An American Lion

Korengal Outpost, Afghanistan

The flexibility of our military is being put to the test in Afghanistan. The fight that the troops are in is transforming quickly because the enemy is adapting their tactics to try and exploit any weakness they can perceive in how our troops do their job. It took years to get the troops in Iraq the vehicles they needed when the insurgency there discovered that we were driving around in Humvees with doors made out of vinyl; will that be the case for badly needed small arms in Afghanistan?

A few weeks back we wrote about a new Army program, the Accelerated Precision Mortar Initiative (APMI), a response to an urgent request from Afghanistan to get troops precision mortar fire. While we tend to focus on big ticket items, it’s often the smaller weapons that make huge differences to troops in the field, particularly those chasing fleeting Taliban around Afghanistan’s harsh mountainous terrain. By providing prompt, precise, indirect fire support to the individual rifle squad, the precision mortar is one such weapon.

I spoke to Maj. Jeffrey Hilt, the program lead for the Army from PEO Mortars, to get some more information on the status of the program, where it’s going.

Hilt said troops in Afghanistan are “screaming” for the 120mm round. Frequent skirmishes with Taliban fighters, along with restrictive rules of engagement, put a primacy on immediate, accurate fire support and Afghanistan’s notoriously bad weather means the Air Force often can’t get close air support exactly where it’s needed.

The Army’s marching orders, he told me, is to get a 120mm mortar round to the field as fast as possible. The Operational Needs Statement from Afghanistan specified a GPS-guided 120mm mortar, with a circular error of probability (CEP) of 5 meters or less and a 7,000 meter range. It must also be compatible with existing fire control systems, such as the Lightweight Hand-held Mortar Ballistic Computer, which is about the size of the old GPS units. The program is being accelerated via an Other Transaction Authority, rather than the traditional and more labyrinthine acquisition process.

This type of a weapon should already be in the hands of U.S. troops. We have been engaged in these kinds of fights with the Taliban for years. We have been in numerous situations where U.S. troops have been surrounded by hundreds of Taliban fighters, and what this weapon could do is put up a precise perimeter around our troops to keep the enemy from coming in and "hugging the belt," which is standard practice for a motivated but outgunned insurgent enemy.

I don't know what this says about COIN, though. If we still need to increase the firepower of a standard infantry company or battalion, it means we are up against more of a conventional threat than a standard insurgent threat. It means we are fighting an enemy that can concentrate in larger numbers and will defend ground much more readily than a standard hit-and-run affair.  If we were fighting small bands of Taliban that could be surrounded or engaged by a similar number of our troops, this kind of firepower would be overkill since we already deploy mortars with the troops. This type of weapon indicates a desperate reaction to a much stronger enemy than we have faced before. Reducing the use of air power fits with a good COIN policy; artillery being as precise as it is, no issues there. We have been conditioned to think of COIN as being a fight best carried out by light forces:

But a smart reader commented in our earlier story that, while a GPS-guided 120mm mortar is certainly a good thing, it’s too big and too heavy to be used anywhere but on established bases and outposts. Also, range limits its fire out to about 7,000 meters distance from the mortar pit. What troops really need, this reader argues, is a smaller precision mortar, in the 81mm to 60mm range. Even the 81mm mortar is too big a weapon to be humped around Afghanistan’s mountains, and 81mm mortar rounds, along with all of the body armor, weapons and ammunition, are too heavy. He thinks a 60mm precision mortar makes more sense, and also suggested it should be laser guided versus GPS.

Laser designation is not a requirement for the APMI, Hilt said, because it costs too much and existing laser designators weigh upwards of 35 pounds, far too heavy for dismounted troops to carry. There is a laser designated 120mm round in the inventory, though Hilt didn’t have much positive to say about it. Also, in Afghanistan, the enemy frequently ducks down behind ridges and rock outcroppings, laser designation would have limited utility, versus a GPS round that can accurately target an enemy taking cover behind obstacles or in dead ground.

So the weapon, then, is not so much for operations in the field where troops have to move; it's more for precision defense of establish perimeters. That the Taliban are able to hit larger installations means we're seeing a definite escalation of the fight, and an indication that the Taliban are making it tough for everyone.

This is a good test to see if the Obama Administration has in place a team at the Pentagon that can do right by the troops. If procurement and bureaucracy are still a hot mess, then the troops will suffer for the fact that the Obama team has failed to clear out the old school mentality at the Pentagon. You cannot criticize anything the Bush Administration did with regards to defense policy if you hang on to the man who ran the Pentagon for the last two years of that administration. Cutting the Obama people slack flies in the face of reason when you consider that they failed to bring in their own man to change the way the Pentagon does business.