Interesting blog post from an embedded reporter in the NY Times. For guys who have been/are over there now, how does this match up with your experience?
Our list includes these: limited Taliban knowledge of marksmanship fundamentals, a frequent reliance on automatic fire from assault rifles, the poor condition of many of those rifles, old and mismatched ammunition that is also in poor condition, widespread eye problems and uncorrected vision, and the difficulties faced by a scattered force in organizing quality training.
Yes, though there are the “out of towner” insurgents that include Chechnyan snipers, Saudis, etc. that are trained. The local Taliban are a mixed bag of half trained to no training thugs. This is not saying they are not capable of being savvy fighters.
Taliban is a broad term these days. It can be anything from a small time warlord or town boss with six fighters that are basically criminals; organized Taliban working for Taliban bosses; or even the structured Taliban/Al Qaeda international terrorists. Also, a never reported group is the HIG, another extremist muslim faction that alternately fights with Taliban and Coalition forces (depending on local politics). I imagine that to all media outlets, all insurgents are ‘Taliban’.
Lastly, it depends on what part of Afghanistan you are in (tribally).
ETA: They tend to suck with RPGs too, which is why I am still here to post.
Exactly as R2000 says, it varies who you’re up against.
The Chechen, Iranian, and Pakistani guys to the south of us knew what was going on, could actually aim with small arms and mortars, and even used combined arms to try a double envelopment. Then some of them left, and it was back to their ‘bomb experts’ blowing themselves up trying to dismantle ordinance.
The guys where I was were not marksmen, and usually missed with 60lb IEDs, thank god.
On one occasion, we had a couple MV-22’s put down in the middle of a field, and sure enough team Taliban shows up with a scope MosinNagant, and a couple AK’s, gets to the closet compound about 200m away from the bird. We’re in the middle of offloading the HST, start taking fire.
They missed the fricking bid. No impacts whatsoever on the Osprey, we felt like idiots for even running back to the the ditch to get better cover.
They can’t retain talent, because as we were able to provide just enough security to make a positive difference in daily lives, our ability to target leadership through intelligence goes through the roof. The locals who are drawn to the cause, or easy money, are usually the local rejects, disowned by families, and are usually the troublemakers or thieves with no other means of income. I’m hardly surprised they can’t shoot, too bad they’ve figured out the scoot part of shoot 'n scoot.
If we’re getting engaged by medium machine guns at range, from compounds where we can’t drop 60mm mortars, we start facing huge limitations on what we can do. Without combined arms, maneuver is our only weapon, and they know it as much as we do. They know that if they engage us from higher ground at those distances with larger caliber weapons, we can’t hit them hard enough and fast enough.
M855 through M4’s isn’t the best for this, but the concern really is being engaged from 500-1000m off, where most guys on patrol don’t have effective enough weaponry (M249’s are marginally effective, Mk12/SAMR/SDMR is just okay, and in terrain where humping an M240 or accurized M14 with glass really sucks). The other half of this is the gear load carried - if we’re too overburdened, or haven’t been resting enough on security halts, they know to engage us on our way back to the PB, from higher ground, and be ready to egress, or lay IEDs on all our likely avenues of approach.
