India ...



Condi: No good & bad Taliban, sceptical of peace talks

Live Mint: There are no good Taliban and bad Taliban: Condoleezza Rice
by Elizabeth Roche


There are no good Taliban and bad Taliban: Condoleezza Rice


Pakistan is complicated, Iran is still a problem internationally, opines former US secretary of state





Former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice has voiced doubts about the readiness of Taliban to join a reconciliation process.
Photo: Ramesh Pathania/Mint


As the US and the international community prepare to scale down their military involvement in Afghanistan in 2014 and the Obama administration seeks talks with the Taliban to stabilize the war-torn country, former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice has voiced doubts about the readiness of the group to join a reconciliation process. In an interview, Rice said she was "sceptical whether the Taliban can be brought into a peace process". Rice, currently a professor of political science at Stanford University, was in New Delhi last week for the 11th Hindustan Times Leadership Summit. Edited excerpts:


This is a critical time for the US in Afghanistan in the context of the transition in 2014. How do you see US-Afghanistan and US-Pakistan relations against the backdrop of this?


The US-Afghan relations is difficult because it is a difficult set of circumstances. It's a relationship of partnership first of all. We have had to do a whole lot of hard things in Afghanistan. We had an apology from our military for innocent civilian deaths in Afghanistan. It's not like the American military would have it that way, but unfortunately it happens. We have pressed the Afghans on the drug trade, we have pressed them on corruption, sometimes the relationship can be difficult, but I think it's a long-term relationship and we will remain engaged there. I hope we will keep a military presence there. I think that would help. But we are in this relationship for the long term. We are not going to leave like we did after the Soviet Union was defeated there (in 1989), leaving then the kind of chaos that led to the Taliban and ultimately the Al Qaeda setting up home base there. With Pakistan again, it's not easy. It takes patience on our part just as it takes patience on the part of India.


If you were secretary of state, would you have thought of opening a line of communication with the Taliban given what happened on 9/11?


I guess you have to think about it and I am not on the inside, and I am always careful because I know that you don't always know all of the factors (involved). I think you have to be extremely careful. I don't think there are good Taliban and bad Taliban. I don't think there are Taliban who are in favour of the stability of Afghanistan. And so I am sceptical whether the Taliban can be brought into a peace process. Eventually there will have to be reconciliation of the Afghan people and I don't doubt there are some who were Afghan people who fought on the wrong side. Everybody has to have reconciliation at some point. But people have to be ready for reconciliation and I don't know the degree to which the Taliban is ready for reconciliation.


There was this recent agreement between the international community and Iran on its controversial nuclear programme. What are the opportunities that this deal throws up for the US in Afghanistan for example?


Well I don't know if it would open up opportunities in the geo-strategic issues. It seems sometimes to me that the Iranian government is in two minds - it wants to have a nuclear deal and it wants to have better relations with the United States, and it wants to reshape the Middle East in ways that are antithetical to our interests and I don't see that changing, frankly, in the short term. Now it may be on Afghanistan because to a certain extent terrorism in Afghanistan is a problem for the Iranians; there would be some small opening there. But I would not generalize from what happens in the nuclear deal to a stronger, better relationship with the Iranians. I think that takes work on other kinds of issues like Iran's interference in the Persian Gulf.


So Pakistan will still have primacy in any Afghan calculations?


Pakistan has to be part of the calculations. Instability in Pakistan is a problem for Afghanistan and instability in Afghanistan is a problem for Pakistan. So those two are forever linked in that way. And I do hope that the Pakistanis will recognize that the Taliban in Pakistan is a real problem for Pakistan, not just for Afghanistan. As long as you have extremism in Pakistan, Pakistan will be a large part of the equation. You will have to pay a lot of attention to it.


Read more in Rice for President Yahoo Group, message 2278

Condi is as diplomatic as ever but I'd say the only "good" Taliban is a dead Taliban.


This war must be prosecuted unto total victory, crushing the Taliban,

• as a political organisation, arresting all their political leaders and media representatives and
• as a military force, capturing or killing all their fighters.

Thank you Condi once again for trying to save those who will listen from the hell on earth, the sacrifice of our cherished values, the dishonour to all that we hold dear, that would be surrendered in any peace deal with the Taliban.

PD, conducting a genocide over a religious based philosophy that spans three countries is not realistic, practical, or moral. The Taliban has nearly no resources and doesn't represent a serious threat. Containment is much preferred. If the West actually understood Islam and at least acknowledged the core issues of oppression, economic desperation that foment their sharp degree of anti-Western views, the focus could have remained to be on the real enemy Al-Quida.

Originally Posted by Lynx_Fox

PD, conducting a genocide over a religious based philosophy that spans three countries is not realistic, practical, or moral.

Firstly, genocide is always immoral in my opinion. That's what I believe. I'd never support the practice of genocide even if were realistic and practical, which given the number of people who think as I do, that genocide is immoral and must be opposed in all circumstances, it isn't. It's unrealistic and impractical as well as immoral.

And you know, I'm just very sad that you've so understand my position that you felt you had to say that, as if there was a suspicion in your mind that I could contemplate genocide in any circumstances.

Secondly, I am engaged in a war on terrorism, organised terrorist groups and all the states sponsoring those terrorist groups, which are states which span more than three countries.

This war on terror is not a war on "a religious based philosophy" per se but for example I propose that "the University of Jihad" ought to be considered a legitimate target in the war on terror because of the military, holy war or jihadi indoctrination and brainwashing of students to wage war and terrorism against us here in our homelands and against our forces in Afghanistan. Students are incited to war against us and go from there to Taliban training camps and then into battle with our forces.

Originally Posted by Lynx_Fox

The Taliban has nearly no resources and doesn't represent a serious threat.

You seem to misunderstand the Taliban as a stand-alone organisation which somehow magics up its own resources from thin air. It isn't. The Taliban is a state sponsored organisation, primarily by Pakistan which effectively runs the Taliban as a proxy irregular force of the Pakistani military but also financially sponsored by states such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Iran.

Lynx_Fox, I would strongly urge you to watch the "SECRET PAKISTAN" videos I post in post #40. I think it would really serve this debate better if you had watched the videos. Admittedly, it is 2 hours of video and perhaps you have better things to do on Christmas Day but nevertheless when you get the time it really is vital information in this context.

For a quicker insight into this issue, there is also the video I posted in post #2 which also identifies Saudi Arabia, rich with oil resources, as a source of funding for Al Qaeda. Saudi Arabia funds a host of terrorist groups throughout the world, including the Taliban.

