Xeric, you are one of the guys here I can have a conversation with. Thank you.
i am honored. So, Thank You.
Was there an "itchy feeling" on the back of the battle commanders' necks during this engagement? At first, probably not. After some period of time, I think it's likely. But a battle that is not ordinary, not standard Taliban fare, does not by itself indicate a cease fire or withdrawal. You'd need more data, and at this point, what data they had is sketchy.
^^ Yeah i am happy that you got my point. i couldnt have put it as clearly as you have done.
So, on topic. See, you self contradict yourself when you first say that
"You'd need more data, and at this point, what data they had is sketchy" and then you also boast about your precision by saying that:
there isn't a force in the world that can match the USA for precision.
How can one be Accurate without being Aware?
Now, one may argue that 'Precision' and
'Battlefield Awareness' are two different things, but then you have to agree with me because that's not the case.
One cannnot be
'precise and accurate' without being
'Aware (of his surroundings)'. Because if these two things are not played
together, it would imply into something like firing a TOW Missile while being blindfolded.
Similarly i would call it CRIMINAL to let a soldier, let's say operate PGMs while he doesnt even know his location on the map or for that matter he's not sure what or
who he is going to shoot at!
It's like handing over a super computer to some guy whose 'day job' is searching for online ****.
I'm not quite sure where you are going with this. Standard for any such contact is locate,
identify, and engage until neutralized or there is simply nothing left to engage. Obviously the elephant in the room is identify. The communications between Pakistan and the U.S. was inaccurate, lacking, or both.
As for the firepower, or "overkill", there isn't a force in the world that can match the USA for precision. Forum readers right now are choking, laughing, or both, but it is the truth. What other country takes its standard iron bombs and ignores them, using instead a 100 kilo JDAM bomb or the new 20 kilo 1 meter long
Griffin guided air to ground missile by Raytheon to be excellent due to the precision guidance?
Again, i will reiterate my previous point - we all know that the US masters in employment of
'Shock and awe Doctrine' or 'Rapid Dominance Doctrine', but then before you decided to employ this 'Shock and Awe' against Pakistani posts on Nov 26 there were certain
rules that should have been kept in mind before going for the kill.
What are those rules, here let me explain it to the readers (i am sure you it must be known to you):
'Shock and Awe Doctrine ' means;
"the use of overwhelming power (which you did), dominant battlefield awareness (which you surely lacked!), dominant maneuvers (ofcourse), and spectacular displays of force (whom am i kidding? Gunships, G/A aircarfts, massive firepower etc) to paralyze an adversary's perception of the battlefield and destroy its will to fight".
So as we can see from the above definition,
Battlefield Awareness is crucial (and probably also a prerequisite) before one can even think of unfolding his (so dearly mastered) 'Shock and Awe' campaign, and thus my perpetual question;
"Why was this IMPORTANT factor missed out during this particular operation (and i am not even taking into account any previous blue over blue incidents of the US military)?" Was it deliberate or mere incompetence? Pakistanis need an answer!
BTW if anyone missed, Battlefield Awareness means having the capability to have
near-perfect knowledge and information of the battlefield' - to a layman this would mean, atleast knowing
whom you going to 'duck shoot' during an operation.
And also as;
Battlefield awareness requires three information technologies: collection, fusion, and dissemination of real-time actionable information to a shooter. Rapid Dominance (the kind of employed on Nov 26 against Pakistani posts) requires an unprecedented level of real-time information collection that will be provided by sensor systems such as space platforms, UAVs, unattended ground sensors, and advanced manned reconnaissance platforms (so that both the commander enjoying his coffee and the shooter on ground can modify their plans if they find a problem during the engagements of the target - the problem, the kind kind of which was there when you were engaging our posts on Nov 26).
And hence i am back to my first point; the importance of passage of
feedback to the commanders (a form of battlefield awareness) which in turn should make the battle commander have that 'itchy feeling behind his neck' thus enabling him to stop shooting Pakistanis for consecutive 90 minutes!
