Pakistani artillery vs Terror camps in Afghanistan.

[Hakikat ve Hikmet]

I agree .. pakistan must keep.up the offensive ... low.level but sustained... it keeps morale up.. it keeps casualities down... this is a 5th gen war... not for territory but for perception..
We.need to be perceived ti be strong and offensive

I ve been advocating decapitating strikes in afghanistan for 6 months... i m still strong believer in that

Calculations are simple. 1 terrorist can kill 100 civilians, but if 100 soldiers take the hit 1000 terrorists die. Nobody's resources are inexhaustible. For instance, India has kept >50% of her folks below poverty level to teach Pak a lesson. Let it be dead costly for them too....

 

[mrrehan]

Gun battery placed in battlefield (whether on border) always has a security belt around it. they are not left un-attended to be targeted easily by enemy infantry. Mortars can be placed at border for retaliatory fire if according to your scenario insurgents do creep up near the posts. FC can also use mortars to give covering fire.

Unless a camp or fixed target is placed behind a crest, Howitzers are very effective.
In any case ,the howitzers will be targeting fixed positions, not individuals.

Can't we use high altitude drone equipped with thermal imagery of boarder monitoring, and then we can neutralize any intrusion with 155 mm howitzer. But we have to monitor boarder 24/7.

 

[BHarwana]

Can't we use drone equipped with thermal imagery of boarder monitoring, and then we can neutralize any intrusion with 155 mm howitzer. But we have to monitor boarder 24/7.

That can be done with drones. and this can be done continuously.

 

[SQ8]

@Oscar Guys on the ground, especially Police Intelligence, who for all their poor reputation, are actually very good, have been saying that the main source of attackers is Afghanistan. Before 2014 the main source was N Waziristan. Even back then many "liberal" people were arguing against the operation saying stuff like "the real support is in the cities".

True, but irrelevant. You can find sympathetic and disaffected people everywhere. If the attackers were inclined to attack Argentina they would be able to find local support. You need to destroy the pipeline of attackers, a gun is useless without ammunition:

Afghanistan is the matchstick
But we still have massive flammable material

I am more fearful of Isis inspiring young minds than anything else

That is not in Afghanistan but online, liberals like bhensa like to spout a lot but in the end run like scattered roaches when we get them; they have no capacity for a fight and create their content out of a false sense of moral superiority

But the extremist element not just claims moral and spiritual superiority, they aim to kill anyone who opposes them

These ideas and elements we need to root out

At the end
A girl in capris spouting blasphemous nonsense is harmless to the state itself and only a troublemaker to society

She is not likely to slit someone's throats or blow herself up

 

[mrrehan]

This is a rough sketch made by me to try and understand why artillery backed by the intelligence assets is enough to deal with JuAh, TTP, ISIS infrastructure in Afghanistan.

Location : Nurestan, Kunar, Nangarhar.
Disclaimer : The sketch only represents pivots. Axis of fire can vary.
Objective : To create a buffer zone, target camps, ammunition dumps, tunnels and hideouts used to wait for a point of entry into Pakistan to launch attacks.

Red = 155mm Howitzer max range estimate.
Blue = A-100 MBRL max range estimate (Not deployed but option is available)
122mm MBRL range would be identical to the Red.

View attachment 379389

Can't we use high altitude drone equipped with thermal imagery of boarder monitoring, and then we can neutralize any intrusion with 155 mm howitzer. But we have to monitor boarder 24/7.

 

[sparten]

Being a diverse highly heterogeneous society means we are going to have vehement disagreements. Which have the potential to become ugly.
The good thing is that the State is finally waking up to what you are saying, earlier till at least 2009 our response has always been to coddle these extremists and punish and crackdown on the lefties.

 

[BHarwana]

Can't we use high altitude drone equipped with thermal imagery of boarder monitoring, and then we can neutralize any intrusion with 155 mm howitzer. But we have to monitor boarder 24/7.

This can be done. We can monitor Pak Afghan border 24/7 cheaply with mid altitude drones and high altitude drones 24/7.

 

[sparten]

Drone are being used for observation at all times. Any movement on the border is punished at once.

