US drone swoops low over Miranshah(Pakistan)

Daily Times ^ | July 2,2004 | Rehmatullah Darpakhel

[Boot Hill]

• “I'd bet Dollars against donuts that Osama's crew has to stay in or near the river valleys (logistics, stealth, etc.)...”

Logistics, perhaps, but definitely not for stealth. Stealth is found in the hundreds of tiny highlands villages, that dot both sides of the high mountain areas that surround Miram Shah. Tactically, valleys are death traps; you want to occupy the highlands and force your adversary to occupy the valleys. ("Yea, though I walk the valley of the shadow of death...").

Even though a big city (like Miram Shah) can provide shelter simply by virtue of the multitude of people and buildings that a terrorist can blend in with, it also offers tens of thousands of prying and greedy eyes whose loyalties cannot be vouched safe for. The tribal system and culture of the FATA, that the terrorists depend on for their security, is strongest in the small villages and weakest in the big cities.

It's just my opinion, but my appraisal of al-Qa'ida and the Taliban openly occupying such places as Wana and Miram Shah is a sure sign of their general disorganization, second-rate training, poor planning and getting their butts handed to them by U.S. armed forces.

--Boot Hill

[Boot Hill]

• “...looks like we could make one hell of a ski resort there one day.”

You've really got the right attitude! But if you really want to ski, check out the Pakistani maps in these two posts.

Missile kills Pakistan tribal head @ #127
Missile kills Pakistan tribal head @ #149

Those runs should make Squaw Valley's ice and mogul covered "Head Wall" and Kirkwood's infamous suicide run, "Cornice", look like a simple green ski run made for grandmothers!

Q: "How long is this ski run?"
A: "Oh, about two days long!"

--Boot Hill

[jeffers]

Back before any of this started, call it early March, the Paks reported that they had 70,000 troops in the "tribal areas", and 35,000 of those in the Wana area.

Long about April, a vehicular convoy "stirred up dust and clogged all the roads" moving from Bannu to Miram Shah. This was after the Kaloosha offensive. A week or two later, about 3,500 troops from Wana reinforced the troops at Miram Shah.

About a week or two after that, two deployments of additional troops reached Wana, each about 3,500 strong.

Subtracting the 50 Pak troops killed in action to date, my addition and subtraction shows there to be, on the basis of official Pak military announcements, 38,950 Pak troops in or around Wana, including the Shakai Valley, and no more than 38,000 in or around Miram Shah, minus those troops that may currently be garrisoned east of Miram Shah at the scene of firefights that took place concurrently with the Shakai valley operation, and minus those troops recently reported to be garrisoned at Razmak.

Of course, it's been a while since Mushie called me to update my numbers, and those troops could be anywhere. I have my speculations about where they might be, I know where I'd put them if they were mine, but I think I'd rather see Bin Laden or Zawahiri's head on a stick than be proved right or wrong later on.

For those who have misplaced the bookmark, a general assortment of maps can be found here:

http://host1.in-motion.net/~jefft/tech/Mapping/afghanistan/index.html

and a specific map showing the engagements that took place in the week or so prior to 6/14 can be found here:

http://host1.in-motion.net/~jefft/tech/Mapping/afghanistan/wana06142004.jpg

I am currently just finishing up a really keen new map. It began with the 30 meter res Digital Elevation Model, which was then analyzed using the 8 nearest neighbor algorithm to produce a slope/trafficability image. That image was redraped over the DEM to add shaded relief to the image. Additional data in the form of a vector dataset including the border, villages, ivers and roads was rough overlaid, and used in side by side comparisons to extract a high resolution slope/trafficability/road/river overlay image which was then yet again draped over the DEM. At this point the major villages were input to the nearest four decimal places.

All of the overlay data except slope was also extracted and overlaid on the 30m per pixel Landsat images too.

Unfortunately, common sense prevents me from posting these new maps until Operation Mountain Storm is either over, or abandoned.

Well, I might be able to post it once certain things become inevitable, but I intend to err on the side of caution.

In the meantime, forgive me if I seem inattentive. I don't really want to speculate on the progress of the operations currently underway, and I'm also having way too much fun flying a virtual aircraft up and down the valleys of the Shawal Mountain District at 50 meters off the deck and some ungodly speed like 2,800 knots, (frame rate advance is indirectly and exponentially proportional to CPU horsepower and RAM required) looking for likely spots to jettison discretionary ordinance.

And buzzing Miram Shah.

[Cronos]

We could run his child through a meat grinder.

ANd us killing innocents makes us different from these slammie scum how?

Killin' the leader if he's mastermindin' an attack on the US is somewhat ok, but not his kids. That's a cowards way, that's a jihadi coward's way.

[JusPasenThru]

BMG=Big Mother Gun.

I read somewhere that in the 80's some Lebanese terrorists abducted 4 Soviet diplomats and threatened them with extinction. The Soviets couldn't find the terrorists but were able to figure out who their families were. They killed a couple of the terrorists' family members, chopped them into little pieces, put them in bags, and had them delivered to the terrorists.

