You're missing the point
The big boogey-man on the block in Afghanistan may be the legendary Stinger but if they are indeed present (and not just a spectral and imagined threat), in that largish country they'd be very few and far between. How to defeat their highly localized limitation?
Just truck the patrols to an LZ pickup nearby and have the choppers fly in to emplane them. We're not talking Vietnam style combat assaults here, just a two-ship slick flight with one or two gunships in support. With some coordination, their destinations could even be distant and in support of an adjacent province.You'd need to be Nostradamus to position the limited supply of MANPADS to be conveniently located for a chopper kill. And the Shadow is not talking about combat assaulting a target, just giving the patrols a non-evident axis of advance towards an objective and thus avoiding a well-trammeled path towards their local and traditional areas and objectives of interest. Their exit route could similarly be a non-evident exfiltration towards an obscure pickup LZ.
Like the Shadow, I see little evidence of any lateral thinking and plenty of evidence for us continuing to play foolishly by the taliban's own ground rules.
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