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CM:SF Helmand


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"Cool elite NATO infantry backed by air go after bad guy insurgent leader in his mountain lair." Realistically, operations like that are going to be few and far between.

No, it's just that most of the time, NATO does some big flashy helicopter insertion and they have tons of artillery and air support on standby, and then there's no Taliban in the target area. How's that for a realistic mission? :D

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Costard,

If the goal is to build scenarios based on NATO ops in Helmand province, and one wants to try and match the probable real engagements rather than pretend ones, I think it is logical that a good portion of them be drug-related. Not: "NATO base is attacked by insurgents," or "Cool elite NATO infantry backed by air go after bad guy insurgent leader in his mountain lair." Realistically, operations like that are going to be few and far between.

You want to model the likely reality, you need to be thinking more about missions like this:

- NATO platoon moves into village, attempts to find head man, crappy insurgent teenagers attempt to kill a NATO soldier or two without getting blown away themselves.

- Insurgents are more organized in village, assume they are outsiders, and their victory goal is getting NATO to level the village.

- NATO troops have to burn a poppy field/poppy bulb processing buildings, owners resist.

- NATO troops are en route to meeting with local elders in some village to discuss drug policy, get ambushed along way.

- Insurgents attempt to raid local police station/village mayor's house for weapons/hostages/money/confiscated product, NATO quick response force attempts to deal with situation.

Etc. The idea would be that the two sides would move through the battle tree based on success/failure in the drug war, which would translate into CMSF into the NATO side trying to kill insurgents w/o destroying too much civilian life and property, and the insurgent side trying to up the NATO casualty count.

Depends what period you model - Op HERRICK 4 and Op HERRICK 5 barely touched the narcotics problem and Op HERRICK 4 had lots of 'defend the base' situations. There is a lot of scope here, the trick is turning it into a workable campaign.

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The 10:1 figure thrown about is the minimum ratio of friendly force to insurgents to defeat an insurgency in classic COIN theory. Although that is just a rough rule of thumb.

The problem with COIN (if we digress for a moment away from CMSF) is that no one really knows what causes a successful insurgency or what are the winning ingredients for a successful counter-insurgency.

For example:

-Vietnam and Algeria waged sucessful insurgencies, but those in Malaya and the Northern Ireland were defeated.

-North Korea tried ignite an insurgency in South Korea, but it failed dismally.

-Iraq had an insurgency from 2003 to 2007ish, but one never occured under Saddam Hussein.

After the fact, it is easy to point to internal and/or external factors that may have caused the insurgency to ignite or peter out, but no one really has the magic formula.

The best NATO can do is apply the standard strategy: provide security, hunt down insurgents, push for reforms and hope for the best in the long run.

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So - not too many suggestions for a Helmand Campaign/missions from what i can see - is anybody interested or not?

YES. I just don't have the time to make, one, but I am extremely interested if someone produces one.

Just an idea: if we have lots of guys who want to do a little bit of work on a campaign, but don't exactly feel like doing a full one, maybe we could do a cooperatively developed campaign like the official campaign. I'd be up for making 1-3 missions, but probably not more than that. But if there are others out there like me, we could easily make a 10+ mission campaign.

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On whether or not Afghanistan is a smart place to commit troops, only time will tell. History would bet "no", but the question is of course how much application history has to the present campaign.

As current events' applicability to CMSF modeling, I think that troop density should have a direct impact on the kind of scenarios the one would build. The fights are not going to be companies and battalions coming down on Taliban die-hards. They're going to be platoons and squads getting ambushed.

In the present RL operation, as I understand it the Marines have hit some resistance and killed something like 10 - 30 insurgents. Here's the linkie on that:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090705/wl_asia_afp/afghanistanunrestusbattle_20090705030416

I love the Marine telling the reporter that a Marine company is "the most feared thing in the world".

Anyway, moving right along, the Taliban for their part appear to be thinking, I read they hit some kind of fire base way the heck out of Helmand, in Paktia province, and they started off the attack with a suicide truck aimed at the base gate, and then shooting up the base for an hour or two. Killed a couple of Allied personnel.

Within Helmand a suicide bomber hit a 4-vehicle security contractor convoy, 1 Allied dead, 4 wounded. Also a bomb got two ANA in a village.

And outside Helmand 7 ANA police killed and 2 injured, roadside bomb.

So there seems to be some evidence that if one wants to model an operation in Helmand, the actual combat it produces, and so we would want to model, is just as likely to take place outside of Helmand.

