Operation Cobra's Anger

[Awesome]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/05/world/asia/05kabul.html

Marines Lead Offensive to Secure Southern Afghan Town

By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
Published: December 4, 2009

KABUL, Afghanistan — In the first major military operation since President Obama’s call this week for a troop escalation, about 1,000 United States Marines and Afghan and British forces swept into a rugged valley in southern Afghanistan in an effort to finally secure what was once a bustling village but what years of fighting have turned into a ghost town.

Yet the offensive in the village of Now Zad in Helmand Province could prove a harbinger of a wider and more significant effort in Helmand, a Taliban stronghold whose huge opium crop provides a large portion of the insurgency’s financing.

After a 10,000-strong Marine brigade began operations throughout Helmand this summer, commanders found that they had enough American and Afghan troops to take control of only limited areas. In many places Taliban fighters simply pulled back to safe havens, undermining the largest Marine operation since the 2004 invasion of Falluja, Iraq.

Now, commanders are preparing to assault Taliban sanctuaries in Helmand, relying on an American force in the province that is expected to nearly double next year as part of Mr. Obama’s decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan.

Journalists who accompanied the Marine-led offensive into Now Zad on Friday reported no American, British or Afghan military deaths but said several Taliban fighters had been killed. The offensive included troops carried to the battlefield by helicopters and by V-22 Osprey aircraft.

A reporter from ABC News in Now Zad reported that the commander of the operation, Lt. Col. Martin Wetterauer, said that Marines had faced little initial opposition and that three insurgents had been killed after they were spotted burying bombs in a road.

In Now Zad, American and British forces have fought a bloody and stalemated battle against the Taliban for three years.

But the most fearsome Taliban sanctuary in Helmand is believed to be in Marja, a central town that Marine officers have said may contain more than 1,000 fighters. In July, shopkeepers interviewed in nearby Nawa, which had just been occupied by a Marine battalion, estimated that 300 to 600 Taliban fighters from Nawa alone had fled to Marja.

Another sanctuary and major smuggling hub, Baramcha, lies on the border with Pakistan, about 70 miles south of the closest regular Marine unit.

---------- Post added at 01:40 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:39 PM ----------

'Cobra's Anger' making progress, say US Marines

'Cobra's Anger' making progress, say US Marines
Sat, 05 Dec 2009 14:36:42 GMT

US Marines are pressing into a remote militant stronghold in the troubled Helmand province on the second day of a major offensive in southern Afghanistan.

The advancing Marines claim they killed several militants and seized bombs and weapons in the first day of the operation.

About 1,000 US soldiers have reportedly launched fierce land and air assaults on alleged militant communication routs and supply lines in Now Zad district.

The raids, codenamed 'Cobra's Anger,' began in the troubled area on Friday. British troopers as well as Afghan police and military are also taking part in the mission.

The operation is the first major operation since US President Barack Obama ordered the deployment of some 30,000 more American troops to Afghanistan and said that his forces would start a partial withdrawal in July 2011.

Moreover, NATO allies have committed 7,000 more troops the almost nine-year-old war in Afghanistan.

In July, the Marines launched their biggest offensive in the war-torn country, which resulted in the seizure of the lower Helmand River valley.

The war-ravaged country is grappling with unprecedented violence despite the presence of around 110,000 American and other foreign soldiers.

 

[Awesome]

Bell Helicopter's V-22 makes combat debut in Afghanistan | Local News | Star-Telegram.com

Bell Helicopter's V-22 makes combat debut in Afghanistan

BY JAY PRICE
McClatchy Newspapers

CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan — The Marines are hoping to resuscitate the image of the MV-22 Osprey in Afghanistan, where the aircraft made its debut into major combat on Friday.

The Osprey, which can take off and land like a helicopter but fly like a fixed-wing plane, is being put to the test in an operation dubbed Cobra’s Anger — which began Friday in Helmand Province and is the first major operation in Afghanistan since President Barack Obama announced that the U.S. was sending more troops.

The Osprey is built by Boeing Co. and Bell Helicopter. Bell makes components for the Osprey in Fort Worth and assembles the aircraft in Amarillo.

The Osprey suffered through a star-crossed development period that took more than 20 years and included several fatal crashes and huge cost overruns. After production models entered service in Iraq in 2007, the complicated aircraft was panned by the Government Accounting Office and critics in Congress.

In a report released June 23, the GAO said that it wasn’t worth the cost and questioned its ability to fly at high altitudes and to carry the needed number of troops with their gear.

At a hearing on the day the report was released, Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., said: "It has problems in hot weather, it has problems in cold weather, it has problems with sand, it has problems with high altitude, and it has restricted maneuverability. The list of what the Osprey can’t do is longer than the list of what it can do."

The Marines countered that the aircraft can do extraordinary things because of its speed and range, and that it does better at higher altitudes than critics say.

