So we’re here on beautiful Emerald Isle, N.C., right outside of Camp Lejeune, to welcome my son back from his second deployment.  His first was in Fallujah, 2007, and this one was with the 26th MEU functioning as ready-reserve for CENTCOM.

I’ve been pondering and worrying over the whole idea of MEUs held in ready-reserve aboard Amphibious Assault Docks when there is such a heavy need for troops in Afghanistan, while Somalia turns headlong towards jihadi militancy, and when there is a need for force projection in the Caucasus in order to hedge against Russian hegemony and ensure logistics supply to Afghanistan.  Yet there is also a need for force projection in the Persian Gulf and in the Middle East generally.

Really.  I have pondered these and related issues until it hurts.  I have also been clear in my advocacy for responsible budgetary and engineering decisions.   The Captain’s Journal has been clear concerning our disapproval of the poor engineering and cost overruns of the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle.  We even recommended against continuation of the program.  After all, if cuts are coming to the Department of Defense, then we must do our part.

No more.  As it turns out, the current administration is planning to make drastic cuts in everything from nuclear weapons refurbisment to the F-22 program.  Because the DoD is filled mostly with responsible people who implement policy, it has been targeted for cuts, while we throw away multiple trillions of dollars on only God knows what for only God knows what reason.

So to the extent that I am read in the circles of power, I have helped to justify the jettisoning of an important element in the Marine Corps’ expeditionary program.  I feel that I have sinned against God and the Commandant of the Marine Corps.  After this post I will engage in protracted prayer and then drop and give the Commandant 100 pushups.

If it’s okay for a sniveling lackey like Timothy Geithner to print a trillion dollars and throw it down the drain, then it’s okay for the Marines to have their EFV.  They deserve it more than any other recipient of Geithner’s money.

In fact, in addition to repenting of the responsibility that I feel towards the fiduciary fidelity of the U.S. economy, I have adopted a new slogan.  “Show me the money!”  I want to see every weapons system currently in the design or manufacture stage followed through to completion, and then I want to see a two or threefold expansion in the weapons systems being planned and funded.  I want to see the number of MEUs increased at least threefold, and the size of the Marine Corps increased similarly or greater.  No more worrying for me.

So as I receive my son back from his hard work overseas and Mr. Obama ponders his NCAA bracket picks, my having agonized over the hard decisions has made the coming years easy for this administration.  No fuss, no trouble and no looking back.  Build the weapons and swear in the boys.  If anyone asks how we’re going to pay for it all, just tell them we’ll print the money.

In More on Battle Space Weight we covered the almost frantic search for pounds as the fact became increasingly clear that the weight Soldiers and Marines carried in Iraq was heavy, but perhaps even prohibitive in Afghanistan.  Exhaustion, lower extremity injuries and lack of mobility mark the heavy weight our warriors carry today.  One possible remedy is the Big Dog, the otherwise cool machine that sounds like a million angry bees.  Here it is one more time.

To our observation that the warrior today carries at least 32 more pounds than in WWII due exclusively to body armor, commenter mwc33 responded:

Isn’t the other big difference between World War II and today the load our enemies are carrying? German and Japanese troops carried comparable combat loads; insurgents in Iraq or Afghanistan don’t – and the disparity in mobility in Iraq’s urban environment has to be multiplied in mountainous and other difficult terrain.

Those 32 pounds of body armor are a big pain in the a$$ and everything possible should be done to lighten them. But while “big dog” may be kinda dumb, even with the lightest possible armor we’re still carrying 40 -70 more pounds than the bad guys; something has to be figured out to lighten the load – not just because of the weight itself, but because our combat loads can straitjacket us with TTPs and can make us predictable in the eyes of the enemy.

Outstanding point!  It’s not just that we’re carrying heavier loads, it’s also that the insurgent isn’t carrying any at all due to the fact that he lives among the population.  So even if the Big Dog works, what to do?

Animals.

The taxpayer has spent billions to make sure America’s fighting forces have the most high-tech modes of transportation.

But in a country like Afghanistan where the enemy hides in mountain lairs, where there are few foot paths, and no roads at all, sometimes a more primitive conveyance makes more sense.

And so soldiers and Marines possibly headed to Afghanistan were at the Animal Packers Course at the Hawthorne (Calif.) Army Ammunition Depot learning how to use mules, donkeys and horses to pack water, ammunition, weapons and medical supplies.

“With vehicles, you have to worry about things like lubrication, tires and fuel,” said Marine Staff. Sgt. Tyler McDaniel. “With animals, you have to think about stuff like shoes and grooming.”

True enough, there may be a call for Farriers in the Marines.  Wonder if that will become a billet?  At any rate, having trained them before, I am partial to quarter horses, and while on their back I have put them in some precarious and dangerous places and positions on the trail.  They are sure-footed and reliable.

But whether horses or mules, the solution may be a millennium old.  Well now.  It looks as if all of that discussion about the health of transport animals in the Small Wars Manual isn’t so dated and irrelevant after all.

The tactical brother of the highly strategic Field Manual FM 3-24 has been released, entitled Tactics in Counterinsurgency, FM 3-24.2.  There are certain Milblogs that are known as the beer drinkers in the outer room, raucous and loud.  You know who they are.  Then there are the more sophisticated guys smoking cigars and drinking Bourbon in a more secluded room.  The Captain’s Journal likes to think of itself in the later category.  From time to time the loud boys break into the back room and want to throw down, and we can do that too.  But soon enough we go back to our high brow thoughts and pedantic ways while we draw on a Macanudo.

But our grunt ties come through all of the time, truth be told.  We just can’t hide it.  That’s why we are more of a logistics, weapons and tactics blog rather than a strategy blog, and we secretly break into the outer room to throw down with the boys from time to time.  And so FM 3-24.2 interests us much more than its predecessor, all things being equal.

