S-2
PROFESSIONAL
- Joined
- Dec 25, 2007
- Messages
- 4,210
- Reaction score
- 0
"I am the pragmatic future of Pakistan - what Pakistan needs to be saved from is nutjobs like you whose conflict resolution skills start and end with 'Kill, kill, kill, bomb, bomb, bomb'."
This is an over-reaction and is unwarranted. Solomon2 is no "nutjob" and his views are lucidly expressed and are not at all fringe. His questions to you are on the lips of every reasonable policy maker out there now.
To this point, you're not ready to fight. Why? You're not ready to extend services and re-construction in it's aftermath. Why? Who knows? Maybe those resources have been identified and sit awaiting the money to move. Maybe you've a bureaucratic stranglehold that chokes the delivery of services.
I'm not sure where the dis-connect lies but I know that this isn't easy. Both Afghanistan and Iraq continue to reveal huge lessons in establishing governance where institutions don't exist or have broken down.
In any case, Loe Sam's continuing complete destruction indicates the disarray here. As such, any successful military operation could not be followed by the re-establishment of local society on any planned scale. Until that can be assured as an immediate follow-up to combat operations, there's little point. Sadly, with each passing day, the captive population becomes more a part of the new fabric and less of the old. Too, the enemy entrenches and prepares daily for your eventual arrival. So doing raises the ante of the battle and it's aftermath yet again.
"Your 'discernment of intent' is quite clearly limited to the PA bombing and blasting its way through Swat, never mind the thousands dead and hundreds of thousands displaced."
You don't know this. Your own examples so far fall to the far sides of the COIN spectrum-near open mid-intensity combat and a protracted unnegotiated standoff that resulted in ceding ground. No in-between and this is another reason for your army avoiding combat.
Like it or not-for all the accusations of "employment of overwhelming firepower" both in Iraq and Afghanistan, we know something about entering neighborhoods, fighting bad guys, and leaving most of the buildings standing. Even a full-blown urban battle at Fallujah unlike anything we've fought since Hue-excepting Somalia- resulted in markedly little unrepairable damage. The city of 300,000 is fully occupied and functioning today. Loe Sam had 8,000 inhabitants. That wasn't a little village but a large community. It's utterly gone now and the cost to replace it is stupendous.
My point is this-there are ways to close with and destroy the enemy without bulldozing an entire mid-sized city and it is often necessary to do exactly that.
So how to fight a battle that's worth fighting? How about identifying those villages and towns that you can occupy and establish the state's security presence now without coming into conflict with your enemies? How about preparing those communities not yet affected with the means to immediately repel the virus themselves? How about training your community leaders and police to identify the signs of an emerging threat?
Those would be proactive actions which I'd take on the peripheries of current threats radiating outward to areas as yet utterly unaffected. That begins securing those areas not yet afflicted. Your army could occupy the unaffected towns and villages on the immediate periphery of threat areas while allowing your training programs to prepare the villages and cities further away.
You copy the COP model of Iraq. It works in high-density population areas. Relative to Afghanistan this is the case on your side of the border I believe. Far more small towns and villages up to good sized cities like TANK. This model allows you to inkblot your platoons throughout communities. They should be able to run to the assistance of another in larger communities. Reaction forces should be identified and so too primary and alternate re-inforcement routes.
You CONVINCE these men that they'll never be abandoned in these COPs. Then you turn them loose to live, work, and patrol among their citizens. Please try to find a few local language guys for each platoon. Hopefully, your men would pick the local tongue up quickly.
All this could be done now without approaching one militant checkpoint and it could be happening everywhere in your nation. I wouldn't wait to see that A.M. is wrong and S-2 correct about Punjab. I'd put your communities on double-secret alert right now. Your army and ISI should be leading this effort and providing the training. None of that requires any redeployments. It alters training schedules and introduces new skill requirements but that's a good thing.
Oh! Combat engineers all over the nation need, NOW, to be assigned every civil engineering task that is within their scope of work, presents a current need, and can be budgeted from existing or alternative resources. In any high threat areas, they should be able to provide for their own security if necessary and other forces are unavailable.
ADA, artillery, armor, M.P.s, signal, and others should be trained and organized as provisional infantry security platoons. They should be able to secure their own facilities and units while taking on local patrol/civic security duties AND fire their cannons when necessary. This is a different war and everybody has to chip in to lighten the infantry's load.
