Treading Lightly
A roundup of up-armoring, down-armoring, soft vs. hard airpower, plus news and views re Afghanistan kicks off with a Canadian Army Journal report* on the use of armor in counterinsurgency, by two-tour Afghan vet Maj. Trevor Cadieu, Lord Strathcona’s Horse:
By deploying tanks and armoured engineers to Afghanistan in October 2006 and supporting the acquisition of the Leopard 2, the leadership of the Canadian Forces (CF) has acknowledged the importance of maintaining heavy armour in a balanced force. While the continued development of sensors and technology will be extremely important to achieving improved situational awareness (SA) on the battlefield, the hard-earned experiences of the Canadian Army and our allies in sustained combat in Afghanistan and have proven we must be prepared to get our hands dirty and come into physical contact with the enemy if we wish to define their strength, composition and intentions and subsequently kill them. Canadian tanks and armoured engineers have better protected our dismounted infantry soldiers in Southern Afghanistan, allowing them to close with and destroy a fanatical and determined enemy in extremely complex terrain. This article will review tactical lessons learned of Canadian armour in Afghanistan since October 2006, provide a candid assessment of the challenges faced by tankers in this counter-insurgency (COIN) environment, and consider the introduction of the Leopard 2. Nowhere in this editorial is it implied that Canadian armour is the predominate arm, or that it should be reinvigorated at the expense of other battlefield enablers. On the contrary, our recent experience in combat has provided irrefutable evidence that all elements of the combined arms team remain fundamental to the delivery of decisive combat power in the contemporary operating environment (COE), and that our efforts in training and operations should reinforce this grouping.
1st Battalion Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry Battle Group (1 PPCLI BG) was confronted in the spring of 2006 with a significant increase in insurgent activity in the Panjwayi and Zhari Districts of Kandahar Province. Although the Canadian BG working closely with the Afghan National Army (ANA) was able to disrupt the enemy in a series of BG-level operations culminating in Operation ZAHAR (as part of Operation MOUNTAIN THRUST), Taliban forces quickly re-asserted their presence in the region once hostilities had ended. The International Stabilization Assistance Force (ISAF) could not ignore the threat posed by this massing of insurgents on the doorstep of Kandahar City, the coalition centre of gravity in the south of Afghanistan. A significant information operations (Info Ops) victory would be awarded to the Taliban if they could not be dislodged from these areas, and the ability of the International Stabilization Assistance Force (ISAF) to achieve its stated mission of reconstruction would be virtually impossible to achieve without the confidence and support of the local populace. Within weeks of arriving in theatre in August 2006, the 1st Battalion The Royal Canadian Regiment (1 RCR) BG was tasked to clear the Taliban from Panjwayi and Zhari Districts in Operation MEDUSA, the largest combat action undertaken to date by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Rather than adhering to small unit attacks and ambushes, and retreating in the face of direct confrontation with NATO forces, the Taliban chose to make a conventional stand at Pashmul. They occupied well dug-in defensive positions amongst densely packed grape and poppy fields and they covered with direct fire and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) all ingress routes suitable for wheeled vehicles. The BG Commanding Officer (CO), Lieutenant-Colonel Omer Lavoie, realized quickly that restoring tactical battlefield mobility would be essential to dislodging the enemy from this complex terrain. Without armour at his disposal, he introduced civilian-pattern tracked dozers to the fight in order to slice through grape fields and allow dismounted infantry soldiers to get “up close and personal” with the insurgents. The tactic was extremely effective. Advancing under the cover of heavy artillery and aerial bombardment, the dozers allowed the BG to seize key terrain and facilitate the systematic clearance by dismounted soldiers of all compounds and infrastructure. By 13 September 2006, Taliban forces operating in
Pashmul and Zhari had capitulated. Hundreds of insurgents had been killed and many others were forced to flee to the west.While two successive infantry-heavy Canadian BGs conducted successful counterinsurgency operations for nearly nine months without integral armour, the lessons of Operation MEDUSA reinforced the importance of retaining all combat enablers in full spectrum operations. According to Lieutenant-Colonel Lavoie, “If you’d asked me five months ago, ‘do you need tanks to fight insurgents?’ I would have said, ‘No, you’re nuts.” He added, “Because [the Taliban] are acting conventionally, then conventional assets like tanks, armoured engineering vehicles, and armoured bridge-laying vehicles certainly have their place here.”
