How would you bag the guy
1970s - Afghanistan. I was there. This may qualify me a bit more than the computer jockies whose knee jerk response might be "send in the Marines".
First some background. The only paved road is a road constructed in the 1950s as a reinforced airplane runway runing almost the length of the country. Constructed by the Russians. Used by the Russians to invade the country. There isn't and hasn't been FedX truck home deliveries, the UPS truck or much built up. The only effective way in is through Red China. We were denied access to the road on the silk route that was reconstructed by the Red Chinese to support troop transports and tanks.
In the 1970s and 1980s the Russians constructed a last ditch command and control center high in the mountains that would be used in the event of nuclear war. It was impregnable. It was abandoned only three years after the purported end of the Russian-Afghani War.
Forget your bunker busters, Rambos, helicopters that can't go much higher than 10,000 feet.
Guess who tunk over the complex when the Russians left and made further improvements? Ok, you get a cigar.
It is an open question as to how to approach the redoubt.
If you had immagination in the US military, some one would be thinking about how the Belgian fort was taken out in 1940 by the German Army at the beginning of the war on the western front (hint, it wasn't paratroopers, it was engineers blasting shell craters used by creeping and approaching troops).
If you think that he will be taken in a frontal assault, guess again.
There seems to be no end to people who fantasize.
How did the Afghanis fight the Russians. Well, Afghanistan is criss crossed by hundreds of miles of subterranean water tunnels used for irrigation. The Russians couldn't root them out.
If the guy is not poisoned on a bribe, I will make a predicition of the approach. It was taken against Mosby in the Civil War. It was taken against Geronimo in the Indian Wars. You train your people to fight and think like the enemy. Sherridan hired local sympathizers finally to fight Mosby. At first they were ineffective, then they became increasingly effective. US military hired local Indians to fight Geronimo, track him, and to deny him places or rest and recoupment.
On a personal level, nothing pisses me more than an unthinking approach. In 2002, the cost for fielding 500 Seals in the world was $1 million per Seal per year. The average age of an SF type guy is about 30 - 32 years. It takes that long to develop the skills. The total no. of SF types in the alphabet soup units is a grand amount of about 35,000. In the last election, some candidate said the solution was to double SF. Yeah. Sure. Spend another 350,000,000,000 US a year? Dream on. And how do you get them and their supplies there?
When 9/11 ocurred, I was asked what I would do. Well, kids, here it is. Charter a jet and send 76 FBI agents to Yemen with $1,000,000 each and hire local interpreters. Each agent would approach a family of one of the 76 Yemni citizens killed in the 9/11 event in NY. Each agent would have a budget. Each family would make proposals for revenge. Simple. And so how did you "win" in Afghanistan a couple of years ago? By sending in 100,000 US troops or by sending in bundles of $100 bills?
