Feral Jundi

   I think these three stories do a pretty good job of discussing what’s what in the war.  In the second story, there is a article mentioned in the UPI about weight versus mobility, that you can check out as well.  My take away from all of this is that armor is too heavy–duh, and our weapons suck.  The thing to ask, is are we able to catch the Taliban up in the mountains when we hunt him?  And better yet, do our troops have a weapon that will work as advertised when we catch up to these ‘miscreants’. (I love using that word, because that is what the Pakistanis call the Taliban–lol)

   Don’t get me wrong though, because many of these advances in weapons and armor is amazing and they have their place.  But we have to be realistic about what really wins battles up in those mountains, and against mountain people. –Matt

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A soldier hiking in the hills of the Korengal Valley. 

Weapons failed US troops during Afghan firefight

October 12, 2009

By RICHARD LARDNER

Associated Press Writer

In the chaos of an early morning assault on a remote U.S. outpost in eastern Afghanistan, Staff Sgt. Erich Phillips’ M4 carbine quit firing as militant forces surrounded the base. The machine gun he grabbed after tossing the rifle aside didn’t work either.

When the battle in the small village of Wanat ended, nine U.S. soldiers lay dead and 27 more were wounded. A detailed study of the attack by a military historian found that weapons failed repeatedly at a “critical moment” during the firefight on July 13, 2008, putting the outnumbered American troops at risk of being overrun by nearly 200 insurgents.

Which raises the question: Eight years into the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, do U.S. armed forces have the best guns money can buy?

Despite the military’s insistence that they do, a small but vocal number of troops in Afghanistan and Iraq has complained that the standard-issue M4 rifles need too much maintenance and jam at the worst possible times.

A week ago, eight U.S. troops were killed at a base near Kamdesh, a town near Wanat. There’s no immediate evidence of weapons failures at Kamdesh, but the circumstances were eerily similar to the Wanat battle: insurgents stormed an isolated stronghold manned by American forces stretched thin by the demands of war.

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