Afghanistan: Lessons Learned (merged)
- Thread starter boondocksaint
- Start date
Greetings all,
This would be my first post here. I'm a Norwegian myself who has done just about four years in our armed forces. I worked with some of you guys in Kabul back in 2005 just before your Recce guys headed back down to Kandahar again, and i just missed you in Kosovo in 2001. Nowadays I'm stuck in Mazar-E-Sharif doing positively nothing, which isn't what most of us folks would like. Politicians i guess...
I was referred to this thread by a colleague of mine the other day and i must say, this is the most informative of AAR's and firsthand accounts I've yet to read. The way we've trained and operated has it's similarities and differences from what is written here, but it definitely help getting it firsthand from the lower ranks who actually was there doing the hard work. I'm not trying to hide the fact that we don't have the combat experience the Commonwealth and the US has, and it shows both in what we do and how we do it - not saying we downright suck though. This thread will be forwarded and, insh'Allah, be put in use by someone up the food chain.
We hear some of the stuff that's going on down there, but nothing as detailed as this. My thoughts and best wishes go out to all coalition members who are down south pulling the fight while the rest of them are cuddled up nicely in the safe spots. I hope to be able to work alongside you guys again some day, it seems a helping hand is really needed down there.
If you ever, for whatever reason, find yourself up north at Camp Marmal outside Maz come to the Norwegian compound and I'll buy you a Coke and a bag of M&Ms. Until then,
Take care, stay safe and bring it to them,
Marcus
This would be my first post here. I'm a Norwegian myself who has done just about four years in our armed forces. I worked with some of you guys in Kabul back in 2005 just before your Recce guys headed back down to Kandahar again, and i just missed you in Kosovo in 2001. Nowadays I'm stuck in Mazar-E-Sharif doing positively nothing, which isn't what most of us folks would like. Politicians i guess...
I was referred to this thread by a colleague of mine the other day and i must say, this is the most informative of AAR's and firsthand accounts I've yet to read. The way we've trained and operated has it's similarities and differences from what is written here, but it definitely help getting it firsthand from the lower ranks who actually was there doing the hard work. I'm not trying to hide the fact that we don't have the combat experience the Commonwealth and the US has, and it shows both in what we do and how we do it - not saying we downright suck though. This thread will be forwarded and, insh'Allah, be put in use by someone up the food chain.
We hear some of the stuff that's going on down there, but nothing as detailed as this. My thoughts and best wishes go out to all coalition members who are down south pulling the fight while the rest of them are cuddled up nicely in the safe spots. I hope to be able to work alongside you guys again some day, it seems a helping hand is really needed down there.
If you ever, for whatever reason, find yourself up north at Camp Marmal outside Maz come to the Norwegian compound and I'll buy you a Coke and a bag of M&Ms. Until then,
Take care, stay safe and bring it to them,
Marcus
daftandbarmy
Army.ca Dinosaur
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Please sir, I want some more
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Hello, MMB, I've been to Norway twice to train, a unique experience. I also witnessed warchild re-decorate a hotel lobby in Tromso with a 10ft polar bear. We then had to leave...
Stay safe over there
Stay safe over there
Hello all. Here is some more. This is a long one. And yes I was attacked by a 10ft STUFFED polar bear in Tromso. I was really drunk on Mac beer.
As a PL WO I was very protective of my PL (My crew). I felt that this was not going to be a Bosnia tour and that allot of leadership was going to be needed to be demonstrated. I would highly recommend and stress that for all the leaders reading this that your Tm, Sect, Pl, and yes your coy is your only family that matters over there. By demonstrating to your crew that you will back them no matter what, it will demonstrate to your crew that they can trust you. Trust as well as respect is earned and at no time should it be demanded. This will build a tight crew who will no matter what watch each others back when the rnds are flying no matter what part of the tour you are in. I was very fortunate to have a PL that all trusted within our crew even though there was times when there was that squabbling going on. This would be my highest bit of advice and if you were going to walk away with anything from this, it would be just that.
Comms- We used a few different styles of comms. The 117 was the best. Everyone from the Pte to the Coy comd must be good to go with it. When our pri PL sig guy was hit in an IED, we had to switch around a few guy's to get a new PL sig. If we were all as good as the guy hit it would not of been such big shoe to fill. Another thing is get used to getting away from VP when you are out on your own. We never used C/S that much unless we were on higher to the TOC. Even our coy comd eventually got away from C/S'ing to death everything. Again when the lead is flying plain text is best. It saves time and it is less confusing saying "C, move up on the left and take those hut's out". Now saying that we had a few times when face to face link ups were 100% more practical. In the Sangin scrap we were close enough to do this. It was more practical and less confusing and doesn't tie up the net. I would suggest to all to work that way when you can.
