That's how SOFREP Website described the recent flair up.
I'm still searching but if my Marine History is correct we haven't lost this many aircraft due to ground action since Vietnam.
It might stretch back even further...and we can consider these numbers scrubbed...I would bet that in the end we'll see the number of aircraft destroyed/written off to be many more than the 6 Harriers destroyed and 2 Harriers damaged that one of my readers informed me of.
If my instincts are correct then it'll be a much higher count. We'll see but this is very bad news. The only saving grace is that it wasn't much worse.
I'm sorry but so far this isn't anywhere near Tet. In Tet you had whole fucking regiments engaging each other. This is big hit for the Corps and ISAF relatively speaking. But, it is not Tet. Not by a longshot. And yes thank God we bought those Harriers.
ReplyDeleteIn unrelated news China just unveiled its new 5th generation jet, the J-21. We are living in interesting times my friend.
http://alert5.com/2012/09/16/photo-chinese-f-22-the-j-21f60-reveals-itself/
we are all students of history. i'm sure SOFREP isn't talking about it in the scale of action but rather in how it came as a surprise to everyone.
ReplyDeletethis is the Battle of the Bulge, Tet Offensive, the Chinese introduction into the Korean War in terms of surprise.
thats what we mean by Tet Offensive.
If it's surprise you're talking about then yes. I remember reading in the Telegraph and Reuters last week that the Taliban were in talks with ISAF to secure a peace deal and let US troops remain inside the country past 2014 indefinitely. Sounds sort of like the peace talks between North Vietnam and the US back in 1968 now that I jog my memory.
ReplyDeleteBut still I believe the MSM (mainly CNN and MSNBC) are blowing this way out of proportion. Not that the general public really cares anymore. To me this is just a bad week for ISAF and the US. Alert me when Kabul has fallen, Karzai is found beheaded, an ANA division attacks a US outpost and our embassy is being evacuated by helicopter. Then I will be alarmed.
if thats what it takes to alarm you then i wonder if you've seen death up close. my heart breaks for the families of all our people (from western countries) that have been lost this week. i've seen the tears in a mothers eyes, seen a wife break down in pain cause she just heard her husband has been killed so you can think globally, i'll think locally.
ReplyDeleteWhoever was in charge of Camp Bastion/ Camp Leatherneck's security is in serious career free-fall. I mean, it's got the close-air support for the area, VIPs arriving all the time, not to mention Prince Harry. It's high profile.
ReplyDeleteIt's amazing that we keep forgetting that the enemy doesn't always do what we want him to do: He always get's to vote on the plan.
I'm amazed that there weren't been any attacks on the other outposts immediately afterwards considering the Harriers were hit and couldn't be used for CAS.
That is a helluva lot of damage for 15 people. It's like something out of one of John Poole's books. This took lot's of planning, weeks/months/year of observation to get the layout and schedule of the guards down, uniforms, etc.
And the fact it comes in the same week as the Benghazi attack is ominously impressive. If these attacks were in concert, that is a blow against us at the grand strategic level.
you get it! i believe these attacks were all done in concert. i believe that many Muslim clerics are tied up in AQ and support their cause. the Obama adminstration just got a serious lesson in reality right along with the Generals who appear to be more concerned with green energy than winning the war.
DeleteThe attack on Leatherneck has likely been in planning for a while, and the timing was more determined by operational requirements than messaging. The planners may have drawn from the expertise--even practice--gained from attacking Pakistani airbases in the last year or so.
DeleteI don't think that everything that is going on is a formally coordinated series of events. I think its more that the administration is ineffective and weak--and the more its shown to be ineffective and weak--the more our opponents and rivals see vulnerability and the more emboldened they become. We totally mucked up the post-occupation relationship with Iraq, broadcast we don't care what happens in Afghanistan anymore, grovelled to the Russians on the missile defense shield in Europe, done nothing about the ongoing issues in the South China Sea, written angry letters over North Korean sabre rattling, turned on the Israelis in the face of Iranian intransigence, fumbled our policy and actions in the Arab Spring, and set back relations with our major allies so badly that it will probably take at least a decade to rebuild that trust.
