Saturday, December 11, 2010

Black Diamonds

The Taliban started calling 1st recon Bn "Black Diamonds"
“We first heard it over the radio in Trek Nawa,” said Cpl. Micah Fulmer, a reconnaissance Marine with 1st Recon Bn. “It followed us to Sangin and they said, ‘Don’t mess with the ‘Black Diamonds.’”

Another new Army Toy

The army has a new sniper rifle and I bet the Marines will field a weapon of similar caliber soon enough. I have grown up around the .300 win mag round my whole life as my dad and brother both hunt with them.

There is a reason the British are using a .338 round in their rifle. The .30 caliber magnum rounds have a superior ballisitic performance over the 7.62x51(,308) round. Put it this way at 500 meters a 7.62x51 168 grain match bullet which is close to what snipers shoot has a velocity of 1823 fps and has dropped 49.9" and delivers 1239 foot pounds of energy. The .300 win mag 168 grain at 500 meters is traveling at 2005 fps and has dropped 39" and has 1500 foot pounds of energy.

My dad tells a story about when he was in Vietnam about their firebase getting shelled every morning and they could see the spotter but no one could hit him with mortars, rifles, or machine guns even though they were shooting .50 cals at him. Anyway two guys show up at his position a sniper and spotter they hang out and get a feel for his habits and the sniper pulls out what looks like a commercial deer hunting rifle. They spot the guy the next day and bang the Vietnamese spotter ends up shot. Dad talks to the guys and they are using a Winchester Model 70 .300 win mag. Well when dad gets back from Vietnam he buys one. He has had this rifle for 40 years and it handles close in and range work he killed a big horn sheep with it at around 500 yards one shot.

I think the Army has a winner here and I hope the Corps adapts something along the same lines

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Marines

A very good story by CBS no less on Marines in Helmand. In good news U.S. and British forces have killed 3200 Taliban in the last 90 days. To add to this it has been calculated that we would have to kill 10,000+ a year for 20 years just to break into their men coming of military age cycle. That is a bunch of killing on a scale that we probably have not done in the past nine years and as a country we probably do not have the attention span to do for ten more years.

If COIN is to work there has to be a bubble of non-fighting so the government can move in behind it even in the ink spot theory where we go and work in different areas. The Taliban and other forces have to be pushed back violently from the civilian population. This is something we have failed to do because we are undermanned not just because of a lack of U.S. troops but most of our NATO allies will not fight. We need "to kill them on an industrial scale" to give the Afghan government such as it is any chance at all.

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Corporal Chad Wade

Tomorrow we are burying another Marine Corporal Chad Wade. I did not know Cpl Wade but he is a Marine and therefore my brother. Rest in Peace and may God bless him and his family.

This will be all of my writing tonight.

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Hezbollah

I know I keep coming back to these clowns even though we have a full on shooting war going on if Afghanistan and it has been over 25 years since Hezbollah has challenged the U.S. directly.

For those that may not know it I had a paper on Hezbollah published a couple of months ago. The paper was criticized as such things are with a lot of passion for and against my theory that Hezbollah was as dangerous as al-Qaeda if not more so.

Today it is read that Hezbollah has been supplied with 50,000 missiles including Scud - D and Fatah-110. If anyone thinks that Hezbollah is anything but a terrorist organization study the 2006 war with Israel. Yes I will concede that there was conventional ground combat and the Israelis got more than they bargained for attacking the strength of Hezbollah's defenses. However lobbing unguided missiles at population centers is just as much an act of terrorism as a suicide bomber. I could even understand if Hezbollah aimed these unguided missiles at military formations or bases they did not do this either. Therefore by all defenitions of terrorism Hezbollah was guilty.

It is going to come down to a matter of Hezbollah having to be dealt with one way or another.

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Reading for the weekend

I just got done reading the final report on the Battle of Wanat in Afghanistan's Korengal valley. The first thing I took away from this report was a great deal of pride in the 101st, Marine, and ANA troopers and Marines defended their position in the face of an overwhelming amount of firepower. To have as one 101st member describe "RPG's landing like machine gunfire" in addition to a huge amount of small arms that were being used and to be able to fight back for an how before air support arrived is a credit to all of these men.