Posted on 02/27/2008 1:10:47 AM PST by naturalman1975
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.
The soldiers have been using 81mm mortars, which can hit targets kilometres away but which have not been widely used by Australia since the Vietnam war.
No Australian soldiers were killed or injured in the fighting and it was not clear if any Taliban had been hit.
The Taliban have launched multiple simultaneous attacks during the past fortnight.
The raids have been aimed at a security post that soldiers from the Reconstruction Task Force (RTF) have been building about 15km from Tarin Kowt, in the Afghan province of Oruzgan.
Chief of Defence Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston praised the work of the soldiers.
"The immediate and aggressive response by RTF soldiers caused the enemy to break off their attack and abandon their weapons in hastily prepared caches.
"These (weapons) were recovered through aggressive follow-up patrolling, which was sustained for a number of days."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.au ...
The bigger the better. About time...
Trust me, combat engineers are front line troops. Who clears minefields, under fire, before the infantry pushes on? Who builds bridges, under fire, before the armor can proceed? I'll let you look up the rest.
yitbos
81mm is the biggest gun they have?
I thought Aussies were bigger men then that.
(Joke. I realize that the reporter is a moron.)
That’s a comment you would be best to say very, very softly if you’re within earshot of Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.
Writer is lefty for sure. He probably saw green camo tube and thought Nam. But Aussies are in East Timur right now, also.
yitbos
And who gets the damned things to the engineers? Transportation, that’s who!
No such thing as a “non-combat support” MOS...
What.....are they supposed to save 'em for a parade, a wedding?
They abandoned their weapons!?!?? Fantastic, now we can arm some more of our troops! </sarcasm meant to mock BHO>
Seabees have been that way for a long time. Proud to have been one, if only for a short time.
Here’s hoping that OBL and all who also work with him are also defeated soon.
I’m retired Navy myself - and the fact is, I can fight, and, theoretically, even command, a decent infantry action as well if I have to (I did my share of armed boarding parties, but that was the closest I ever came to direct combat). I had the training, because there are situations in which even a sailor can find themselves down in the dust, facing armed enemies.
But I’d never claim to be a front-line combat soldier in the way an infantry soldier is.
Army Engineers are somewhere between the two of us, in my view. I’d expect them to do a good job in combat - as I say, I could do a decent job and I would expect them to do better than me - when they have to. And there are occasions, when they have to - when you need engineers in a place where’s there’s fighting, that’s where they’ll be.
But they’re not front-line combat wombats in the same way as infantry are.
But I’m not intending to disparage them - quite the opposite in fact.
The real reason I would make the distinction though is because elements of both the Australian and international media who are trying to present the planned withdrawal of about a third of Australia’s troops from Iraq as abandoning the war there - because what will be left will be people like Engineers, and people like I was - sailors, etc. Well, we might not have the same skills as infantry, but we still know how to fight, and we will still do it in any case, where it’s necessary.
This article highlights the fact that ‘support’ troops and ‘reconstruction’ troops are not less as soldiers than infantry. They just have different specialisations.
Any soldier is trained to pick up a rifle and fight. So for that matter is any sailor, or any airman.
Infantry are especially well trained at it, special forces even better - but we all know how to fight.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.