Langenator said:
JABQ04 said:
I was at a place called FOB Wright, and granted it was 2013-2014 and it seemed everything was winding down I've there, we were surrounded by mountains. Bad dudes would get on multiple hillsides and rocket us. Fortunately though we had a ring of OPs built on higher ground surrounding the FOB but still ****ty position. I was the gun chief for the only
Arty section there so we got to man the gun and shoot counter fire missions when rockets were flying in and everyone else was undercover.
Keating did have one overwatching OP, with IIRC, a 120mm mortar. But that Taliban had that mortar pit zeroed in and were able to keep it suppressed for a good chunk of the fight. No artillery of it's own, because they couldn't get any up that crappy road, and Keating was also beyond the range of friendly artillery support, which the terrain in Kunar and Nuristan made a difficult proposition in any case.
If Keating had to be on the valley floor, then they need, by my military judgement, at least three OPs in the surrounding hills, with a section (2 tubes) of mortars in each, and maybe an old 106mm recoilless in each as well, if you can pull some out of mothballs and detail some 18Bs to teach the 11-series types (maybe 11Hs from the battalion AT company, for old times sake?) how to use them.
(At least one SF post down south, I think in Uruzgan province, did manage to get themselves a 106, which apparently was quite effective.)
This isn't quite right. Fritsche did have a 120mm, as did Keating.
We could range Keating with 155 from the 2 x 777s at FOB Bostick, but you were shooting red bag RAP at high angle. Given the azimuth, artillery could only safely range the north side of the Landay Sin, so the hills and ridges on the south side were dead space. In 2008, before 3-61CAV arrived, 6-4CAV had some M119 105MM at COP Leibert near Gowerdesh that I believe could range Keating, but they were pulled out when 6-4CAV closed that COP.
More OPs might have helped the situation on October 3rd, but the OPs themselves were isolated and vulnerable, and extremely difficult to supply. A squad getting over run in an OP -- or multiple squads in different OPs -- would have been as bad or worse. The fact was, the units occupying Keating were stretched to the limit already. 3-61CAV had 9 x organic platoons of 18 Soldiers (scouts or infantry) each. And were defending:
FOB Bostick (0-1 x PLT - much of the security was provided by Afghans, which in retrospect is terrifying)
COP Keating (2 x PLT)
OP Fristche (1 x PLT)
COP Lowell (2 x PLT)
OP Mace (1 x PLT)
COP Pirtle-King (1-2 x PLT)
OP Bari-Alai (1 x PLT)
OP Hatchet (1 x PLT(-) of 12 HQ personnel - all the HQ HMMWV drivers, armorer, etc.)
OP Mustang (1 x Squad of 8 HQ personnel - cooks, mechanics, clerks)
There was no more Schlitz to send to Keating. As it was, you could not get more than three platoons on patrol at any giving time. The QRF was an MP squad and the recovery team from the Forward Support Company.
The positioning of COP Keating was a bad compromise -- a decision made in 2006 when the area was more permissive, and there was insufficient aviation to support the rapid expansion going on under 10th Mountain. The general idea was to provide a base for the Nuristan Provincial Reconstruction Team that was in closer proximity to the major population center at Kamdesh. Which was ironic, because Kamdesh was a 4-hour walk straight up the mountain, and nobody actually patrolled there due to the distance and general reticence of the local leaders.
The PRT brought in a radio tower to extend IO into the region. But the "permissiveness" was a less than expected, and the amount of shooting led the PRT to bug-out to Parun within a few months...they left the radio, though. And maintaining the radio seems to have been a major justification for keeping the COP. In hindsight, it would have been much better to put another platoon and the radio at Fritsche, and close Keating -- which was a course of action discussed with McChrystal, but he shot it down.
I suspect another factor in the positioning decisions was the fact that when you look at a map from J-Bad or Bagram or Kabul you can look at Keating and COP Lowell and OP Mace at Gowerdesh, and pretend you are "refusing the line" at the north edge of the Pakistan border. Which is ridiculous when you are actually there, as none of the bases were close enough to be mutually supporting -- and military vehicle ground transit was not even possible after 2007. You could walk an Army between the COPs and never know it, especially since the area was rarely assigned ISR assets.
And then, closing an OP or COP was considered as tantamount to retreat -- which was completely absurd. Senior leaders (Scaparotti and McChrystal) were so fearful of the public blowback from closing bad positions that they backed themselves into a terrain-oriented approach that not only made zero sense in Afghanistan, it was in tactical opposition to the population-centric "strategy" McChrystal was allegedly implementing.
The cherry on top was McChrystal having the gall to reprimand the entire chain of command below them - who had been planning/begging to close the bases for months prior. But after the political crapshow following Wanat and Pat Tillman fratricide cover-up (another McChrystal-led folly), somebody had to be "accountable" - and it wasn't going to be a general.
It was politically expedient to maintain the status-quo. It was cynical, and over-cautious, and stupid, and a bunch of people died because of it. Every death of one of your Soldiers is a life-long burden. The needless deaths are something I will never get over.
BTW -- Stoney Portis is a tremendous leader. He's recently been selected for battalion command.
I've heard good things about the movie, but haven't brought myself to see it yet. Maybe I will eventually.
