Sitting Ducks

We gotta take these bastards.  

Now we could do it with conventional weapons,

but that could take years and cost millions of lives.

 No, I think we have to go all out

I think that this situation absolutely 

requires a really futile and stupid gesture

 be done on somebody's part! 

--Animal House (1978)
___________________

USAToday argued this week that the expensive MRAPS (Mine Resistant Ambush Protection vehicles) have saved far fewer troop's lives than reported by the Pentagon -- perhaps 2,000 to the military's estimate of 40,000. The Pentagon stated that classified data was unavailable to the author of a Foreign Affairs study which gave the lower figure.

Rather than quibble over a few tens of thousands of lives, the question actually is: Why are our troops tooling around in these death traps at all?

An MRAP, contrary to popular belief, is NOT a combat vehicle; it is just a big truck, up-armored to resist blast damage.  The same is true of the Humvee which it replaced (which replaced the Jeep) -- these are troop-transport or mobility vehicles.  No one would expose either the Humvee or the MRAP to enemy direct fire weapons except in extreme circumstances, yet somehow they have become fixed in American minds much as the horse was for the mounted gunfighter.

The misconception probably began when the TOW anti-tank system was mounted on the Humvee.  This resulted from the MP Corps insistence that they could fight the RAP (Rear Area Protection) battles by killing tanks in the rear.  (Of course, no one explained how enemy tanks could get into the rear without the front either collapsing or contracting.)

This Corps scenario conventional thinking miraculously regenerated in the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©) when United States Forces deployed Humvees as road-cruising vehicle in threat environments.  The battlefield with clearly-defined boundaries was dismissed as a doctrinal concept, and vehicles were employed as they were never intended.  "Combat" became road-running and detonating Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), and hoping to escape the ensuing explosion with the minimum bomb damage.

The question not asked: How or why can armored trucks win an insurgency war?  Why are U.S. forces tasked with this basic support function of keeping the roads open?  Why doesn't the Host Nation secure its own borders?  Why are U.S. soldiers running a daily gauntlet?

The Pentagon has spent $45 billion on MRAPs since 2007, a price tag criticized recently in an article in Foreign Affairs, the magazine published by the Council on Foreign Relations. The trucks do not perform significantly better than Humvees, the cheaper vehicle they replaced, according to the article's authors, who based their findings on Pentagon data.

Former Defense secretary Robert Gates said in a statement to USA TODAY that it was impossible for anybody, including the authors of the article, to determine how many lives had been saved by MRAPs (Tally of Lives Saved by MRAPs Lower).

The discussion over cost and effectiveness of MRAPs versus Humvees is a distraction from the essential question which is: What will troops so engaged accomplish?  

The insurgents -- who have now been re-tagged as "gunmen" in the media, neatly conflating their actions with every other gunslinger out there -- will adapt their tactics to neutralize the MRAP's capabilities, like moving their operations to rough terrain disallowing MRAPs from traversing the terrain.

The Pentagon disputed the article's findings, saying classified data unavailable to the article's authors prove the safety of the vehicles used in Afghanistan. In July 2009, Gates ordered more MRAPs to Afghanistan, including 5,200 of a new MRAP variant specifically designed for Afghanistan called the M-ATV.

Why offer MRAPs and M-ATVs to the Afghanis when they lack the logistical and mechanical capability to sustain the vehicle?  Why is this data classified?  Surely the enemy cannot use these statistics as a battlefield tool.

The U.S. has the best airlift capability, a plethora or support and supply and our weapons systems are the most sophisticated  ever seen on the battlefield.  But we will still lose, regardless of the superiority in materiel.  Money and sophistication will not trump the advantage of a people wearing shower shoes and toting AK-47s on Vespas.

It is their country, a fact that MRAPs nor any of its next generation can alter. 

Technology Does Not Trump Strategy

The internet is a fascinating nexus. One interesting contact made via the blog is with a man who is trying to uncover the facts surrounding his soldier son's death in Iraq. He is educated and appears of a conservative political bent, and has written the writers of this site many informed and lengthy letters on his investigation.

In a recent reply to one of Ranger's comments on the futility of the Army's Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles (MRAP's), the man spent a page arguing for the trucks, and that they mitigate casualties. We were going to pass it over as the usual bit of hooah, until the last page.

The man conceded to allow Ranger to print his words, without attribution:

"But an MRAP is not a strategy. One might ask, what is the strategy and could money have been better spent paying bribes (clearly working in Anbar) or building power plants or water systems or schools or clinics? Fact is could building any of these be better for the world whether they occurred in Afghanistan, Iraq or the good old US of A? Probably.