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Company 2 PPCLI and the ANA in a series of offensive operations aimed at expanding the BG’s security zone. Conducting several complex deliberate breaching and cordon and search operations in Zhari District, the ANA and Canadians demonstrated clearly their capacity and resolve to go after the Taliban at a time and place of their choosing. After securing the Siah Choy area with the ANA, the tank squadron united with American Special Operations Forces (SOF) and the Canadian Reconnaissance Squadron to dominate the Dowrey-Arghandab peninsula, keeping the enemy off balance in the region. Following the transition of command authority to 2 RCR, B Squadron remained in theatre for nearly a month conducting disruption operations along the Helmand-Kandahar provincial border and reinforcing Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) in contact with insurgents in Howz-e-Madad and Sangsar. While sub-unit integrity was maintained for specific missions, B Squadron was tasked as a steady state to support two different operations concurrently: the squadron minus (two troops of four tanks and the squadron headquarters) usually formed a combat team with A Company, while the third tank troop was detached to another sub-unit elsewhere in the AO. Tanks never worked independently and the value of the combined arms team was evident. The tank squadron commander led routinely during the advance and break-in phases of operations, while infantry company commanders naturally retained control of the fight through/clearance and consolidation phases.
The article goes on to address criticism of the use of armor, saying warnings that armor would increase civilian casualties was not only untrue, they think it helped reduce civilian casualties by increasing on-the-ground direct fire capabilities. Also notes armor’s limitations. Whole thing for any treadheads, grunts and COIN artistes out there who are interested in this kind of thing.
Looking around for articles on the American use of armor in Afghanistan, not finding any. The extent to which armor is useful probably has a lot to do with what part of the country you’re operating in, and how the Taliban is behaving there. Anyway, here’s a recent Defense Industry Daily article looking at the Canadian experience, and a Canadian decision to back off the Stryker option and start picking up secondhand Leopards cheap in Europe.
As long as we’re looking at boots off the ground, SWJ also offers up some examples of COIN do’s and don’ts from 30,000 feet, with the Softer Side of Air Power and Close Air Support and Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan.
Down from the wild blue yonder, unassing the heavy metal, Captain’s Journal looks at a McClatchy report on the desireability of down-armoring the grunts who have to drive around goat tracks and run up and down mountains:
As regular readers know from our body armor coverage and analysis, we have been preaching the virtues of weight reduction in body armor for months, and even years (focusing on the weight of SAPI plates). Further, the Marine Corps was lethargic to react to known problems with troop transport, abandoning an urgent request for MRAPs in 2005. The Marines had chosen to run Amphibious Assault Vehicles across desert terrain, and one particularly brutal example of the consequences of this choice was the loss of fourteen Marines near Haditha in August 2005.
Marine Commandant Conway has lamented the heaviness of the force now, and if there is a need for lighter, faster-moving all-terrain vehicles, then the Corps cannot be as slow to react as it was in Anbar. We have also commented that some TTPs (such as satellite patrols) won’t have the same value in the rural terrain of Afghanistan versus the urban terrain of Iraq. Having said that, the lectures of the Marines will stop and the analysis will start …
You’ll want to click in for the rest of that one.
Pulling back for the big picture, here’s Petraeus on Afghanistan via Small Wars Journal:
“It’s not possible to solve the challenges internal to Afghanistan without addressing the challenges, especially in terms of security, with Afghanistan’s neighbors,” Petraeus said in an address to the U.S. Institute of Peace. “A regional approach is required.”
Petraeus spoke as part of a conference highlighting some of the foreign policy challenges facing President-elect Barack Obama’s administration, citing complexities of the war in Afghanistan and his perspective on the way forward to bring peace to the region.
“There has been nothing easy about Afghanistan,” he said. “Indeed, nearly every aspect has been hard, and that will continue to be the case in 2009 and the years beyond.”
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“We and our Afghan and coalition partners have a tough fight in Afghanistan, and the natural tendency will be to look to the ways progress was achieved in Iraq for possible answers,” he said. But it’s important, he noted, to understand that “Afghanistan is not Iraq.”
The principles of counterinsurgency operations, such as the importance of security and serving the population and the necessity of living among the people, remain active in Afghanistan, he said. These principles, nonetheless, have to be adapted to the unique cultural and political geographic and terrain of Afghanistan.
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The two wars and countries differ in almost every aspect. Iraq has experience under a strong central government. Afghanistan hasn’t in recent years. Afghanistan lacks in natural resources, infrastructure and provisional services, such as electricity, clean drinking water and education, in most areas, he said.
