BLACKFIVE: Roundtables: Iraqi Air Force, Afghan "Texas Rangers"

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Roundtables: Iraqi Air Force, Afghan "Texas Rangers"

Posted By Grim

We spoke with Brigadier General Allardice this week, who is in charge of standing up the Iraqi Air Force. It's an interesting project, and he has a lot to say about the specifics -- how they're addressing COIN and heavy transport needs, long term and short term plans, and the ethnic mix of the force (as well as how they're getting along). He also gave some anecdotal thoughts on the Surge:

Number one, my life is a lot easier in the last four weeks because I'm not getting shelled every day. I just point that out as a statement of fact. It's kind of nice.

Number two, two months ago, I didn't have -- we didn't have anybody coming into the Iraqi air force. Despite the efforts to recruit, I was told for my first three months, it's just very difficult to get anybody. And starting about mid-July until today, we wound up with the numbers I gave you earlier on -- you know, over 130 pilots that are now coming back into the air force.

On the Afghan side, we spoke with Major General Cone and Colonel Wenzler (transcript here). This was a very interesting conversation. I was especially encouraged to see that something I've been advocating for a long time seems to be taking shape: a "Texas Ranger" style force that can respond to engagements out to the border, with rule-of-law powers as well as firepower.

I'll put that exchange in the extended entry, but as is nearly always the case, the whole transcript is worth reading.

GRIM: I was wondering if there's been any plans to institute a kind of air mobile unit that could help the police respond to ambushes in more outlying areas and bring kind of a rule-of-law-based response to that kind of thing, sort of more like a sort of Texas Rangers type model instead of the division between kind of military responsibilities and then, on the other hand, more localized police model. Could you talk about that?

GEN. CONE: Yes. As a matter of fact, we're working two significant models to support that, one on the military side, that is probably more mature, and one on the police side.

Let me talk the military side. We are forming six commando Kandaks or battalions. This is the equivalent of a Ranger school-like experience in which we put together about 600 highly trained light infantrymen that are capable of conducting air assault operations. And what we have done is, through the acquisition now of Mi-17s, I think, will be the initial airframe that we use.

The intent -- and exactly what you've said; the pattern that this enemy uses would be to identify geographically what is an isolated location where there might be a district police center. And what they're doing is they'll show up and leave a night letter that tells the police they're coming the next day in great numbers. The police, probably wisely, cannot be reinforced, so they might leave their posts. And then what happens is they'll overrun the district center, burn the district center and use it as a photo-op and say they've overrun it. And then, by the time we can reinforce this some number of hours later, they're gone.

So what we would have with these commandos, when we had such a situation, linked into now a network of joint provincial and joint regional coordination centers, that they could call for assistance and that we could enable a very rapid air assault-type response of commandos that could defend that district center or whatever might be threatened.

On the police side, we are training what is known as Afghan National Civil Order Police. And again, these will be police that have either a rural function or an urban function that are specialists, literally a SWAT team that are, again, regular policemen that have been through a higher degree of training, and then some very focused training for the regions that they'll be in. And they will be a response force to assist with local police. And again, we've produced our first three battalions of those, and we're getting ready right now to push those out to the field as reinforcement forces for the district police that might be in peril.

GRIM: Thank you. It seemed like an element that might have been missing in our overall tactics in the area. So I'm relieved to hear that it's coming online now.

GEN. CONE: Well, I think you'd be tremendously impressed by the commandos. And having spent some time, U.S. Special Forces runs that school. And I will tell you that these are -- you know, you have to understand, the Afghan soldier, of course, comes from a martial background. Most of these young soldiers grew up in families where fighting has been a part of their lives. They are very -- they have a great deal of endurance. They have, I think, a high amount of physical strength and, in fact, make very good soldiers.

One of the stories I would relate is I had one of my 06s out who was doing an assessment on one of the units, and he observed an Afghan unit he was traveling with came into an ambush. And, of course, as I'm sure many of you know, one of the most difficult things to do is to teach people the reaction when you're in an ambush is to turn into the ambush and attack. And what he watched was, you know, a textbook reaction with characteristic U.S. amount of fire power that was fired back at the enemy that quickly broke off the ambush, and they were successful.

And the colonel -- I think the quote that he gave me -- I said, "Well, how would you characterize the young Afghans' performance in combat?" He said one word: "Fearless."

Outstanding.