I just want to be clear (and perhaps I should have posted the full excerpt or the link to the report) but the Soldiers at COP Kahler and OP Topside did use claymores in their defense and had built well thought out defenseive barriers and wire.
The 2nd Platoon, Chosen Company leadership made the best possible utilization of Class IV (construction materials) assets available at Wanat. All available Concertina wire was installed, and all available concertina stakes and poles were utilized. All available HESCOs were emplaced, and based upon limitations of the construction equipment available at Wanat (a single Bobcat with bulldozer blade that ran out of gas on July 11th and 12th) all available HESCOs were filled to the maximum extent possible. All available sandbags were maximized. All available weapon systems were positioned with established fields of fire and range cards. With the exception of weapons systems either suppressed or destroyed by the ACM, all weapon systems had been emplaced such that they could be successfully employed during the engagement. Available hand tools were maximized, and given the tools available the positions were excavated to the greatest depth feasible.
And on the use of claymores, it wasn’t that they didn’t use them, it’s that they didn’t use them effectively…
Insufficient numbers of Claymore mines were positioned to control the dead ground to the north, east and south of OP Topside (only four Claymores were thus employed). At OP Topside the Claymore mines were simply placed atop the ground. Claymore mines were properly tested by the soldiers, and the three Claymore mines whose wires were not damaged functioned correctly. Claymore mines were only emplaced after darkness at OP Topside, which was an effective TTP. However, the limited numbers and failure to have overlapping Claymore fields of fire is evidence that Claymores were not employed to their maximum effectiveness at OP Topside. Of the four Claymore Anti-Personnel mines emplaced at OP Topside at Wanat, one of them had its wires severed by a nearby RPG detonation, rendering it unusable. A second Claymore was either knocked over by the RPG detonations, fell over for some other reason, or was deliberately turned around by the ACM. There was no way for the defenders of OP Topside to know that this Claymore mine had either fallen over or been tampered with. The other two Claymore mines functioned as intended, and at least one killed an ACM insurgent in the act of crossing the wire.
And this is sort of along the point of what Byron, atacms and Mat are getting at in their comments on the previous post…Afghanistan is tactically more like Vietnam than Iraq ever was (at least eastern Afghanistan is) and I was talking to a source about this yesterday…time to dust off the old school firebase defense plans and agressive patrolling and search and destroy missions, maybe. If you couple that with a comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy that’s well resourced not incremental, then we might be able to eek one out.
And for those of you questioning the leadership and training (as I did a bit), here’s another thing the official history (draft) said:
2nd Platoon leadership maintained high standards of discipline within the platoon. Numerous candid photographs taken by soldiers at COP Kahler from 9–12 July do not evince a single instance of soldiers being out of proper uniform, or not wearing their personal protective equipment. CONOP Rock Move came at the end of a 15-month deployment, but no degradation of discipline could be documented, or was reported by members of the platoon. Rigid adherence to high standards of discipline, to particularly include the stand-to measures that permitted the platoon to successfully withstand the determined attack, reflect great credit upon the leadership of 2nd Platoon and Chosen Company. Stand To at 04:00 (approx 75 minutes before BMNT) resulted in the garrison of COP Kahler being alert, awake, all defensive positions were fully manned, and all soldiers were fully equipped and armed prior to attack being launched. This standard defensive measure, first documented by Major Robert Rogers of Rogers Rangers in 1755, and meticulously implemented by 2nd Platoon leadership, prevented disaster.
I leave you with that for now…I’ll have more on the weapons issue later this afternoon…
– Christian
{ 37 comments… read them below or add one }
Christian,
Out of disclosure, I have no relationship with Textron or ATK, but could you ask your sources and the Army if collateral damage is a potential concern vis a vis use of Claymores, why aren’t they seeking to get Textron Spider mines out to the troops.
