The Leopard C2 tank allows us to reach out and touch the enemy with precision
direct fires to ranges of 4000 meters, nearly twice the effective range of the M242 25 mm chain gun mounted on our LAV fleet. The Taliban choose not to fight us in the open desert for obvious reasons. Rather, our enemy finds sanctuary in grape-drying huts and compounds with concrete-like walls measuring over a meter in thickness. Prior to the deployment of the Leopard tank, massive volumes of 25 mm fire from the LAVs achieved limited results against these structures, often requiring the BG to resort to the use of aerial bombardment or risk the deployment of dismounted soldiers forward to affect a breach with anti-tank weapons or demolitions. One 105 mm HESH round from the Leopard C2 can punch a hole in excess of five by five meters through a grape-drying hut or compound wall, penetrating structures with reduced collateral damage to surrounding infrastructure and less risk to our dismounted soldiers. While the importance of infantry in the fight-through and deliberate clearance of objective areas is irrefutable, it makes little sense to send dismounted soldiers onto an enemy objective without first eliminating known resistance from a distance with 105 mm HESH. The tank squadrons attached to the TF 3-06 and TF 1-07 BGs have been able to kill numerous insurgents at ranges of 150-3800 meters while mitigating the exposure of our dismounted infantry soldiers to enemy direct fire. Both the coaxially mounted and anti-aircraft configured 7.62 mm C6 General Purpose Machine Guns (GPMGs) mounted on the Leopard C2 have been used
to engage and suppress dismounted insurgents at close range. The wooden stock assembly on all anti-aircraft MGs has been replaced with a spade grip assembly to allow crews to bring the weapon to bear more quickly, while maintaining a lower profile in the turret.

A common misconception is that the tank is primarily an anti-armour platform. This is false, especially in the environment in which we currently find ourselves fighting. The Taliban seek tactical advantage in terrain impassable to wheeled vehicles and when able to predict ISAF avenues of approach, they have used, effectively, hit and run tactics that include the use of small arms/RPG ambush, suicide attacks and IEDs. Equipped with a dozer blade, mine roller and mine plough in each troop of four tanks, the Leopard fleet of vehicles has restored tactical mobility to the combined arms team in Afghanistan through its ability to penetrate grape and marijuana fields, clear mine and IED belts and breach mud walls and compounds that were previously impassable to the LAV III. The mobility options created by the tanks and armoured engineers afford the combat team commander additional ingress routes, making it more difficult for the enemy to sight defensive positions, while decreasing the risks to less protected coalition soldiers. Combat teams grouped with armour have created on numerous occasions throughout the past year improvised roads suitable for wheeled vehicle movement during cordon and search and offensive operations. The enemy was kept off-balance, constantly guessing from where the combat team would advance, and the tanks were able to form a “ring of steel” around the infantry as they conducted deliberate clearance operations in urban areas. Both tank squadrons have used the dozer blades and ploughs extensively to conduct hasty and deliberate minefield breaches and break into complex terrain in order to destroy the enemy and extract personnel and vehicle casualties.

DELARAM, Afghanistan — On a sunset patrol here in late December, U.S. Marines spotted a Taliban unit trying to steal Afghan police vehicles at a checkpoint. In a flash, the Marines turned to pursue, driving off the main road and toward the gunfire coming from the mountain a half mile away.

But their six-ton vehicles were no match for the Taliban pickups. The mine-resistant vehicles and heavily armored Humvees bucked and swerved as drivers tried to maneuver them across fields that the Taliban vehicles raced across. The Afghan police trailed behind in unarmored pick-up trucks, impatient about their allies' weighty pace.

The Marines, weighted down with 60 pounds of body armor each, struggled to climb up Saradaka Mountain. Once at the top, it was clear to everyone that the Taliban would get away. Second Lt. Phil Gilreath, 23, of Kingwood, La., called off the mission.

American airpower seems to have lost some of its mystique in the war in Afghanistan. American air dominance, including its ability to conduct airstrikes in close air support of coalition troops, has been and continues to be critical to the Afghan war effort. Close air support, in particular, is allowing the United States and NATO to fight an energized insurgency with far fewer troops than it needs. Yet if one follows press reports from the Afghan theatre, what Eliot Cohen once characterized as an “unusually seductive form of military strength,” has become a source of consternation for the United States and a ready cudgel with which to beat America’s troubled prosecution of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). Tragic news stories of American airstrikes gone wrong and their resultant civilian casualties trump more mundane analyses of the Afghan government’s failings or the (by now routine) atrocities committed by Afghan insurgents. American airpower, it seems, has become a victim of its own misunderstood successes in the Persian Gulf War and Kosovo bombing campaign. Its famed precision makes any costly error unacceptable, inflames Afghan and international public opinion, and forces American defense officials and military leaders to observe endless rituals of public apology. The irreconcilable conflict between the immutably violent nature of war and the fiction of a “bloodless” use of force has trapped the United States between the Scylla of military exigency and the Charybdis of public sentiment.

President-elect Barack Obama intends to sign off on Pentagon plans to send up to 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, but the incoming administration does not anticipate that the Iraq-like "surge" of forces will significantly change the direction of a conflict that has steadily deteriorated over the past seven years.

Instead, Obama's national security team expects that the new deployments, which will nearly double the current U.S. force of 32,000 (alongside an equal number of non-U.S. NATO troops), will help buy enough time for the new administration to reappraise the entire Afghanistan war effort and develop a comprehensive new strategy for what Obama has called the "central front on terror."