PB (Patrol base)- We did allot of mech PB's and dismounted in the hills. Stand off should be your only concern. Dominate the high ground always. Dismounted ops- Don't worry if it is not the circle or triangle. We never while dismounted used the standard formation. Just worry about getting up as high as you can, have eyes on 360 and put out claymores. We always did this no matter what or who was with us. Remember you have to be flexable and do not worry about "That's how we did it on the 6B or phase trg". Those types of attitudes will hurt you. In the hills between Feb and April it is cold at night. I carried a snugpak sleeping bag good for minus 10, bi vi bag because it will rain, toque, smog (I never went anywhere without it) rats, water and ammo. Point to note for ammo. I divided everything between the PL. As we got to our PB if req we would drop it by my spot i.e. 7,62 everything else the sect took up to their spots. Note: When the boys put their extra ammo in the rucks, make sure it is in the outside pockets or pouches. Do not let them put the extra ammo (7.62, claymores etc) inside their kit. When you get into a scrap they cannot start digging into the kit. As an SOP on the outside. We had ANA with us on a few tabs. They need to be given strict direction on PB occupation. I learned that one the hard way. For water on average had 10 liters with us. We had pure tabs just in case. Our medic also gave us the high speed electrolytes. We needed it. If you are going into the hills on a tab, get the high speed electro. I would drink 1 liter with it then one with out it. For rats if you can get by with just the meal pack, some tuna in a can and lots of trail mix and Hooah bars (KAF has them in the KBR kitchens to take) go with it. It will save you weight and garbage. Make sure your terp to has a good ruck when you pick him up. Not the bed roll.. The first time we took ours into the hills he had an old gym bag that looked like it was given to him from Goodwill.
For mech we used the triangle. That never changed but the spacing could depending on the ground. Try not to use the same one over and over. I would say twice is enough. Any more and they will have it ranged. Set up your 60 mm and test fire it.
KAF life- Try and get a coy web site made up prior to departing. When you get there have a guy walk about with a video camera or just a camera. Put it on the web site. Obviously I don't need to talk about OPSEC. I know but somebody out there will sound off. This will let the loved ones back home see where you live 2 days out of the month and will relax them a bit. They will have a visual on your surroundings instead of making one up in their heads.
DVD players- Buy a good one here with a gasket type seal such as a sport one. The dust will wreak cheap ones.
MP3- Again buy here. PX is expensive but good in case you fry yours trying to hook it up to the TCCS.
Laptop- It was great but for me it was just a big DVD player or for porn.
Rear link- Make sure the guy's loved ones have the rear party phone # and web link. If your loved one is going to visit somebody over the weekend or for an extended period of time, make sure they tell the rear party. If something happens to one of your guy's and his loved on is visiting their mother in Ont, well she is going to find out on the news. It happend. Tell your crew to make sure they get that one.
Phones- Watch the guy that lives on the phone. It will cause prob's when you are out on an extended op and Johnny hasn't kept up his phone calls home.
Cultural trg- I personally thought this was a wast of time. I learned more from our terps over there than anything. Pointy talk cards are great to.
IA's- Use them, practice them and remember that they are just IMMEDIATE ACTION DRILLS. Resist the urge or push to "What if everything". We kept a standard IA drill for IED's, ambush, and ptl's. If we came across something better or if we learned a hard lesson due to combat then we would change it up and practice it over again until we got it. I always used the round robin approach too with this. I don't have all the answers. Bash it around and get it out to your crew for feedback.
Orders- I have to say allot of the time there was min orders and less battle prep. I have to say though and this is on hind site that we did allot of high speed stuff with min time to prep. Again I go back to my 1st para about a good crew. This helped more than I will ever know. All you need is a concept of ops and intent and you can do anything with a tight crew. Make your plan, give frag orders and let your section sort it out. Again I had some very strong talent in my crew. They new there stuff and I let them run with it. I always trusted them to do there best in the time allowed. Don't get rapped up with 2 hr long orders. Maybe at the beginning but after you feel comfortable, trust your judgement.
These are lessons that I learned being a PL WO and for awhile as PL Comd. Ours got IED'd and evac'd. I was the dude for 2 months. BDS covered allot if not the most important ones and did it very well. His experience's should be required reading before deploying. I have to stress that it is a sect scrap over there in a PL context. These lessons learned are from my perspective and allot of them may seem rash if not "Out side the box". I hope these will be of help to at least one other person going over.