These mines are networked in addition to being able to use non-lethal fires against intruders reducing the political fallout in a COIN environment if a non-combatant gets in the crossfire.
http://www.atk.com/datasheet_PDFs/spider.pdf
I think this system would be of great benefit to our troops.
One can even envision with this being a digital system for it to be command detonated electronically by an overwatching UAV in case, there are issues with the tripwire as there seem to have been with the Claymore tripwires.
Sooo: Everything functioned so marvelously, so text-book-like on that base, that only the 9 deaths remain unexplainable, huh?
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
From a CIVILIAN information source:
“The first RPG and machine gun fire hit the forward operating base’s mortar pit, knocking out the 120mm mortars and exploding the stockpile of mortar ammunition.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Wanat#The_Battle
(Second paragraph, first phrase)
Mortar-S ( = plural) ??!
T-W-O ( OR M-O-R-E !!! ) mortars ( + their respective crews, I suppose) all stuck in one and the SAME pit, with their crews sitting on top of their entire
Dozer ran out of fuel, weapons ran out of ammunition, soldiers ran out of water, not enough claymores available.
Is this sounding more and more like a glaring supply problem this unit was having?
There is nothing unexplainable about their deaths. Its war, they were being attacked by a large number of troops. There was a lot of lead and explosives going off. Even if their defense is perfect, enough enemies and a lucky or smart shot can kill someone. I’m sure mistakes were made, but I’m not in a position as a civilian college student to say that under fire they should make perfect decisions. Unfortunately, mistakes usually mean someone dies.
I’m sure there are many important lessons that will be learned from this engagement, as well as the two recent attempts to overrun outposts. The question is does the military and political leadership have the willpower and foresight to learn the right lessons.
Yep!
The dead Lieutenant should be recommended for a Silver Star for leading the first QRF (3 men including himself) to the Topside position. It should go along with a letter of reprimand for leaving a fire team in an exposed position and deserting the main force of his platoon.
The Captain should be recommended for the Army Physical Fitness Badge for sprinting through the market place under fire to discover that dispite heroic efforts, Topside was a killing ground. He too should receive a letter of reprimand for leaving the main force area.
The entire chain of command should be examined under Article 32 to determine who thought it was a great idea to occupy that terrain with 49 GIs and wait for an Afghan contractor to finish the road and build the FOB.
For all that changes, it’s amazing what stays the same. The battles of Robert Rogers on snowshoes in the French & Indian War eerily echo your descriptions of battle today.
Read more about Robert Rogers in my new book, War on the Run: The Epic Story of Robert Rogers and the Conquest of America’s First Frontier.
http://www.warontherun.com
For all that changes, it’s amazing what stays the same. The battles of Robert Rogers on snowshoes in the French & Indian War eerily echo your descriptions of battle today.
Read more about Robert Rogers in my new book, War on the Run: The Epic Story of Robert Rogers and the Conquest of America’s First Frontier.
http://www.warontherun.com
To paint a complete picture, what was the environment insofar as artillery? They had the nice 120mm mortar(s?), but what was the availability on 105mm fire? A family friend was at one of these outposts ~20km away when the base was nearly overrun on the 3rd, so why don’t we move redleggers out to these firebases for mutual heavy gun support?
This is all rhetorical, since headquarters wants to pack these bases up and (wisely) consolidate around the Afghan population, but what were the plans for these bases in the event that weather negated air support, or, like at Wanat, the organic fire support gets knocked out? Sit there and exchange machine-gun fire? I don’t think so.
Sometimes the bad guys get lucky too. There might not be any one thing that went disasterously wrong at Wanat or the other recent battle. We try to learn the lessons so that we can minimise the likliehood of it happening again, but you’re never going to completely eliminate the fact that sometimes the bad guys get lucky too.
Shouldn’t the title of this post be “Flawless Exemplary Defense Wiped out by Farmers”
I always find it amusing that in Center for Army Lessons Learned monograghs they find it important to identify the West Point graduates and the high five Honor Graduates in an army where Source of Commission” isn’t a discriminator.
