Duncan Hunter sees a new opportunity for tackling the growing problem of improvised explosive device attacks in Afghanistan.
Posted on 07/01/2010 8:19:16 PM PDT by pissant
With a new commander in Afghanistan, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) sees a new opportunity for tackling the growing problem of improvised explosive device attacks there.
Hunter, a former Marine, lays blame on Gen. Stanley McChrystal for altering the brand of counterinsurgency fought in Iraq in ways that have allowed the number of IED attacks to flourish in Afghanistan. Casualties there peaked last month; at least 100 coalition forces died, according to news reports. And IEDs remain the No. 1 threat to U.S. troops.
For quite some time, Hunter has been trying to make sure the military replicates the success of Task Force ODIN (observe, detect, identify and neutralize), which was credited with dramatic reductions in IED attacks in Iraq, in Afghanistan. “It takes the commander on the ground” to establish ODIN, Hunter said of McChrystal. “You’ve got to lay that on his feet.”
Hunter traveled to Afghanistan for the second time as a freshman congressman over the Memorial Day recess and told POLITICO he found that what is supposed to be ODIN in Afghanistan “chases high-value targets, as opposed to taking back the road, where 60 percent of the casualties come from.” So he’s circulating a letter to be sent to McChrystal’s replacement, Gen. David Petraeus, in hopes that the man who helped establish the task force that targets the people who bury IEDs will listen.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Duncan Hunter sees a new opportunity for tackling the growing problem of improvised explosive device attacks in Afghanistan.
It's good to see.........
I like the name of the task force: Odin.
I hope President Palin looks at his father for SecDef or Secretary of the Army.
Tag for later bump
“I hope President Palin looks at his father for SecDef or Secretary of the Army.”
Yes!, or Homeland Security.
Persistent surveillence as executed by Task Force Odin is orders of magnitude more difficult in Afghanistan than it was in Iraq due to the expansive countryside, rugged terrain, and low population densities. Odin is operating in Afghanistan, but a different set of tactics, techniques, and procedures must be developed.
Things are so simple from inside the Beltway.
Hunter did two long tours in Afgahanistan and one in Iraq. He knows exactly what he’s talking about.
He’s also a mighty fine looking guy——
I’m sure that he understands the problem. But, to suggest that what worked in Iraq with Odin can be applied to Afghanistan strikes me as a political comment, not a serious course of action.
YEs, but if you heard Hunter in the HASC hearing on the subject, it becomes very obvious he understands the differences as well as what adaptations may be needed.
Which McChrystal was not doing, was he?
Nor, for that matter, does taking the NAME of what worked in Iraq, "Odin," and applying it to something completely different in Afghanistan work.
McChrystal was doing the same things that all commanders in both Afghanistan and Iraq have been doing: expending lots of resources to fight the IED threat. We currently detect about 50% of IEDs that we encounter. Only one of the ones that we miss has to work correctly to kill an entire crew and garner a great victory for our enemies. We have zero room to make mistakes and even if we made no mistakes, the enemy will succeed from time to time.
When you dig a hole and place 500kg of explosives into the hole connected to a pressure plate trigger, you are going to make that work from time to time.
What needs to be looked into by Hunter is the money spent on JIEDDO and the contracts issued by JIEDDO for IED defeat. He aslo needs to look at the automated tools available for C-IED and ask why humans are used at all in these efforts and why we don’t have the entire country covered with hyper spectral sensing UAV’s.
JIEDDO is by design a very inefficient organization. Throw money against a problem and see if anything comes of it. Lots of good things emerged, but also lots of things that were a complete waste of time and money. Some of them were good ideas that just weren’t mature enough and some were hairbrained ideas that had political backing. Google a company called Ionatron if you want an example of the latter.
Data fusion, data analysis, and pattern analysis have been one of the biggest buckets for money and much of the CIED intel effort is now at least partially automated.
Hunter and his Dad have been right in the middle of fueling the JIEDDO engine and goosing the accelerator. They don’t want anyone looking at some of their pet projects.
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