Wikipedia: State-sponsored terrorism - Saudi Arabia


Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabiais said to be the world's largest source of funds for Salafi jihadist terrorist militant groups, such as al-Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban, and Lashkar-e-Taiba in South Asia, and donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide, according to Hillary Clinton.[110] According to a secret December 2009 paper signed by the US secretary of state, "Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaida, the Taliban, LeT and other terrorist groups."

The vast oil resources of Saudi Arabia and the nuclear weapons of Pakistan mean that in confronting the Taliban we are in effect, whether we wish to or not, confronting the secret agents, the proxy irregular forces of some very powerful, well-resourced, well-armed, and very threatening states.

The Taliban has precisely the resources and is as seriously threatening as its state-sponsors want it to be. The sponsoring states can increase the Taliban's resources at will. The Taliban can be doubled in size at the whim of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in the same way as they can double the size of any of their conventional military units.

Originally Posted by Lynx_Fox

Containment is much preferred.

Therefore one cannot contain the Taliban without also containing Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and all the other state sponsors of the Taliban.

Originally Posted by Lynx_Fox

If the West actually understood Islam

Our war has never been on Islam. The state sponsors of terrorism have merely clothed their imperialist propaganda in jihadi terms. That's what the madrasahs and the jihadi colleges and jihadi universities in Pakistan and funded by Saudi Arabia are designed to do, to brainwash the students so that they will fight and die for (in their minds) "Islam" when actually they are dying for the Pakistani generals and former generals who dictate Pakistan's military policy and they are dying for the Saudi King, to defend his kingdom, and for the imperial ambitions of the other states which sponsor the jihadi terrorist groups which recruit from those brainwashed students.

Originally Posted by Lynx_Fox

and at least acknowledged the core issues of oppression, economic desperation that foment their sharp degree of anti-Western views, the focus could have remained to be on the real enemy Al-Quida.

I am very quick to acknowledge the desperate plight of the people of Afghanistan, not least because a war is being fought out on their land which is the responsibility of the cruel calculations of state leaders in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, and Riyadh who have very cynically lured our forces into Afghanistan by advertising Al Qaeda as based there.

Al Qaeda is again simply the proxy terrorist irregular forces, with a world reach, as compared to the Taliban's more local operations, of the state sponsors.

If we wish to end this war, with a victory, then we must understand who the real enemy is - it is those state sponsors of terrorism, countries with whom our governments are still giving aid, doing business with, trading with the enemy.

So the governments which you and I vote for are trading with and supporting in aid the real enemy. That's where we are going so wrong in this war. We ought to be developing a strategy of war against those states which are secretly waging war on us while they sell us oil (in the case of Saudi Arabia) and accept our aid (in the case of Pakistan).

The current war or peace strategy of President Obama and the Pentagon, Prime Minister Cameron and other NATO leaders and their defence advisors is inappropriate and that's what my AfPak Mission is designed to explain.




The AfPak Mission



The AfPak Mission on the internet is about war on terror military and security strategy for NATO and allied countries with ground forces in action in Afghanistan and air and airborne forces including drones and special force raids in action over Pakistan.

The AfPak Mission helps implementation of the Bush Doctrine versus state sponsors of terror and is inspired by the leadership of Condoleezza Rice.

The AfPak Mission approach to the Taliban is uncompromising.

• There should be no peace with the Taliban.
• The only "good" Taliban is a dead Taliban.
• Arrest all Taliban political leaders and media spokesmen.
• Capture or kill all Taliban fighters.

The AfPak Mission identifies useful content across multiple websites.

On YouTube, the AfPak Mission channel presents playlists of useful videos.

The AfPak Mission forum offers structured on-line written discussion facilities and the forum is the rallying and reference centre of the AfPak Mission, linking to all other AfPak Mission content on the internet.

The AfPak Mission has a Twitter, a Flickr and a wordpress Blog too.
You are invited to subscribe to the channel, register with the forum and follow on twitter, flickr and the blog.

Eliminating the Taliban would mean removing practically all military ages males and many female from vast swaths of Pakistan and Afghanistan to remove the culture including entire tribes--that simple it not going to happen, nor should it.

Taliban are a regional terrorist problem not a serious threat to Western interest--Western involvement only served to strengthen their populist hold and sympathy by other Muslims who see the cultural damage and exploitation by unbridled Western military backed, international cooperation eager to exploit the most impoverished parts of the word.

Your recommendations would only bring more Western-backed atrocities to the region. Sorry Dow, I'm not going to hold your vid or twitter feeds as anymore credible than a fake military uniform.

Originally Posted by Lynx_Fox

Eliminating the Taliban would mean removing practically all military ages males and many female from vast swaths of Pakistan and Afghanistan

Not at all. Those of their fighters who have genuinely deserted the Taliban, defected, abandoned their war against us, laid down their weapons, come under a different authority with which we had peace, those ex-Taliban are not the issue; there would be no need to remove those particular individuals.

The task is to eliminate the Taliban organisation and all its fighters but if someone is genuinely no longer a fighter for the Taliban then OK. I'm not daft; if some Taliban fighter is captured on the battlefield, weapons still hot, then we can't just assume that he's defecting just because he suddenly says "I'm defecting, can I go free now?".

Originally Posted by Lynx_Fox

to remove the culture including entire tribes--that simple it not going to happen, nor should it.

Well this is not a war on culture either it's a war on terror. Cultures which are at peace with us, we can be at peace with.

Originally Posted by Lynx_Fox

Taliban are a regional terrorist problem not a serious threat to Western interest

The Taliban are state sponsored terrorists and those states are a serious threat to Western interests so we must destroy all of their terrorist groups.

Originally Posted by Lynx_Fox

--Western involvement only served to strengthen their populist hold and sympathy by other Muslims who see the cultural damage and exploitation by unbridled Western military backed, international cooperation eager to exploit the most impoverished parts of the word.

The people of Afghanistan have suffered horribly as "collateral damage" casualties and as refugees of the war on their land. That means that both warring parties are very unpopular with the people by now, I would expect.

So it is losing their lives, limbs and use of their lands in peace that really offends the people, not so much that we are imposing a new culture on them, not unless being in the middle of a war-zone could be thought of as a new "culture".

As for those Muslims who watch jihadi terrorist propaganda satellite TV, they are going to hate us whatever the real truth is.