As a PL WO I was very protective of my PL (My crew). I felt that this was not going to be a Bosnia tour and that allot of leadership was going to be needed to be demonstrated. I would highly recommend and stress that for all the leaders reading this that your Tm, Sect, Pl, and yes your coy is your only family that matters over there. By demonstrating to your crew that you will back them no matter what, it will demonstrate to your crew that they can trust you. Trust as well as respect is earned and at no time should it be demanded. This will build a tight crew who will no matter what watch each others back when the rnds are flying no matter what part of the tour you are in. I was very fortunate to have a PL that all trusted within our crew even though there was times when there was that squabbling going on. This would be my highest bit of advice and if you were going to walk away with anything from this, it would be just that.
Comms- We used a few different styles of comms. The 117 was the best. Everyone from the Pte to the Coy comd must be good to go with it. When our pri PL sig guy was hit in an IED, we had to switch around a few guy's to get a new PL sig. If we were all as good as the guy hit it would not of been such big shoe to fill. Another thing is get used to getting away from VP when you are out on your own. We never used C/S that much unless we were on higher to the TOC. Even our coy comd eventually got away from C/S'ing to death everything. Again when the lead is flying plain text is best. It saves time and it is less confusing saying "C, move up on the left and take those hut's out". Now saying that we had a few times when face to face link ups were 100% more practical. In the Sangin scrap we were close enough to do this. It was more practical and less confusing and doesn't tie up the net. I would suggest to all to work that way when you can.
PB (Patrol base)- We did allot of mech PB's and dismounted in the hills. Stand off should be your only concern. Dominate the high ground always. Dismounted ops- Don't worry if it is not the circle or triangle. We never while dismounted used the standard formation. Just worry about getting up as high as you can, have eyes on 360 and put out claymores. We always did this no matter what or who was with us. Remember you have to be flexable and do not worry about "That's how we did it on the 6B or phase trg". Those types of attitudes will hurt you. In the hills between Feb and April it is cold at night. I carried a snugpak sleeping bag good for minus 10, bi vi bag because it will rain, toque, smog (I never went anywhere without it) rats, water and ammo. Point to note for ammo. I divided everything between the PL. As we got to our PB if req we would drop it by my spot i.e. 7,62 everything else the sect took up to their spots. Note: When the boys put their extra ammo in the rucks, make sure it is in the outside pockets or pouches. Do not let them put the extra ammo (7.62, claymores etc) inside their kit. When you get into a scrap they cannot start digging into the kit. As an SOP on the outside. We had ANA with us on a few tabs. They need to be given strict direction on PB occupation. I learned that one the hard way. For water on average had 10 liters with us. We had pure tabs just in case. Our medic also gave us the high speed electrolytes. We needed it. If you are going into the hills on a tab, get the high speed electro. I would drink 1 liter with it then one with out it. For rats if you can get by with just the meal pack, some tuna in a can and lots of trail mix and Hooah bars (KAF has them in the KBR kitchens to take) go with it. It will save you weight and garbage. Make sure your terp to has a good ruck when you pick him up. Not the bed roll.. The first time we took ours into the hills he had an old gym bag that looked like it was given to him from Goodwill.
For mech we used the triangle. That never changed but the spacing could depending on the ground. Try not to use the same one over and over. I would say twice is enough. Any more and they will have it ranged. Set up your 60 mm and test fire it.
KAF life- Try and get a coy web site made up prior to departing. When you get there have a guy walk about with a video camera or just a camera. Put it on the web site. Obviously I don't need to talk about OPSEC. I know but somebody out there will sound off. This will let the loved ones back home see where you live 2 days out of the month and will relax them a bit. They will have a visual on your surroundings instead of making one up in their heads.
DVD players- Buy a good one here with a gasket type seal such as a sport one. The dust will wreak cheap ones.
MP3- Again buy here. PX is expensive but good in case you fry yours trying to hook it up to the TCCS.
Laptop- It was great but for me it was just a big DVD player or for porn.
Rear link- Make sure the guy's loved ones have the rear party phone # and web link. If your loved one is going to visit somebody over the weekend or for an extended period of time, make sure they tell the rear party. If something happens to one of your guy's and his loved on is visiting their mother in Ont, well she is going to find out on the news. It happend. Tell your crew to make sure they get that one.
Phones- Watch the guy that lives on the phone. It will cause prob's when you are out on an extended op and Johnny hasn't kept up his phone calls home.
