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Afghan Update

Keep it Simple

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

XM25-PEO

You know, it’s been said that the U.S. Army is the best equipped force in the world but I’m really more amazed by what we don’t have that other armies do than what we do have, or what we want to have that oth­ers don’t.

Take, for exam­ple, the four shot 25mm XM25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement System cur­rently in the works (the XM25 is itself an off­shoot of the doomed XM29 OICW thingie).  It’s sup­posed to be effec­tive out to 500 meters against point tar­gets, will have a built in multi-​​spectrum electro-​​optical sight, and will have the abil­ity to indi­vid­u­ally pro­gram the burst time on the launched pro­jec­tiles so that they explode behind or over the tar­get, thus defeat­ing any frontal cover the tar­get might have.

Sounds good on paper, and I’m sure there’s no other Army out there try­ing to develop a weapon specif­i­cally designed to attack a tar­get behind cover, but the real­ity is, we haven’t got one of these either (yet, and I don’t see these get­ting issued soon either), and there are a lot of really sim­ple weapons cur­rently in ser­vice which could just as eas­ily per­form this mission. 

Rifle grenades:  What’s wrong with rifle grenades?  We, the American army, used the hell out of them in WWII and Korea, but they went away after that.  Were they not high tech enough, or was this one of those “no guns on jet fight­ers” deci­sions, where we decided that the types of wars we’d be fight­ing in the future would ren­der these weapons obso­lete?  There are any num­ber of designs out there now that could imme­di­ately enter ser­vice with the US mil­i­tary as short range (<300m) anti-​​personnel, anti-​​tank (ok, anti-​​APC), dual pur­pose, indi­vid­u­ally fired muni­tions, yet we haven’t got any.

I under­stand that we have ded­i­cated grenade launch­ers like the M203 now that can fill the role of the rifle grenade, but the 203 is an indi­vid­u­ally assigned weapon, and in the stan­dard infantry squad there are only two (one per team) and in the Army’s table dri­ven orga­ni­za­tional scheme, if your unit isn’t autho­rized any (like mine) then you just go with­out.  With a rifle grenade, on the other hand, every­one in the unit has the capa­bil­ity of car­ry­ing one or two, and they can be fired by any­one (this capa­bil­ity would enable a com­man­der to stock­pile the grenades in a defen­sive posi­tion, or with a sup­port by fire ele­ment, with­out dis­rupt­ing unit orga­ni­za­tion by shift­ing grenadiers around.)

Shoulder fired weapons:  Next to the AK-​​47, the most com­mon weapon car­ried by the insur­gents is the RPG-​​7.  Introduced as a shoulder-​​fired anti-​​tank weapon in 1961, it is now the most pro­lific such weapon in the world.  What is the US equiv­a­lent?  The sin­gle shot AT-​​4 (M136.)  The US used to have a reload­able shoul­der fired weapon, the M1-​​M20 series rocket launch­ers (a.k.a “Bazooka” and “Super Bazooka”) but the Bazooka was retired from ser­vice dur­ing the Vietnam war and replaced by the M72 LAW (tanks and the new ATGMs like the TOW and the Shillelagh would elim­i­nate the need for a short ranged infantry based AT weapon) and later the AT4. 

While designed as anti-​​armor weapons, as the insur­gents can attest to, they also serve admirably as “pocket” artillery, and what I won­der about is why we don’t use some­thing sim­i­lar. We have a num­ber of sim­i­lar weapons (the Marine Corps has the SMAW and the M3 Carl Gustav is in ser­vice with SOCOM forces) in our inven­tory.  The exclu­siv­ity of the M3 espe­cially both­ers me. Of a sim­i­lar weight and size of the AT4, it presents a sig­nif­i­cantly greater capa­bil­ity in that you can reload it and you can fire a vari­ety of muni­tions through it.  Again it would be a lot eas­ier for an infantry pla­toon to carry a pair of M3s and 40 seven-​​pound HE pro­jec­tiles than it would be to carry 40 AT4s.  Yet its use is lim­ited to SOCOM, while the reg­u­lar Army has to set­tle for the AT4.

Read the rest of this post at Military.com’s KitUp!

– Eric Daniel

While Obama ‘Consults’

Friday, October 30th, 2009

Seriously? Another meet­ing with the Joint Chiefs, another strate­gic trial bal­loon with the “McChrystal lite” strat­egy and we’re going to study each province and its polit­i­cal needs? Are you freak­ing kid­ding me!?

