Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Wednesday, October 7, 2009

COIN and Force Protection

By David Anderson:


Bernard Finel makes the very simple and astute point that being out-numbered 10:1 means a very bad day for any unit involved in a slug fest, even when artillery and air support is readily available:



It is simply-put a different war when your adversary can concentrate 200-300 men in a sustained ground operation.  The risks change.  The operational response changes...


failing to grasp a structural transformation in the conflict.  Our adversaries are no longer just operating in small groups, terrorizing the unarmed� but rather they have developed the capacity engage in sustain small-unit operations.  No matter how well led a platoon is, it still is going to face rough going when faced with 300+ fighters willing to go toe-to-toe.


American COIN doctrine has US and other ISAF security forces dispersed through an ink-spot and the ink-spot boundary area in small and very small units.  These units are supposed to integrate and almost become one with the local social mileau in order to gain trust, legitimacy and effective operational intellgience in order to provide the basic security and population sorting process that is the prerequisites for host-nation government legitimacy enhancement. 


A US squad or platoon is more than adequate to beat back an assault on fixed positions when the assault element is no more than a few dozen men.  Unless artillery and air support is readily available and collatoral damage is not a concern in built-up areas, the same US units would be in severe trouble against two or three hundred men. 


This is the dilemna that Steve has been pounding on.  US COIN doctrine requires significant exposure of small units to potential over-run attacks.  US force protection imperatives will either not allow those small units to be dispersed as COIN doctrine dictates, or will disregard COIN's imperative to minimize heavy firepower when the dispersed units are in danger of being over-run. 



As a side note, one of the items from the two large engagements in Wanat and Kamdesh was a significant local militia presence that was pissed off enough to fight because of recent US airstrikes or check-points that killed local medical teams. 



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1 comment:

  1. KevinOctober 7, 2009 at 4:14 AM

    On NPR they were "surprised" by the attacks... and gee we had just told the local chiefs that we were planning on leaving in a few days....
    what? was it the plan to get them to attack before you left? seems dumb to tell them anything before you are loaded in the trucks and headed down the road.
    I believe we did a good thing overthrowing the hard-line taliban, but that we should have put as many ranger battalions as we had available into Tora Bora and not relied on the locals in that instance. It was our fight/cause to get OBL.
    and right after, we should have said thanks maam! and gotten the hell out.
    why are we still there? what is "winning?" what does it look like?
    I think we have killed enough Afghanis.

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