Then, add in the total cockup of national grand strategy, which trickles down into a craptastic sub-strategies. Our economic policy is a joke, and we spend money and act like we're still economically powerful, when everyone knows we're charging off a fiscal cliff. Our diplomats do not have a framework on what American interests in the world are, so they are either playing pro-internationalist games or trying to stomp out fires without a plan. The military is just trudging along, fighting a war the administration has made clear it doesn't want, trying to design a force to do...something, we don't really know what. The intel services are just running in circles, because how can they work to support military and diplomatic objectives when we can't define those objectives? Finally, the administration makes random royal proclamations on whatever it feels like whenever it feels like, uncoordinated and often apparently off-the-cuff. While that is their right, if the president wants an effective policy to happen, its generally a good idea to coordinate it to the agencies below, gather their expertise and advice, and get plans of action sorted out before making a proclamation. And I won't dive into the more domestic messes.
So where are we? Well, now the world has so little respect for the U.S. that rioters in the streets feel free to do what they please against the Americans, safe in the knowledge that the worst we'll do is talk tough and then blame ourselves for the problem.
You know what man, you and I do think differently. You can think local all you want but that does not matter as much as the global arena. If the death of two Marines, three British troops from the Yorkshire Regiment and few destroyed Harriers gets you and the nation into a tizzy I fear what it will be like for you when we fight China or if we had fought Russia in the past.
ReplyDeleteI think as Americans we are either too afraid or too ignorant of what conventional war entails. Lest you forget we lost over 400,000 men in World War II, over 30,000 in Korea and 56,000 in Vietnam. Can you stomach that if you can't stomach five men (now 9 if this other report I'm hearing about is true) are killed?
Call me an insensitive keyboard warrior all you want but I'm right. We've been at war for eleven years now and we've lost 6,603 men and women. I'm sorry but through all this we've come out pretty good.
If we ever go to war with a peer enemy (which I think we will) then we will see a hell of a lot more of mothers' tears and wives breaking down but hey that's war. We need to harden up. That's all I've got on this topic.
thats about the most ignorant, self serving, arrogant reply you could have come up with. i can tell by the smell that you've been no where near military service and i can tell that you're simply a left wing fool thats scared to death of pissing off the muslim world. fuck you, your attitude and if you don't come back i really don't give a shit.
DeletePS. oh and yeah the deaths of those Marines, the British Soldiers and the Security detail and the ambassador does piss me off. if you weren't such a sanctimonious bastard it would piss you off too. but you're too scared to be pissed off because then you would have to confront feelings that you don't know how to deal with .
elportonative77, you miss the larger point.
DeleteLook at IEDs. It's just a landmine. Simple, inexpensive, but very effective. Nothing new, we've seen them used for a hundred years.
Yet, we and our Allies have funded overlapping organizations like JIEDDO to figure out how to stop IEDs with budgets and personnel orders of magnitude larger than AQ in its hay days.
We've spent billions to detect, avoid, jam, protect against, deny and disrupt the manufacturer's network for IEDs with hundreds of billions of dollars in technology and armored vehicles.
We cancelled the FCS program after we'd spent tens of billions to develop it because it didn't factor in IEDs.
We've discovered the hard way that Bradleys and Strykers were made outmoded by IEDs, thus negating the billions we spent buying them.
Now we're developing a better protected, yet far much heavier replacement like the GCV and will cost billions of dollars more. This will in turn force us to re-plan the logistical tail necessary to transport these vehicles with larger vehicle tranporters and more C-17 sorties.
All because of some dudes in pajamas with a few hundred dollars worth of copper wiring, batteries, diesel fuel and fertilizer multiplied thousands of times over.
We spend hundreds of billions to foil, or clean-up after, while the enemy spends a tiny fraction to kill us.
If this was a conventional war like Korea or WWII, we should have won it on the first day.