Have we fired a shot yet?
This is an over-reaction and is unwarranted. Solomon2 is no "nutjob" and his views are lucidly expressed and are not at all fringe. His questions to you are on the lips of every reasonable policy maker out there now.
To this point, you're not ready to fight. Why? You're not ready to extend services and re-construction in it's aftermath. Why? Who knows? Maybe those resources have been identified and sit awaiting the money to move. Maybe you've a bureaucratic stranglehold that chokes the delivery of services.
I'm not sure where the dis-connect lies but I know that this isn't easy. Both Afghanistan and Iraq continue to reveal huge lessons in establishing governance where institutions don't exist or have broken down.
In any case, Loe Sam's continuing complete destruction indicates the disarray here. As such, any successful military operation could not be followed by the re-establishment of local society on any planned scale. Until that can be assured as an immediate follow-up to combat operations, there's little point. Sadly, with each passing day, the captive population becomes more a part of the new fabric and less of the old. Too, the enemy entrenches and prepares daily for your eventual arrival. So doing raises the ante of the battle and it's aftermath yet again.
"Your 'discernment of intent' is quite clearly limited to the PA bombing and blasting its way through Swat, never mind the thousands dead and hundreds of thousands displaced."
You don't know this. Your own examples so far fall to the far sides of the COIN spectrum-near open mid-intensity combat and a protracted unnegotiated standoff that resulted in ceding ground. No in-between and this is another reason for your army avoiding combat.
Like it or not-for all the accusations of "employment of overwhelming firepower" both in Iraq and Afghanistan, we know something about entering neighborhoods, fighting bad guys, and leaving most of the buildings standing. Even a full-blown urban battle at Fallujah unlike anything we've fought since Hue-excepting Somalia- resulted in markedly little unrepairable damage. The city of 300,000 is fully occupied and functioning today. Loe Sam had 8,000 inhabitants. That wasn't a little village but a large community. It's utterly gone now and the cost to replace it is stupendous.
My point is this-there are ways to close with and destroy the enemy without bulldozing an entire mid-sized city and it is often necessary to do exactly that.
So how to fight a battle that's worth fighting? How about identifying those villages and towns that you can occupy and establish the state's security presence now without coming into conflict with your enemies? How about preparing those communities not yet affected with the means to immediately repel the virus themselves? How about training your community leaders and police to identify the signs of an emerging threat?
Those would be proactive actions which I'd take on the peripheries of current threats radiating outward to areas as yet utterly unaffected. That begins securing those areas not yet afflicted. Your army could occupy the unaffected towns and villages on the immediate periphery of threat areas while allowing your training programs to prepare the villages and cities further away.
You copy the COP model of Iraq. It works in high-density population areas. Relative to Afghanistan this is the case on your side of the border I believe. Far more small towns and villages up to good sized cities like TANK. This model allows you to inkblot your platoons throughout communities. They should be able to run to the assistance of another in larger communities. Reaction forces should be identified and so too primary and alternate re-inforcement routes.
You CONVINCE these men that they'll never be abandoned in these COPs. Then you turn them loose to live, work, and patrol among their citizens. Please try to find a few local language guys for each platoon. Hopefully, your men would pick the local tongue up quickly.
All this could be done now without approaching one militant checkpoint and it could be happening everywhere in your nation. I wouldn't wait to see that A.M. is wrong and S-2 correct about Punjab. I'd put your communities on double-secret alert right now. Your army and ISI should be leading this effort and providing the training. None of that requires any redeployments. It alters training schedules and introduces new skill requirements but that's a good thing.
Oh! Combat engineers all over the nation need, NOW, to be assigned every civil engineering task that is within their scope of work, presents a current need, and can be budgeted from existing or alternative resources. In any high threat areas, they should be able to provide for their own security if necessary and other forces are unavailable.
ADA, artillery, armor, M.P.s, signal, and others should be trained and organized as provisional infantry security platoons. They should be able to secure their own facilities and units while taking on local patrol/civic security duties AND fire their cannons when necessary. This is a different war and everybody has to chip in to lighten the infantry's load.
Have we fired a shot yet?
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