Meanwhile, our troops fight on with what they have…

…while Washington does its “solemn duty”…whatever…

– Christian

Don’t be Too Quick to Dis the Contractors

Friday, October 30th, 2009

contractor

So here’s a lit­tle side­bar story from the Oct. 28 sui­cide attack on the UN guest house in Kabul.

Turns out a con­tract truck dri­ver held off Taliban attack­ers with his AK while 15 UN work­ers were bar­ri­caded in a laun­dry room behind him. John “Chris” Turner was pour­ing 7.62 down range dur­ing the 2 hour gun­bat­tle, sav­ing the lives of the UN work­ers cow­er­ing in the cubby…

“I am armed. I carry an AK-​​47 and I kept fir­ing it to keep the attack­ers away from the group I was guard­ing,” he said, describ­ing how he shot from the entrance of the laun­dry room. The group later jumped over a back wall to take refuge in a house behind the guest house.

he told the Associated Press in Kabul.
What a badass!

I’ve bumped into a ton of these cow­boy types in both the­aters and it doesn’t sur­prise me for one sec­ond that Turner did what he did. While the third coun­try nation­als are less ballsy, the Americans I’ve met tran­sit­ing through the AO are by in large adven­tur­ers, self-​​reliant and extremely patri­otic. They work hard as hell, put up with poor liv­ing con­di­tions and I’ve never seen them com­plain or act bit­terly towards the troops they help keep comfortable.

I’ll never for­get when we came back from a week out on patrol in Afghanistan and we’d been ambushed twice — once on our way back to the FOB — and we arrived into Salerno pretty late. The KBR work­ers opened the chow hall for us and whipped up some grub for the pla­toon that came back bat­tle and served it to us with a smile. They seemed gen­uinely happy to do it.

Guys like Turner do it for more than the money — part eccen­tric, part thrillseaker, part patriot — they do it in part because to them there’s a sense of ser­vice to their duties. They gen­uinely like being around the troops and doing what they can to make their lives eas­ier and safer so they can do the job of tak­ing it to the bad guys.

Here’s a video Turner made back in the day when he trav­eled to Afghanistan to do a doc on the drug trade there (and to get a bit of the whacky tobaccy for himself).

Great walk-​​off from his dad:

“He said he was burned a lit­tle, but that he wasn’t hurt,” the father said. “He’s got more guts than a Missouri mule.”

So the next time you hear the poobahs whin­ing about how F-​​ed up “con­trac­tors” are in the war zone, remem­ber they’re talk­ing about guys like Chris Turner, a man who put fear aside and slung lead to keep the UN work­ers he was liv­ing with safe from the evil doers…

– Christian

IMINT: Local Weeds

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

When I was search­ing for a pic to illus­trate the pre­vi­ous post, I ran across this one of a Soldier actu­ally employ­ing local foliage as camouflage.

Just yes­ter­day I was chat­ting with a source and he was say­ing how Iraq had made Soldiers lazy or com­pla­cent because of the rel­a­tive con­ve­nience of the fight­ing there (close, vehi­cle borne engage­ments in pri­mar­ily urban set­tings) whereas Afghanistan stressed old school sol­dier­ing skills that were last seen in Vietnam.

One of the things he men­tioned was using local foliage to cam­ou­flage your out­line, and low and behold, here’s a Soldier (clearly a des­ig­nated marks­man with his souped up M14) who’s des­tined for Ranger school.
Afghanistan-local-vegitatio.jpg

U.S. Army Sgt. Zachary Adkins, from Sweetland, W.Va., con­ducts a dis­mounted patrol with his pla­toon near Combat Outpost Herrera, Paktiya province, Afghanistan, Oct. 11. The Soldiers were search­ing for sites from which the Taliban has been using to fire rock­ets at the out­post. Adkins is deployed with Apache Troop, 1st Squadron, 40th Cavalry Regiment.

– Christian

Of C-​​Wire and Hescos

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

chosen-company-wanat.jpg

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

New Source: Counter IED Plus Up in The ‘Stan

Thursday, August 27th, 2009

MRAP-afghanistan.jpg

First of all, dear­est readers…lighten UP! Yesterday’s post on the Russians buy­ing an amphibi­ous assault ship from the French was tongue in cheek, and if you don’t get the irony, watch Spinal Tap or Tropic Thunder a few more times.

OK, so I want to intro­duce to you an excit­ing new source we’ve secured for Military​.com, DT and DoD Buzz con­tent from the Christian Science Monitor. We’ve high­lighted a cou­ple sto­ries from my good friend and for­mer col­league Gordon Lubold, who is the Pentagon Correspondent for the Monitor. Well, after months of nego­ti­a­tions, we’ve earned the right to post Gordon’s con­tent on our sites, which is a huge coup con­sid­er­ing his solid sourc­ing, great analy­sis and top-​​notch writing.