But I'm not sure where you think we've "exploited" anything in Afghanistan? The war has cost us a huge about of money. Admittedly, there are a number of corrupt officials in the Karzai regime who have exploited the billions of dollars we've given Karzai with no strings - but that's the only "exploitation" of the situation that I can think of.

Originally Posted by Lynx_Fox

Your recommendations would only bring more Western-backed atrocities to the region.

Well my recommendations would lead to a wider scope of war yes, well beyond Afghanistan, but I'd be very keen to reduce the amount of casualties to the civilians in Afghanistan - which should be easier and easier to do as we occupy a smaller footprint of occupation as the drawdown in forces proceeds.

However those collateral damage civilian casualties have never been "western backed" in the sense that we'd ever deliberately target civilians. No, this has happened when the Taliban have fired at our forces deliberately from in or beside civilian areas and our return fire against the Taliban has hit innocents by mistake. This has been part of the strategy of the Taliban who while they will never be loved by the people, by fighting in such a cowardly way, surrounded by civilians and putting them at risk, the Taliban have sought to get us to be hated by the people even more than them.

As for "collateral damage" outside Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Saudi Arabia, well again that is very much going to depend on how our enemies seek to defend themselves, surrounded by women and children or not.

Originally Posted by Lynx_Fox

Sorry Dow, I'm not going to hold your vid or twitter feeds as anymore credible than a fake military uniform.

Well never mind my vids for now.

The "SECRET PAKISTAN" videos I posted in post #40 I asked you to watch is not "my" vid, not made by me. It is a BBC production, produced by the BBC's top documentary investigative journalists "Panorama" team who are very highly regarded in Britain and no doubt by those in the know in the USA too.

You don't have to watch that BBC programme now - it is 2 hours - but it would indeed honour the baby Jesus on Christmas Day if you were to promise to God to watch it when you have time. It really is that important for you and everyone to understand what's in it.

I think you'd find I have a pretty deep understanding of Islam and the Taliban, both from the perspective of an interested citizen and as a Soldier--it's simply not worth the blood nor treasure, nor the moral legacy of needing to decimate entire generations of males over large tribal communities across two nations until they become a significant threat.

But I suppose it's easy to dream up all sorts of imagined dangers, armchair theorize, and take a position of spending other's lives by those who've never put their lives on the line--it's also damn unrealistic and hypocritical perspective. You'd be better fixing something in your own community rather than pushing such an meaningless wasteful agenda by the very government (and I guess other freedom living peoples) you spurn.

Once you've watched the SECRET PAKISTAN videos I posted in post #40 I think you'll discover that Pakistan ordered 9/11, Pakistan ordered the Taliban to kill our forces in Afghanistan.

What don't you understand?

Pakistan.

You don't understand Pakistan.

Who is your enemy?

You don't know. I'll tell you.

It's Pakistan.

Pakistan is your enemy.

Watch the videos "SECRET PAKISTAN".

Pakistan.

Understand it.

Watch the videos.

Pakistan.

The New York Times
Military Plans Reflect Afghanistan Uncertainty
THOM SHANKER JAN. 29, 2014

The alliance has approved the concept for a post-2014 training and assistance force of 8,000 to 12,000 troops, two-thirds of them American, based in Kabul and in four hubs in each compass corner of Afghanistan to carry out a follow-on mission, named Resolute Support.

10,000 and more US troops plus thousands of allied troops are required to secure 4 airbases in Afghanistan securely versus the threat of siege so that the airbases can be supplied entirely by an airlift.

In particular, a surge of military engineers working to a precisely prepared scientific plan is required to fortify the airbases, constructing extensive perimeter and base defences, to secure a very wide area around the air base to keep besieging enemy fire out of range of the runways and the take-off and landing flight paths.




Click to view larger image

This cannot responsibly be left to be improvised by troops and their commanders in the field.

By the time our forces finally appreciate their precarious supply predicament when surrounded by enemy forces besieging our Afghan airbases it will be, at that late stage, far too late to avoid our forces being trapped and starved of supplies.

The task to secure an airbase supplied entirely by airlift in a war zone and to hold it indefinitely versus all foes is a very hard military task with a history of disastrous failed attempts.

Surrounded troops cannot be easily reinforced or evacuated. Throughout military history, troops which get surrounded by the enemy and which cannot be relieved by a ground army breaking through the lines of the besieging forces have often found that they had no other option but to surrender.

However, as President John F Kennedy said, we choose to go to the moon and do the other things not because they are easy but because they are hard.

Compared to going to the moon, compared even to designing and building a modern jet-fighter, this is a comparatively simple task for our scientists and engineers to plan for.

Designing and building a fortified airbase is easier than rocket science but it still a harder scientific and engineering task than the military can routinely do.

It is not a job that our officers out of military academy have learned how to do.

So this task is comparatively simple and doesn't require Wernher von Braun, the first great rocket scientist, who led the Apollo mission from a scientific and engineering point of view.

However, planning for this military operation is indeed a task for the attention of our best military scientists and engineers rather than a task left to the professional military serving in Afghanistan to tackle all on their own.

It needs a specialist team of scientists and engineers to lead. My bet is that no such team has been set up. That's the issue. Unpreparedness by government for a hard but possible task.

Obama is no JFK. He wants to bring the troops home. He doesn't want to set up a special team to design fortified air bases for Afghanistan.

It's a problem of political leadership. We need leaders with something of JFK about them, to lead the people to strive to do the harder task, even though it is not as hard as going to the moon.

I could help do the science and engineering required but I'm in no way well positioned or suited to doing the political leadership job.

So for this task, I could do the Wernher von Braun role, as could many other scientists out there. But who is going to do the JFK part of the job?

Where are the political leaders who will get the government to set up the required team of scientists and engineers?

The political and military leaders, politicians and generals, we have in post just now, don't seem to be thinking about this issue.

I don't have any doubt that if I were in charge of our military I could manage this but, sadly, I'm not in charge and those who are in charge, worry me as to their competence, to be honest.


Details previously posted

Originally Posted by Peter Dow

Perimeter defences plan for a military base


Click for LARGER image

This diagram shows my suggested layout for the perimeter defences for a military base.

The diagram illustrates the basic plan for a small base, with no runways, and a Central Base area of diameter about 1 kilometre or 5/8th of mile.

For larger bases such as Camp Bastion with central Base area which is miles wide this plan can be adapted by making the lines of perimeter defences longer and adding more gun towers, gunners etc

Explanation of the diagram features. - see earlier post

No one is interested in paranoid ranting armchair generals.