A single strand of unstaked concertina around Topside served little more than window dressing. Four claymores set out at night by spreading the legs and laying wire on the ground by the low man on the fire team isn’t the key to turning back a determined assualt. Oh well, the kids did the best they could with what they had.
The Battalion Commander, CSM, Brigade Commander, and his CSM that didn’t bother showing up, and the Company Commander that showed up the afternoon prior on a resupply bird with his RTO didn’t think it necessary to do any more than what the LT had accomplished.
So yeah you’re right…this is Vietnam, not Iraq….at least as far as the outpost war is concerned…
…aaaaand based on your raving response, you seem a pretty good judge of professionalism yourself, mr. freefallingbomb….
It is starting to look like what I wrote a few days ago is closer to the truth than what some posters here wanted to admit.
Incompetent leadership, from top to bottom.
No defenses to speak of on a camp that had been in place for 2 years and was ripe for attack.
What in the hell were these idiot’s first priority?
Sending e-mails home to mommy? Or building a defense?
Jesus H. Christ when I was in the field everyone, other than the RTO, carried a Claymore, and they new how to use it.
What we have here is a bunch of Boy Scouts all dressed up in macho camo getting themselves killed because they don’t have a clew as to what to do.
This will also go a long way in explaining why their weapons “failed”.
These “soldiers” probably didn’t know how to change the magazine after the weapon became “white hot”.
Their training probably never involved firing more than one magazine in a day.
The perimeter should have been saturated with mines, the mortars with ammunition should have been dug in and separated, where were the night vision devices, etc. etc.
The mighty US Army is a pathetic joke, and the Afghans have given it a deadly punch line.
In Viet Nam there were dozens of Special Forces camps that endured attacks which make this little “dust up” look like a walk in the garden.
The Special Forces never whined about their weapons malfunctioning, they just shot it out.
I want to puke.
Look at this picture.
Gee! I wonder why the weapons don’t work so good?
Clue! It might have been a lot of dirt in the mechanism, or perhaps it was due to there being branches and dirt in the mechanism.
The US Army will issue a report on this subject in late Nov. 2011, and then the problem will be solved.
Go Army Go!
Away.
”Bobcat ran out of gas” as far as i read hummves didn’t and they use same gas.And what about shovels ,in the end the fact is not filling the hescos cost lives.
Hey assholes, you think you can do better than these men? Well sign up and prove it. These men did not have enough equipment to build an effective defense and you armchair generals are bitching about their fire discipline and uniforms.
You try hitting with every burst when there are hundreds of Taliban bastards advancing on your position.
Yes due to a lack of proper defenses more men were KIA or WIA than should have been but they held their own and weren’t destroyed as a unit. The Americans who gave their lives there were heroes in my book.
”Bobcat ran out of gas” as far as i read hummers didn’t and they use same gas
I wonder what would have happened had these guys a couple of Netfires packs with thermobaric warheads.
Also, during the night leading up to the attack, would a good set of thermal optics have helped them spot the attackers organizing? Would a foliage penetrating laser vision system (those do exist, at least in the research world) have helped them do so?
How much $ amounts in equipment does a firebase like this get? It seems that there are several pieces of equipment in the R&D world that could work in all weather and effectively negate surprise, concealment and cover in a number of situations.
Dennis,
You’re hitting the nail on the head every time…
shame they didn’t have a couple drums of diesel left over. tape a claymore to one of those barrels and its 4th of July. Its still breaks my heart when I think about those 173rd troopers. Btw, how the hell did that many talibs manage to sneak so close? No UAV’s, no airpower? Arty? Maybe we should start using nape and FAE’s again..
i think we should give Gen. McChrystal the troops he needs, and a weapon that doesn’t jam or get white hot after going thru a bunch of rounds. The gas/piston system has already been proven to be superior. When those 1 SF brought Hk uppers for thier weapons, well that spoke volumes. The M-4 is a fine weapon, but how about if ur in a gunbattle for HOURS? CLICK… damn shame.
