H&I* Fires, 01 JUN 2007
Open post for those with something to share, updated through the day. New, complete posts come in below this one. Note: If trackbacking, please acknowledge this post in your post. That's only polite.
You're advertising here, we should get an ad at your place...
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Continuing the recent focus around here on the military families:
For the families: We don't know what you're feeling, but we're trying to understand.
I do anticipate that this one from Fehrenbach may annoy some: Equipment, troops strained for ... what was it? Not even going to attempt to defend it. It’s an either you get it or you don’t situation. If you don’t well, me trying to ‘splain is just going to get me into more trouble. So I’m not even going to try. Don’t ask.
[Heh. Fehrenbach and I are at least in the same chapter, if perhaps not exactly on the same page. -the Armorer]
A post by Opposed Systems Design about the sailing of USNS Comfort in a Long War mission, that doesn’t take it anywhere near the Middle East.
Another from OSD, a discussion of why command and control is currently done wrong because it focuses on tech instead of people.
[Ah, the tales I could spin. Suffice it to say - and I've been paid a lot of money to work in *exactly* this arena - "Amen, brother." -the Armorer]
Just a fun one: De Re Militari. Feed your inner historian.
--ry
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Hmmm. Overheard recently (as in about 20 seconds ago) "You know you're not awake when you spray your underarms with nasal spray." Indeed.
Here's a trend we can hope continues... Sunnis revolt against al-Qaida. Reported by the AP, so it must be true.
From the email box yesterday:
Perhaps if instead of requiring convinience stores to install bullet proof glass, more lighting, locks etc. It would be more useful and cost effective to follow ol' Cooter here in his response to a robbery. Notice how Mr. Mouthy punk gets real humble, real fast.H/t, Kevin G. -the Armorer
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Peggy Noonan announces the death of the Conservative Coalition, stabbed in the heart by President Bush. There will be much rejoicing in KosLand, should this be true. But if the Prez has lost Peggy, he's lost the center of his mass.
I disagree as often as I agree with Ralph Peters, but this one struck a nerve.
We may have waited too long to operate on the cancer killing Iraq. (Washington's still arguing about the diagnosis.)Since Saddam's statue fell, we've tried one grunt-level technique after another, hoping tactics would produce a strategy. That's backward. First, you establish your strategy. Then you select the tactics that can achieve it.
Oh, we had nebulous goals regarding democracy and peace in the Middle East. But goals aren't a strategy. And neither the Bush administration nor the Pentagon ever laid down a coherent and comprehensive strategic plan to get us from A through B to C. Even if the current troop surge works, it gets us only to B - with C still undefined after more than four years.
The terrorists have done a better job. We sent them reeling in Afghanistan, and the invasion of Iraq stunned them, but when we reached Baghdad we turned out to be the dog that caught the fire truck. Civilian ideologues insisted our troops wouldn't be needed long, if at all, and forbade our military from running a no-nonsense occupation with sufficient resources to impose and maintain order.
We gave the terrorists and insurgents time to regain their balance. And they did. Oh, they went through trial-and-error phases, including ill-judged mass confrontations with U.S. firepower. But they ultimately proved more adaptable than we've been: We restrict ourselves to supposedly humane theories of counterinsurgency warfare that have failed us for 60 years; our enemies simply do whatever works.
And we can't. Because "whatever works" usually involves a lot more killing than we and the international community are willing to stomach - until you have no choice but to either surrender or engage in *real* killing. WWII-style killing. -the Armorer
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*A term of art from the artillery. Harassment and Interdiction Fires.
Back in the day, when you could just kill people and break things without a note from a lawyer, they were pre-planned, but to the enemy, random, fires at known gathering points, road junctions, Main Supply Routes, assembly areas, etc - to keep the bad guy nervous that the world around him might start exploding at any minute.
*Not really relevant to today's operating environment, right? But, it *is*
The UAVs (oops, can't call 'em UAVs anymore - they're now Unmanned Aerial Systems... some Colonel got his Legion of Merit for that change...), er, um UAS's we fly over Afghanistan and Pakistan looking for targets of opportunity are a form of H&I fires, if you really want to parse it finely. We just have better sensors and fire control now.
I call the post that because it's random things posted by me and people I've given posting privileges to. It's also an open trackback, so if someone has a post they're proud of, but it really isn't either Castle kind of stuff, or topical to a particular post, I've basically given blanket permission to use that post for that purpose. Another term of art that might be appropriate is "Free Fire Zone".
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