“While Iraq this past year generated nearly $60 billion in money-export revenue alone, Afghanistan’s total revenue was well under $1 billion,” he said. “In Afghanistan, it is important to remember that we’re helping them construct infrastructure, not reconstruct.”
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“We have to demonstrate commitment to sustain comprehensive, coordinated approaches and build and execute a regional strategy that includes Pakistan, India, the central Asian states and even the army in Russia along with, someday, perhaps at some point, Iran,” the general said.
All of which taken together explains what he means by “every aspect of this has been hard, and that will continue to be the case … ”
Back to the business end, we’ll close with John Nagl, again via SWJ, to a Maneuver Captain’s Career Course full of Iraq and Afghan vts at Ft. Benning:
In between combat patrols and meetings with village elders and local security forces, I’m asking you to think about what you need to do your job better. What can we back here do to help you build strong local and provincial governments that meet the needs of their people and gain their support? What organizational changes should we implement to give the companies on the ground what they need to understand and influence the local situation, from a company intel section in the TO&E so that you don’t have to make one out of hide to a battalion Political Advisor to help with negotiations and tribal dynamics? What doctrine or training did you not receive here in the training base that would have helped you more effectively build the Afghan National Army into a force that can secure Afghanistan on its own, so that my son and yours don’t have to do so?
Your nation needs you to lead soldiers into harm’s way to fight a determined and often invisible enemy who knows no laws of war or man. Your nation needs you to be a diplomat as well as a warrior, because we can’t kill or capture our way to success in this fight; victory comes from building local institutions that can stand on their own. But your nation also needs you to tell us what you need to fight your fight better, to build an Army that is truly a learning institution able to defeat adaptive insurgent enemies.
So don’t throw your books away at the end of the course. Take ‘em with you—your Galula, your FM 3-0 and 3-07 and yes, your FM 3-24–and tear ‘em apart. Tell us what we got right and what we got wrong. Tell us over email distro lists that you send to everybody in your small group and by blogging at Small Wars Journal, that gift to the American military that every soldier should read every day, and by publishing in your branch journals and in Military Review. Think and read and publish, when you’re in the fight and, in some ways even harder, when you’re back here after the fight, once the kids are in bed.
Because these will be long wars, and when you’re back, you’re getting ready for the next tour—for yourself, or for one of your buddies standing here next to you. And something you learned—something you realize our Army could do better—may make the difference between whether he comes back from the next tour, or whether he doesn’t; whether his unit accomplishes its mission in Wardak, or whether the enemy gains strength instead. It’s your Army, gentlemen, and we need you to help make it better—through your heart, and your soul, but also through your brains.
Speaking of brainwork, interesting on-the-ground Christian Science Monitor report on reducing civilian casualties looks at problems posed by high-spirited young guys who lob rockets for kicks and profit:
One of the reasons for the mounting number of coalition casualties, explain General McKiernan’s staff, is the pressure not to hit civilians – coupled with the growing use of civilians either as proxy fighters or as human shields by the insurgents.
“In my area of operations, those doing much of the shooting and lobbing of rockets at our outposts are not, by and large, the enemy you might think they are,” notes Maj. Matt McCollum, operations officer at Bostick, a Forward Operating Base (FOB) that oversees much of the volatile northeastern Kunar Province, which borders Pakistan.
Many are just local young men who have nothing to do and are being paid by the insurgents. “They do it for adventure, for the money, and just because they’ve been told it’s cool to fight foreigners. It gets them street cred points.”
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The main alternative response involves redoubling efforts to “win” over villagers by offering them development projects and jobs, setting wages at about $170 a month, more than what the coalition believes is the going rate for attacking the bases. “We have more to offer than the Taliban, and we need to make it worth their while to come over to our side,” says Major McCollum.
But it’s not easy to convince young men to put down their weapons in return for a day laborer’s job. “These guys are thinking, ‘I could work with a shovel for eight hours and make some money – or I could lob a rocket over the ridge for same.’ The latter appeals. It’s easier, more exciting work,” admits McCollum.
OK, some news.
Washington Post: Obama to reassess US Mission in Afghanistan.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Barack Obama intends to sign off on Pentagon plans to send up to 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan to help buy time for the new administration to reappraise the war effort, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.
The incoming administration does not anticipate that the new deployment would significantly change the direction of the conflict, the newspaper said.