 

[Neutron]

Defensive, static and predictable solution cannot give you permanent victory in this warfare. Artillery is ineffective in mountainous terrain due to crest problem and numerous dead grounds inside enemy terrain. Artillery cannot engage targets effectively. You can only use artillery as support weapon. Artillery is supporting arm and i dont think it can alone prevent any cross border terrorism. Guerrilla ( a member of a small independent group taking part in irregular fighting, typically against larger regular forces ) warfare can effectively be fought with the tactics of guerrilla warfare. Use similar tactics of raid and ambushes on Terrorist inside Afghanistan as they are using against us. In my opinion conventional tactics and strategy to encounter sub conventional or guerrilla warfare is stupidity.
My suggestions
1. Fight them in Irregular Fashion
2. Organize small independent raid and ambush parties all across the durrand line.
3. Select member of these regular raid and ambush parties from local or nearest towns.
4. Give them hight tech wepon ammo like SSG.
5. Give them perks and privileges better than SSG and regular army.
6. Post them permanently in same local areas so that they can make best use of knowledge about ground and terrain.
7. Give them advance specialized training of sniping , hunting and survival.
8. Task them to infiltrate and hunt terrorist inside Afghanistan
9. Give them full initiative to search , select and plan for the operations.
10. To avoid protest of Afghan government on initial stages keep them as a covert force and launch these operations as covert operations.
11. Raids and ambushes of this covert force on terrorist hideouts should be three times more than terrorist incident in Pakistan.
12. This is offensive strategy to deal with them.

@Horus

 

[F86 Saber]

Human movement is dynamic, in a ground prespective. It is always an incidental scoop.

Artillery is not at all effective against inhabiting a target, you can achieve a dispersal effect but you can never inhabit your enemy by a purely artillery strike.

To effectly call an artillery strike, 3 things you will need to consider

Target Designation - Which target you want to bomb
Adjustment - To correct the setting for your artillery piece
Damage Assessment - To see the effectiveness of your artillery strike.

Now, in a perfect world, you will want to have a source that can continue feeding you target infomation. Be that an RSTA drone or a SF Sniper team. They can be used to call target, and wait on scene until the splash.

Then you would want to have Forward Observer over your target area so they can provide your gun detail and how to hit your target.

And after the bombardment is over, you will want to get to that place and investigate the effectiveness of the bombardment.

But to do all these, unless you are talking about bombing one or two target along the whole line, you would need a lot of resource just to know you are up in the queue. If you have 40 targets, you will have to have 40 teams on the ground, and so on. Which is as good as having invade afghanistan yourselves.

If you don't provide all these, then you may as well just fire your gun anywhere, hope and pray that they hit something, which is worse than not sending any round over. Artillery strike without RSTA is nothing more than a show, you may as well sending fireworks over the border.

You are quite right, so the fact that our artillery shelling did effectively take out two main JuA leaders means something doesn't it?

1. TTP and JuA will just move their double and single beds away from artly range.
2. They are not regular army to be suppressed by artly.
3. They will move training centers further deep out of artly range.
4. Their operations will not be disrupted if they move inside afg urban areas. They are looking to send human bombers few times a year and that will be enough to cause fear and helplessness all across Pakistan. Presumably they are working in cohot with NDS, Afg Govt, and RAW, they can sufficiently hide activities.

Answer in to use PAF whenever they are sightes
Border management
Provinces to step up Police
Intel coordination
Citizens to be taught telltale signs of recognising a suicide bombers.

Like @Horus @Oscar said, artillery strikes serve the purpose of creating a buffer zone, i.e making sure the terrorists training camps are far enough from our border. Once they are pushed back, the buffer zone will be guarded by drones and checkposts who will be ordered to kill anyone coming in the area indiscriminately. Using airstrikes and admission of troops on ground will be a declaration of war and openly attacking Afghanistan has a lot of drawback which have been discussed many times here.

Afghanistan is the matchstick
But we still have massive flammable material

I am more fearful of Isis inspiring young minds than anything else

That is not in Afghanistan but online, liberals like bhensa like to spout a lot but in the end run like scattered roaches when we get them; they have no capacity for a fight and create their content out of a false sense of moral superiority

But the extremist element not just claims moral and spiritual superiority, they aim to kill anyone who opposes them

These ideas and elements we need to root out

At the end
A girl in capris spouting blasphemous nonsense is harmless to the state itself and only a troublemaker to society

She is not likely to slit someone's throats or blow herself up

Enter operation Rid-Al-Fasad. Like i said, if the operation is conducted in it's true sense i.e if army is serious in getting rid of the "Fasad", it will be a nightmare for a lot of Mullahs and some political leaders.