The magnitude of ignorance and disinformation displayed by fringe fascist militarists masturbating to machine-guns while cheering for tyranny and oppression of other people is repulsive.

People that believe the disinformation of Governments and Mainstream Media are as misinformed and brainwashed as the Germans that were cheering for Hitler, and dangerous for humanity for they enable the crimes against humanity that the military and other hierarchies perpetrate on humans.

With thousands upon thousands of illegal entries into the US occurring on a yearly basis, and the ubiquitous access to firearms, it takes little more that a potato for a brain to realize the "War on Terror" is an utter fabricated Sham so that clueless gullible people would support Wars based on further lies and the demolition of what rights to protect them from their own state tyranny they had left.

For a long time I've been wishing the US military would start a Zeppelin program. That seems to me like the ideal way to ship freight in a war zone, so long as you've already achieved air superiority to the point where your enemy has no planes to dispatch against them.

If they were able to build a few Zeppelins the size of the Hindenburg, they could probably ferry freight into and out of the region almost unchallenged.

Entering "hindenburg weight " into google, I got this snippet:

Originally Posted by google

242.2 tons
The lifting capability of the Hindenburg was 242.2 tons, and with an empty weight of 130.1 tons it had an available lifting capability of 112.1 tons.

112 tons is just about three truck loads on a standard commercial truck.

It might be less using helium instead of hydrogen, though.


Entering "hindenburg speed" into google, I get this snippet:

Originally Posted by google

84 mph
Hindenburg was powered by four reversible 890 kilowatts (1,190 hp) Daimler-Benz diesel engines which gave the airship a maximum speed of135 km/h (84 mph).

So that would seem the best way to ship supplies in and out. I can run down other statistics on how bullet resistant zeppelins are. Basically the air pressure inside the air bags is set just barely over atmospheric pressure (to maximize lift), so you can punch it full of holes and it will just lose helium very gradually. There should be plenty of time for it to get to its destination so it can be repaired.

Rockets have the problem of needing to explode in time to hit it, as well as having something to lock onto. The engines will still generate heat, but they're not going to be as hot as helicopter or jet engines. And also you can put a barrier between them and the ground, to block the heat so it can't be locked onto from the ground. There's no absolute need to be aerodynamic, so stuff like that is easy to build into it.

Originally Posted by icewendigo

The magnitude of ignorance and disinformation displayed by fringe fascist militarists masturbating to machine-guns while cheering for tyranny and oppression of other people is repulsive.

People that believe the disinformation of Governments and Mainstream Media are as misinformed and brainwashed as the Germans that were cheering for Hitler, and dangerous for humanity for they enable the crimes against humanity that the military and other hierarchies perpetrate on humans.

With thousands upon thousands of illegal entries into the US occurring on a yearly basis, and the ubiquitous access to firearms, it takes little more that a potato for a brain to realize the "War on Terror" is an utter fabricated Sham so that clueless gullible people would support Wars based on further lies and the demolition of what rights to protect them from their own state tyranny they had left.

You sound like a rabid conspiracy theorist... believe or not terrorism is real (two suicide bombs several weeks ago in Russia) and your anti-western sentiment is actually detrimental to war efforts to impose liberal democracy on what were before tyrannical regimes.

Curious do you actually believe what you write? Why would the state want more power (most republicans have quite libertarian views on capitalism??), and do you realise Congress isn't a single entity composed of one person with one goal?

Originally Posted by kojax

For a long time I've been wishing the US military would start a Zeppelin program. That seems to me like the ideal way to ship freight in a war zone, so long as you've already achieved air superiority to the point where your enemy has no planes to dispatch against them.

The problems I see with airships for transporting freight is that in war zones people tend to be in a hurry to get their supplies delivered as soon as possible and you need to get supplies through even when air superiority isn't 100% and a smaller and faster moving fixed-wing aircraft has a better chance of avoiding enemy fire.

Not being seen by the enemy is often the best defence in war and large, slow-moving airships are about the most visible thing for miles around - which is why they are great for advertising, right Good Year?



If this method was in routine use for shipping goods around the world already then it might be worth investigating but I don't see that it offers anything unique that would make it more efficient in a war zone compared to its efficiency or lack thereof in commercial freight shipping.

Originally Posted by kojax

If they were able to build a few Zeppelins the size of the Hindenburg, they could probably ferry freight into and out of the region almost unchallenged.

I think most light aircraft could be fitted with a variety of weapons to worry an airship enough that it would probably need an accompanying fighter plane escort to keep attackers off and they'd have to be refuelled to keep on guard the whole time of the flight across contested airspace.

Originally Posted by kojax

Entering "hindenburg weight " into google, I got this snippet:

Originally Posted by google

242.2 tons
The lifting capability of the Hindenburg was 242.2 tons, and with an empty weight of 130.1 tons it had an available lifting capability of 112.1 tons.

112 tons is just about three truck loads on a standard commercial truck.

You'd need more room for cargo handling at the airport than 3 trucks or the equivalent fixed-wing transport aircraft would need.

Originally Posted by kojax

It might be less using helium instead of hydrogen, though.

Somewhat but the density of helium is not the flaw with this proposal.

Originally Posted by kojax

Entering "hindenburg speed" into google, I get this snippet:

Originally Posted by google

84 mph
Hindenburg was powered by four reversible 890 kilowatts (1,190 hp) Daimler-Benz diesel engines which gave the airship a maximum speed of135 km/h (84 mph).

Maximum airspeed maybe but actual ground speed equivalent depends on the wind speed and direction vector relative to the direction you wish to travel in. In a 40 mph gale, your ground speed maximum could be as high as 124 mph or as low as 44 mph.

Originally Posted by kojax

So that would seem the best way to ship supplies in and out. I can run down other statistics on how bullet resistant zeppelins are. Basically the air pressure inside the air bags is set just barely over atmospheric pressure (to maximize lift), so you can punch it full of holes and it will just lose helium very gradually. There should be plenty of time for it to get to its destination so it can be repaired.

Rockets have the problem of needing to explode in time to hit it, as well as having something to lock onto. The engines will still generate heat, but they're not going to be as hot as helicopter or jet engines. And also you can put a barrier between them and the ground, to block the heat so it can't be locked onto from the ground. There's no absolute need to be aerodynamic, so stuff like that is easy to build into it.