Today, we ran a Lubold story on Afghanistan com­man­ders’ increas­ing counter IED capa­bil­i­ties in-​​country, includ­ing pulling in more EOD Techs, MRAPs and countermeasures.

The U.S. mil­i­tary is respond­ing to the dra­matic rise of road­side bomb attacks in Afghanistan by sig­nif­i­cantly step­ping up its efforts to com­bat the No. 1 killer of American troops in the war.

It is send­ing thou­sands of new bomb-​​resistant trucks there, increas­ing by 50 per­cent the num­ber of explo­sive ord­nance dis­posal experts, and import­ing “lessons learned” from the war in Iraq to counter impro­vised explo­sive devices (IEDs) in Afghanistan.

The effort is not expected to weaken “counter-​​IED” capa­bil­ity in Iraq. That will stay put for now, with the mil­i­tary increas­ing its efforts in Afghanistan. 

But Afghanistan is a much dif­fer­ent IED envi­ron­ment than Iraq, with aspects that make it eas­ier and harder to coun­ter­act the threat. For exam­ple, IEDs are eas­ier to emplace and con­ceal in Afghanistan, since 90 per­cent of its road­ways are unim­proved — dig­ging in a road­side bomb is a lot eas­ier to do and cover up than on a paved sur­face like most of the roads are in Iraq. Also, most of Afghanistan’s IEDs are made from home­spun mate­ri­als, mak­ing the foren­sics and inter­dict­ing of the explo­sives etc. harder to do.

But IEDs are much less sophis­ti­cated in Afghanistan and while deadly, we haven’t seen the kind of triple stack anti-​​tank mine setups, Senao base sta­tion acti­va­tors or EFPs we saw in Iraq. Most are crude, com­mand det­o­nated IEDs which put the insur­gents at much greater risk.

Nevertheless, IED attacks are spiking…

In July 2007, there were 230 IED “inci­dents” in Afghanistan the Pentagon’s ter­mi­nol­ogy for road­side bombs that were det­o­nated or detected. These killed 12 mem­bers of coali­tion forces. Last month, there were 828 inci­dents that killed 49 mem­bers of coali­tion forces, accord­ing to the Joint IED Defeat Organization, an arm of the Pentagon.

In Iraq, by con­trast, there were 170 inci­dents last month, down from the 2,137 reported in July 2007, accord­ing to the organization. 

…but deaths from IEDs are not. According to Gordon’s num­bers, the rate of KIA per IED attack has ticked up a frac­tion of a per­cent, now at about 5.7 per­cent. By con­trast, in Iraq the May 2007 death rate for IEDs was 90 troops in about 1200 attacks, or about an 8 per­cent KIA rate.

What will the MATV bring? Not sure. Look, I’ll meet my crit­ics half way and say that an MRAP robust­ness in a light­weight pack­age is a bet­ter call than flood­ing the zone with, what my boy Dave Woroner likes to call, bank vaults on wheels. But I won­der if, given McChrystal’s new guide­lines, the MATVs are still not COIN-​​centric enough to do that job effectively.

What won the IED bat­tle in Iraq? Not “bang­ing trons” from Prowlers or MRAPs or even the upar­mor­est of upar­mored Humvees. It was turn­ing the pop­u­la­tion against the IED lay­ers and boots on the ground (which I include snipers, who I say are the best counter IED weapon in the US/​Coalition arsenal).

So please read the rest of Gordon’s story on Military​.com and be sure to keep a scan on other CSM con­tent relevent to your inter­ests. We’re glad to have them aboard and look for­ward to fur­ther news on tac­ti­cal devel­op­ment and strate­gic events.

– Christian

More Bombs Less Butter

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

As we get set for the lat­est round of pres­i­den­tial elec­tions to kick off in the 20th, I thought it tastey food for thought to for­ward this post at the Small Wars Journal by Military​.com con­trib­u­tor and well known author Bing West.

In his post, West turns the Obama “civil­ian­ized” Afghan strat­egy on its head, and says the key to suc­cess is killing more bad guys.