To freefallingbomb;
This Afghanistanian escapade in ineptitude was not caused by the reasons that you mention.
The entire fiasco was the fault of Colt’s M-16 design which turns white hot when it is fired!
No other rifle in the world gets hot when it is fired. Only the M-16 has this flaw in its design.
And the government knew about it from the start, that is why the US Army just loves to equip its soldiers with an obviously deeply inferior weapon.
To the poster “Jones” :
You wrote: “The entire fiasco was the fault of Colt’s M-16 design which turns white hot when it is fired!”
Please tell to me what kind of sentry doesn’t see 200+ men slowly climb up a hill towards him and even cut through the barbed wire right in front of him, without giving the alarm and starting to shoot downwards, at maximum fire range OR EVEN BEYOND , from one of BEST POSSIBLE , MOST UNASSAILABLE tactical positions in A-L-L of military (even pre-Human?) History!
Apparently the base crew only became aware of “some sort of battle noise” when the first Taliban mortar round wiped out all their mortars & respective ammunitions together, an artilleristic / gunnery feat absolutely comparable to the “Bismark” ‘s first salvo against the “H.M.S. Hood” ! But by that time they were already all surrounded.
Just tell me what kind of sentry that is (you don’t even have to excuse him: Probably he was even the first outpost crew member who died, in his post, in his sleep and in his dreams, under a starlit summer night sky, with a hole or slit somewhere in his head)
I wouldn’t be surprised if lots of the M-16′s didn’t even get warm that night.
Wikipedia account of the attack? A bunch of Wikipedia editors weren’t actually there! You think you can do better? Well sign up and head over to Afghanistan instead of talking tough. It is very hilly terrain over there and obviously a force of 200+ men with heavy weapons providing suppressive fire could advance towards a small force of Americans and a handful of unreliable ANA soldiers. They didn’t crawl up to them and slit any of their throats you idiot.
You seem to be getting the Battle at Wanat a year ago confused with the recent Battle at Kamdesh. Make up your mind about which you are ranting about. They weren’t the same outpost and in neither scenario they hadn’t been at their respective outposts for two years as you claim. In both cases US troops were outnumbered, and at Wanat at least those men didn’t have enough resources to work with. At the more recent Battle at Kamdesh the US forces were in the process from moving out of that area.
At Wanat the main failures were at a higher level of command, and the unusual behavior of the villagers not being noticed.
In both cases the outer perimeter of the main base was breached for only breached for a short period. At the Battle of Wanet the men at the OP unfortunately didn’t have much of a chance with the main attack being focused at them. Either way they did the best they could and the men who made a mad dash to the OP deserve a commendation for their bravery, even if they violated proper doctrine. The Army does need to brush off lessons learned in Vietnam.
“It seems the problem with artillery was in intervening terrain requiring steep trajectories with the resulting circular error probability against an enemy already in close contact. The report mentions the supporting four tubes of M777 155 mm were firing nowhere near their possible ROF due to targeting problems.”
Colonial-Marine
Says:
” At the most recent Battle of Kamdesh the US forces were in the process from sic. moving out of their area.”
I say:
Well then, it looks like the Taliban did nothing other than give the US forces a little extra incentive to move out of their country.
What would you do if it was your country, and a bunch of arrogant Muslim morons with guns were killing your people?
Colonial-marine goes on.
” At Wanat the main failures were —- the unusual behavior of the villagers not being noticed.”
I say:
How does anyone that was there say they didn’t see any unusual behavior going on in the village, and then, in the same breath, say there was unusual behavior?
Nobody saw it then, however I guess it is easier to see things after they have happened than when they are happening, and when somebody should have been doing something about what was happening.
It is sort of like predicting last weeks football scores.
However Colonial- Marine seems to believe that you can have things both ways.
Gosh I didn’t know the house was burning, and that is why I phoned the fire department.
Go figure.
