Wanat

[DavidFields]

"as remarkable as any small-unit action in American military history": historian Douglas Cubbison.

The New York Times today outlines a report on a 2007 battle in Afghanistan, where 72 "Blue" troops (US and Afghan), in a fortified position, are almost overrun by 200 Taliban in a 4 hour battle.

Of course, in this "Red attacking Blue" Red had no artillery or armor. Blue had airpower, which eventually broke the attack.

Reading this forum, I would have thought the Red attack would have been suicidal. Could CMSF acurately model the attack? Do we have to assume tactical incompetence on the Blue side (apart from not getting into the situation--assume that was not a good decision) in this case, or are there factors not in CMSF which would actually explain Red's relative success in this battle?

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Depends on the terrain, and the amount of ANA troops. ANA troops are poorly trained and have ditto motivation. Expect VERY little fight out of them.

If the terrain allowed the Taliban to get close to you then air support is of limited use while the typically poor marksmanship of the Taliban starts getting less relevant. 3-1 odds are never a good sign in any case.

*edit*

Linky:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/03/world/asia/03battle.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

Ah! I think I saw a docu on that one. (Youtube, I think) Very difficult terrain, poor local knowledge, plain bad luck and the fortified position wasn't all that fantastic either. I wouldn't say incompetence, certainly not of the troops there. You can't blame troops for not maintaining the untenable. You can't win every battle.

[Sergei]

Interesting question. I had to check Wikipedia about casualties to give some clue about the intensity of combat:

Coalition casualties:

9 killed, 27 wounded (U.S.); 4 killed, 4 wounded (ANA)

Taliban casualties:

US Estimate: 21–52 killed, 45 wounded (unconfirmed)

Only two Taliban bodies were found after the battle - is this because Taliban would have evacuated their comrades, or is it indicative of the strength of the air attacks?

It's notable that the Taliban had mortars and also managed to take out 120mm mortars at the base. I wonder how many grenades the Taliban had for mortars... US forces did have artillery support, how quickly they were able to summon it and to what effect I didn't find out.

CM battles always tend to be more decisive than real life battles, because there is little reward for attacker for failing to capture objectives but keeping his forces somewhat intact. Players tend to be more aggressive and take bigger risks, resulting in greater bloodshed and quicker results. The Taliban commander may have been unwilling or unable to press on the attack and rather try attrition.

[akd]

I read a draft of this history two months ago, linked off of Michael Yon's website. I was very confused when I saw a front page NYT story today saying the report had just "surfaced."

http://www.battlefieldtourist.com/content/battle-of-wanat-historical-analysis-rough-draft-release/

There are a few factors in the battle that would be difficult to simulate in CMSF (e.g. on-map mortars, dismounted LRAS, barbed wire, etc.). I don't recall the Taliban having mortars, but I'd have to go back and look. They used volley-fire RPGs to knock out some of the US heavy weapons at the start of the battle (TOW Humvee and 120mm mortar, if I recall) and maintained a high rate of RPG fire after the opening volleys.

edit: reading the NYT article now and it seems they are distorting a number of aspects of the battle contained in the report. For example:

The ammunition stockpile was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, igniting a stack of 120-millimeter mortar rounds — and the resulting fireball flung the unit’s antitank missiles into the command post.

In the report it is quite clear that these were two separate events. The TOW rounds were sent flying when the burning TOW humvee exploded.

[Field Marshal Blücher]

Only two Taliban bodies were found after the battle - is this because Taliban would have evacuated their comrades, or is it indicative of the strength of the air attacks?

I believe the Taliban usually evacuate their comrades. It's a tried and true tactic in irregular warfare to keep the regulars wondering how much damage they did.

[dan/california]

I have read several of the documents posted about this fight, the Times article is less than brilliant in IMHO, and the overwhelming tactical issue was that the bad guys got a LOT of people into RPG range before the battle started. The patrol base was too close to the village and the insurgents were able to open fire in mass from well within there effective range while in covered positions. The screw ups at higher levels that led to this mess are too numerous to list.

The raw courage the actual soldiers showed to avoid being overrun is beyond mind-boggling, and the fact that some bad command decisions put them in that situation in no way detracts from it. If some of those decisions were the platoon commanders, well he paid in full, and died trying to protect his command.

