Afstan: Aussies not in combat...
Er, that's not in "proactive counter-insurgency". I wonder what M. Dion makes of these stories:
Diggers clash with Taliban in Afghanistan
...
The Defence Department says Australian soldiers have fought off a number of Taliban attacks over the past few days in southern Afghanistan...
Aussies turn big guns on TalibanUpdate: Duhh.
...
AUSTRALIAN troops have been forced to use some of their heaviest firepower to fight Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan during a series of recent skirmishes, the Department of Defence says...
Combat will sometimes be part of Canada's extended Afghan mission: MacKay
posted by Mark, Ottawa at 5:14 p.m.
3 Comments:
There are four, soon to be five, almost separate Australian forces in Afghanistan, which may account for some of the confusion. There are (approximately) 300 members of the Special Forces Task Group (SFTG), 450 members of the Reconstruction Task Force (RTF) in Uruzgan province, an aviation detachment of two Chinook helicopters plus crew and maintainers, and an Air Defence Radar Controlling Unit based in Kandahar. Soon there will also be Afghan army trainers and a few more Australian Federal Police. All up about a thousand persons. Only the Radar Control Unit and the Federal police guys could conceivably be called non combat. The SF are heavily engaged, and even the Reconstruction Task Force seen plenty of action. In fact the RTF are really just combat engineers that do a mix of civil (re)construction engineering as well as traditional combat engineering -- recently they have been building army/police checkpoints under fire. Don't let the word 'Reconstruction' in their title fool you Mr Dion
Video of the recent action against the RTF:
http://www.defence.gov.au/media/download/video/2008/Feb/20080227/index.htm
I should mention that the RTF also includes a force protection element of infantry/cavalry.
As far back as the World Wars, the Allied Armies' Combat Engineers were so often unsung heroes.
As fm noted, they so often have been in the past and are today in the thick of combat. Even when not under enemy fire, they have so often operated in unbelievably challenging conditions and achieved tremendous things. Unfortunately, they mostly don't get the recognition they so eminently deserve.
By coincidence, I watched a documentary last night on the construction of the AlCan Highway. This road was built in 1942 for the strategic purpose of having an overland supply route for the west coast of North America and to link a series of air bases from Alaska down through British Calumbia. (In that sense, that was almost a WW2 precursor to NORAD.)
This two lane 2,300 km road through virgin wilderness was built, not in the projected two years, but in eight months! It was done by seven Army Engineer regiments, totalling about 10,000 men.
Operating in unbelievably harsh conditions through an Alaska-BC winter, they did this incredible feat with hand tools and no equipment more advanced than the early model Cat bulldozers of those times. About twenty men died during construction in accidents and of exposure.
Today, that much upgraded road is frequented by commercial trucks, greatly benefitting the economy of that region and both nations, and by tourists enjoying traveling on a fine highway in one of the most majestic regions in North America.
All of that was made possible by Army Engineers and unfortunately most people in both America and Canada are unaware of that historic engineering achievement.
Today, we're unfortunately equally uninformed of how much the Allied Combat Engineer units are contributing in both Iraq and in Afghanistan. Someday, in those two nations, there'll be a tremendous flow of peaceful commerce and private travel by free peoples on roads and bridges built by military engineers in both those formerly enslaved nations. Thanks to military combat engineers!
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