Red meat for the mar­tial types…

It appears our strat­egy is nation-​​building, with fight­ing and dis­man­tling of the Taliban a sec­ondary con­sid­er­a­tion. Thus, the num­ber of enemy killed will not be counted, let alone used as a met­ric. This non-​​kinetic the­ory of coun­terin­sur­gency has per­suaded the lib­eral com­mu­nity in America to sup­port or at least not to vocif­er­ously oppose the war. But we have to main­tain a bal­ance between mes­sages that gain domes­tic sup­port and mes­sages that direct bat­tle­field operations…

More senior-​​level atten­tion must be paid to inflict­ing severe enemy losses in fire­fights and to arrest­ing the Taliban, so that their morale and net­works are bro­ken. A recent direc­tive for­bids apply­ing indi­rect fires against com­pounds where civil­ians might be hid­ing. That direc­tive upholds human decency and may reduce enemy pro­pa­ganda.

Interesting — and con­tro­ver­sial. Removing the most mil­i­tant of the insur­gency from the bat­tle­field worked in Iraq — though that took mil­i­tary nego­ti­a­tions with key tribal lead­ers to dry up sup­port for the heart of the insur­gency. But they were removed from the bat­tle­field. Can’t guns and bul­lets do the same?

And West also calls for bet­ter and more tech­nol­ogy to keep the bombs drop­ping, bristling at the restric­tions being placed on direct and indi­rect fire sup­port for troops in all but the most “bro­ken arrow” of situations.

But indi­rect fires heli­copter gun­ships and jets used to be called pre­ci­sion fires and gave the US its enor­mous advan­tage in com­bat. Now that such fires are restricted, what pro­vides our advan­tage when the enemy sen­si­bly fights from com­pounds? Dont expect Afghan sol­diers to do it for us. We have equipped and trained the Afghans in our image. They are as heavy and slow-​​moving on the ground as we are, and rely upon our advi­sors to call in the firepower.

This is my third war. It has the high­est level of mil­i­tary schol­ars. Those schol­ars who empha­sized the con­cepts of non-​​kinetic coun­terin­sur­gency need also to design con­cepts that bring more lethal­ity to the ground bat­tle­field. Were pump­ing bil­lions into UAVs. Surely we can find tech­nolo­gies and tech­niques for the grunt.

Like I said, food for thought. Also, be sure to check out his video below.

– Christian

A Personal Reminder of the Cost of War

Friday, August 14th, 2009

Matthew-Freeman_.gif
As jour­nal­ists we deal with infor­ma­tion regard­ing the wars on a near-​​constant basis. Usually we approach what we see with stoic eyes — a func­tion of our mis­sion to bring you the news as objec­tively as pos­si­ble — but occa­sion­ally that’s impossible.

This morn­ing I received an email from the local chap­ter of the U.S. Naval Academy Alumni Association with the tragic news that Capt. Matt Freeman, USMC, had been killed in action in Afghanistan.

I met Matt dur­ing my last tour on active duty, when he was a plebe at Annapolis and I was on the fac­ulty teach­ing English, among other sub­jects. He knew that I was a Tomcat guy and asked if I had heard of his dad, Gary, call­sign “Freeperson.” I had. I’d flown on Freeperson’s wing when I was going through the F-​​14 RAG for the first time. He was the kind of fighter pilot stu­dent RIOs wanted to fly with dur­ing syl­labus events — calm and com­pe­tent dur­ing briefs and in the air. And more than that, he was a Tomcat com­mu­nity icon with a great rep­u­ta­tion. When I related that to Matt his face lit up with a proud smile, the kind only a son can offer when some­one says some­thing good about the father he loves.

Matt grad­u­ated with the USNA Class of 2002, and his grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mony at Navy-​​Marine Corps Memorial Stadium was the last offi­cial func­tion of my career. I had a warm spot in my heart for his class. My time on the fac­ulty had coin­cided with their time as mid­ship­men. I’d watched them grow from clue­less plebes to poised junior offi­cers. They were the first class to grad­u­ate after 9–11; their Annapolis edu­ca­tions would be put to the test.

Although Matt went on to become a Marine Corps Harrier pilot, this tour he was serv­ing as a for­ward air con­troller — the guy on the ground who tells pilots where to drop their bombs. It’s tough duty, proof that when they tell young sec­ond lieu­tenants dur­ing The Basic School that they’ll always be rifle­men first, regard­less of war­fare spe­cialy, they mean it.