Mind it, these are not my thoughts alone, but also said by Mr Harlan K. Ullman and Mr James P. Wade in their paper written for
Command and Control Research Program (CCRP). CCRP is a program for assisting the US DoD in understanding of the national security implications of the Information Age;
Any
Intelligent Dynamic Planning is totally based on based upon
feedback and new information received from the battlefield so that the plans could be modified and mistakes rectified ASAP before it's too late.
http://www.dodccrp.org/files/Ullman_Shock.pdf
Both the Spectre Gunship and the Apache have like performance. Some might say it's "overkill" vs. troops with only machine guns, but those that do still think romantic thoughts of battle. That sort of thought process - "not a fair fight" - are naive. When the enemy presents himself, and you can attack with impunity with stand-off weapons, you do so. You don't leave your tank behind if the enemy has none to make it "honorable or fair." You know this.
You need to stop this, you know i have never said anything regarding 'the Nov 26 episode being
unfair'.
Do you believe we'd be in Afghanistan at this moment if those idiots hadn't hijacked those four Boeing airliners and did what they did?
Annnddd.... this brings me back to Sun Tzu, Harts and Clausewitz... There is a reason you and me are taught military history and it was this reason that i made a reference to it in my previous post;
Ofcourse you'd not be in Afghanistan if 9/11 didnt have happened, but then one of the (probable) reason behind your anxiousness to enter Afg and kill the bad guys was, because G. Bush (and probably your generals of that time) didnt read Liddle Hart's "Indirect Approach" of
'Superior Stratagem', neither did they know of its relation to Clausewitz's "Total/Absolute War". Therefore you guys relied merely on the '
Absoluteness and
Totalness of War' (ref my previous post#709) - and it is therefore the US
still needs to look into he following questions (which they should have done well before jumping the gun into Afg);
-whose funding the terrorists,
-why these terrorists are so MAD at you,
-why these terrorists did what they did on 9/11,
-and (if you have time), find out why still after more than 10 years, you guys failed to achieve victory in Afg,
In short, Clausewitiz, Hart and others let you understand that acting like a MAD ELEPHANT running amok and crushing people (including your Allies - Nov 26) to their deaths, all over the world ('Nam, Iraq, Afg and counting) is not what makes you superior, respectful and praiseworthy.
But this is a separate debate for a separate thread,so i'll stop here.
"US is shyt-slinged by every weak Nation?" --> meaning, "We hate the USA when they use stuff like JDAM, thermal night vision, F-15E's and F-117's, and Spectre gunships, because we don't have any counter to those lethal platforms? Or are those sentiments aimed at U.S. foreign policy in general? Both?
Like i said earlier, though i am
jealous of the US being superior to us in technology, this doesnt necessarily means that i consider it unfair when we get beaten by you while we just didnt have the resources to counter it. War is war, nothing and everything is fair in it.
Question: Would Pakistan's reaction (murderers and butchers) be the same if Pakistani soldiers had shot the AC-130 and 2 Apaches down with MANPADs? Let's say there are 24 Pakistani KIA, but also 35 U.S. Airmen and 3 aircraft downed... would that change the national reaction, make the whole incident more palatable? But it wouldn't change the fact that 24 soldiers won't be going home.
i am glad you asked this.
i am not sure about the situation you have painted above, but i am sure our National sentiments would have been different (less emotional and probably more palatable also) if the same 24 Pakistanis soldiers would have been killed by indian forces (or for that matter any other "enemy") and not by 'allies/friends', our people see this incident as if the US has back stabbed us - may be now you can see the difference and understand the reasons behind our emotional outburst.
On one side we (the military) get blamed by Pakistani (and the indian trolls) for getting paid by the US to kill our 'own' nationals/citizens (Pakistani people think that we have been
hired by you guys to do your dirty work) and then all of a sudden you do Nov 26, and then you complain regarding the average Pakistani getting mad at you? Strange!