There will be many opportunities to mine the depths of this magnificent document, and so don’t hold it against us that we start with a seeming random bit of detail.  Satellite patrols.

The field manual says (page 166, Section 5-216):

All units must know the overall route and if possible, left and right boundaries. Both the base unit and the satellite units move in ways to confuse the enemy as to the patrol’s actual axis of advance.  Standard movement techniques are still used. Satellites move away from the base unit for limited periods  of time to inspect potential ambush sites, dead spaces, parallel roads, or other assigned missions. The time  that the satellite is separated from the base unit should be prescribed by the patrol leader prior to departure.

It’s a wonderful and effective tactic, the notion of smaller units connected to the larger unit patrolling in diagonal, circular and perpendicular patterns to the main unit, all with the intention of providing force protection for not only the larger unit but itself and the other smaller units as well by confusing the enemy as to the axis of advance.

I have long known about this tactic, as well as some of the finer details not shown or discussed here, but been reluctant to discuss it over the blog since it was unknown whether this should be considered FOUO, OPSEC or something that otherwise shouldn’t be divulged to the enemy.

Think I’m paranoid?  In Marines, Taliban, Tactics Techniques and Procedures, using a Powerpoint presentation I obtained from Michael Yon, I outlined a number of lessons learned from Marine Recon battling the Taliban in highly conventional fights recently in Afghanistan with close to Battalion-sized units of enemy, from their understanding of the use of combined arms, to interlocking fields of fire, to fire discipline, massing forces and other problematic issues stemming from the fact that the Taliban are more skilled than the insurgents in Iraq.  The presentation also had a discussion of Marine tactics to counter the Taliban, some of which had been highly successful.

No sooner did this post go up than I received a note from the Marine officer in Afghanistan (a Small Wars Council member as am I) who authored the presentation.  This officer complained about the release of the document and its presence on this web site, saying that not all Taliban are as skilled as these were and the presence of the presentation on this web site could lead to the education of other Taliban.

Sure, if they had access to electricity, a laptop, Powerpoint and the time to read it, along with a total absence of communication with their colleagues to teach them about these tactics.  Not likely.  But the officer hung his hat on the fact that the document was FOUO, which in reality means that whomever released it in Afghanistan should have been the target of this officer’s complaint, not me.  The term FOUO means nothing to me, since I am the official owner and founder of this web site.

So what do the readers think?  What about revealing the tactics of the Taliban and our counter-tactics, and satellite patrols as applied in urban areas?  Problematic, or not?

In Caucasus Talks on Logistical Transit Routes for Afghanistan we discussed the recent attack on NATO supplies in Baluchistan province’s Soorab, noting that this seemed to be a new front in the Taliban campaign against logistics.  Now comes a second attack within eight days, this time near the town of Chaman.

Two men on a motorcycle threw a bomb at a truck carrying an excavating machine to NATO troops in Afghanistan, halting traffic Wednesday along a supply route through Pakistan’s southwest, officials said.

No one was injured in the blast near the Pakistani frontier town of Chaman, but the machine was damaged, area police chief Gul Mohammed said.

U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan rely heavily on two major supply routes running through Pakistan. The main one goes through the Khyber Pass in the northwest, and trucks that use it have frequently been attacked.

The smaller route through Chaman has attracted less attention from militants, but has not been exempt from violence.

This developing trend to expand the targeting of NATO supplies into the South makes all the more important the trial runs of supplies through the Caucasus and the need to engage that region.  Faster, please.

Continuing with our compulsive interest in battle space weight, we learn some interesting things about the potential future use of technology to help reduce battle space injuries and carry more weight.

Assistant Commandant Gen. James F. Amos told a House committee Wednesday about “Big Dog,” a robotic quadruped that can carry 300 to 500 pounds of gear.

Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the Army’s vice chief of staff, joined Amos to testify before the House Appropriations subcommittee on defense. He said Big Dog and other alternatives might reduce injuries that have contributed to an increase in “non-deployable” men and women.

The number of soldiers who can’t be deployed rose from 17,000 or 18,000 to 20,000 over three years . Half have less serious injuries, including those caused by heavy loads. That has led to research in lightweight body armor, lightweight machineguns and lighter food rations.

According to an Army statement, soldiers may carry loads that start at 63 pounds and exceed 130 pounds. Extra protective gear or body armor can weigh 41 pounds. The typical combat load increased from 93 pounds in 2001 to 95.1 pounds in 2009.

The statement cited a study that proved “cumbersome” individual body armor caused pain, reduced performance and increased fatigue. Soldiers carrying 101 pounds for 12.5 miles had a 26 percent decrease in marksmanship.

“We are working very hard to lighten the load,” Chiarelli said. “One of the things we are looking at is civilian off-the-shelf solutions.”

Big Dog is one of many projects from the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency started in June 2007. A small, remote-control helicopter might deliver loads to soldiers. Another alternative is to use an “organic load-carrying asset,” or leaving some gear in soldiers’ Humvees or amphibious assault vehicles.

Ah, those DARPA dollars.  Here is one thing those dollars have bought.  The Big Dog.

Now if we can just get it not to sound like a million angry Africanized bees, we’d be much better off since we don’t want to telegraph our location to the enemy.  Seriously though, it seems that it would be a much better solution to invest dollars into lighter weight body armor SAPI plates.

The biggest difference in the weight carried by the Soldier or Marine today versus in WWII is from body armor.  The total weight of the soft panel ballistic armor, SAPI plates and carrier vest is around 32 pounds.  This is 32 extra pounds that the Soldier or Marine in WWII didn’t have to carry.  Body armor is the low hanging fruit.  But it seems that we’d rather design cool robots that sound like a million angry bees.