Those ideas sound great on the surface, but you have to understand that you can’t hide a thing in Afghanistan. Even out in the most remote areas, there are people. Anything you put out will be found and either stolen or disabled. A sensor system designed to look like a rock was found and destroyed in one AO where I was operating. It literally looked like a rock. The Afghans figured it out.
You can’t hide anything there.
Predators, on the other hand, or a mast or even balloon-mounted RAID system would have helped. It helps elsewhere. IMO, there were waaaay too few predators in country.
As far as the hair-trigger QRF, there are a number of small Combat OutPosts in Afghanistan, and most of them are never attacked in mass. Rockets, mortars, a few RPG’s, yes; 200 Taliban, no. There is no reserve of that size available in country in the first place.
We used to get reports of 200 Taliban all the time. It was always 200 Taliban. The usual rule was to divide by 6 and that gave you more what the actual strength was. I’m not saying that’s the case here, just saying what our experience was.
One thing to point out about the latest NYT article about this whole mess is that at 4:30 am at this time of year, it is daylight in Afghanistan. The sun starts to come up at around 4. By 4:15 in the more open valleys, it is broad daylight. Even in mountainous country, it was pretty well lit by that time.
Early morning, just after morning prayers, was not an uncommon time for activity.
Also, a lot of “information” is coming from Tamim Nuristani, who obviously has an agenda and was just recently fired for “comments” that he made within the past week about the airstrike on the mortar crew in that same small area. He is still insisting on propagating the story that it was a wedding party. The NYT is publishing that as if it were true; IO success for the Taliban.
Again, I caution patience to see what the real story is. CJTF-101 has not put anything at all about it on their website, although they do mention the coalition soldier killed by an IED in another province over the weekend.