The terrorists promptly released the Soviet captives.

They seem to understand the technique.

[treeclimber]

I agree with your assessment that qaeda has a better chance of hiding in the highlands than the valleys...the highlands offer surveillance opportunities (who's coming?) as well as difficulty for our troops to swoop in quickly. But, as GWB said in 2001, "We will hunt the terrorists in every dark corner of the earth. WE WILL BE RELENTLESS."

Our marines and Army special ops are like the guys that hunted down Butch Cassity & the SunDance kid.

How do you say, "Who ARE those guys? in arabic?

[treeclimber]

that looks like a barn for goats

[Dog]

I am currently just finishing up a really keen new map

When you finish this new map ......would you please freepmail a link so I can view it. I promise not to post it.

[VOA]

Killin' the leader if he's mastermindin' an attack on the US is somewhat ok, but not his kids.

That's the angle I was pursuing with the .50 BMG sniper-in-the-sky drone.
A way to sisperse a murderous crowd with the a graphic, yet minimal, spilling of blood.
I suspect that if that happened a few times, fewer crowds would turn out to go after
convoys...maybe more convoys would even go through unscathed.

[Boot Hill]

• “They killed a couple of the terrorists' family members, chopped them into little pieces, put them in bags, and had them delivered to the terrorists.”

Urban legend and a very popular myth, but it never happened!

It is true that in September 1985, terrorists kidnapped four Soviet diplomats. And it is true that the Soviets obtained their release one month later (minus the one diplomat that the terrorists killed). And it is true that the Soviets used threats to obtain their release. But from there on, the story turns from fact to myth.

The urban legend got started as a Soviet disinformation campaign to cover their own complicity. The kidnapping was an operation run by Imad Mugniyah, who turns out to be a Soviet trained terrorist! (Mugniyah, is also the man responsible for the 1983 terrorist attack on the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241. Far less known than bin Laden, but equally as dangerous, here is some further background on him: Google.)

Since Mugniyah had become an agent of the Iranian-backed terror organization, Hezbollah, the Soviets called in the Iranian Ambassador and informed him of the severe military retaliation that would be taken against Iran if the diplomats were not released immediately.

This Soviet counter-terror operation was run in the field by a KGB officer by the name of Colonel Yuri Perfilev, who about three years ago disclosed much of the basic facts of the kidnapping and release in a Russian foreign service journal. Here is a snyopsis of that interview. (Use edit-find to locate the story entitled: "Intelligence Officer Says He Knows Organizer Of September Attacks".

When you trace back the source for the urban legend, most point back to a single source. Two years after the kidnapping, the gullible, but useful idiot, and leftist muckraker, Bob Woodward, in his book Veil: The Secret Wars Of The CIA, gave life to the legend that is the Soviet dis-information campaign, by repeating the now classic version of the story. Is it any surprise that Woodward would be the stooge for Soviet dis-information?

--Boot Hill

[Dog]

You both have a freepmail.

[Cronos]

Err... the story I heard (and I think it may be an urban legend) was that the KGB kidnapped some TERRORISTS and chopped them up. That's ok, that's GOOD.

But, talking, even thinking of revenging yourself on the man's children?? That makes us no better than the jihadi scum. I say slaughter the jihadis, but let's show them we're better than them.

[Cronos]

BEcuase if you think that the sins of the father should be visited on the son, that justifies the Jihadis warped logic on 911 -- viz. that America supports Israel that kills jihadis, hence American innocents (and Israeli innocents) are open targets. Warped logic? YES. Let's not support it.

[VOA]

BEcuase if you think that the sins of the father should be visited on the son, that justifies
the Jihadis warped logic on 911 -

As per my post #19, I am NOT in favor of the abuse of the sons/relatives/etc.

My musing about a "sniper-in-the-sky" Predator was only thouhght of as a way
to disperse/discourage one of those murderous mobs with a minimum of bloodshed.

[Cronos]

Hi VOA -- sorry, that wasn't directed AT you, just ccing you as I saw your post #19 which makes us in agreement

[jeffers]

The current map file is 16.8 megabytes which puts it beyond my ability to transfer at this time, regardless of security considerations. It is also in .psd format, which facilitates multiple layers that allow me to toggle on and off various terrain features such as roads, rivers, text, etc. Not all viewers support this format.

Here is a small section of the master image, just to give you an idea what it looks like without giving away potentially useful information:

The area shown represents about 1/30th of the full image.

Regarding the possible "occupation" of Miram Shah, by militants displaced from the Shakai Valley, as speculated by the author of the report quoted in the original thread post, the Pak troop concentrations in and around Miram Shah make that highly unlikely.

There are much more plausible scenarios that would explain the presence of both US SOF troops and the extended, loitering drone deployment.

[HoustonCurmudgeon]

You're missing the big picture. While it would be great to take out one guys head with a 50 cal. it is so much better to kill everyone within a 100 yards with a Hellfire! Besides it's easier to aim and the name is better! ;-)