Well someone likes us
“Joint Force Harrier”
Written by Commander Ade Orchard about a Royal Navy Fighter squadron based a Kandahar.
The Extract starts on page 108:-
In truth the RAF Regiment had really got to work on the threat from rockets. Although the airfield was subjected to attacks for the whole of the time we were in theatre – and probably still is – the accuracy of the attacks got worse and worse as time went on, because the Taliban insurgents were pushed further and further away from the perimeter. And for that the RAF Regiment was entirely responsible.
Anyone who has read anything about the Afghanistan campaign will be familiar with the major forces taking part: 3 Para, The Royal Marines and others. But the RAF Regiment guys were the real unsung heroes during our det.
Before they arrived to take over the force protection of the airfield, the task seemed to have been approached less proactively. A swift and violent retaliation to Taliban attacks was always guaranteed, but there were fewer patrols outside the wire. And it was these that made it more difficult for the Taliban to set up their rocket batteries within range.
Most of the rocket attacks came from the sector that lay to the North-east of the airfield, with just a handful from the South. The reason for this was clear to us: Highway one, the main road that runs from one end of the country to the other, passed right through tat area allowing attackers an easy route both in and out.
But all that changed as soon as the RAF Regiment took over. Their policy was completely different to that of their predecessors. They identified where the attack were coming from and began mounting aggressive patrols outside the wire in those areas, and succeeded in pushing their safe perimeter so far out that the Taliban were having to fire their rockets from extreme range, with very little chance of even hitting the airfield itself, let alone any specific targets on it.
The guys from the RAF Regiment achieved their success not only by their patrolling, which often located rocket batteries before the Taliban had a chance to fire them – the rockets were normally fired by remote control – but also by having excellent sniper teams.
There’s a misunderstanding about snipers. Most people seem to think that their job is just to go out into the badlands and kill people, but the primary role of a sniper team is usually reconnaissance and intelligence gathering. In Afghanistan, in particular, they were watching for significant changes in the pattern of life in the villages and hamlets, because that was often the first clue that the Taliban might have moved in. They observed their targets through telescopic sights, but the fact that the sight was attached to a long range sniper rifle was almost coincidental – it didn’t automatically mean they were tasked with killing the people they were observing.
At Kandahar the snipers went out into the area and dug themselves in for days at a time, initially just watching the activity around them, acting a surveillance teams, and radioing their reports back to the Regiment on the airfield. Only when they’d observed all they needed to would they then pick off the individual Taliban as they were setting up their rocket batteries, well before they were able to fire their missiles. And, even then, killing the men setting up or firing the weapons was only part of it, because these were believed to be very low ranking insurgents, given the most dangerous jobs. Whenever possible, the snipers preferred to target the people who gave the orders or directed the preparation of the weapons.
Once this operation got underway the numbers of rocket attacks on the airfield dropped sharply’ and eventually almost stopped. It was an excellent demonstration of proactive force protection and, once the RAF Regiment took over, most of us at Kandahar slept a lot better knowing they were out there.
Counter – battery fire was, without doubt, one of the most impressive aspects of the RAF Regiment’s considerable repertoire of skills. As the name suggests, the tactic is return fire directed at a rocket battery or gun that is firing into the defended area. I saw it used several times, but one occasion in particular sticks in my mind. The base was again the target of a rocket attack, but while the rockets were still in the air an RAF Regiment mortar team responded, firing their rounds at the location they’d calculated the rockets had been launched from.
When a reconnaissance party went out to check the site the following day, they found the launchers exactly where they’d expected. They also found that one of the mortar rounds had landed within two feet of one of the launchers, and the other two at distances of about twelve feet and twenty feet. If any Taliban had been at the site when the mortar bombs landed, they would certainly have been killed. There were no bodies at the site, which was not surprising, as the Taliban invariably removed their dead and injured comrades, and we also knew that most rocket attacks were initiated by timing circuits.
This remarkable speed of response and staggering accuracy was down to the high tech gear they used. The RAF Regiment mortar teams identified the location of the battery that fired the missiles, and a high speed computer then calculated the trajectory required by their weapon to return fire.