The 2nd thing we need to do is to ensure financial stability and proper grooming of the Madrassa students. As it is, the millions of Madrassah students who graduate every year are extremely vulnerable to brainwashes because a) they have knowledge but no understanding of Islam b) they have no skills and no proper education so it is impossible for them to get jobs, they don't have a place in the society hence nothing to live for.
Govt. should ensure that all Madrassas either provide conventional education or work on teaching some kind of skills to their students so that they can be useful for the society and have something to live for.

 

[jhungary]

You are quite right, so the fact that our artillery shelling did effectively take out two main JuA leaders means something doesn't it?

I am sensing mockery and sacarasm tone.

Well, in the Battle of Saipan. The General incharge of the whole Japanese Defence were killed in the initial bombardment called by chance. Does that mean artillery won the whole invasion for the Allied Force (mainly American) on the Battle of Saipan

People do die in artillery strike, the problem is, yes, you killed 2. How many rounds you expanded on these 2 and how many more you need to kill to effectively render the whole JuA organisation combat ineffective? You can wait and see how many more Arty round you can drop and that does not mean anything if people, important or not, were killed here and there.

Let alone those 2 can be replaced, and will be replaced. You are saying to render the whole organisation at least ineffective to rage war or insurgency, thus creating a buffer zone, killing 2 leader does not mean anything. Nor would it dilute, diverage or detract the efficiency for them to raise an insurgency on your soil. What you need is a back breaking offence, not a pin strike.

 

[F86 Saber]

I am sensing mockery and sacarasm tone.

Well, in the Battle of Saipan. The General incharge of the whole Japanese Defence were killed in the initial bombardment called by chance. Does that mean artillery won the whole invasion for the Allied Force (mainly American) on the Battle of Saipan

People do die in artillery strike, the problem is, yes, you killed 2. How many rounds you expanded on these 2 and how many more you need to kill to effectively render the whole JuA organisation combat ineffective? You can wait and see how many more Arty round you can drop and that does not mean anything if people, important or not, were killed here and there.

Let alone those 2 can be replaced, and will be replaced.

No, what i meant to say was that Pakistan Army Think Tank are not stupid, do you think they don't know what you wrote about effectiveness of artillery fire? If JuA leaders were taken out in Artillery fire it just shows that it was not a "Fire and Hope" operation. Lets just leave it at that....

 

[MarcsPakistan]

My question is that "All the terrorists camps are located as mentioned in photo above or there are more other camps located in any other areas which are not mentioned in the Photo ?"

 

[maximuswarrior]

Finally people waking up to the Afghan nexus. All good suggestions which require careful thought. The Pakistanis have for too long naively hoped for an improvement in relations with Afghanistan. It hasn't happened and frankly won't happen. Pakistan needs to make work of securing the border, infiltrating and dismantling terror factories as well as repatriating Afghan refugees. Negligence on any task will be very costly.

 

[jhungary]

No, what i meant to say was that Pakistan Army Think Tank are not stupid, do you think they don't know what you wrote about effectiveness of artillery fire? If JuA leaders were taken out in Artillery fire it just shows that it was not a "Fire and Hope" operation. Lets just leave it at that....

It's always about effectiveless.

As I said, even if you can send a DET team as well as a RSTA team over to the target, call in strike and access damage, it won't do much in the big picture. Because for every one of those guys you killed, they would have redundant. For precision strike to work in COIN, you need to deal a large chunk of damage in one go, you need to eliminate at least 50-75% of high echelon member of an organisation at the same time in order to inhabit the groups movement.

To do that, you will need to launch a wide area strike, be it conventional or precision. Because if you can't, you may be able to kill one, two or ten leader, but that would not deal any damage on their warfighting capability.

The term fire and hope mean you fire and hope it got someone good (like a HPT), even if you know the areea you are targetting is a known Terrorist Camp, otherwise, location can change, and they will be doing business as usual.