Kevin you and several others havepointed out some good issues. For some reason I spent about four hours last night looking into some issues that I thought related not only to this contact, but OEF in general. I've been out of country for what five years now, but from all the photo and video eviadance I see a few things have not changed.
1. Weapons Station SOPs. First SOP's should include those gallon jugs at every weapon station on the FOB, MG's in particular. When the weapons start to act up dump lube on them and things usualy smooth out. Ammo storage. I can't count how many times I found belts of ammo that had been exposed for so long the belts were rusty or dirty. Ammo needs to be rotated and cleaned often. Ammo in fixed sites should be stored in ammo cans. We would link our 7.62 in to long belts and stow them like that in the cans in the positions. 203 rounds also were bunkered in the firing positions.
2. Fire Suppression capablities on the FOB's is lacking. I had traced out a few concepts based off of the old TPU tanks, but you could do it with a blivet to. Bottom line the FOB's need some way to fight a fire if they have one from a TIC such as this.
3. Plunging fires vs. grazing fires. Defense in the mountains is VERY differant then defense in the open. In 95% of all situations you will use plunging fires to engage your enemies. Extreme elevation changes that are often required are not well supported by either the M-192, M-3 or M-122A1 tripods. We often only used our M-240s off the bipod, because we could not get the tripods set up well enough to cover the sector. "Mountain" tripods, the rebirth of the old anti-aircraft tripods, mounting M-66 ring mounts on some sort of hard stand or something like the FN Medium Boat Pintle would assist with returning fire on super elevated targets from a FOB. Free gunning a M-2 or MK-19 at max elevation and max range from a M-1152 isn't going to end a fight.
4. I see video on the new it seems every night showing soldiers and marines in the defense on FOB's engaging targets with the m-249 from the standing position. It's unclear how far away the targets are, but it appairs safe to safe that they are outside 100m. The beaten zone for a 249 fired off hand at a Talib hiding by a rock is preety full of large holes at 100m for the average gunner. From video you can't deduct the reason for the shot being taken in such a manner. Underlying reasons can be as simple as poor positoning of firiing positions. Fighting positions being to shallow and the shelf to narrow to get a good firing position. Target of oppertunity, ect. I keep coming back to construction of the firing positions though. HESCO bastions while solid and simple cause many issues when attempting to depress to engage targets and with construction. Every one we recieved was either to tall or too short to make a good firing position. In all but the oddest terrian grazing fire is impossible from a weapon mounted on a HESCO. While at Baghram we had some high speed conex fighting positions and the shelf was too narrow to mount a tripod.
Of course all of these observations are from the safety of retirement. Of the 4 observations I make, only one cound have been easily dealt with by a PL/PSG or even a BN Commander.
It would be nice to see if SinnFéinM1911, Riverine and some of the SME's down range could comment on these aspects, at least so I don't loose another five hours sleep working on a info paper that will most likely take 3 years to see an outcome.
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