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DeleteParalus, yes all that you've have said is true. I completely agree we are getting our asses handed to us not in the fighting arena but from spending too much. I didn't even argue otherwise or address that issue. I was railing at Solomon for being so damn angry at this little weekly occurrence (not including the six Harriers lost or the death of Ambassador Stephens). If you have a better way of defeating the Taliban and AQ I would truly (not being sarcastic) like to hear it. Now, onto Solomon.
Now Solomon you are correct I've not been in the military. I intend on going in as an officer after college that is why every day I dedicate myself to my college studies and coming onto this and many other blogs in order to gain some perspective and understanding of what I am about to get myself into. But that does not void my opinion nor my tax dollars or vote(s). I honestly don't see how I am a sanctimonious and ignorant bastard with no feelings. I would truly love it if you would explain to me how I am. You sit here behind your computer and come up with a fanciful and hypothetical situation of entire CSGs being destroyed and thousands of lives being lost on both sides in a few days. And you don’t even blink or stutter. Yet when some ambassador is killed and few troops are lost in real life you and nearly every other American completely lose your shit and like every other redneck I’ve come across scream "Glass the place! No more moneys for them! How long are we going to put up with this shit?" Yeah that's real mature and something we should adopt as our foreign policy and diplomatic posture. Really cool and even headed that is.
Part 2 of 4:
DeleteYou don’t think I’m saddened when I see pictures of the dead. When I see a picture of them smiling? Or a YouTube video of them just talking, being human beings, joking around or hanging with friends. You don’t think I think of what could have been if they had not died, if they had lived to grow old with their families and loved ones? You don’t think I try put myself in their shoes and imagine what it would be like to have gone through life only to die in some God-forsaken place on the other side of the world. You are wrong if you do. Yes, I am fortunate not to have lost anyone yet due to military service. Not my father, not my brothers, not my friends, not dozens of other active duty and reserve military members that I have the pleasure of having met and known. Yes, I have not yet joined the military and gone abroad to fight for my country. But even I know that men and women who enlist and give their lives to the protection and service of the United States and its Constitution will die in battle and that has to be accepted. You know this as well. But that does not make me an ignorant, arrogant, self-serving, sanctimonious, left wing bastard does it?
Left wing? I'm a Republican. If you would like to know more about my political, social and economic beliefs I would be happy to share them with you. What all that I have said in the few months that I've been reading and commenting on your blog has lead you to believe that I am left wing? All I'm trying to understand is why the fuck you and every other American I come across get so bent out of shape when a few of our men die. Fuck yeah it's sad, it's gruesome and we lose a bit of our national soul and fabric every time one dies but it happens and it has been happening for decades on end and it will continue to do so. And you as a man of service know this and were willing to lay down your life without hesitation if the need arose. All I am saying is that if we ever get into a prolonged war with a peer enemy we will lose tens of thousands and possibly hundreds of thousands of men and women. Am I wrong?
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DeleteSay we get into a war with a peer enemy and the seventh month of the conflict rolls around and we've lost 14,000 men and women. Are we (including you and I) as a nation going to shoot ourselves in the foot by giving into national grief, mourning and rage which will soon degenerate into hopelessness and apathy? Or will we be stoic and resolute to the objective of winning the conflict and achieving peace? I would hope we would be the latter. But after reading your comments, the comments of hundreds of others, seeing demonstration after demonstration on the streets for years since I was a child after every single soldier’s death I am appalled. We as a nation can no longer grieve properly or be convicted towards an objective of victory. And that pisses me off Solomon.
I am sick and tired of the pessimism. I am sick and tired of self-hatred. I am sick and tired of blind rage that you and countless others are displaying. I’m sick and tired of people not being able to stay calm and come together to achieve something, in this case victory and peace in Afghanistan. Did we not think that there would be sacrifices, blood shed, lives lost? Did the politicians and generals we put faith into not get the memo on that? Where is the leadership? Where is the stoicism? Where is the conviction? Where is the sense that we our Americans and that even though there might be a great cost we will see it through to the end knowing that there will be a better day on the other side?