It should be noted that hydroelectric dams built by the USA in the 1950s still provide power in Afghanistan. Would low head hydro plants sprinkled into isolated villages which give them electricity for irrigation and tv’s expose them to a planet of other people and ideas serve a useful purpose? How about using TV to teach people to read Sesame Street style? Think that’s dumb – well with an illiteracy rate through the roof in Afghanistan and Taliban throwing acid in kids faces – maybe not. I’ll bet there are a fair number of adults who would like to learn to read if they could do it in the privacy of their own home.

A COIN operation is not one of blowing up a man’s house, killing his family and then offering to build him a new one.

MRAPs cost $1.5 million. Could a special forces unit with Afghan troops put $1.5 million to use in a village? I’ll bet so. Could $1.5 million spent on bridges in the US serve a useful purpose – you betcha. How about an energy strategy that reduces our dependence on foreign oil? Yup we’ve heard that one before, but still it is a strategy that makes more sense than driving aimlessly around the desert looking for Charlie err Hajji, err Omar. Whatever, you get the idea.

It is worth noting that the common thread between Vietnam and our current unpleasantness is us – the USA. It isn’t that Vietnamese are like Afghans. It’s more like our own corrosive presence, our technique or lack thereof, are common threads between these conflicts.

Equipment is not a strategy.

Tactics are not a strategy.

We have no strategy.

That in a nutshell is the problem.

. . .

Build It, They Will Come

You know I just got paid
I got my hot rod wheels
So if you wanna find out how it feels
Call me - Pennsylvania 6-5000
--Pennsyviania 6-5000, Glenn Miller

You were my pills, you were my thrills
You were my hope baby, you were my smoke
You dropped a bomb on me, hey baby
You dropped a bomb on me, baby
--You Dropped a Bomb on Me,
The Gap Band

I have known many adventures in my time. . .
but war is not really an adventure at all, it is only a substitute. . .
War is a disease. Like Typhus.
--Pilote de Guerre, Antoine de St. Exupery
_____________

Analogies can be helpful things. But one must be careful when dealing with the intricacies of modern warfare to select the appropriate model. Ranger believes a model from his childhood fits hand-in-glove with modern counterinsurgency in the Middle East.

After reading U.S. News & World's reports this week on the Taliban's "New Superbombs" -- even bigger drums filled with bigger hunks o' explosives, it became clear that Looney Tunes' Roadrunner and his nemesis Wile E. Coyote provide the perfect analogy. The Taliban is the Roadrunner, usually outrunning the wily Coyote, who is the U.S. in our current scenario.

The 55-gallon-drum is such a useful item. During our Florida A & M University Homecoming weekends, a revered tradition has the drums lining the sidewalks, where inside braises the best barbecue this side of the Apalachicola. Rednecks find joy burning every example of household toss off of in same such. Every ammo dump is rife with such flotsam.

Against such brute realities, Coyote is ever reading, plotting, and purchasing new destructive technology from the ever-ready ACME Tool Company. For sure, Coyote possesses more weaponry, and the theme song does say that "if he catches you, you're through." However, Coyote usually becomes ensnared in his own well-laid plans. His problem is that he does not understand his nemesis.

Roadrunner sees the holes in the road, and moves them, or chooses to take another path. He is not predictable, and Coyote thrives on understanding the psychology of his enemy, who alas is a shape-shifter. Despite Coyote's increasingly violent methodology, he never gets his bird.

Just as roads figure largely in the Roadrunner cartoon, so it is in Afghanistan. The U.S. military is road-bound as usual, with the added problem that Service and Service Support are no longer protected in the Corps and Division rear areas.

Since there is no Forward Line of Troops (FLOT) or Forward Edge of the Battle Area (FEBA), all of our vehicles, to include combat vehicles, are subject to attack at any time and place. Running unsecured roads is military folly. Fighting dirty little wars for no quantifiable objective is another level of insanity. Fighting unconventional threats with conventional means is neither cost-effective nor sound.

"Roadside bombs that once weighed 10 to 20 pounds have morphed into multigallon drums packed with 200 to 500 pounds of explosives, which insurgents roll into culverts with wheelbarrows (Taliban's New Super-Bombs Threaten U.S. Troops, Even in Pricey MRAPs)."

So U.S./NATO forces are running the roads in multi-million dollar vehicles and the Taliban are countering this threat with explosives hauled out of the fields in the precision delivery modality of -- wheelbarrows. When Sheikh Omar escaped U.S. forces, he did so on a Vespa motor scooter, while multimillion dollar drones with multimillion dollar bombs searched for him. Which side of the battle will you place your money on the win table?