Cultural trg- I personally thought this was a wast of time. I learned more from our terps over there than anything. Pointy talk cards are great to.
IA's- Use them, practice them and remember that they are just IMMEDIATE ACTION DRILLS. Resist the urge or push to "What if everything". We kept a standard IA drill for IED's, ambush, and ptl's. If we came across something better or if we learned a hard lesson due to combat then we would change it up and practice it over again until we got it. I always used the round robin approach too with this. I don't have all the answers. Bash it around and get it out to your crew for feedback.
Orders- I have to say allot of the time there was min orders and less battle prep. I have to say though and this is on hind site that we did allot of high speed stuff with min time to prep. Again I go back to my 1st para about a good crew. This helped more than I will ever know. All you need is a concept of ops and intent and you can do anything with a tight crew. Make your plan, give frag orders and let your section sort it out. Again I had some very strong talent in my crew. They new there stuff and I let them run with it. I always trusted them to do there best in the time allowed. Don't get rapped up with 2 hr long orders. Maybe at the beginning but after you feel comfortable, trust your judgement.
These are lessons that I learned being a PL WO and for awhile as PL Comd. Ours got IED'd and evac'd. I was the dude for 2 months. BDS covered allot if not the most important ones and did it very well. His experience's should be required reading before deploying. I have to stress that it is a sect scrap over there in a PL context. These lessons learned are from my perspective and allot of them may seem rash if not "Out side the box". I hope these will be of help to at least one other person going over.
daftandbarmy
Army.ca Dinosaur
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All very good stuff. Thanks. By my guesstimate you're subsidizing Canada's war effort by at least 500 -600 bucks (chestrig, shemag, sleeping bag etc). How much cash are people dishing out for their own gear?
daftandbarmy
Army.ca Dinosaur
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Infidel-6 said:Yeah but all the shiny stuff work in Canada too...
Provided you dont have an asshat CSM (serving guys dont comment)
By that I assume you mean 'Craphat'. Out-standing. Haven't used that term in... well... days now
MJP
Army.ca Fixture
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To add to WarChilds post from a Sect Commander/2IC perspective for training.
Comms- I can’t stress enough comms. Everyone should be able to do all the basic programming on the CI box as well as on the radio itself. It’s not hard as long as everyone stays current but it will help you when your comms goes to crap and you need to trouble shoot in a hurry.
Designate a section signaler and make sure he is up to speed on everything and is constanting liasing with the Pl signaler for the comms plan. My guy didn’t even have the course but after a month over there was just as good as the Pl signaler when it came to crypto loading and other malfunctions. ID him early in the training and get him working on it as often as possible.
At every CI box that had a headset we put a list of channels with who it would contact on it. As well we made up reports and return cards so if you got flustered or couldn’t find yours it was right there so you could call in anything and everything.
M203 gunners- During pretraining get them firing as often as possible. Once you get over there you should get the opportunity and if you don’t ask for it to fire a couple boxes of M203 each. Get your guys good with the M203. As warchild mentioned most guys could hit a door at 300 at the end of the tour. I watch one of my M203 gunners hit a designated target on a hill top from the air sentry hatch while the vehicle was moving. M203 is a powerful tool used right to suppress and kill the enemy
Rifle and ranges- Its already been stressed that gunfighter is crucial and saves lives while overseas. But some other training to do is make sure your guys are extremely comfortable with adjusting their own PAQ4/2s for night fighting. Not to mention get them use to using the NVGs. As well get them use to only seeing part of a target and hitting it. Very rare to get a full body shot away. Do a range that has enemy targets hiding behind or screen by various objects. And run them through it. We did it on a conventional range by making them move left to right and turn into the enemy find the exposed part and fire. Do this by day and by night.
Vehicles and vehicle weapons system- All soldiers should be able to start up and emergency drive all the vehicles that your Pl operates over there. As well they should be able to use and fire all weapons systems as well as be able to clear any stoppages with Gwagon or RG31 (C6 and .50). 25mm is a bit different but regardless all soldiers in a section should know how to operate the turret and fire the cannon of they have to. This is also so they can conduct Ops and sentry from the turret utilizing the thermal and the night sight on the turret.
More as I think of it……
Comms- I can’t stress enough comms. Everyone should be able to do all the basic programming on the CI box as well as on the radio itself. It’s not hard as long as everyone stays current but it will help you when your comms goes to crap and you need to trouble shoot in a hurry.
