Haji Inside the wire: Harriers, CO lost

[Termite]

Okay, maybe it's a cultural thing, but why the hell would you poach rabbit? If you're gonna do poach, why not deer?

Well, rabbit is a lot easier to sneak back to your kitchen.

HS, were you using a suppressed .22RF?

[Highspeed]

HS, were you using a suppressed .22RF?

That depended on the location. My area was semi-rural and a lot of places were just unsafe for even .22RF due to lack of backstops. Thing about rabbits is that you have to shoot them where THEY want to be rather than where you'd like them to be.

I'd got several pneumatic airguns, the kind you fill from a divers bottle, and I used to use them at quite low power levels. You get more shots between refills that way, and hauling a 300 bar cylinder about in the truck is a pain.
They were suppressed and virtually silent. Maximum range maybe 40-50 yards, but it's enough with fieldcraft.

Very occasionally I'd take a suppressed .410 with subsonic loads, laser aimer and NV goggles. Strictly about a 20 yard proposition though, unless you don't care about making a clean kill. I always did care, I'm a pussy
Head shot rabbits would fetch more money than ones taken with shotguns because the chef\butcher doesn't have the hassle of digging all the shot out so his diners don't break a tooth on the ' rabbit a la mode avec lead shot '

I'd use a suppressed .22RF if I knew I'd got a backstop behind where the rabbits liked to feed and a good position to sit and snipe them from. Probably I got 75% with the airguns, 25% with the rimmie ? something like that.

[HTRN]

Ah, so like everything else "If it's worth doing, it's worth doing for money".

[Draven]

Sony NightShot feature on ten year old video cameras = 1 1/2 gen (better than first gen, not quite as good as second gen) night vision. The rangefinder can act an an IR illuminator. $50 used on ebay.

[Netpackrat]

Our fricken video baby monitor has night vision.

[Rusty Ray]

It was an attack that anybody would be hard pressed to contain. The sangers around the wire were manned by (AFAIK) every bugger on his dog (Tongans, USMC and RAF personnel) and the breach was made by a suicide bomber detonating himself against the wire or wall. I am eagerly awaiting the after action report, because my old regiment was the first responder. It seems that there was some pretty fucking intense CQB going on between the bag guys and the responders (Raf Regt QRF/USMC/Army Air Corps). One of that lads wounded was wounded during previous tours, another one took rounds in the Kevlar, but fought through to destroy the enemy. In all, around 7 guys were wounded from the QRF. The fire fight was in the region of five hours, and despite being at night with the enemy in the uniform of friendly forces, they were bottled up quite quickly. The number of dead bad guys is set at 15 now, with one taken prisoner.

If anybody has ever tried to defend an airfield, they will tell you that it is an impossible task. An airfield sits out in the open, cannot be moved, and will always be vulnerable to enemy infiltration of various kinds. It will have many soft skinned juicy targets but the location will not have been picked with defence in mind, it is there for planes to take off and land on. This means that it will be flat, big and often surrounded by rough terrain (by dint of the fact that it is the flattest bit of real estate in the area). It will have miles and miles of wire to defend. At night, you have the choice to light it up like a fucking xmas tree (to see the perimeter) or leave it dark and keep your eyeballs out on stalks. The former makes you a great mortar target and is hardly very tactical. The later leaves you with a manning problem, you'll never have enough men to cover that much area effectively. And you must take into account things like ATC towers, water towers, radar sites, supplying the bloody place, runway lights and landing lights, non-com personnel by the hundreds etc, none of which is condicive to maintaining security.

Castles, they are not and can never, ever be.

Then add into the equation the fact that when landing and taking off, aircraft must bottle neck into a small area dictated by the runway and approach, thus leaving them vulnerable to ground fire quite some way from the wire, you'll see that the actual size of the area to be defended/controlled is massive. To deter the threat of shoulder launched AAM, mortar fire or HMGs, the defenders must push out even further to dominate the ground. What a lot of soldiers that have defended a base, buildings, embassy, areas etc really can not appreciate is the actual size of the job. Forget thinking of this job as town sized, think more of it as county sized and you'll start to get the picture.

Airfield/airports are not often in the front line, and you cannot mix them up with fire bases. They are normally situated in an area where you will have Civpop of some sort. Locals are enlisted as extra eyes and ears, or at least must not be pushed about/bullied as this will drive them into the arms of the bad guys. Local civpop also necessitates a high level of fire discipline and the need for arc taboos, denying you free fire zones. Dropping the local warlord's son when he is out for a stroll will just give your enemy a friend on your doorstep. But this will also leave you vulnerable in the immediate vicinity of the wire. It would seem that this gap between the troops patrolling aggressively to dominate the area further out, and the actual wire itself, is where the attack originated from. It is thought that the enemy prepped for the attack in a local farm.

As I said, airfields are a bastard to defend and all of the above is there to explain why the defenders of an airfield cannot pre-empt an attack, but only respond to one. It is not an understatement to say that the attacker has all the advantages. I am not excusing any fuck ups here, apportion blame where it is due. But I have to say that an attack like this was always going to happen, it will probably happen again.

Cheers- Rusty

[Highspeed]

Sounds like you were a Rock Ape Ray ?

[Rusty Ray]

Just PM'ed you mate. Cheers.

[Termite]

Why can't we put double fencing with mines, both automatic and command-fired, between the fences? Too much area?

[Jericho941]

Why can't we put double fencing with mines, both automatic and command-fired, between the fences? Too much area?

The Soviets certainly tried. Didn't do them much good. Mines suck.

Mines are especially sucky in a COIN campaign anyway, since you're dealing with people who will figure out how to dig them up and use them against you. There's also the added bonus that every civilian that steps on one is a moral victory for the bad guys. On that note, minefields are the gift that keeps on giving: Long after we're gone, the minefields will still be there and every time someone gets blown up, even if they're in a Soviet minefield we've left cordoned off, we'll be blamed for it.