As far as simulating it in CMSF is concerned, an initial setup that allowed 10 or 15 RPG teams to fire into a platoon sized position in the opening minute might result in a red victory in a matter of minutes. Someone should write a scenario about it.

[dan/california]

If Steve would sneak wire into CMSF that would be a lot easier to do by the way.

[Dietrich]

Only two Taliban bodies were found after the battle - is this because Taliban would have evacuated their comrades, or is it indicative of the strength of the air attacks?

From Sean Naylor's Not A Good Day To Die: The Untold Story Of Operation Anaconda:

"The team contacted a B-52, and within minutes six JDAMs rained down, killing four of the fighters, including the commander. The two survivors, one of whom was mortally wounded, got to their feet and dragged the commander's body down to some nearby low ground. . . . Al Qaida fighters reoccupied the same position twice, and each time Juliet [the aforementioned AFO recon team] arranged a similarly devastating bombing run. In a testament to the enemy's motivation, after each air strike, even the wounded would assist in carrying off the dead."

Obviously, though, the insurgents in this case were Al Qaida rather than Taliban. I reckon that Al Qaida fighters could be counted on for showing greater aggressiveness than Taliban.

The impression I've gotten is that the Taliban almost never physically attack; sure, they bombard with mortars, BM-21 rockets, RPGs, maybe the occasional howitzer, and they blaze away with their AKs and PKMs and whatnot, but they never assault, they just strive to achieve fire superiority from well-concealed positions, and when Coalition forces return fire and achieve fire superiority themselves, the Taliban seem to vanish into the landscape.

On the one hand, I don't think CMSF can simulate such cunning tactics (if Red is AI-controlled); and on the other hand, such a battle could easily be disappointing and frustrating for the Blue player -- suffer casualties from a disturbingly accurate mortar barrage, take lots of small-arms fire from nearby treelines, return fire viciously, call in air support, then notice that the enemy has pretty much disappeared.

[akd]

It is suspected that there was a sizable contingent of Al Queda-type "foreign fighters" that crossed over from Pakistan at the Wanat battle.

[Dietrich]

Ah, that would in part explain the aggressiveness of the attack and their striving to actually get inside the outpost.

I get the impression that the Taliban are content to harass Coalition forces and inflict casualties through tactics which involve minimal risk to themselves (namely IEDs).

[DavidFields]

I am perplexed by the responses to this topic-there seems to be an element of denial.

Given the local political situation, is it really astonishing that one could find 200 Red fighters? If one botches the local politics, could not one face 2,000 or 20,000 enemy?

Blue picked the terrain to defend. Blue is fortified. Blue has air support. Blue has some of the best trained military in world history.

So why was Red anywhere near successful? It ain't politics. And Al-Quida are not Transformers. I sense an incomplete understanding of modern warfare--which we are best to understand and correct.

[Sergei]

Denial? I have no idea what you're on about. Please be more clear.

The attacker knows where the defenders were and has taken good positions. Defenders were taken by surprise and has to take up positions while already under heavy fire. One third of the defenders are Afghans, who you cannot trust to be motivated, adequately led or trained, or even loyal to you. If you look at the valley in Google Earth, it is difficult to defend with surrounding mountains going a kilometer above the village and so many crevices where fighters can sneak up on you, and with so few men and without UAV you can't control the whole area night and day. The location was not picked because it was easily defendable, it was picked to block fighters from Pakistan streaming to more populated areas. But all of the battle descriptions I've seen are just too vague about how the battle unfolded and how the casualties came about, to draw conclusions.

[Migo441]

An eerily similar attack (also in Nuristan) unfolded yesterday.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091004/ap_on_re_as/as_afghanistan

Estimates of 300 enemy fighters, a similar two-outpost set up, 8 American KIA.

[Wengart]

So last night I made a quick and dirty battle loosely based on the Wanat battle.

- Blue had two platoons of Syrian Mech. Infantry, without BMPs, with motivation low and set to green experience. U.S. forces consisted of one plt. of light infantry, veteran experience and high motivation.

-Red had 5 snipers, 2 MMGs, 10 RPG teams, and 6 large fighter groups experience level green--one fighter group was veteran while another was conscript--, high motivation.

-RPGs acted like mortars, killed relatively few troops, mostly ANA, and mainly suppressed. Additionally they managed to cause some ANA to route.

-U.S. infantry although small in number managed to pin inflict heavy casualties on the attacking force.