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DeleteI am not scared of Muslims. I am not a left wing fool. I am not an ignorant, arrogant, self-serving, sanctimonious, left wing bastard. I am an optimistic yet disappointed and saddened American that when he looks around does not see Americans but lost and enraged drones mindlessly going about shouting and crying without hesitation or thought. That is what I am more than anything else Solomon.
And as a side note you need to check your attitude. Not as a Marine or blogger but as a decent human being. You don’t simply cuss, scream or wave off people because you don’t like them or their opinion. You have the right to yes, but that does not make it right. Having said that I hope you reevaluate how you approach other commenters or just people you meet in your daily life that have a different opinion. I intend to keep on reading this blog and commenting on it when I feel like it. Will you accept my presence and opinion as valid and welcome or will you just keep doing what you do with every other person who disagrees and has the misfortune of happening to get under your skin?
While I don't think it's a wide-spread Muslim thing, I think many forget the impact a militant, focused minority can have. If just 1% of 1% of the 1.5 billion Muslims were crazy enough to be Jihadis, that's 150K+ nutjobs.
ReplyDeleteI just read a RAND Report called "All Glory is Fleeting : Insights from the second Lebanon Invasion".
"Hezbollah tried to avoid confronting the IDF at the operational
and strategic levels because that is where Israel is stronger, instead
focusing on the tactical and grand strategic levels, just as did the
PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] with launching rockets
at the grand strategic level. It is very typical of insurgents to operate at the two edges of the levels of war.
—Avi Kober"
8 Harriers, a handful of servicemen/foreign service officers and an Ambassador isn't much at the operational or strategic level, but it is quite a blow at the tactical and grand strategic levels.
Knowing that this would be picked up and amplified in the media (just like the original 9/11 attacks albeit smaller in scale), it made a bigger splash than just some attack on an outpost in Afghanistan.
Imagine if the enemy had conducted a successful Wanat-style attack simultaneously with these other attacks and then sent out video-tapes of dead American soldiers?
This was a clever asymmetric warfare gambit. Our enemy fired a stone shot from his sling that, luckily for us, only lodged in the eye slit of our bronze helmet.
Paralus, walk me through this. We lose the Ambassador, the foreign service officers, the Marines, the British troops, the Harriers and a another Battle of Wanat. What happens?
DeleteTet was a military failure for the Communist North that ended up destroying valuable cadres. It's intent was to be more successful by triggering a mass uprising, etc. The Communists failed miserably.
DeleteBut after several years of being told that the VC were on its last legs, tha the media and our population to doubt the military's claims that we were winning. And that is when the American populace's support of the war started to dry up.
A few tactical victories, but an obvious operational failure for the Communists, ended up being a key setback at the Grand Strategy level.
Hitler may have intended as much with the Ardennes Offensive in 1944, but the American population was committed to a war it believed was tied to the immediate and long-term survival of our nation and that of our Allies. The American public in 1968 did not share the view that the Vietnam war was tied to our long-term destiny and we decided Vietnam didn't matter.
If our voters or citizens were the targeted audience of these recent Camp Leatherneck/Benghazi attacks, I don't think that it has succeeded at the grand strategy level mainly because of two factors:
1.) Our mainstream media is too diversified (and dumb) to realize what this was e.g. there is no equivalent of Walter Cronkite that captures 30% of the tv audience to tell America we are in a stalemate.
2.) The enemy has thusly been unable to manipulate the media into disseminating it to a wide enough audience of interested info-consumers/voters.
If the target of the attacks was our political leadership, however, then we have to ask ourselves: is the enemy more capable of these sorts of operations and we should give more thought on our negotiations with them OR was this a limited, singular event that enemy can't sustain.
That's up to our national leadership to decide and posit to America.
Meanwhile, it makes for good political fare and could be exploited by Romney to disrupt Obama's re-election which would mean it WAS more than losing just a few Harriers and our people.
