"F-35 Test Flight Deemed a Success"

Stand with you on all points and the reason we have to continue patrolling is because the Iraqi's just are not up to it yet and when left to themselves the militia police units overwhelm them and they "turn" into sympathizers of the local warlord. So it will take time and more casualties and without each little unit having back up and "high cover" they all go out and are limited to what they can see.

Also many things drive me crazy - there are optical scanners, laser scanners, audio scanners and other things that will pick up rifle fire, spot video camera lenses and sniper scope lenses and in a sense help provide a 2 second to 10 second warning that a sniper is about to shoot at something - none of this has been implemented in the field yet and the billions spent can not account for any serious effort to go after this hard and heavy. We put billions into robots, sensible but not practical for a moving force, so you try to spot an IED and then move around it, that becomes a shell game because there are now multiple plants predicting where you will "go around" the first one. Stuff like that could have simply been dealt with using many small manned aircraft with night systems. Would there be dull moments - absolutely - dull for everyone but the patrols and convoy personnel. The Army says that the local gomers stop moving around after 02:00 am, and most traffic stops but they are still moving and you would think for a minute that those moving around then would constitute folks doing something other then normal. Until only recently in the Baghdad crisis was there a systematic use of road blocks and curfews - I found this unbelievable but no **** the following existed right up until today:

(1) If you plotted where all the US casualties were made what would it look like - it would be clusters of dots collected along the main highway routes south to north through Baghdad branching off to Mosul and Tirkit. Well then the roads and the casualties overlap perhaps in more then 75% of the time.

(2) with that consistent for four years it would seem obvious that they enemy is coming after us since most of the time we are found in long convoys and patrolling along the main routes that connect the population centers - kind of challenges the notion of irregular and asymmetric warfare when things are so determined by bad habits and not corrected - starts to sound like repetitive guerilla warfare, but the enemy has made the war a business in that the skills and wares of the various cells can be scheduled and purchased to set IED's, provide ambush cover, set mortar harassment fires, etc. As long as we keep coming along the roads without controlling the roads and accesses regardless of how much we armor the vehicles or counter the IED triggers with jammers, or have robots to clear known IED finds - well as long as this continues we will be attacked because the enemy has no reason to change his habits

(3) Now knowing that one would aks - well how many units in the US and coalition forces are dedicated to road security an road access - answer NONE, nada, the road security mission is an add-on to those units that are assigned certain AO's that include the highways and the EOD teams (after the fact) are assigned to them but efforts to thwart and clear the highways are taken only with normal patrolling not with dedicated efforts except in special circumstances when helicopters were put up in groups for periods of hours but nothing could be sustained because under every rock and on every roof is an enemy with a rifle or RPG and they have a field day shooting at the helos that are heard for 20 plus miles away and can't turn fast enough to counter shots from a blind side.

(4) How many Iraqi units are dedicated to road security - very few and those involved are tainted by the militias. Note that if we allowed and encouraged the various towns and villages to set up toll sections the earned income would translate to a cash cow and there would be a firm interst in keeping the roads safe for our convoys. Well they would steal us blind - SO WHAT - at $2 billion a week that is nothing and it could provide jobs because we could demand that the roads be repaired and cleaned etc. Also alternative roads could be built for Iraqi normal traffic thus isolating the main roads for the convoys totally and many more jobs. Iraq has railroads, but they do not work - yet railroads have "rightaways"and rightaways mean you could build simple elevated rails on contrete pylons with steel tracks using sleds run by rubber-tires and electric motors (see http://www.megarail.com/CargoRail_Heavy_Cargo/) and low and behold the roads nurished by tolls that have rail rightaways running paralle could produce elevated rails capable of being manufactured in Iraq and on those elevated "T" concrete pylons you could then add pvc water lines, fibre lines, electric power lines, communications in the fibre etc and the same militias and local police collecting tolls and protecting the roads would have to protect the elevated rail segments that would rebuild the infrastructure piece by piece. Remember that over 1200 convoys a day, some miles long are required in Iraq. There are at least six major depot and garrison points - each one has over 8 to 10,000 people, so with 130,000 troops there you have around half in garrison every day - who the hell is fighting the war - a hand full of units going on patrol after patrol after patrol with no air cover and no real support. The generals see everything and in short can do very little because the sytem id set up to feed them not just keep them informed.



"Ed Rasimus" wrote in message ...
On Thu, 04 Jan 2007 23:09:40 GMT, The Leslie Cheswick Soul Explosion
wrote:

On Thu, 04 Jan 2007 18:55:08 GMT, Ed Rasimus
wrote:

I think you're singing bass and I'm singing tenor in the same choir.

I think you're missing an opportunity to reduce a constructive thread
to the normal level of usenet discourse.

It's a curse, I know.

Be that as it may, I would still differ on the importance of
patrolling. Reducing the visibility of the uniformed army on the
ground serves a valid purpose in reducing the 'occupier' propaganda
dynamic, but some level of patrolling is still required - covert and
overt - to maintain some independent contact with the community.

Without that, there won't be the level of intelligence required for
checking that the Iraqi forces are operating efficiently or even the
level of intelligence required to effectively use precision heavy
weaponry which is sometimes required.

I agree with your premise, but the model I'd go with would eliminate
US unit patrolling. As I suggested, the unit-level involvement
scenario would be on-call response to Iraqi security forces or intel.

The idea would be the classic Special Forces model. "Advisors"
embedded in national units. They keep the local force honest
(hopefully), correct errors in training, gain insight into community
relations/intel, and provide feedback to HHQ on progress. It reduces
external force visibility and hence the opportunity to use the
"occupier" propaganda against us.

I'm strongly in favour of
'minimum force' to reduce the asymmetric propaganda dynamic, but I
have to say bombing Zarqawi accurately from the air is a better
alternative to going though the door (or window, or wall) on foot,
always provided the intelligence is sufficiently accurate.

No doubt about it.

It will be a while (of ever) before the Iraqi forces can get to the
required level of operational proficiency, and they certainly won't be
delivering PGM attacks any time soon, so I personally see a valid role
for air strikes (in limited numbers) and therefore a USAF presence to
deliver them for some time to come.

Good point. But the essence of the tactic is that the front end,
visible security force is national not foreign. Where the indirect
fire support comes from is not readily apparent. (You could even mount
a disinformation campaign to deflect responsibility to newly
reconstituted Iraqi units....)

Gavin Bailey

Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
www.thunderchief.org
www.thundertales.blogspot.com