-Red troops managed to make it into the first trench line, although this was accomplished by a human wave attack, and were quickly repelled.

In conclusion, a scenario based on the battle of Wanat is not outside the realm of possibility, and more importantly RPGs will not shred the defenders.

I would also like to do some more work on this scenario, but currently I have no idea what a patrol base looks like. Any help would be appreciated.

Finally, if anyone would like to see the scenario I could send it to them, but, as a reminder, it was made in an hour and has no AI plan.

[Battlefront.com]

Indeed, the Taliban has long since figured out that direct assaults on fortified ISAF positions most often results in a lot of dead Taliban and little to show for it. Even the massed attack against the outpost at Wanat didn't do much, and that was (up until this week) the single biggest attack in years. They do a lot more damage by focusing on roadside bombs and doing horrible things to the ANA, police, and civilians. In particular the tactic of drawing IASF against civilians on purpose.

As for simulating this in CM:SF... it would take a lot to do it "right", but it could be done. The biggest problem is that apparently the majority of problems the US base suffered from was the hit to its ammo supply. Even if we simulated ammo dumps, if you tried to recreate the battle with one and the Red *didn't* it it the results might look very different.

Like all attempts to replicate outlier real life battles in a sim, it's extremely difficult to do because a real life battle is a culmination of hundreds of small variables randomly going one way or another. The example we most often discuss here is Villers Bocage. It's been created and recreated dozens of times in various CM games and the results often come out dramatically different than the original battle. That's because Wittmann got damned lucky and was in a position to take full advantage of it. It's impossible to duplicate this reliably in a game, no matter how accurate the game and the setup is.

Steve

[Bigduke6]

Steve,

There is a semi-censored AAR on this fight floating around the Internet, if you haven't seen it you should.

My read, the "massed assault" at Wanat, as you call it, was over from the insurgent side in about 15 - 20 minutes. They hit an OP and killed every one in it, and then when the platoon LT and a couple of guys tried to reinforce the OP, the insurgents shot them down too.

The insurgents at the same time used high ground to put the whole US base under fire, and even after US air arrived on station - including a friggin' B1A1 and 155mm firing w/in about 2 minutes from when the assault kicked off, and continuously for the next hour - all the blues could come up with was a pair of dead bodies. Who supposedly were Taliban, but that's what the Army said.

The Army also said 20 - 40 insurgents probably were killed or wounded. There is no evidence, it could be 200 - 400 or 2 - 4. As best as I can tell it's a number the Army estimates based on the amount of explosives they unloaded on the AO.

But it really looks like the insurgents just got away pretty much intact.

The initial attack by the insurgents targeted the US' forces most critical crew-served weapons: a mortar, a TOW HUMMV, and some kind of thermal imaging device in the OP.

The insurgents used MGs, mortars, and RPGs to lay down supressing fire, and to support assaults. They came from it looks like at least three directions, and they managed to execute this assault w/in 48 hours of the Americans arriving at Wanat and setting up camp. Think for a second of the "staffwork" necessary, to get about 200 armed tribesmen in hidden positions around a US patrol base, ready to launch a deliberate assault, in 48 hours or less, and your available means of transport are pretty much two or four feet.

(Had the Americans finished their berms and completed the wire etc., things might have been different, yada yada yada.)

The insurgents appear to have armed themselves, in part, by prior agreement with the Wanat police force. It is a good bet that was also an intelligence pipeline. In Afghanistan, there are ways other than UAVes to find out what the opposition is up to!

As a result of the Wanat battle NATO left the region and, aside from patrols armed for bear and always keeping moving, has yet to come back.

Sure, roughly 30 per cent or so casualties on reinforced US airborned infantry platoon isn't going to kick the Americans out of the war. So you're right, attrition-wise the battle didn't do the insurgents much good.

But from the insurgent POV, they took the Americans on, and used good infantry tactics to better the high tech Americans. Engagements like that are really important to the insurgency, as it's one thing to blow up bombs or assassinate collaborators, and it's another to pick a straight up ground battle and use guile and discipline to win it. Talk about an effective recruiting tool.

The reports about the US heroics in the fight are pretty close to propaganda. Not to say the US troopers didn't fight well, by all accounts they did, although most of them seem to have returned fire and waited for air and indirect to lift the heat. The US troopers that went beyond that, it looks like, for the most part got killed without having much effect on the battle.