Matt had been in Afghanistan just over a week when he found him­self as part of a 5-​​man team patrolling the Kapisa Province accom­pa­nied by Afghan National Army forces. Air Force Master Sergeant Rex Temple’s blog describes the details of the battle:

While trav­el­ing through one of the vil­lage ham­lets lined with thick stone walls and mud brick houses, the insur­gents unleashed a furi­ous attack. The insur­gents were well pre­pared and it was almost as they were informed and antic­i­pated their arrival. Approximately 60–100 Taliban insur­gents fired RPGs, AK-​​47s, PKMs, and Ditska (equiv­a­lent of US 50-​​cal.) and other weapons at the approach­ing forces. [Army SPC Chris] Lowe along with his team sought shel­ter in a kalat (mud-​​stone house inside a walled in com­pound). Captain Freeman crawled on top of the roof look­ing for advan­tage points and was fatally hit by a bul­let. Doc the medic was try­ing to pro­vide assis­tance and recover the body. Doc yelled out for some help and Lowes reflexes took over as he scram­bled up a lad­der to the roof. Doc was tug­ging on Captain Freemans body and Lowe appar­ently sensed the dan­ger. He grabbed Doc and threw him down. About the same time, Lowe took a bul­let to his upper right thigh area. Both he and Doc fell off the roof to the ground. Doc appar­ently fell on top of Lowes leg and thought he broke it because Lowe was yelling My leg, my leg.” But when the Doc saw the spurt­ing blood, his med­ical train­ing kicked into high gear and he applied a CAT tourni­quet to stop the bleeding.

The femoral artery was nicked, but Doc was able to sta­bi­lize the bleed­ing and Lowe was trans­ported out of the bat­tle space to a heli­copter land­ing zone. Meanwhile the fierce fight­ing con­tin­ued until the Air Force F-​​15s armed with a 500 lb bomb along with a pair of Army Kiowa Attack heli­copters arrived. The ANA counter-​​reacted by method­i­cally blow­ing up the kalats where the Taliban was hid­ing. The insur­gents retreated and ran for the hills. The next few hours were small tac­ti­cal engage­ments as the Taliban dis­ap­peared. Tragically that day dur­ing this 6.5 hour bat­tle, the ANA lost 4 sol­diers, US 1, and the French had 3 sol­diers wounded. The body count of the insur­gents was 6-​​fold includ­ing one promi­nent Taliban area commander.

The staff of DT wishes a speedy recov­ery to SPC Lowe, a true hero. And we also pass our deep­est sym­pa­thies to Freeperson and the entire Freeman fam­ily. Matt’s death is a great loss to the Marine Corps and the nation. He had much more left to do with his life.

– Ward

We Won’t Let You Forget Afghanistan

Thursday, August 13th, 2009

It seems that all we’re see­ing on the nightly news is “angry mobs” this and “health reform” that.

Meanwhile, troops are fight­ing and dying in Afghanistan dur­ing a with­er­ing assault on Taliban strong­holds in the south of the country.

We’re not going to let that pass, so as events war­rant, DT will be post­ing con­tent or alert­ing read­ers to good mate­r­ial that will keep them up to date with what’s going on.

First, I’d like to men­tion that after a long hia­tus, Michael Yon has agreed to con­tribute con­tent to Military​.com and its asso­ci­ated prop­er­ties. Yesterday, Ward had a pod­cast inter­view with him even as bul­lets and rock­ets were wiz­zing by. The inter­view was so com­pelling, we penned a com­pan­ion piece that ran as today’s lead story on Military​.com. Please be sure to keep his site in your scan as he con­tin­ues his embed through Christmas.

Also, I’d like to direct your atten­tion to a com­pelling video posted on the Washington Post site shot by Ann Scott Tyson of said paper.

I’ve run in the same cir­cles as Anne for many years on the defense beat, and she is polite, pro­fes­sional, per­sis­tent and com­pas­sion­ate. Well, add to the ballsy as hell, because the video she shot of a day long skir­mish with Marines in Helmand is bad ass…and a trib­ute to her calm under fire and com­fort with new media. She is one of those rare defense scribes that is as com­fort­able in a sit-​​down with SecDef Gates as she is bunk­ing on a cot and eat­ing warm MREs in the dust of Iraq or Afghanistan. Keep her con­tent in your scan.

Watch the video, read the story, lis­ten to the pod­cast…don’t ignore was going on over there in the still (for now) “for­got­ten war”…

– Christian

Afghanistan Heats Up (literally)

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

I’d also like to make our read­ers aware of some great cov­er­age com­ing from a good friend of mine who’s embed­ded over in Afghanistan.

David Wood used to work for the Baltimore Sun before he left the paper dur­ing the cur­rent media crunch, but he landed a great gig at AOL’s new Politics Daily site and they promptly sent him for a six week embed in Afghanistan.

He’s got a great dis­patch that exam­ines the new strat­egy being worked up by McChrystal et al and comes as our boy Ward Carroll just posted an OpEd on the sub­ject.

The Marines have launched a “behind Taliban lines” assault today and with all this com­ing together, I think it’s time to make sure we have some good reads to fol­low events in the Stan…

– Christian