Anywaz yes, the situation would probably have been different if we had dealt with the intruders on Nov 26 the way we are supposed to deal with any 'external threat/enemy'. The whole emotional outspark is primarily because of you guys taking advantage of our affiliation with America and ruthlessly killing our men for more than 90 minutes and despite all the exercise of sharing the coord/intelligence, liaison officers, hotlines etc, still failing to stop the attack and then displaying a blatant refusal to offer an apology - atleast that's how an average Pakistani thinks.
Come now - both Desert Storm, the invasion of Iraq, and the initial stages of the Afghanistan campaign, all demostrated the epitome of the military arts, using warfighting methodologies that make Hart or anybody else seem like schoolchildren by comparison. The speed, precision, and yes lack of destruction have never before been seen in modern war.
Please Read about
Col. John Boyd and his theories on war - Sun Tzu couldn't tie that guy's shoes.
The New American Way of War
And that's why
Captain David B Snodgrass, US Army has so vigorously contested
THE RELEVANCE OF MILITARY HISTORY TO THE TEACHING OF MODERN WARFARE. Read it, it's written by an American solider.
Capt Snodgrass probably knew what rejecting Hart, Clausewitz and their ilks (Saner warfare) would do to the US military (Mad Elephant Warfare), and therefore wrote the above research paper.
Oh come on, Chogy, i am already fed up of this RMA (Revolution in Military Affairs) stuff. i know how your
7 x Stryker Brigades (Net Centric Warfare) enabled were employed in Iraq and what message Desert Storm conveyed to the world - the US military is the world leader in RMA, so there's no need to quote wikipedia.
i exactly know who Boyd is. i also know that how his OODA Loop model was developed during the Korean War. i have my own study of how according to Boyd, decision-making occurs in a recurring cycle of observe-orient-decide-act and blah, blah..(dont stimulate my RMA nerve, i 'll ruin this thread with it's single lecture
)
And i am also quite clear on Network Centric Forces (the one that employ the OODA Loop) and its various levels (Network Controlled Warfare Capability, Network Enabled Capability, Network Assisted Warfare Capability), and i am saying all this without even opening the links you have provided.
So let's stop teaching each other and concentrate on the issue at hand - why on the God's earth did American forces failed to make use of the above quoted technologies and techniques (strategies) in its
essence and did what they did on Nov 26, and then having knowing it now, why dont they feel like apologizing?
I understand about 10% of what Boyd used to teach in detail. The man was an immensely deep thinker who stepped on a lot of shoes, and thus is not famous. He also has a dedicated display in the U.S. Marine Corps School of Land Warfare. His warfighting strategems were what allowed General Franks to invade Iraq in 2003 with less than 1/2 of the manpower that Schwartzkopf had in Desert Storm. And those 2003 forces were rolling tanks through Baghdad while the Iraqi generals were insisting they were winning the fight.
Summary -- Victories with a miniscule (by comparison to past campaigns) cost.
The current conflict is so far from "total war" it's not comparable. To do so is to ignore reality.
Both of these I have already addressed. I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion you did. U.S. maneuvering and warfare is based primarily upon Boyd's matured warfighting vision.
And that's why;
- i stressed upon the importance of 'Battlefield Awareness' (and the reasons why it is dangerous to allow 'those who are not qualified' to play with weapons).
- i implored you to read Captain David B Snodgrass' paper (link quoted above)
- the militaries world over still take into account the theories of guys like Sun Tzu, Moltke, Hart etc, ofcourse
in addition to Col Boyd (the guy was a genius, modern warfare is indebted to him).
Because if this hadn't been the case they wouldnt have said this:
You know guns dont kill people, stupid mother******s with guns kill people. (i hope Chogy will take no offence and Mods please, it's just a quote, so take it as such).