Designate a section signaler and make sure he is up to speed on everything and is constanting liasing with the Pl signaler for the comms plan. My guy didn’t even have the course but after a month over there was just as good as the Pl signaler when it came to crypto loading and other malfunctions. ID him early in the training and get him working on it as often as possible.
At every CI box that had a headset we put a list of channels with who it would contact on it. As well we made up reports and return cards so if you got flustered or couldn’t find yours it was right there so you could call in anything and everything.
M203 gunners- During pretraining get them firing as often as possible. Once you get over there you should get the opportunity and if you don’t ask for it to fire a couple boxes of M203 each. Get your guys good with the M203. As warchild mentioned most guys could hit a door at 300 at the end of the tour. I watch one of my M203 gunners hit a designated target on a hill top from the air sentry hatch while the vehicle was moving. M203 is a powerful tool used right to suppress and kill the enemy
Rifle and ranges- Its already been stressed that gunfighter is crucial and saves lives while overseas. But some other training to do is make sure your guys are extremely comfortable with adjusting their own PAQ4/2s for night fighting. Not to mention get them use to using the NVGs. As well get them use to only seeing part of a target and hitting it. Very rare to get a full body shot away. Do a range that has enemy targets hiding behind or screen by various objects. And run them through it. We did it on a conventional range by making them move left to right and turn into the enemy find the exposed part and fire. Do this by day and by night.
Vehicles and vehicle weapons system- All soldiers should be able to start up and emergency drive all the vehicles that your Pl operates over there. As well they should be able to use and fire all weapons systems as well as be able to clear any stoppages with Gwagon or RG31 (C6 and .50). 25mm is a bit different but regardless all soldiers in a section should know how to operate the turret and fire the cannon of they have to. This is also so they can conduct Ops and sentry from the turret utilizing the thermal and the night sight on the turret.
More as I think of it……
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Attached as needed, and yes, VERY useful.
RHFC_piper
Sr. Member
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I just wanted to comment on gear;
This is the gear I carried into Panjwayi.
Chest rigs are worth (in my oppinion) every dime. Same with verticle foregrips.
During work up, we argued that we would rather have rigs that can carry at least 10 full mags up front and accessable (this one carries 12 up and 4 more in a detatchable bottom piece) and the answer we got was "you will never have or need 10 mags".. I had 15 mags and I used 4 in 2 1/2 hours of fighting on Sept 3rd. When I talked to a few other guys who went into panjwayi, they said they went through 8 to 10. The need is there.
Also, Dump-pouches are very usefull. I used mine for shotgun shells and empty mags. (not at the same time). When I showed off my Afghan pics to the higher-ups in my home unit (RHFC) they showed a great deal of interest in the acquisition of dump-pouches for the troops, as well as training on how to use them effectively.
This is the gear I carried into Panjwayi.
Chest rigs are worth (in my oppinion) every dime. Same with verticle foregrips.
During work up, we argued that we would rather have rigs that can carry at least 10 full mags up front and accessable (this one carries 12 up and 4 more in a detatchable bottom piece) and the answer we got was "you will never have or need 10 mags".. I had 15 mags and I used 4 in 2 1/2 hours of fighting on Sept 3rd. When I talked to a few other guys who went into panjwayi, they said they went through 8 to 10. The need is there.
Also, Dump-pouches are very usefull. I used mine for shotgun shells and empty mags. (not at the same time). When I showed off my Afghan pics to the higher-ups in my home unit (RHFC) they showed a great deal of interest in the acquisition of dump-pouches for the troops, as well as training on how to use them effectively.
RHFC_piper
Sr. Member
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Haggis said:
Well... to continue the encouragement; the CO of my unit has hinted that he wants to meet with our deployed troops (10 of them) when he returns to discuss changes in unit training. He is also in Kandahar right now.
It seems asthough new TTPs and info from AAR (even right on the battlefield) are being considered greatly. Perhaps changes will be made for the better... and all it takes is major combat.
ArmyRick
Army.ca Veteran
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Who ever says you are not going to go through 5-10 mags that fast is not clued into the concept of truly winning the fire fight.
I finally was able to watch the videos on youtube.com and I am in the firm beleif that kit needs to be built around the infantry soldiers needs first. I beleive we should change and upgrade the TAC vest now before we get to far along in that project.
I finally was able to watch the videos on youtube.com and I am in the firm beleif that kit needs to be built around the infantry soldiers needs first. I beleive we should change and upgrade the TAC vest now before we get to far along in that project.
daftandbarmy
Army.ca Dinosaur
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Agreed, but don't hold your breath!