But the point to the war is not to prove how brave one's soldiers are, it's to defeat the enemy. And if the insurgents kill or wound around two dozen the "foreign occupiers" in a straight-up fight, and then basically clear out scot free, that's a huge morale victory for the insurgency. Something they would love to repeat if they could.

And as we have just seen, it appears they can.

[Rant] One of the worst canards out there is that the US forces on the ground in Afghanistan somehow are the bestest, baddest warriors in the history of mankind. Leaving aside the obvious suspects like the Wehrmacht and the Spartans and the Roman Legions and Napoleon's Guard and the Swiss pikemen and so on aside for a moment, consider the Pathans.

Compared to US/NATO forces, Pathans can move faster, hide better, operate in a wider variety of terrain, and do more with less in worse conditions. They have more combat experience, they know the ground better by several orders of magnitude, and they have defeated at two superpowers in the last century. They can survive on bread and water pretty much indefinately. If necessary, they appear quite willing to die, and if they are hit they do not expect a Medevac.

In the US army you're a veteran if you've heard shots a couple of times and have a year or more in theater. In the Pathans, you have lived in a war all your life, and most of what you know about how to behave on a battlefield, your father or uncle taught you, and he was in a war his whole life too.

How members of a US force with all its tech and cost and political strings attached somehow amount in any one's mind to more dangerous fighters than the Pathans, is beyond me.[/rant]

[Battlefront.com]

BigDuke6,

But from the insurgent POV, they took the Americans on, and used good infantry tactics to better the high tech Americans.

Putting aside the enemy casualty count, which can't be verified either way (for understandable reasons), it is clear that the Americans got caught with their pants down. There's quite a bit of recriminations as to why that happened, though I think it all boils down to "forces stretched too thin".

Regardless, the Taliban has not proved that it can take the Americans, or other Western forces, on head to head. In fact, there are far more instances documented where such attacks have failed completely. If they really had what it takes (leadership, training, discipline, etc.) to replicate the attack in Wanat they would have been doing it over and over again since 2007. Instead they have relied on different tactics, including more and more suicide bombing tactics.

What I'm saying is Wanat was an outlier. The Taliban appear to have done pretty much everything right, the Americans did a fair amount wrong. Yet, tactically speaking, the incident may have been more favorable to the Americans than the Taliban, or the other way around. It's never going to be answered very well, I think, because the Taliban had the ability to remove bodies (i.e. a battalion wide sweep didn't go out immediately to poke into all of the attacker's positions).

At an operational level it didn't make a blip from a military standpoint. From a Taliban propaganda standpoint, I don't think it really mattered much either since they are preaching to the choir and could likely get the same effect from a successful suicide bombing or roadside ambush.

At a strategic level I don't think it did anything either. It's been two years since then and I don't see it having had any impact on the big picture at all.

Now, if the Taliban really COULD replicate such attacks on a regular basis, well... then I'd call it a "game changer" in favor of the Taliban.

Steve

[theFightingSeabee]

We all know that IED's and suicide bombers present a terrible problem that we'll never be able to fully defend against. They have certainly taken their toll on us. But when we fight for land, we REALLY don't like losing. So when a squad worth of guys dies with others injured in a real infantry battle, that's when we start getting shaky. On msn.com, there was the story of the guys who died today, and right after was followed by "Is the Afghan War really a necessity?". The more brazen the and ballsy the attack, the more we get nervous. They want our public to get scared and stop supporting the war. And with the support of the Afghan people, they are doing just that.

[Dietrich]

This thread is starting to sound annoyingly like a certain other thread in the General discussion forum. Rather than pertuate the foregoing argument/discussion about who is the man-for-man bestest force in the world today or the rationale for Western troops remaining in Afghanistan, I say consider this: A scenario in which the player posed the challenge of commanding Regular/Veteran Fighters and Combatants in a lighting assault (with the aim of taking out certain pieces of equipment and otherwise inflicting as many casualties as possible while simultaneously minimizing own losses) on a incompletely-fortified position manned by a platoon of Green/Regular IBCT infantry and two platoons of Conscript/Green Syrian Reserve infantry (to simulate ANA troops).

