2 Para http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wjj-OtiHgc&NR=1
Marines http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UIqRxzgtyo&feature=related
Thanks.
Interesting footage and commentary.
Seems like a fairly long range war for small arms (400 yds being mentioned by a reporter on a voice over), especially with modern small arms and the modern standards of musketry.
Too much flat open country.
Needs aggressive patrolling, but that doesn’t stop infiltrators coming in or popping up after the patrols, especially when the source of enemy fire is villages where the infiltrators don’t even have to infiltrate.
Why is the machine gunner in the third video carrying what (to somone who last saw a radio back pack in the flesh around 1970) looks like a radio pack and advertising his position with what looks like a folded aerial above his position? Or why is a signaller firing a belt fed MG? It’s not like the section looks like it’s down to the last few men.
My understanding is that this a unit of the Royal Marines, Special Boat Squadron (one of whom was awarded the Congressional medal of Honor for this action - which isn’t bad for a Brit.). As with most special forces units they carry a formidable aray of weaponry and are cross-skilled as signallers, medics etc.
The belt fed weapons are General Purpose machine Guns,
http://www.eliteukforces.info/weapons/GPMG/
which fits with your comments, above, regarding range and firepower. In this action there is a number of buildings within the fort which, with its penetrative power, the GPMG is more suited for suppressing fire than the M16’s that some of the Marines are firing and others have accross their backs and (as I see it) protruding from the pack of one (which you are seeing as a folded ariel).
There were several hundred Taliban prisoners who had been able to arm themselves and kill their interogator and guards. IIRC the battle raged for about three days, but don’t quote me.
http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/archive/index.php/t-83231.html
If that radio is the one I think it is (not the world’s best video), that is the Bowman replacement for the section-level radios as carried by the section commander and 2IC. That carried by the platoon signaller has a different aerial.
Oh, and the problem with that radio is that unless you carry it where intended (on your webbing at the back) there isn’t much you can do to stop the antenna sticking up a lot like that. That guy has a Bergen on as well…