Battle for Wanat [Merged]

[George Wallace]

Have we gone full circle, or just rehashing lessons learned and forgotten?

Compassion and courage!-Jessica Lynch Article

Jessica L ynch's units training

Jessica Lynch

 

[chrisf]

As far as weapons maintenance/marksmanship goes, don't know about the American system, but the Canadian system of teaching needs an overhaul from the bottom up... the way basic training teaches weapons/marksmanship needs to be seriously rethought.

 

[ballz]

the way basic training teaches weapons/marksmanship needs to be seriously rethought.

*sticks nose where it doesn't belong*
Agreed. In two weeks in Farnham we had 3 NDs out of about 50 coursemates. I'm no expert with firearms but I had enough prior knowledge to understand why you need to take the magazine out of the rifle before you start cycling the action to unload... However, if I didn't know that before, I probably still wouldn't, because I know a lot of my coursemates still don't understand a lot of that stuff.

Anywho, I'll get my nose out of this cause it's way beyond me.

 

[chrisf]

I have troops right now who are afraid to volunteer for Nov 11 firing party as they're not comfortable enough with the weapon that they're afraid they're going to have an ND..."

After I went to fetch a few 1 gallon jugs of CLP to soak our guns at the end of an exercise, I had a troop say to me "Why are you putting on more oil, aren't we just cleaning them soon anyway?"

While teaching BMQ, I still heard crap from my fellow instructors along the lines of "There's carbon at the end of your barrel, inside your flash surpressor... use a gerber and scrape it out"

I've had troops pulling crap like taking the firing pin out of their weapon to avoid an ND.

Too often the only way to turn your weapon into supply is to have it so bone dry that there's not a speck of oil on it...

The Americans released a comic book style set of cleaning/maintenance instructions for the M16 when it was first issued, I had a digital copy of it at one point, have since lost it, it was actually an excellet set of instructions, even going so far as to explain WHY you don't remove the trigger mech, WHY you don't scrape it with steel tools, WHY having oil on the weapons come inspection time is acceptable.

 

[vonGarvin]

As far as weapons maintenance/marksmanship goes, don't know about the American system, but the Canadian system of teaching needs an overhaul from the bottom up... the way basic training teaches weapons/marksmanship needs to be seriously rethought

There is nothing wrong with the system.  There may be a problem with its application, however.  I had always hoped that us being in a shooting war would re-emphasise to us (the collective Army, that is) on how important marksmanship is.  I was wrong.

 

[DirtyDog]

12 mags in 1.5 hours?  God forbid! That definitely is an operator/maintainence issue.

600 rds through an M249?  It's just getting warmed up for cripes sake.

BS article.

 

[COBRA-6]

I have troops right now who are afraid to volunteer for Nov 11 firing party as they're not comfortable enough with the weapon that they're afraid they're going to have an ND..."

After I went to fetch a few 1 gallon jugs of CLP to soak our guns at the end of an exercise, I had a troop say to me "Why are you putting on more oil, aren't we just cleaning them soon anyway?"

While teaching BMQ, I still heard crap from my fellow instructors along the lines of "There's carbon at the end of your barrel, inside your flash surpressor... use a gerber and scrape it out"

I've had troops pulling crap like taking the firing pin out of their weapon to avoid an ND.

Too often the only way to turn your weapon into supply is to have it so bone dry that there's not a speck of oil on it...

The Americans released a comic book style set of cleaning/maintenance instructions for the M16 when it was first issued, I had a digital copy of it at one point, have since lost it, it was actually an excellet set of instructions, even going so far as to explain WHY you don't remove the trigger mech, WHY you don't scrape it with steel tools, WHY having oil on the weapons come inspection time is acceptable.

Good point, our PAMs read like crap. You think in todays day and age we would have easy to read, understand and remember soldier's guides/user manuals with accompanying youtube-type videos or interactive online applications.  :

 

[Sigs Pig]

The Americans released a comic book style set of cleaning/maintenance instructions for the M16 when it was first issued, I had a digital copy of it at one point, have since lost it, it was actually an excellet set of instructions, even going so far as to explain WHY you don't remove the trigger mech, WHY you don't scrape it with steel tools, WHY having oil on the weapons come inspection time is acceptable.

Found an online copy here:
http://www.ep.tc/problems/25/

Looks like a good read,
thanx
ME

 

[The Bread Guy]

The U.S. military's "last word" on Wanat?  This from the Washington Post:

The Army's official history of the battle of Wanat - one of the most intensely scrutinized engagements of the Afghan war - largely absolves top commanders of the deaths of nine U.S. soldiers and instead blames the confusing and unpredictable nature of war.

The history of the July 2008 battle was almost two years in the making and triggered a roiling debate at all levels of the Army about whether mid-level and senior battlefield commanders should be held accountable for mistakes made under the extreme duress of combat.

An initial draft of the Wanat history, which was obtained by The Washington Post and other media outlets in the summer of 2009, placed the preponderance of blame for the losses on the higher-level battalion and brigade commanders who oversaw the mission, saying they failed to provide the proper resources to the unit in Wanat.

The final history, released in recent weeks, drops many of the earlier conclusions and instead focuses on failures of lower-level commanders ....

Link to full report (almost 4MB PDF) here.

More discussion of this elsewhere at Army.ca
http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/83809.0.html
http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/83626.0.html
http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/89732.0.html

 

[The Bread Guy]

Longer piece from Mark Bowden in Vanity Fair on Wanat:

When First Lieutenant Jonathan Brostrom was killed by Taliban fighters in 2008, while attempting a heroic rescue in a perilously isolated outpost, his war was over. His father’s war, to hold the U.S. Army accountable for Brostrom’s death, had just begun. And Lieutenant Colonel William Ostlund’s war—to defend his own record as commander—was yet to come. With three perspectives on the most scrutinized engagement of the Afghanistan conflict, one that shook the military to its foundations, Mark Bowden learns the true tragedy of the Battle of Wanat ....

 

[tomahawk6]

Colonel Ostlund's paper about lessons he learned in Afghanistan. Ostlund is having to carry the water for his brigade commander,who put his finger on the map and said put a platoon here.The platoon was too small to make a differnce IMO.A company sized force would have made more sense.Resources were too imited to execute the strategy.

http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/MilitaryReview/Archives/English/MilitaryReview_20090831_art004.pdf