Afghanistan, with its great distances and challenging terrain — and more likelihood that the aircraft will face combat — could start to clarify whether the Marines are right and the MV-22 is worth the cost, now more than $120 million each.

"If it saves lives or somehow wins a battle, maybe people will say that it is," said Richard Whittle, author of the upcoming book The Dream Machine: The Untold History of the Notorious V-22 Osprey.

Ten Ospreys arrived about a month ago and are being flown by Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 261 (VMM-261) of Marine Corps Air Station New River in North Carolina. They officially went operational last week.

If this deployment goes well, it could start to repair the Osprey’s tarnished image. The aircraft hasn’t suffered a fatal crash since 2000, and the Marines think they’re starting to get a handle on the maintenance problems, which in many cases involved shortages of relatively minor parts such as connectors and wiring insulation that had been expected to last longer and therefore weren’t stockpiled.

"With the right parts, these planes will be as reliable as anything out there," said Gunnery Sgt. Jake Korkian, 36, of Fort Worth, who has worked with the Osprey program since 1996 and is in charge of the squadron’s maintenance of the airframe, hydraulics and other systems.

Among the parts that have to be replaced more often than expected are certain hydraulic lines — which on the Osprey are built of light but expensive and brittle titanium — and clamps for them.

"It’s just nuisance stuff, like bushings," Korkian said. "It’s nothing major, it’s just that these guys don’t know what to stock, so you either waste money and build up a stock of stuff you don’t need, or you let the supply system learn what it needs, and that’s what it’s doing right now.

"The next unit that comes out here won’t have as many problems as us, and the unit that comes after that won’t have as many problems as them."

In Afghanistan, where required flying distances can be much greater than Iraq, the additional speed and range the Osprey offers will boost what the Marines and other units can do.

For one thing, it will allow them to react to information about the enemy much quicker. The aircraft is so fast, in fact, that it can sometimes make two trips back and forth in the time it takes a helicopter to make one trip.

 

[Awesome]

Militants killed, detained in new Afghan-US military operation : Asia World

Kabul Four Taliban militants were killed and two detained in a combined US-Afghan military operation in southern Afghanistan, the defence ministry said Saturday. The operation, dubbed Qhareh Cobra (Cobras Anger) began in the Nawzad district of Helmand province on Friday when 900 US marines and 150 Afghan police and soldiers conduced an air and ground push to drive the militants from the region's second biggest city.

"So far as a result of the operation four militants were killed and two were detained," the defence ministry said in a statement. The operation in the province, where some 9,000 British soldiers are also stationed, is scheduled to last for four days, it said.

The military assault happened on the same day when some 20 NATO countries pledged an extra 7,000 military personnel for Afghanistan and three days after US President Barack Obama ordered 30,000 additional soldiers to top the 68,000 US troops already stationed in the country.

With the extra NATO and US forces, there will be around 150,000 international troops in Afghanistan by next summer, the largest foreign military presence since the ouster of the Taliban regime in late 2001.
Obama also set summer 2011 as the start date for US forces withdrawal from Afghanistan, while other NATO countries are expected to discuss the exit plan in a conference in London next month.

The Western leaders have said that they would accelerate the training of Afghan forces in order for them to take over the security responsibility for their country.
Fridays operation is part of a plan by the NATO commander in Afghanistan, US General Stanley McChrystal, to shift the forces from remote outposts to more populated areas to provide security for the people and connect local citizens with their central government.

A majority of the additional US troops are reportedly expected to be deployed in restive southern provinces, where Taliban are most active.

---------- Post added at 01:46 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:46 PM ----------

The Associated Press: US service member killed in eastern Afghanistan

US service member killed in eastern Afghanistan
By HEIDI VOGT (AP) – 1 day ago
KABUL — A U.S. service member was killed by a bomb planted in eastern Afghanistan, NATO said Sunday.
The American died Saturday while on foot patrol, Sgt. Angela Eggman said. She did not provide further details.
Meanwhile, a NATO airstrike early Sunday killed six militants who were planting bombs along a road in eastern Laghman province, U.S. military spokesman Col. Wayne Shanks said.
In southern Afghanistan, about 1,000 U.S. Marines and 150 Afghan troops continued an operation to disrupt Taliban supply and communications lines in the strategic Now Zad Valley of Helmand province.
Marine spokesman Maj. William Pelletier said Sunday that clearing operations yielded a few weapons caches and troops engaged insurgents around Changowlak, just north of Now Zad, in an area known as a Taliban stronghold.
Shanks said the Now Zad push was one of many operations being carried out in Afghanistan, rather than a major offensive. "We have 22 similar operations ongoing throughout the country," he said.
No Afghan or U.S. casualties have occurred since the operation began Friday. The Afghan Defense Ministry reported over the weekend that at least seven Taliban fighters had been killed and troops had confiscated explosives and weapons.
Associated Press writer Amir Shah contributed to this report in Kabul.
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

 

[Awesome]

