Future posts in the “Afghanistan” category will be posted in the AfPak Mission war on terror strategy blog at afpakmission.wordpress.com.
Road-side bombs again guys and it’s an attack that works for the Taliban just because we haven’t secured the few main highways we must use by building a secure perimeter around the road – barbed wire, guard posts, minefields – and thereby keeping the enemy far away from the road at all times.
Instead, our generals have for years stuck with the same old bad patrolling plan and so the enemy just watches the road and after one patrol has passed and before the next patrol arrives, the enemy times it correctly to sneak up to the road and lay their road-side bombs.
The enemy can sneak up to the road so easily because they don’t have to cross a minefield, they don’t have to penetrate barbed wire and there isn’t guard posts with guards with machine guns watching over the land either side of the road 24/7, defending the approaches to the road the whole length of the road.
Then the next patrol or some other vehicle later on comes along the road and gets blown up by the road-side bomb we failed to stop the enemy planting in the first place.
BBC: Afghanistan roadside bomb kills three British soldiers
Three British soldiers have died in Afghanistan after their armoured vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb in Helmand, the Ministry of Defence said.
The soldiers were from the Royal Highland Fusiliers, the 2nd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland. Next of kin have been informed.
Six other soldiers were also injured after the bomb blast on Tuesday.
The soldiers were travelling in the heavily armoured Mastiff vehicle on a routine patrol in the district of Nahr-e Saraj when the blast happened.
Here’s what my solution to create a secure perimeter for the supply roads might look like.
Can you see how that brings the road “inside the wire”? That’s a plan that could work to keep the main highways safe to use.
Mine is not a plan for the small side-roads far away from the highways. We don’t have to use these side-roads to supply our main bases. We should only have our main bases next to the main supply roads. We should not have isolated bases which are difficult to supply. We need to abandon those isolated bases in bandit territory and fight the enemy there using air-power, aerial bombing, drones, attack helicopters, airborne raids and so on. There’s no need to drive to those out-of-the-way hideouts the enemy has.
Read Peter Dow’s Secure supply routes plan in full in the topic Military strategy against the Taliban in Afghanistan & Pakistan in the Republican Intelligence forum.
Peter Dow's preview blog 