CYA is something that they teach to officers and senior NCOs.
Colonial continues on,
” In both cases the outer perimeter of the main base was breached for only breached for only for a short period.” sic.
I say:
For only a short time on Dec 7 1941 the outer perimeter of Hawaii was breached.
Then Colonial-Marine finishes things off with this bit of wisdom.
” It seems the problem with artillery was intervening terrain–”
I say:
Gosh did this intervening terrain just sprout up overnight when nobody was looking?
Was this intervening terrain there a week before the attack?
Is intervening terrain a new secret weapon of the Taliban?
wat i cannot understand is this: these guys were told wat was coming. how do 200+ talibs get so close to the wire? How did they get within 100 yards? SOMEBODY should have seen them. NVG tech has taken a qauntum jump, and no one saw these guys coming?
To the poster “Jones” :
You’re quite good at spotting “elephants stuck in doorways” which everybody else gleefully oversaw (not being ironical), but you (and I) still missed this one here:
How comes that an EXTREMELY TALENTED Taliban artillerist hits the outpost’s mortar pit
1) with INdirect fire,
2) IN THE DARK NIGHT
and
3) WITH HIS V-E-R-Y F-I-R-S-T SHOT (!!!!!!)
(which completely defies belief, but since even the biased, Jew-run “post-11 / 9 ” Western Press reported it, it really must have happened…), but FOUR U.S. American cannons together can’t even kill A SINGLE of the 200 Taliban bulbuls hopping mad “because they were behind a hill”, and even get officially acquitted for NOT intervening?!
Did they receive their mountain warfare training in uh… Kansas?! Maybe they ought to train with the Talibans then.
(Other possibility: Arms integration no more?)
To the poster
The High Command already deliberated: The U.S. Airforce didn’t open fire because their M-4′s malfunctioned too.
To the poster “DakotaAv8r” :
Thanks for the links! Finally SOME COMPLETE information has arrived here on “Defense Tech” ! (You should think of creating your own “Defense Tech” one day! Can I be your house troll?)
The more you look at this sorry ass picture the sicker you become.
The ” NCO? ” seems to be giving instructions to a ( myopic yet highly trained nerd ) instructions as to which way the cartridges should be placed into the feed tray of the nerd’s machine gun.
Then! We hear all kinds of stories about how some weapons malfunctioned.
I wonder why?
My bet is that it was the myopic nerds that malfunctioned, and not their weapon.
However that would reflect poorly on the exemplary leadership, so therefore it must be the defective equipment that caused the nerds not to detect an advancing enemy.
The nerds had Night Vision devices, the nerds had infra red devices, the nerds had wire and mines.
And yet the nerds did’t hear anything?
Give me a break!
The ugly fact of the matter is that the nerds were asleep on their watch.
Where were the officers that were supposed to being in charge of nerdville?
What in the hell were they doing?
Rotten leadership from top to bottom.
All of them are nerds, some are now sadly dead, some are alive and strutting around with their war stories.
Court Marshals for the entire leadership is in order.
The US Army disgraces itself once again.
The donkey powered Afghans are the winners in this fight, while the jet engined super powered USA is the loser. Period!
The sooner the USA gets its ass out of Afghanistan the fewer dead soldiers will be flown back to Dover Del.
” Know when to hold em, and know when to fold em”
Eight years of pissing down your trousers, and a lot of dead boys to boot.
Thank you George Bush!
Get out of Afghanistan now!
Jones.
Christian, please delete this and the first duplicate comment, the one without the revisions.
I’m ecstatic!
Did you even read the damn article or anything at the battle? Or do you get your news directly from a Taliban website? First saying it is a DAYLONG siege, is simply wording. The main ASSAULT (as in trying getting up and close and trying to enter the base) ended within the first hour or so. After that it became a LONG drawn out firefight. The Taliban weren
Excuse the poor readability of my posts, I am still trying to get such drawn out comments to look acceptable on this relatively basic comment board.