US Marines have upper hand in lawless Now Zad Afghanistan : Jackson NJ Regional Opinions News Reviews – Jackson Howell Freehold Lakewood Toms River

WASHINGTON, Dec. 11, 2009 – A battalion of Marines in southern Afghanistan now has the upper hand in a city they believed to be a Taliban stronghold, a senior Marine Corps officer in Helmand province said today.
For many months, Now Zad, the province’s second-largest city, was occupied by the Taliban. The city was almost a ghost town, except for the militants who forced residents to abandon their homes.
There’s been no Afghan army, police or even government represented there for months, with the exception of one Marine company — about 100 infantrymen — in a small corner of the city, Marine Corps Col. Randy Newman told reporters today from his Helmand base camp.
Newman, who commands Marine Regimental Combat Team 7, and his unit took operational responsibility in the region in late October. He’s now overseeing a Marine offensive, which is dubbed Operation Cobra’s Anger, to regain stability in Now Zad. The mission kicked off Dec. 1, shortly after President Barack Obama announced his order to send 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan.
The timing was a coincidence, Newman said, noting that the Now Zad operation is something coalition forces were planning to do long before the president’s decision.
“Taking Now Zad and giving it back to the Afghan people is something we’ve been looking at doing for a long time here,” Newman told the Washington Post. “Now Zad was something we would’ve done whether more forces were coming or not. One company of Marines held a corner of the city, but in front of them was an area that was impassable, unusable and uninhabitable by everyone. So we’ve looked at that for a long time.”
More than 900 Marines and roughly 150 Afghan troops pushed through the city, clearing every section and building of militants. Most of the militants fled or were captured or killed. As of today, the Marines have encountered “a few, but not many” enemy fighters, Newman said.
“Initially we’ve seen success,” he said in the Washington Post interview. “We’ve been able to achieve our objectives, which was to get in there and assume some security positions to allow us to provide a security bubble around the city.”
Newman didn’t talk about the casualties on either side, but said much clearing, the initial phase, is left to be done to locate all of the enemy munitions and explosives hidden throughout the city.
“[Marines] still have a great deal of clearing to do,” he said. Once the Marines are comfortable with conditions there, they’ll “begin to allow Afghans back into certain portions of the city, allow them to get back into their markets and allow their government representatives to come back to that area,” he added.
Early success in Cobra’s Anger is an important victory for U.S. forces and the Afghan people, Newman said. Not only will Now Zad residents be able to return soon, but the operation also struck a significant blow to extremist operations in the city, province and possibly the country, he said.
Too many weapons and explosives have been found so far for Newman to believe the focus of the Taliban stronghold there was focused on just the city, he said. In one compound alone, Marines found 80 pressure plates used to set off homemade bombs, 30 gallons of homemade liquid explosives and a horde of other weapons.
Every place coalition forces operate in Afghanistan is fueled by militant strongholds and cells like Now Zad, he said.
“When you look at [the Taliban operation] in Now Zad, all of that [weapons and fighters] would’ve gone somewhere, and it certainly wouldn’t have remained in Now Zad,” Newman explained. “It was a safe haven for Taliban where they could, at will, develop [and] distribute sources of instability, both material and in the human sense.
“They could train fighters there, they could build explosives there, and they could export that throughout the rest of the province,” he continued. “In addition, they were denying that city to the Afghan people. For those… , we decided to put an end to that and change that dynamic.”
It’s difficult to estimate how long it will take and how many of the displaced residents will return, Newman said, while adding that he’s pleased with the initial phase of the operation.
Marines there will now focus on continuing their security efforts in hopes to build upon their success by re-establishing the local government and essential services and eventually transition full responsibility to the Afghans, Newman said.
“Our belief is that [if] we provide that security bubble, we show initial progress there and the Afghan government begins to show they’re going to make progress there, the people will have every reason to come back,” he said. “It’ll be a month or so before we can see exactly what kind of response we’ll have from the displaced population.”

 

[S-2]

Thanks for keeping an eye. I've been somewhat out of touch and this helps.

Found this of interest today from Noah Shachtman of Danger Room-

Can U.S. Troops Run McCrystal's "Soft-Power" Playbook- Danger Room Dec. 23, 2009

Are our operations calibrated appropriately and is there the obvious tolerance for local battlefield conditions at the highest command levels to allow committed ground force commanders adequate latitude to make adjustments to the formula as necessary?

Not all A.O.s are the same...

 

[lvwilly]

I know this is an old thread but I feel ok replying because it's a sticky. I was involved in operation khanjar in 2009 and left right before operation cobra's anger. Now Zad was one of the most violent places at that time and the city was nearly deserted. It was a fight every time we went up there. Dahaneh was secured right before the elections to provide a place for the locals to vote, not sure what the turnout was but couldn't have been much. From everything I've seen lately, the city has been repopulated with something like 10,000 residents and is relatively peaceful. I have friends there now who say it is nothing like it was before.