Oh, and just because the number of "Taliban" bodies found afterward could be counted on just one hand doesn't mean that those were the only casualties inflicted. Obviously, if the insurgents are so swift and adept at blending into the terrain, it stands to reason that they could "medevac" all the but the closest-to-the-enemy-positions KIA and leave no trace.

[hcrof]

Uh, Green/Regular IBCT infantry? They straight out of basic or something?

Even National guard would have had intense pre deployment training to make them all regulars wouldn't they?

Given the paranoia the west has about casualties I can't see them sending under prepared troops to a warzone and I thought green troops were 3rd world conscript level - not entirely useless (given good morale) but need supervision.

[Dietrich]

Uh, Green/Regular IBCT infantry? They straight out of basic or something?

Even National guard would have had intense pre deployment training to make them all regulars wouldn't they?

Given the paranoia the west has about casualties I can't see them sending under prepared troops to a warzone and I thought green troops were 3rd world conscript level - not entirely useless (given good morale) but need supervision.

True on all points. However, I said nothng about what percentage of the IBCT infantry would be Green versus what percentage would be Regular. As per your supposition(s), I reckon Regular/Veteran would be more realistic. Were I designing the scenario, I would probably just set the soft factors of the Blue troops (IBCT as well as ANA) to their "typical" settings and call it good.

"Green troops are third-world conscript level" sounds like an oxymoron. From the CMSF v1.20 manual:

Conscript: draftees with little training and no combat experience whatsoever.

Green: draftees with little training and some combat experience or reservists with some training and no combat experience. Green can also represent professional soldiers whose training is substandard in comparison to another force.

Regular: professional soldiers who went through extensive, quality training programs, but lack combat experience. Or Regular can represent troops that received mediocre training that have a fair amount of combat experience.

Veteran: professional soldiers with standard military training and first hand combat experience. Alternatively, it can be professional soldiers who have trained to a slightly higher standard than Regulars, yet lack combat experience.

Crack: exceptional soldiers with more than the average training and plenty of combat experience.

Elite: the best of the best. Superb training, frequent combat experience, and generally all around tough guys.

It strikes me as odd when I come across a scenario in which all the US troops are set to Elite when said US troops are not SEALs, Delta Force, etc., and are in greater than platoon strength. I try to apply a more subtle and nuanced sense of soft factors -- when simulating an ODA or MARSOC operators or what have you, I wouldn't necessarily even set their experience of every unit to Elite. I can't help but chuckle at all the complaining I've read on these forums about how people wish there was an experience level above Elite.

[Wengart]

Do you think it would be doing too much if the IBCT plt. had High motivation?

Also does anyone have a link to some decent images/ building plan for a patrol base?

[zmoney]

Steve,

Compared to US/NATO forces, Pathans can move faster, hide better, operate in a wider variety of terrain, and do more with less in worse conditions. They have more combat experience, they know the ground better by several orders of magnitude, and they have defeated at two superpowers in the last century. They can survive on bread and water pretty much indefinately. If necessary, they appear quite willing to die, and if they are hit they do not expect a Medevac.

rant]

You know in my opinion this is one battle in a war that could easily be won by the “West”. And some usually American citizens love to point at this one battle and say “see this proves someone else is better than us so we should just give up”.

Small scale battles like this don’t take great military minds to plan and conduct especially when it’s in your own backyard and terrain clearly favors you. Now if sustained attacks like this happen frequently then I as a Westerner would be worried that our military isn’t the best.

If you remember the same thing happened in Iraq if the terrorist had any little success and now it looks like the military campaign in Iraq is finally paying off. But that’s the key, military campaigns take time and blood.

That’s what some don’t seem to understand. And to call these sub-humans who like to decapitate husbands in front of their families or stone women for not wearing their burkas some kind of elite or worlds best fighter is ridiculous, see my second paragraph.

I seriously don’t think they could keep this kind of pace due to attrition issues on their own side which I believe proved the key to success in Iraq.

[zmoney]

Oh and generally all Al Qada and Taliban fighters with any real combat experience are usually called martyrs because they died gaining their combat experience. I bet you’d be real hard pressed to find any of those fighters who have survived several pitched battles. But they are brave and they do believe in their convictions enough to die for them I’ll give you that.

[theFightingSeabee]

I've got a scenario cooked up, but never released. It's a small group of US troops at a tiny old outpost in Afghanistan. They have to survive a taliban onslaught. I can release it if you guys want.