Here's a linkie to a wrap-up from yesterday:

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/07/200974184336848756.html

So scenario-wise, maybe the way to build a campaign is not a single unit going through a series of connected actions, but rather a series of actions all over the map. Battle 1 is the Marines clearing some ville of local yokels most of whom will run, but maybe a couple will shoot. Then your next battle is the Taliban reaction, a raid of some kind way the heck somewhere else, kicked off with a suicide bomber. Depending on how that battle goes the tree takes the player to say a roadside ambush scenario, with previous battles influencing the force ratios. Then depending on how that battle goes, you start a tree, where if the Marines are winning their have missions of "clear this place and take control without trashing everything", within increasing difficult terrain. And if the insurgents are winning then it's first they get to hit the Marines during a village clearing operation, then graduate maybe to an organized ambush of transport columns, and maybe finish up with a grand assault on some provincial headquarters where the mission is kill all the ANA and the unlucky Marine element stuck out there with them.

It would be a huge amount of work to build a campaign like that, besides all the differing battle maps you'd have to work out the victory conditions so that the campaign could see-saw, for instance the insurgents do well the first few battles and they start moving down the branch leading to insurgent victory, but then they screw up a battle and the Marines get the initiative. To do it right it would take a month or two of work eight hours a day, plus the play-testing. But man it would be great to play.

Oh yeah, on the "magic number" to win, as noted the standard answer is 10 - 1, so it all comes down to how many insurgents are out there. If Helmand province has about 250,000 military age men, and 1 in 100 decide to fight, that means 2,500 active insurgents, and to defeat them according to the forumula you need 250,000 NATO soldiers and allies. You beat up on the insurgents and get the population behind the central government, maybe you can shift the insurgent from population ratio to 1 in 1000. By the formula, that produces an insurgent force of 250 fighters, who by the forumula should be defeated by 25,000 NATO-type soldiers and their allies.

I think this numerical exercise is useful, because people talk "boots on the ground" all the time, but discussion of what sufficient boots on the ground is, is really rare. And the bottom line here is that 15,000 or so NATO forces and allies, by the classic rules of insurgency warfare, are sufficient in numbers to defeat an insurgent force of 150 fighters.

Which leaves only two more questions:

- Maybe the classic ratio forumula is wrong for Helmand province?

- Maybe out of the 250,000 fighting-age men in Helmand province, there is a way to convince them not to fight NATO to such an extent, that no more than 1 in about 1,500 or 1 in 2,000 actually joins the insurgency.

The Duke dead on about how to do this, I could get motivated to contribute a scenario or two.

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I dont know if that was already posted, since it is a week old, but interesting nonetheless:

The Marine operation that began last week appeared to overwhelm the Taliban fighters who have long dominated this region, which provides a large part of the raw opium the Taliban use to finance operations throughout the country. But commanders believe that the Taliban made a calculated decision to retreat, leaving the Marines with little resistance so far.

For now, many Taliban are believed to have pulled back to more remote locations, like Marjah, a village west of here, to regroup and try to figure out how to reassert themselves in an area so crucial to financing their guerrilla campaign.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/08/world/asia/08afghan.html

obviously, the Taliban will not tackle NATO forces headon, but will wait for the opportunity to come back in when they see an opening.

Also this article on the increasing sophistication of IEDs in Afghanistan:

This is the war in Afghanistan today, where death is measured less by the accuracy of bullets than by the cleverness of bombs. And though the Afghan insurgency’s improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.’s, are less powerful or complex than those used in Iraq, they are becoming more common and more sophisticated with each week, American military officers say.

This year, bomb attacks on coalition troops in Afghanistan have spiked to an all-time high, with 465 in May alone, more than double the number in the same month two years before. At least 46 American troops have been killed by I.E.D.’s this year, putting 2009 on track to set a record in the eight-year war.

I.E.D.’s have been even more deadly for Afghan police officers and soldiers. At the current rate, I.E.D. attacks on Afghan forces could reach 6,000 this year, up from 81 in 2003, an American military official said. In early July alone, nine Afghan police officers were killed in two bomb attacks in Logar Province, south of Kabul.

With few paved roads, Afghanistan is even more fertile territory for I.E.D.’s. than Iraq, where hard pavement often forced insurgents to leave bombs in the open. Not so in Afghanistan, where it is relatively easy to bury a device in a dirt road and cover the tracks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/world/asia/15ied.html

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again, coming in a bit late, but this could also be of interest to a CMSF Helmand campaign:

03helmand_map_large.jpg

this was apparently the situation on the ground before the operation began on july 2.