Attacking enemy aircraft or ground-based anti-aircraft fire would shoot at the fuel tank, engine, propeller, pilot (drone airships wouldn't carry a pilot of course) or cargo and being a slower moving target the enemy would have a better chance of hitting their target.

There is one military application where lighter-than-air lift does very well and finds in use in Afghanistan by our forces already - aerostats for surveillance.

Originally Posted by Trivium

anti-western sentiment is actually detrimental to war efforts to impose liberal democracy on what were before tyrannical regimes.

Actually his view IS the predominant Western view.

--
While I think icewendigo's views are naive, and all too common expressed to me while I was living in Europe between deployments and spending American treasure to prevent a European Genocide, the idea that a War on Terror was real, realistic or wise (it's a tactic, not something to war against) or thinking that liberal democracy should be imposed by wars, is even more dangerous.

Originally Posted by Lynx_Fox

Originally Posted by Trivium

anti-western sentiment is actually detrimental to war efforts to impose liberal democracy on what were before tyrannical regimes.

Actually his view IS the predominant Western view.

--
While I think icewendigo's views are naive,

Well he practically conceded that his views are not predominant, do not feature much in the mainstream media.

Originally Posted by icewendigo

People that believe the disinformation of Governments and Mainstream Media are as misinformed and brainwashed

Rather the mainstream view has always been hostility to the enemy which attacked us on 9/11 USA and London bombing 7/7 and hostility to the enemy which kills our troops in Afghanistan and even kills Afghanistan's and Pakistan's own leaders too.

This video features Condoleezza Rice speaking on the BBC about the 7/7 London bombing and at venues she visited in her visit to North West England as a guest of UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. I have enhanced the video with music and illustrations.



This video features Sky News, BBC and other mainstream coverage of the UK National Health Service treatment given to the victim of the Taliban, Pakistani girls education campaigner, Malala Yousafzai. Again I have enhanced the latter part of this video with music.



And considering all the many nations of NATO etc. who have contributed troops to the mission in Afghanistan it could not be other than the mainstream sides with the US-led invasion of Afghanistan.

Our troops who have served in Afghanistan are treated like heroes by the people.

Originally Posted by Lynx_Fox

and all too common expressed to me while I was living in Europe between deployments and spending American treasure to prevent a European Genocide,

Well I am surprised that you did not find most people welcoming and supportive of our military alliance and views like icewendigo's views to be in a tiny but vocal minority.

I am sure that I speak for the vast majority of the people of Europe when I say that we are immensely grateful to our American allies and friends who have stood by us in times of trouble and war.

The mainstream view was represented on the BBC when Condoleezza Rice dedicated a new statue to Ronald Reagan in London. In this version, I have added music and illustrations to the points that Condi was making.



The day that the people of Britain put up a statue to Osama Bin Laden, or that we offer up our NHS for treatment of Taliban injured then one might suppose that icewendigo's views had become the mainstream.

However there is public battle weariness with the Afghanistan war after all these years and I think that is the reason why UK PM Cameron shamefully has decided to withdraw British combat troops from Afghanistan at the end of 2014, rather than the mainstream suddenly agrees with the war aims of Al-Qaeda.

Personally, if I were British President I would offer 1/5 the number of whatever US troops were to be sent over 10,000 for NATO's planned Resolute Support mission beginning 2015. So if 10,000 US troops were going, I'd send 2,000 British troops.

Originally Posted by Lynx_Fox

the idea that a War on Terror was real, realistic or wise (it's a tactic, not something to war against) or thinking that liberal democracy should be imposed by wars, is even more dangerous.

Our purpose in the Afghanistan war is to defend ourselves against our enemies who are waging war on us.
We were attacked on 9/11 and in many terrorist attacks since by Al-Qaeda a terrorist group so we declared a war on those terrorists.

All the states which host and sponsor Al-Qaeda to attack us are our real enemies in this war; all such states, even those states which hide the fact that they secretly sponsor terrorism against us.

The former Taliban state of Afghanistan everyone understands to have been our enemy and that's why we removed it with regime-change.

Some readers won't know that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia also secretly sponsor Al-Qaeda and the Taliban because our political leaders such as President Obama have not explained who all our enemies are.

So our purpose in war in Afghanistan serves our war aims in 2 ways

1) it helps us keep the Taliban from running Afghanistan and allowing Al-Qaeda to be based there

2) Afghanistan shares a border with Pakistan and therefore us having military bases in Afghanistan is very useful to wage war against our enemies in Pakistan where Al-Qaeda and the Taliban are based and are sponsored by the Pakistani military.

Yes it would be very helpful if President Obama, David Cameron and other political leaders could explain our wider purposes for war in Afghanistan.

I think the likes of Tony Blair and Condoleezza Rice have done a better job of leadership to explain the purpose of our war than the present leaders who seem to be more on the retreat as to what our war aims should be.

This is Condoleezza Rice's interview for the BBC in 2011 and the only enhancement I've made is to widen the view at times to show a copy of her book.



And if you are bored with Condi here is Tony Blair speaking to the same BBC journalist Andrew Marr in 2010.



http://figh.tk

"You sound like a rabid conspiracy theorist... believe or not terrorism is real (two suicide bombs several weeks ago in Russia) and your anti-western sentiment is actually detrimental to war efforts to impose liberal democracy on what were before tyrannical regimes.

Curious do you actually believe what you write? Why would the state want more power (most republicans have quite libertarian views on capitalism??), and do you realise Congress isn't a single entity composed of one person with one goal?"

Its just a question of information. (If you look at the equation "2+2" and Im saying "the result is 5", you might say how in the hell do you get 5 its wrong, but I' looking at "2+3", your vision of reality is accurate based on the information you have, I just have different input).

How many declassified US documents and documents in the National Archives have you read and analysed so far?
If Operation Northwoods False flag simulated attack had been executed in the 60s, would you have known that it was not Cuba that had done it?
Did the people watching ABC news and reading newspaper and thinking they were well informed know about Operation AJAX in the 50s? Or were they fooled like everyone else into thinking the terrorist attacks were done by the (targeted) Iranian government (instead of being actually CIA/MI6 controlled operations)?
The sinking of the USS Liberty, whats your take on it? Nothing strange there?
How many arrests by the FBI were terrorists that had been influenced/aided/pushed/guided by FBI informants? None? One? Four? How many trial records did you read yourself, one? Two? Or do you just watch what CNN or FoxNews say?
Operation Mocking Bird?

