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Afghan fighting - the latest reports.

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unsuprising though with the amount of surplus stuff that is available do the discerning buyer.Did the US ever trace the stingers they gifted to the bearded followers of cammels?

Yeah....I was asked by a guy in 1990 whether he should buy a consignment from the Muj which had wound up on the global market. I suggested not to touch it with a bargepole. He seemed happy. Good lunch.

The point of my post was not the use of NVGs - but the location, Farah was very much US turf back in the day. I note however that it is all hearsay from AFG sources.

This come after early this year around 200 NATO soldiers, mainly Italians, have been deployed to Afghanistan's volatile western province of Farah after attempts by Taliban fighters in recent months to overrun its capital city.

The Pentagon recently said it would deploy some 300 U.S. Marines to the southern province of Helmand, where American forces engaged in heated combat until their mission ended in 2014.

Last year, Taliban fighters attempted to overrun several provincial capitals, from Kunduz and Baghlan in the north to Helmand in south and Farah in the west.

The U.S. still has some 8,400 troops in Afghanistan.

In early December, NATO and U.S. forces commander in Afghanistan Gen. John Nicholson said the government in Kabul directly controls about 64 percent of the country's population of 30 million, down slightly from 68 percent earlier in 2016.
 
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Yeah....I was asked by a guy in 1990 whether he should buy a consignment from the Muj which had wound up on the global market. I suggested not to touch it with a bargepole. He seemed happy. Good lunch.

The point of my post was not the use of NVGs - but the location, Farah was very much US turf back in the day. I note however that it is all hearsay from AFG sources.

This come after early this year around 200 NATO soldiers, mainly Italians, have been deployed to Afghanistan's volatile western province of Farah after attempts by Taliban fighters in recent months to overrun its capital city.

The Pentagon recently said it would deploy some 300 U.S. Marines to the southern province of Helmand, where American forces engaged in heated combat until their mission ended in 2014.

Last year, Taliban fighters attempted to overrun several provincial capitals, from Kunduz and Baghlan in the north to Helmand in south and Farah in the west.

The U.S. still has some 8,400 troops in Afghanistan.

In early December, NATO and U.S. forces commander in Afghanistan Gen. John Nicholson said the government in Kabul directly controls about 64 percent of the country's population of 30 million, down slightly from 68 percent earlier in 2016.

I did wonder if they were trying to represent NVG’s as some sort of wonder weapon which was the main reason for any kickings they have endured recently.
 
Being in Afghanistan "down sarf" I can tell you they don't need the NVG's as they tend to smash a lot of convoys that still transit that area in broad daylight.
 
Bit of (historic) background on CIA efforts to buy back Stingers:

Stingers, Stingers, Who's Got the Stingers?

" Stingers inevitably turned up for sale on the international black market. Alan Kuperman, author of a history of the Stinger transfer published in 1999 in Political Science Quarterly, puts the United Arab Emirates, Somalia, Iraq, Qatar, Zambia, and North Korea among the nations to acquire the Stinger. They are also believed to be in the arsenal of anti-government guerrillas in Turkey and Sri Lanka, as well as Hezbollah guerrillas operating in Lebanon. In 1990, two Colombian drug dealers were arrested in Tampa, Fla., after attempting to arrange the purchase of Stingers for the Medellín Cartel. The following year, U.S. Customs agents in Miami arrested four men and charged them with attempting to smuggle Stingers and other weapons to Yugoslavia.

In the early '90s, Stingers were used in a flurry of attacks against military and possibly civilian aircraft. The Russian press reported that Islamic rebels used a Stinger to shoot down an Su-25 fighter-bomber over Tajikistan, and a U.N. investigation fingered the U.S.-made missile in an attack that brought down an Italian supply plane. In 1993, Muslim separatists shot down a Georgian airliner, killing dozens of passengers aboard. Investigators never determined what type of missile was used, but shortly before the attack took place, separatist leaders had coyly hinted to reporters that they were the proud owners of a few Stingers.

To stem the damage, the CIA sought to buy back its missing Afghan Stingers. The agency allocated $65 million for the program—about twice the cost of the original 1,000 sent to the mujahideen—which commenced in 1993 and relied upon the help and cooperation of Pakistani intelligence.

The CIA offered so much for the wayward Stingers—at least $100,000 a copy and possibly as much as $200,000—that the program's most immediate effect was to drive up the price of Stingers on the international black market. "They were offering so much that sellers could take the money and buy themselves cheaper anti-aircraft missiles and other weaponry," says Kuperman.

A former intelligence officer familiar with the program calls the buyback effort an abysmal failure. "The things have spread so far that we don't even know where they are anymore," he says. "

 
BBC News this morning has Sec Of State saying "up to 400 additional", so the Grauniad seems to be struggling with addishun as much as spellinge errahs

Our Dianne says it's acksherly flortytwiddle and the extra cost of this increase in strength amounts to an eye-watering 1000 Quatloos (or ₿21,000,000).

Maybe.
 
haha, thanks for that.

reading the article you'd think we're going to be send blokes running up the Khyber pass with nothing other than a spare pair of underpants and a sharpened spoon
Indeed.

We clearly don't plan to let our lads anywhere near the Khyber with their spoons.

Look what happened the last time we tried it.

This is the kind of token gesture for which we would once upon a time have derided Portugal, or Belgium.

Not that Im advocating a resumption of HERRICK, but it's about time we recognised how limited our capabilities are in reality
 
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