So, do we loose our heads and panic to allow it to become a grand strategy victory? Or do we realize that this was a tactical victory and we decide we aren't going to let it affect our elections or our intermediate duration of involvement in Afghanistan.
That's up us as individuals and as long as we view this a grand strategic failure, then it won't have a larger impact on us politically or militarily.
Quo imus, fratres?
We seem to be entering an IED-like stage of the war similar to what happened in Iraq, at the same time we are supposed to be pulling out.
ReplyDeleteThe enemy is using our need to build up the Afghan military as noose around our neck.
Four years of Obama and we are back where we started, which was Obama's and the democrats plan. Remember Hilary's silly assed RESET button? That was the plan reset everything the Bush/Republican admin did, turn wins into losses, losses in crisis and never let a good crisis go to waste politically.
ReplyDeleteThe Obama and Clinton foreign policy and war prosecution are based on a ideological fantasy world, where the Democrats have replaced actual reality with a fantasy reality of their own. The Obama administration hit that reset button BUT our real live enemies did not reset when they did.
With a good defense department budget and uncut military spending the US could replace those Harriers with something better BUT with the economy in a shambles and the defense department gutted we will be lucky if the Harriers will get replaced at all.
I expect some cheap ass COIN aircraft Prop, Rotor or Fast mover to be inserted into the region most likely from some foreign country in exchange for some hard cold cash.
The Obama administration is one big clusterphuc of a miserable failure.
In some respects the situation, I suppose, could draw parallels with General Giaps battles at Dien Bien Phu and Khe Sahn.
ReplyDeleteStep 1: Cut of the base and prevent access via ground routes. Okay the Taliban haven’t cut off the base from overland supply and troop movements however they’ve done a pretty good job at it by using IED’s causing most supplies being brought in and supplies/troops going to FOB’s to be moved by aircraft.
Step 2: Obtain the high ground. No high ground to obtain.
Step 3: Start siege, shell and attack the flight-line and try to breach the base perimeter. So the Taliban didn’t bother with the siege and just went all out nuts instead but it sort of worked. Several personnel killed and wounded, perimeter breached and infrastructure and equipment successfully attacked and destroyed.
Yes the helicopters and Harriers can be replaced but not over night. So in the mean time there would be (in theory) fewer CAS and support/supply mission by helicopters. How many insurgents would have been killed by 6 Harriers performing CAS in the time frame needed to get new aircraft out there? Probably more than the 14 that died raiding the base.
Also how many extra troops were delayed/held up by having to help repel the attack and or had to wait whilst the base was on lockdown and security sweeps took place to establish that there were no more enemy in base? Not being in the military I don’t know the answer to this one but it is logical to assume that if troops were stuck in the base helping secure it, rather than being out on patrol this would allow the Taliban to move un(or less)hindered and for example plant more IED’s without being noticed as everyone was busy elsewhere.
Is, what I’ve just said a load of b*llocks? Am I over estimating the intelligence and cunning of the enemy? I don’t know but after this and the second time they’ve used military uniforms to get close to a base to attack it, we definitely should not be underestimating them. This is just my personal view and opinion of the situation, I haven’t been in the military I just have the information that I can find or from what I’ve been told by serving friends and family past and present.
P.S.
I do wonder what might have happened if they had a couple more 14-man trained squads and had launched multiple co-ordinated attacks and managed to breach the perimeter at different locations around bastion?
On a grand-strategic and strategic level, yes, we are over-estimating the abilities of the enemy. This was a one-of attack and they cannot sustain these operations at a level worthy of forcing us to take note.
ReplyDeleteI would give odds that those that planned this were not the ones strapping on suicide vests.
On a tactical level, this was not the local neighborhood's Terry Taliban, but likely a small cell of outsiders. Yes, they were capable of the planning, training and execution of it, but until we see more of these type of attacks, I don't see this being more than a lone, well-executed hit. To have an impact in A-stan, you'd need sustained attacks and I doubt we'll see that happen.
Using aircraft in ground action doesn’t make sense at all.
ReplyDelete-Avionic testing | AvionTEq