"Curious do you actually believe what you write? "

You are making assumptions about what I write, I have limited time and must cut corners I cannot explain the reasons behind every element I write, sorry.

" terrorism is real"

Yes, the US supported many killings and terrorist actions in South America, and has supported radical islam and Osama Ben Laden, has committed terrorist actions in Iran in the 50s (and the terrorists where not CIA agents with tweed and a "I heart CIA" tshirt but people in the region aided/supported/given-funds-orders-etc) and is still supporting terrorists against Iran now(Bush). So So yes terrorism is real, A-some of it is pretty much as portrayed (Group A attacks point X), and also, some of it is B- false flag state supported against enemies (US terrorism on Iranian civilians) and there are also cases of C- false flag against their own population (as Operation Northwood would have been, USS Liberty, US-supported Anti-Chavez shooting at Anti-Chavez rally in order to falsely accuse the Gov, etc).

"impose liberal democracy on what were before tyrannical regimes"

Yes, as if the US did not commit terrorism and coup d'etats to replace democratically elected governments like Allende and Mossedeq, and put tyrannical regimes like Pinochet and the Shah. How many calls to overthrow Kazakstan, Saudi Arabia etc have you seen in the Media? This "Dog that didnt bark" clue is revealing. You realize that Saddam was supported by the US, with Rumsfeld's hand shake, having gassed Kurds was no problem then, just like the Taliban's red carpet reception.

"Congress isn't a single entity composed of one person with one goal?""

Congress, that got the US military Anthrax letters, I wonder if they discussed, debated and approved the planned military interventions that General Clark mentioned in his interview with Charlie Rose? I guess not, but Yes Congress isnt a single entity and so on.

cheers

"While I think icewendigo's views are naive,"

Care to explain which part of my views are naive?
Which view do you interpret/assume to be the most naive of them all?

Originally Posted by Lynx_Fox

Originally Posted by Trivium

anti-western sentiment is actually detrimental to war efforts to impose liberal democracy on what were before tyrannical regimes.

Actually his view IS the predominant Western view.

--
While I think icewendigo's views are naive, and all too common expressed to me while I was living in Europe between deployments and spending American treasure to prevent a European Genocide, the idea that a War on Terror was real, realistic or wise (it's a tactic, not something to war against) or thinking that liberal democracy should be imposed by wars, is even more dangerous.

ugh he has bombarded me with a wall of text... I still think liberal democracy should be imposed if it can be (i'm not saying the end justifies the means, this is exactly the type of thinking that got us in such a mess in the 20th century) some of these governments deprive their citizens of the most basic human rights and although it's not all heavenly over here people take for granted how good our conditions are.

Icewendigo I have no interest in addressing a list of conspiracy theories and events that happened decades ago, Saddam was supported for strategic reasons, as were most of those actions above... incase you have forgotten the cold war was real, and fortunately for you the US were on your side protecting your rights, whether you choose to accept it or not.

"US were on your side protecting your rights"

Protecting rights or protecting interests?

"I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service. I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."
-General Smedley Butler


No one will say ~Hey go die for Exxon!~ or ~Forward for National City Bank we go!~ Thats why Propaganda is used, just as it has in WW1, this is documented not a conspiracy "theory", Propaganda and war go hand in hand. The war is justified with LIES, usually inspired by the ~narrative of the day~, If Banana Interests coup d'etat had occured during the Salem witch trials the people killed in South America would have been accused of flying on broomsticks and people would tell me how that the Banana Invasion saved my soul.

It may be old events but they are important in examining the propaganda. The point of telling you about Operation AJAX, which is not a conspiracy theory, is that at that time people did not know the truth.

Originally Posted by icewendigo

"US were on your side protecting your rights"

Protecting rights or protecting interests?

"I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service. I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."
-General Smedley Butler


No one will say ~Hey go die for Exxon!~ or ~Forward for National City Bank we go!~ Thats why Propaganda is used, just as it has in WW1, this is documented not a conspiracy "theory", Propaganda and war go hand in hand. The war is justified with LIES, usually inspired by the ~narrative of the day~, If Banana Interests coup d'etat had occured during the Salem witch trials the people killed in South America would have been accused of flying on broomsticks and people would tell me how that the Banana Invasion saved my soul.

Right. I know little about that but this is the 21st century, in case you haven't noticed (and judgeing by your Sadam remark earlier) there is this thing called the continuation of time, and since then there has been a lot of it.

Peter Dow - RationalWiki

Should be posted wherever this loon surfaces...

"Right. I know little about that but this is the 21st century, in case you haven't noticed (and judgeing by your Sadam remark earlier) there is this thing called the continuation of time, and since then there has been a lot of it."
no problem, cheers

Originally Posted by icewendigo

"impose liberal democracy on what were before tyrannical regimes"

Yes, as if the US did not commit terrorism and coup d'etats to replace democratically elected governments like Allende and Mossedeq, and put tyrannical regimes like Pinochet and the Shah. How many calls to overthrow Kazakstan, Saudi Arabia etc have you seen in the Media?

None sadly. What I see in the media with regard to Saudi Arabia mostly is President Obama and Prime Minister Cameron going to Saudi Arabia to grovel low with a view to supporting US / UK businesses to sell the Saudis arms, etc.

Being Scottish / British, I watch mostly British TV news and political comment when I watch the news so maybe US TV news is different - maybe over in the good old US of A, viewers do see calls to overthrow Saudi Arabia?

As for British-written plans to overthrow the Saudis the only one of those I've seen is my own and here it is.

Plan to overthrow Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia sponsors Al-Qaeda and other terrorist attacks against us. So how do we stop that? How do we beat Saudi Arabia in the war on terror?

Wikipedia: State-sponsored terrorism. 1. By countries. 1.11 Saudi Arabia -
"Saudi Arabia is said to be the world's largest source of funds for Salafi jihadist terrorist militant groups, such as al-Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban, and Lashkar-e-Taiba in South Asia, and donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide, according to Hillary Clinton. According to a secret December 2009 paper signed by the US secretary of state, "Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaida, the Taliban, LeT and other terrorist groups."

The dollar value of Saudi oil exports varies according to the oil price and how much is produced in any year.
For example, in 2009 it was only $163 billion but in 2013 it was estimated to be $334 billion.


So the plan is to take a share of that.


What we can do very effectively and humanely is prevent, limit or tax Saudi Arabia's oil exports. All Saudi Arabia's oil exports leave in oil tankers.