"The enhanced bombs have in some cases proved effective in destroying the U.S. military's expensive new Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles—the product of a multibillion dollar investment by the Pentagon that features a V-shaped hull to absorb and disperse the impact of roadside bombs.

"The vehicles were not built, however, to withstand 200-pounds worth of explosives. "They've flipped MRAPs 15 feet in the air sometimes," says one U.S. officer in Afghanistan. "And they break them in half." U.S. troops inside the overturned vehicles have been crushed and seriously injured by falling equipment."

The U.S. answer to the problem is Coyote's: Do something, even if it is wrong. Spend your way out of the problem, for ACME has a new handy-dandy tool just right for you. But the MRAP's are folly, as they are not combat vehicles and they are not fighting platforms. What purpose do they serve?

The MRAP is like the 55-gal-drum is to the barbecue: a containment device for being shaked-and-baked. They are classic bomb magnets. They are slow, unmanueverable and most importantly, MRAPs serve no discernible military purpose.

The new bombs, which U.S. military officials say began cropping up in June, are part of an insurgent effort, they add, to disrupt commerce, create chaos, and strike at the heart of government efforts to bring progress to strategic provinces like Ghazni.

This editorializing attempts to overlay meaning on the project, but it is false. There is no progress and the government is as useless as the MRAP's are to address the Taliban insurgency. There is no realistic government in Afghanistan; it is a puppet regime bolstered totally by external military power. This is not a formula for success.

Even if the US/NATO forces control the roads, they will never control the countryside. This means that the government is a sham. Controlling the cities does not counterbalance the popular insurgency, and it IS popular or it would have been defeated in seven years.

The construction-grade explosives are trucked in from Quetta, a Taliban stronghold in neighboring Pakistan, according to U.S. intelligence officials. But the material is manufactured elsewhere, leading officials to believe that insurgents are bypassing border crossings in eastern Afghanistan, where U.S. troops have a greater presence, to bring them in through southern provinces.

Other possible sources of explosives are the Afghani Army and Police Forces sympathetic and loyal to the Taliban. The U.S. supply system is a probably source of these stolen explosives.

Insurgents and guerrillas will flow around U.S. blocking positions just like the Mississippi flooded around New Orleans. U.S. intel always claims the explosives were produced elsewhere since this exonerates their poor performance in insurgent settings, but Ranger doubts all explosives came from Pakistani sources.

Even if they did, what does this say about the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©) in Afghanistan and Pakistan? What would be the logical conclusion?

The article claims "good news" when U.S. forces tracked down "five IED-planting teams, leading to a decrease in roadside bombs in the area from 30 a month in July and August to some five a month in September and October." This is not good news, simply a fact. Yes, a nine-man team was killed and eliminated, but their replacements are a cell phone call away.

That there was a tactical decline in the number of IED's is meaningless over the long haul. It may look good on Officer Efficiency Reports, but it does not translate into strategic success. Absent the active presence of Afghani Army and Police, the U.S. will never quell the insurgents.

You can not create something out of nothing. There is no nation, and killing Afghanis to produce a puppet state will not be successful. What exactly are U.S. forces fighting for in Afghanistan?

To reiterate Ranger's position:

1. A free and democratic Afghanistan is a chimera
2. The Taliban is not al-Qaeda
3. A free Afghanistan will not enhance U.S. security in the PWOT
4. Who gives a rat's ass about Afghanistan?

T-t-t-t-that's All, Folks!

All Roads Lead to Houston

This is a one-page ad which ran in the Wall Street Journal recently. Navistar thanking WSJ-readin' Americans for their contract. Who gave Navistar this sweet deal to build MRAP's?

A blogger writing at stationed-in-iraq, who says he is a truck driver, tells of a nasty experience at the Halliburton Fuel Point at Navistar just across the Kuwait border, and a later shaky series of competing offers he receives from Halliburton and another representative claiming to be ''based at Navistar.''

This reservist says he was interested in working for Halliburton after his tour to score the $100,000 salary. Halliburton made him a job offer, but two days later a competing company offered to buy a job site he also ran --www.Jobs-in-Iraq, a site which did not post Halliburton listings (because they were unwilling to pay for being listed by his service.)

He was ''a competitor'' of sorts, and his hit counter let him know that 15-20% of the hits were coming from Halliburton servers.

It was the good cop-bad cop routine, and being skeptical, he researched the Navistar-based representative's company's holdings in Iraq, tracing a trail back to the States. ''[A]nd guess where they're based out of. . .Houston, Texas the home of Halliburton!!'' Golly.

Food for thought.

--Lisa