After Friday's post regarding how many troops we can put on the ground in Afghanistan v. logistical capability of maintaining supply lines (that no one is talking about), comes this little report:
Pakistan temporarily bars closed container trucks from rolling on certain roads.
Namley, the roads we use to keep our troops supplied. The Al (Qaeda) Press, helpfully notes that US shipments leave Karachi in unmarked, closed containers. They just confirmed all Taliban suspicion that they should attack all of these trucks. Don't bother with all that long distance spying hanging out near Karachi to see what and when something leaves. Just hang out some where further up the road and capture all unmarked containers.
Uggh!
Any how, this is the problem with putting troops in Afghanistan. There is simply few ingress routes for re-supply and they are all dangerous.
Pakistan temporarily bars closed container trucks from rolling on certain roads.
Namley, the roads we use to keep our troops supplied. The Al (Qaeda) Press, helpfully notes that US shipments leave Karachi in unmarked, closed containers. They just confirmed all Taliban suspicion that they should attack all of these trucks. Don't bother with all that long distance spying hanging out near Karachi to see what and when something leaves. Just hang out some where further up the road and capture all unmarked containers.
Uggh!
Any how, this is the problem with putting troops in Afghanistan. There is simply few ingress routes for re-supply and they are all dangerous.
For your consideration.
Karachi is the Sea Port of Debarkation for Operation Enduring Freedom. The place where they unload the boat. Karachi is for OEF what Shuaiba, Kuwait is for OIF, and the Main Supply Route, or OEF’s Route Tampa up from Karachi, is 759 klicks. 472 miles of bad road, shake down, extortion, break down and delay. The drivers get jacked around at Karachi by Pakistani Customs, the Pakistani version of the Teamsters, the trucking company they contracted with, and all the various trolls setting up road blocks for the collection of protection money, and then they get to sit in a parking lot at Chaman waiting to cross over to Spin Boldak. Things go boom in the night in that parking lot. By the time they got to us, a lot of them were a bit testy. Some times they wanted to fuss at us over what ever shaft they had got or abuse they had suffered on the way. They exaggerate to pull on your heart strings with the most pitiable ordeals imaginable, but some of that was indeed happening. Neither the U. S. Army, Afghan National Army, Afghan National Police, Canadian Forces, British, Romanians or Dutch military escorted these jingle trucks until they got through Spin, and often not even then. Some times they weren’t even part of a convoy. Just a lone truck, a driver and his alternate lifestyle partner diddy-bopping on up the road.
improve your detection capability by all means possible. If you don't quite know how to organize this, put your brightest sof and armor guys in the room with the submariners and the surface ASW guys from the Navy, the young troublemaking out of the box ones. Then back em, enable em, and protect em from the mossbacks and the remfs. Works every time, if you got the nerve...
Just my opinion. No charge.
Predator strikes will continue in the FATA. Protests by the Paki Government should be taken with a grain of salt, as they are meant mostly for "local consumption".