Yet Taliban control of the countryside is so extensive in provinces like Kandahar and Helmand that winning districts back will involve tough fighting and may ignite further tensions, residents and local officials warn. The government has no presence in 5 of Helmand’s 13 districts, and in several others, like Nawa, it holds only the district town, where troops and officials live virtually under siege.

The Taliban’s influence is so strong in rural areas that much of the local population has accepted their rule and is watching the United States troop buildup with trepidation. Villagers interviewed in late June said that they preferred to be left alone under Taliban rule and complained about artillery fire and airstrikes by foreign forces.

both from a NY Times article on the situation:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/03/world/asia/03helmand.html?fta=y

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So scenario-wise, maybe the way to build a campaign is not a single unit going through a series of connected actions, but rather a series of actions all over the map. Battle 1 is the Marines clearing some ville of local yokels most of whom will run, but maybe a couple will shoot. Then your next battle is the Taliban reaction, a raid of some kind way the heck somewhere else, kicked off with a suicide bomber. Depending on how that battle goes the tree takes the player to say a roadside ambush scenario, with previous battles influencing the force ratios. Then depending on how that battle goes, you start a tree, where if the Marines are winning their have missions of "clear this place and take control without trashing everything", within increasing difficult terrain. And if the insurgents are winning then it's first they get to hit the Marines during a village clearing operation, then graduate maybe to an organized ambush of transport columns, and maybe finish up with a grand assault on some provincial headquarters where the mission is kill all the ANA and the unlucky Marine element stuck out there with them.

It would be a huge amount of work to build a campaign like that, besides all the differing battle maps you'd have to work out the victory conditions so that the campaign could see-saw, for instance the insurgents do well the first few battles and they start moving down the branch leading to insurgent victory, but then they screw up a battle and the Marines get the initiative. To do it right it would take a month or two of work eight hours a day, plus the play-testing. But man it would be great to play.

I tried making a campaign using this basic idea, and even with very simple DOS-game-like scenarios, I had to give up. The sheer number of scenario files needed would be daunting, it really would have to be paid work to pull off something like this. Every time there is a branch, the amount of scenario files multiplies. I suppose it could be pulled off with some very clever branching and a shorter campaign, but the way that CMSF campaigns flow is really not designed for this sort of action. That said, I'll play around in the spread sheet and see if I can't come up with something.

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BigDuke6's plot line is ambitious, but if we want this project to actually get off the ground, we should maybe stick to a mini-campaign or a scenario pack. As Jons can attest, managing a full-blown campaign is a lot of work.

The strategy behind "Operation Khanjar" is actually very smart. NATO only took over pinpricks in Hemland, but those spots are located right in the middle of the best Opium fields. NATO has already annouced it will be setting up permanent bases in the valley. Since I presume they know the taliban can read, they may be hoping the taliban will attack the bases or outposts in the area. For NATO, it is a win-win, no need to go chasing after the Taliban over impassable terrain. Either they win the valley without a fight or they sit in defensive positions while the Taliban attacks them.

On the other hand, the Taliban can't really afford to just walk away from this prime real estate. On top of the money they would be leaving on the table, there is the prestige issue of how this would be perceived by the civilian population they are trying to win over or control through intimidation. They can't just walk away without a fight. There is also the boost their cause would get if they could overrun a NATO FOB/outpost and parade the prisoners in front of the media. I presume the Taliban strategy is to lay low until the bases are setup and some of the forces have moved out before trying to mount an attack.

so a campaign could look like this:

Phase I: initial attack

NATO attacks and takes over certain key spots in the valley. You would have mostly recon type scenarios since the bulk of the Taliban would retreat, although there would still be skirmishes, ambushes, IEDs, to deal with.

Phase 2: counter-attack

After the NATO are setup and the bulk of the forces have moved out, the Taliban probe the NATO defences and try an all-out assault on an outpost.

Phase 3: counter-offensive

Depending on the resluts of phase 2, NATO reinforces the FOBs/outpost and attacks the Taliban forces.

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looks like the insurgents are already probing the Marines defences:

In the pivotal southern province of Helmand, for instance, where 4,000 Marines and 650 Afghan soldiers faced only sporadic fighting in the first two weeks of their operation, General McChrystal said, Taliban fighters are starting to fight back, probing with small-scale attacks and improvised explosives.

“They’re coming back and nipping at the edges,” he said, after meeting with Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/16/world/asia/16general.html?ref=asia

and some photos of the fighting on the British side:

28887461.JPG

28888315.JPG

28888161.JPG

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/16/world/europe/16britain.html

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