Obama campaigned on a promised to “finish the job” in Afghanistan and said he would increase the U.S. military presence there. However, since the November election, he has been flooded with dire assessments of the war, the Post said.
“We have no strategic plan. We never had one,” the newspaper quoted a senior U.S. military commander as saying about the Bush years.
Let the recriminations begi … continue.
Obama’s first order of business will be to “explain to the American people what the mission is” in Afghanistan, the official told the newspaper.
That could be pretty simple. Just say “We need to clean up Bush’s mess” and everyone will applaud. Then let Petraeus go do what Bush was having him do, anyway. Try to avoid saying too much, or meddling too much, or you’ll own it. Try not to kiss too much terrorist ass and keep Congress out of it. About the flood of dire assessments, he’s got to stop reading the AP. Meanwhile, this part’s fun:
By presenting NATO with a comprehensive plan and demonstrating the leadership to implement it, Obama hopes to capitalize on his popularity in Europe with requests for increased military and financial contributions, the Post reported.
“What they’ve got to say is, ‘OK, if you love Obama, show us how much,’” another retired senior military officer was quoted as saying.
That’s what I call hoping for change.
WPost: U.S. construction a sign of long commitment in Afghanistan.
The Army is building $1.1 billion worth of military bases and other facilities in Afghanistan and is planning to start an additional $1.3 billion in projects this year, according to Col. Thomas E. O’Donovan, commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Afghanistan District.
Massive construction of barracks, training areas, headquarters, warehouses and airfields for use by U.S. and Afghan security forces — which could reach $4 billion — signals a long-term U.S. military commitment at a time when the incoming Obama administration’s policy for the Afghan war is unclear.
WPost: US-funded intel center struggles in Khyber region.
TORKHAM, Afghanistan — Located at the foot of a towering mountain range in eastern Afghanistan, near the border with Pakistan, the $3 million Khyber Border Coordination Center was billed as a first-of-its-kind experiment in intelligence sharing among Pakistani, Afghan and U.S.-led coalition forces when it opened here on a sunny day last spring.
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But more than nine months later, U.S. officials at the Khyber Center say language barriers, border disputes between Pakistani and Afghan field officers, and longstanding mistrust among all three militaries have impeded progress.
“It’s a very useful facility, but it’s just going to take a while before they understand what cooperation entails,” said Dan Villareal, a military contractor who has worked at the center since its inception.
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“There’s a hell of a lot of lip service. The Pakistanis talk a good game but don’t play a good game,” said a U.S. officer who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of military and diplomatic sensitivities.
BBC: Attacks renewed on NATO supplies. Depot outside Peshawar hit.
LA Times embeds with the Taliban, gets a not-particularly informative ride-along for their trouble. The biggest revelation … Talibs are chewing tobacco, a sign of softer Taliban touch. Which may actually be useful information. Less idiotic ideology makes Ahmadi a happier mujahid. A lot of crowing about how the Taliban own the place, ride beside the hated Crusader convoys on the hated Crusader highways with impunity, and also enjoy hanging around in mud huts watching TV and doing lunch. Rolling Stone already told us that. So what I want to know is, if the Taliban are so hot, when is someone going along for the ride on some righteous anti-Crusader ops? Be sure to take a video camera that might survive the blast.
LA Times oped: Even a “good” war offers bad choices for Obama. Roundup of all the conventional thinking on Afghanistan by a Lehigh prof.
Great minds, like thot … Castle Argghhh!!! looking at some of the same material above remarks:
President Bush ended up having to focus on Iraq and turn Afghanistan into an “economy of force” operation. Hopefully the trends in Iraq will hold up, and allow soon-to-be President Obama and his Generals to turn their full attention to Afghanistan, with the willing assistance of other “soft” elements of US power as embodied in the other agencies of the Executive Branch. All needful before we can expect our Allies to maintain, much less expand, their efforts in the region.
And hopefully Congress will be constructive in its engagement on the issue. Of all the aspects of the problem, that is the one I have the least confidence in.
In closing, Neptunus Lex mulls some of the hard parts of soft power.
* With a nod to everyone’s favorite Canadian dragoon, the Strathconas’ own Capt. Heinrichs.
Topics: Afghanistan, deep thot, military
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 11:08 pm on Monday, January 12, 2009
2 Responses to “Treading Lightly”
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January 13th, 2009 at 10:10 am
[...] has a round-up from all the usual [...]
January 13th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Jules,
This is a fine, fine, assemblage of material. Thanks for taking the time to lay it out for us.
Respects,