Solid post.I was an Infantry Platoon Leader in the same general area of Afghanistan in the same timeframe as this series. My Platoon’s direct fire engagements ranged from about 40m to 900m out. The most difficult aspect of every engagement was gaining PID on the threat...and I don’t think that having a LPVO over the ACOGs that most of us had would have made any difference. The terrain we found ourselves in through that deployment ranged from very mountainous to flat desert to very vegetated agricultural areas with the typical Afghan biblical era mud architecture villages and family compounds. The folks who fought us were in all reality mostly dirt poor farmers who made up the population of the area. They were fighting in their backyard, and were extremely adept at utilizing available cover and concealment, as well as pre-planned escape routes to break contact when the time came. Overall, extremely frustrating to try to break that cycle.
I have no complaints about the M4 carbine as issued. You can’t see it as just a rifle in isolation- with proper echelonment of fires both organic and supporting, an Infantry Platoon as it exists today is pretty well equipped for most threats it would face, with reasonable tactical employment. My major complaint is the weight of a combat load, and I imagine that is an age old complaint.
To the poster remarking about how today’s Infantrymen lack the “savagery” of your early GWOT (presumably) Infantry unit- what is your frame of reference? Early Iraq? The rules have changed significantly over the years- we weren’t even supposed to enter Afghan homes in 2014. The geography of Afghanistan itself dictates tactics somewhat- taking close in pop shots from a building in Iraq, then storming in to eliminate the threat is somewhat different from Afghanistan, when you take harassing fire from nearly a K out...unable to see the enemy, much less think through which ones you are going to kill in what order...with a significant terrain feature between you and the enemy, especially when you can’t even tell where the fire is coming from...that situation lends itself to trying to pinpoint the threat and eliminate with CAS or other fires. You also have to weigh the possibility that you are being baited into a certain situation. My most useful tool in the PLT I found was to engage with direct fire handheld 60mm mortars.
I can tell you, outside of all the alarmist Facebook posts out there on various veteran pages, there isn’t a significant difference between the type of Infantryman in today’s Platoons versus who I went to war alongside of for 15 months in 2007 to Iraq. Certainly no less “savage”.



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