Now, we've seen how easy it was for Somali pirates to take unescorted ships. We had to deploy NATO naval power to protect shipping from those Somali pirates.


Now, imagine how very easy it would be for NATO to pirate or blockade oil tankers exporting oil from Saudi Arabia or indeed from any of the Middle East ports.


It would be like taking candy from a baby.


So we could confiscate the oil from Saudi tankers, impose a tax, make them pay, compel them enough to mend their ways, explain on seized Arab satellite TV what the Arabs need to do by way of stopping terrorism and regime change to get their oil flowing in full again.


As a military strategy, it's a no-brainer. An easy win. A home run. A slam dunk.


We can control a lot of the oil business because a lot of oil moves around in oil tankers and we can use naval power to control the movement of oil tankers.


If oil tankers don't take their shipping destination from the orders of our navies then board the oil tankers with marines - that's what marines were originally for - put a naval team on board and ship the oil tanker to where we want it to unload it.


Ideally, the flow of oil would be where we want it to go. So we wouldn't be trying to cut off ALL oil flow. We'd be directing the oil tankers to go where we wanted them to go, not to where the Saudi's paying customers wanted them to go.


If customers wanted the oil, they'd have to pay us and the Arabs would get paid only what we wanted them to get paid and the money wouldn't go into Saudi royal bank accounts but into the hands of the needy Arab people, including paying the wages and costs of extracting the oil itself of course. No doubt Big Oil can help us with that side of things.


Pay the oil company which filled the oil tanker with oil in the first place a minimal value which covers the costs of doing so, but doesn't pay the full market value including profits.


We sell the oil at full market value and use the profits for our good causes, not sponsoring terrorism, paying down our war debts, investing in new water and electricity supply works for Iraq, all kinds of good things like that.


Now, it's never as simple as that because the Saudis could try to cut off the oil production themselves, but we could argue against that on seized Arab satellite TV and use that as another reason to call for a revolution to overthrow the Saudis.


Of course, there will be panic on the oil market as the new system of control is announced and our naval blockades go into place. Sure, the oil price will sky rocket for a time. However in due course it should settle down and we may well end up with lower oil prices when the fuss has died down.


Fighting the war on terror like that, makes the Afghan war look retarded, a famous military disaster in comparison.


Once we have control of Saudi oil we won't need them to buy much off us so no more need for our political leaders to grovel like slimey salesmen before the Saudi King!


In fact, we could bankrupt Saudi Arabia and thereby regime change the Saudis to another Arab regime, one which didn't sponsor terrorism against us!


So that's how we can beat Saudi Arabia in the war on terror!

The trouble with that plan is the Saudis already own too much of America's economy. They're not stupid. They've been taking all those dollars we've been giving them over the last 50 years and reinvesting them right back into the USA's stock market and etc. If we blockaded them, they'd just pull their investments and wreak havoc on our economy.

We can't impoverish them without bringing ourselves down too. They already gave George Bush Sr. a job since he stepped down as president. There's little doubt GWBush was in their pocket when he was president. They want the Jihad to rage on. They don't care who wins. The Saudis are mostly secular, not extremist. Most of the extremists totally hate the Saudi royal family. But the Saudis still give them money. Why not? They're useful.


Hardly ever gets mentioned in the press just how badly Saddam had antagonized the Saudis. He kept breaking with OPEC. Exceeding his quotas (the way OPEC controls oil prices is by imposing quotas to limit how much is produced.) Arguably, Saddam was the sole reason gasoline was a dollar a gallon in the 1990's. But the Saudis found a way to shut him and his oil wells down. Didn't they?

Originally Posted by Peter Dow

Originally Posted by kojax

For a long time I've been wishing the US military would start a Zeppelin program. That seems to me like the ideal way to ship freight in a war zone, so long as you've already achieved air superiority to the point where your enemy has no planes to dispatch against them.

The problems I see with airships for transporting freight is that in war zones people tend to be in a hurry to get their supplies delivered as soon as possible and you need to get supplies through even when air superiority isn't 100% and a smaller and faster moving fixed-wing aircraft has a better chance of avoiding enemy fire.

Not being seen by the enemy is often the best defence in war and large, slow-moving airships are about the most visible thing for miles around - which is why they are great for advertising, right Good Year?

I've dealt with some of these misconceptions in other threads before, but most of them are antiquated now. So, to reiterate: a Zeppelin doesn't need to dodge most small arms fire. Bullets tear harmlessly through it, and it only leaks out a little bit of helium from them. Rockets would be a danger, but they still need something to lock onto, and it would have a minimal heat signature.

As for air superiority not being 100% .... in this particular war, air superiority started at fully 100% and has stayed there ever since. I doubt it will ever drop.

If the USA were able to stockpile supplies in massive quantities at one base, then it would be a lot easier to distribute from there than to always special order each item from outside the country and try to deliver it individually. I think slow, high volume, constant shipping wins out. The tortoise beats the hare.

If this method was in routine use for shipping goods around the world already then it might be worth investigating but I don't see that it offers anything unique that would make it more efficient in a war zone compared to its efficiency or lack thereof in commercial freight shipping.

The main problem we're facing in Afghanistan is that the traditional means of moving freight don't work. We can't ship in by sea, because Afghanistan is land locked. If we send freight by land, then we've got bribe an endless number of local warlords and the combination of bad roads and too many workable ambush locations ensures quite a lot of serious problems for us.

Shipping by air is just plain expensive. Lots of aircraft fuel, and the planes usually can't carry very much per run.

Originally Posted by kojax

If they were able to build a few Zeppelins the size of the Hindenburg, they could probably ferry freight into and out of the region almost unchallenged.

I think most light aircraft could be fitted with a variety of weapons to worry an airship enough that it would probably need an accompanying fighter plane escort to keep attackers off and they'd have to be refuelled to keep on guard the whole time of the flight across contested airspace.

What war are you thinking of?

In the current war (Afghanistan), the enemy has no aircraft at all. Not light aircraft. Not heavy aircraft. Nothing.

Originally Posted by kojax

Entering "hindenburg weight " into google, I got this snippet:

Originally Posted by google

242.2 tons
The lifting capability of the Hindenburg was 242.2 tons, and with an empty weight of 130.1 tons it had an available lifting capability of 112.1 tons.

112 tons is just about three truck loads on a standard commercial truck.

