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Fighting Light.. what is the problem?

Have you ever considered allowing a local commander to make an appreciation of the ground, weather conditions and tasking to decide what is possible, probable or unlikely to occur and plan the deployment as they see fit?
Yes, why would you think I had not? Freedoms and constraints.
 
Yes, why would you think I had not? Freedoms and constraints.

You give the impression of having a doctrinal approach.

You repeatedly ask how much of X should be carried for Y duration, when perhaps that should be answered by the commander on the ground, basing their decision on the immediate environmental and tasking demands.
 
You give the impression of having a doctrinal approach.

You repeatedly ask how much of X should be carried for Y duration, when perhaps that should be answered by the commander on the ground, basing their decision on the immediate environmental and tasking demands.

I ask for specificity because it is easy to say "do not carry x" when it is actually needed. Hence why i repeatedly ask what soldiers are actually carrying that is extraneous and in what environment.
 
I ask for specificity because it is easy to say "do not carry x" when it is actually needed. Hence why i repeatedly ask what soldiers are actually carrying that is extraneous and in what environment.

You keep saying “it’s actually needed”, where in actual fact it’s just in case it’s needed.

Daylight patrol does not require NVGs.

But they may be needed if the patrol extends beyond daylight hours.

A recce patrol doesn’t need breaching charges.

But may be needed if we suddenly need to enter compounds.

24 hour rations aren’t needed on an 8 hour patrol.

But may be needed if things change and we need to secure a perimeter for 24 hours.

In fact fcuk it, take the kitchen sink just in case…
 
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You keep say “it’s actually needed”, where in actual fact it’s just in case it’s needed.

Daylight patrol does not require NVGs.

But they may be needed if the patrol extends beyond daylight hours.

A recce patrol doesn’t need breaching charges.

But may be needed if we suddenly need to enter compounds.

24 hour rations aren’t needed on an 8 hour patrol.

But may be needed if things change and we need to secure a perimeter for 24 hours.

In fact fcuk it, take the kitchen sink just in case…
Which is why I've asked for specificity about this hypothetical patrol.

A daylight patrol might not extend beyond daylight hours, but in some theatres it could/may so taking NVGs makes sense.

Jumping out the back of a warrior in broad daylight to assault a fire trench, probably don't need NVGs.

And then we are back to asking when and where soldiers are carrying extraneous equipment. Actual empiricism helps here.
 
IMHO the fallout from the death of Sgt Roberts 2RTR has had the consequence that the top of the CoC are paranoid about soldiers being killed whist not carrying/wearing "essential" kit. The BAR had an article written by the Royals of their experience in Afghanistan in 2001 which highlighted the problems with carrying so much kit and their inability to dump it in close pursuit. IIRC they called for dropping kit and two men.
 
If not, can you afford for individuals to carry less ammo, a trade off for a higher kill rate?
You're not going to know until you're engaging the individual in question. They could be the biggest shitebag in history and bottle out at the first crack-thump or they could be Sergeant Rock and stay fighting even with their clothes being shot off them.

Suppressive fire is highly subjective.
 
Which is why I've asked for specificity about this hypothetical patrol.

A daylight patrol might not extend beyond daylight hours, but in some theatres it could/may so taking NVGs makes sense.

Jumping out the back of a warrior in broad daylight to assault a fire trench, probably don't need NVGs.

And then we are back to asking when and where soldiers are carrying extraneous equipment. Actual empiricism helps here.
All the ‘just in case’ contingencies have a degree of merit, but are invariably at the cost of capability to do the actual task we set out to complete.
 
Hmm, I'm pretty sure the ladders thing was a valuable, if limited, lesson from direct operational experience. Carrying ladders originated in Sangin (possibly earlier from the US in urban fighting in Iraq) and then spread outwards, because it allowed you to cross walls and ditches in places other than the chokepoints, which is where IEDs would be placed. It's the same function as carrying ropes in mountains: it hugely expands the route options your patrol has when mountain routes are otherwise highly constrained and so vulnerable to ambush.

In those cases, I think it was probably the experienced SNCOs who coughed loudly and whispered "we're doing it". Of course, this doesn't mean we should issue every platoon flying out to eastern Europe with a ladder.
I volunteered to be ladderman on patrol with 2Para in (from memory) NES(S). There were that many drainage ditches it was like doing a bizarre bleep test.

Without them we would have been incredibly channelled and much more likely to hit IEDs. In that AO, they were pretty essential on most patrols, IMO.
 
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I volunteered to be ladderman on patrol with 2Para in (from memory) NES(S).

I'd be more inclined to carry a set of ladders than full ECM suite for the reason you cited; enabling greater route unpredictability.

Our multiples got made to carry full ECM suites despite operating out of mastiffs. You'd literally think that the hierarchy believed the Taliban had planted millions of RCIED.

Surprised nobody's mentioned vallon (or equivalent) given its trivial weight if we're 'fighting the last war'.
 
Our multiples got made to carry full ECM suites despite operating out of mastiffs. You'd literally think that the hierarchy believed the Taliban had planted millions of RCIED.
To an extent some of them did. There was a lot of willful blindness and deliberate failure to think logically about the problem. There was also a good deal of "don't want to contradict the bloke on the ground" from detached officers or OCs in FOBs, exacerbated by the Int Corps unwillingness to push analysts down to the ground level, so a reliance on infantry int cells of variable quality. Then the usual poor passage of information and reporting meant the bad takes often stuck and were repeated, so areas of the map just got written off without anyone having thought too hard about why.

I did one tour with a recce unit where part of my job was unpicking this for our route planning, and it led to a few conflicts where the ground holding coy J2 cell got in my face accusing me of planning to get blokes killed (helped that I was actually on the patrols I was planning for). Every time we walked straight through areas they had marked as no go, without even a bleep on the Vallon. As I said above, other recce units had the same experience in different areas at different times.

IEDs were a bit like terrorist attacks: the psychological impact they had on limiting our freedom of action and TTPs was far more effective than the actual body count.
 
I want to chip in on the ECM aspect of the debate - in a near peer/peer conflict it probably won’t be necessary.

However in anything but that our potential adversaries will know the lessons of our recent conflicts - and apply them suitably.

As a result we will deploy ECM appropriately - it is one of the few things that we do better than anyone else in terms of generating military equipment.

A few commentators have asked if the ECM was really necessary in Afghanistan and Iraq. I can’t state about Iraq but I set up a project to look at incidents in Afghanistan whilst deployed there. Without going into any details - yes it was. I looked in some detail in the period of my deployment and for about a year before hand and It’s carriage was warranted.
That is sidestepping the actual objection people have raised here: no IED regardless of trigger type can be placed everywhere.

Did your study separate out the instances of vehicles and foot patrols, and did it manage to find separate study groups to compared use of ECM to tactical patrolling drills? If so, how did it do the second one? How did the study address the fundamental problems of unquantified variables (i.e. you don't know where IEDs are, and if you do you don't direct patrols onto them unwittingly).

There were so many junk 'studies' done by the military with absolutely basic errors in data and design that unfortunately I have to ask.
 
Another sphinx-like answer.

What is this hypothetical task? And what extraneous kit is being carried and where?

The hypotheticals abound in every post you make.

I suggest local commanders are given latitude to take whatever kit their experience tells them they may require to achieve the objective set before them.

You on the other hand are wedded to the endless possibilities of a daylight recce patrol morphing into an assault on a compound or being adrift from logistical support for ever and a day.
 
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