You'd need more room for cargo handling at the airport than 3 trucks or the equivalent fixed-wing transport aircraft would need.

Why would you need that? Why not just attach full containers to the bottom of the Zeppelin, and then drop the whole container and leave it behind?

Originally Posted by kojax

Entering "hindenburg speed" into google, I get this snippet:

Originally Posted by google

84 mph
Hindenburg was powered by four reversible 890 kilowatts (1,190 hp) Daimler-Benz diesel engines which gave the airship a maximum speed of135 km/h (84 mph).

Maximum airspeed maybe but actual ground speed equivalent depends on the wind speed and direction vector relative to the direction you wish to travel in. In a 40 mph gale, your ground speed maximum could be as high as 124 mph or as low as 44 mph.

44 mph is faster than any truck would be able to bring it in. Not as fast as a plane, but then we're talking bigger and bigger expense.

Originally Posted by kojax

So that would seem the best way to ship supplies in and out. I can run down other statistics on how bullet resistant zeppelins are. Basically the air pressure inside the air bags is set just barely over atmospheric pressure (to maximize lift), so you can punch it full of holes and it will just lose helium very gradually. There should be plenty of time for it to get to its destination so it can be repaired.

Rockets have the problem of needing to explode in time to hit it, as well as having something to lock onto. The engines will still generate heat, but they're not going to be as hot as helicopter or jet engines. And also you can put a barrier between them and the ground, to block the heat so it can't be locked onto from the ground. There's no absolute need to be aerodynamic, so stuff like that is easy to build into it.

Attacking enemy aircraft or ground-based anti-aircraft fire would shoot at the fuel tank, engine, propeller, pilot (drone airships wouldn't carry a pilot of course) or cargo and being a slower moving target the enemy would have a better chance of hitting their target.

There is one military application where lighter-than-air lift does very well and finds in use in Afghanistan by our forces already - aerostats for surveillance.

I think it's a lot harder for them to hit a zeppelin's crew compartment than you might think. It may not be as fast as a helicopter or airplane, but it's still a moving target far away from the shooter's position.

Zeppelins are slow, bulky, awkward to maneuver, and tend to get blown around in the wind.
They are not really cheap to operate either.
The military isn't using them for the same reasons private industry is not using them, and there have been regular failed attempts to make them work for industries like logging and mining.
Even tethered observation ballons went out of style after the airplane pilots in WWI figured out how easy of a target they were. Parachutes were first used to save the lives of the artillery observers as they jumped out of the ballon baskets when facing an attack from airplanes.

Originally Posted by kojax

I've dealt with some of these misconceptions in other threads before, but most of them are antiquated now. So, to reiterate: a Zeppelin doesn't need to dodge most small arms fire. Bullets tear harmlessly through it, and it only leaks out a little bit of helium from them. Rockets would be a danger, but they still need something to lock onto, and it would have a minimal heat signature.

1) Rockets are - for the most part - unguided: that means they don't need to lock at all. RPGs, for example, have been known to bring down helicopters (Black Hawk Down).
2) If you're talking about guided missiles then you should be aware that "minimal heat signature" is what a Zeppelin would have: IIR (imaging infra-red) would be entirely capable of locking on to one: they work on contrast as much as anything else (i.e. the craft will not be at the same temperature as the surrounding air). There's also millimetric guidance. And there's manually-guided (visual cueing) types.

You also seem to be unaware that, unless the craft is a blimp, it will have a rigid internal structure: that structure will be not only be vulberable to small arms it wouls also provide opportunities to initiate the fusing on shells from larger-calibre (20mm and above) weapons - the majority of which will be HE and HEI (High Explosive - useful for ripping HUGE holes in the skins of dirigibles and High Explosive Incendiary - useful for setting fire to anything flammable, which then melts the container bags, releasing lots of gas).

We may yet get tacit approval to attack taliban bases in Pakistan, but first, we gotta sucker the taliban into doing more terrorists attacks within Pakistan.
A good strategy trumps tactics in any engagement.

You mean like we did in Vietnam and Iraq? Just today 33 more people were killed by a suicide bomber and it seems everyday there's death and violence in Iraq. Is this a good policy?

Originally Posted by dan hunter

Even tethered observation balloons went out of style after the airplane pilots in WWI figured out how easy of a target they were.

Actually tethered balloons are pretty common and were used over Iraqi bases. Equipped with modern optics, anyone who shot at them was quickly responded to and often didn't survive to try again--a lot of them didn't' even get into position.

A possibility I think would be to run them at night. I'm thinking it might be possible to make the propellers pretty quiet. If we used helium as the primary lifting gas, but also had some space reserved for hydrogen (maybe in a smaller balloon of its own in the middle, so the helium can block it from having access to any oxygen), then used hydrogen as the power source for the propellers, then they could be electric (via a direct to electric power cell) So no combustion engine to try and silence.


Paint them black, and just let them quietly drift across the night sky.

Originally Posted by Dywyddyr

2) If you're talking about guided missiles then you should be aware that "minimal heat signature" is what a Zeppelin would have: IIR (imaging infra-red) would be entirely capable of locking on to one: they work on contrast as much as anything else (i.e. the craft will not be at the same temperature as the surrounding air). There's also millimetric guidance. And there's manually-guided (visual cueing) types.

Hmmm.. So even if the bottom part of the blimp were cooled somehow, there would still be contrast. Probably pretty difficult to make it fully the same temperature as the surrounding air.


So would terrorists be able to spot them at night using thermal optics? Do you think they'd have enough thermal optic devices to be able to watch for them very well? In theory we could send the zeppelins down randomly generated routes (like rolling dice to decide), so as to make it impossible to intercept them without covering a wide area with observers.

You also seem to be unaware that, unless the craft is a blimp, it will have a rigid internal structure: that structure will be not only be vulberable to small arms it wouls also provide opportunities to initiate the fusing on shells from larger-calibre (20mm and above) weapons - the majority of which will be HE and HEI (High Explosive - useful for ripping HUGE holes in the skins of dirigibles and High Explosive Incendiary - useful for setting fire to anything flammable, which then melts the container bags, releasing lots of gas).

Helium is a fire suppressant. So inside the bag it's unlikely anything would catch fire.

But.... if they're able to make the explosive blow up inside the balloon then the pressure from the explosion would push lots and lots of the lifting gas out of it. Maybe tear the outer wall. I could see that ruining the Zeppelin's day.

Also helium is expensive. Wouldn't want to lose too much of it and have to buy more.