Peter Dow

Transcript of the video Hi everybody and welcome to my "H" / "I" Bricks or HI-BRICKS & DOWELS demonstration video. This is Peter Dow from Aberdeen, Scotland. There are two components to a HI-BRICKS & DOWELS construction - the BRICKS, which you can either describe as "H"-shaped or "I"-shaped, depending on which way you turn them around and the DOWELS The shape of the "H" or "I" bricks is designed so that they fit together to form a layer or a wall of bricks and importantly, the bricks, just by their very shape, immobilise each other from moving, in one dimension only. Let's have a look at that. Let's consider this green brick here as the fixed point. We can see that it immobilises its neighbouring bricks in one dimension. They can't move with respect to the green brick in this dimension. So that's locked. Even though there is no bricks here or here, the very shape stops it moving in that dimension. Now the shape doesn't stop the bricks moving with respect to each other in that direction, or in that direction but they are fixed in that one dimension. Now if we want to make a rigid structure of bricks in all three dimensions but without using mortar or glue so that we can assemble and disassemble the structure whenever we like, what we need next are the DOWELS. As you can see, the "I" or "H" bricks have shafts running through the corners so that you can run a dowel through the corners - two shafts, four holes per "I" or "H" brick. And when you assemble the bricks you can slide the dowel in ... and this forms a structure which is rigid in all three dimensions, which is what we need to form structures.

Thank you very much for your post Enthalpy and for the benefit of your knowledge and wisdom. I have only got time to address your questions right now but I hope to return to the many other relevant issues you raised here when time permits. I am unsure what exactly the shape of your "metal clamps" would be or how they would fit into a three dimensional structure of I or H bricks or tiles? Certainly metal is a ideal engineering material in many applications. Well a big "tile" with features to attach to other tiles could be described as a big "panel" of sorts, right?

3-Dimensional model video This video shows a model by Peter Dow (of Aberdeen, Scotland) of the 3-dimensional shape of a simple structure composed of 6 bricks or tiles, each of which, when viewed from one-direction anyway, is a 2-dimensional "I"-shape (equally when rotated by 90 degrees "H"-shaped). This model has been made from aluminium tubing and in order to distinguish one brick from another they have been coloured using marker pens - so there are two bricks coloured blue, two coloured green and two coloured red. This colouring was necessary for clarity because otherwise the permanent joints within bricks (which are only an artifact of the method to make a brick from square tubing) might be confused with the simple touching surface where two neighbouring bricks abut, abutting securely but without being in any way stuck by glue etc. The 2-D "I" shape being modelled is supposed to be of square proportions, the column of the I being one third of the width of the square and the top and the base one quarter of the height of the square. These 2-D I or H shapes can be mathematically said to be able to tessellate a plane, that is to say, one can fit many of these shapes together to cover a surface completely. This 3-Dimensional model reveals a further design feature of the I or H brick and tile structures, which secures the bricks and tiles together in 2 further dimensions, some such feature being necessary because the 2-D I or H shape in of itself only secures the bricks together in 1 dimension. This feature is revealed here to be nothing more complicated than dowels or fixing rods which run in the vertical direction of the Is (or the horizontal direction of the Hs) through shafts in the Is' bases and tops and which serve to lock the tops and bases of neighbouring Is together, preventing movement radially from the dowels. These dowels may henceforth be referred to as "Mazurka Dowels" named after the username of a scientist in an internet science forum who first correctly anticipated this feature of my 3-D design and its function to hold the structure together in all 3-dimensions, in a reply post to my topic there describing in detail only the 2-D tessellation, suggesting somewhat vaguely that some such design element was required for a good 3-D design with a view to seeing who would suggest the solution I had thought of first. As I explained in that topic I could hardly call those dowels the "Dow dowels" there being too many dows in that name and anyway, my name can be used to reference this particular shape of I or H tile and brick and structures composed of them, as per "Dow tile" "Dow brick" "Dow I-tile" "Dow H-brick" "Dow I-H-brick" "Dow I-H-brick structure" "Dow I-structure" etc.

Right on target, especially considering structures where more strength or less weight are advantageous enough to make a novel approach worthwhile. An issue for mass production engineers if and when they decide to use this design but the requirement for precision is nothing beyond the state of the art. Ceramics generally are not so good under tension and tend to fracture under shock loads, impacts and so on. Nevertheless there still could be a place for I-shaped ceramic bricks for some applications, such as where resistance to fire and heat is a particular requirement. Absolutely. Thanks for your input dimreepr. Well spotted John and thanks for your diagram which makes your important point very well. This is precisely why there is a need for a 3-dimensional design which introduces sufficient fittings, fasteners or fixtures or such as bolt-holes etc which ensure the columns of I's stay locked together. However, I am not thinking of glue or mortar because I want something which will disassemble quite easily. Glue actually isn't all that strong compared to say a nut and bolt.

From the engineering consideration that regular tiles and bricks are far from optimal in terms of adding strength to structures, I've been considering that better would be the very particular shape of tiles and bricks illustrated in this image which is a version (representing steel) of a pattern I first posted here in a topic in The Lounge forum, Tessellated I - my simple technical drawing, coloured artfully View larger version of Tessellated I in Steel 1800 x 800 Representing a surface of "I"-shaped (rotated by 90 degrees, "H"-shaped) steel tiles. The shape is of square proportions, the column of the I being one third of the width of the square and the top and the base one quarter of the height of the square. I intend further design developments to the I or H tile and brick 2-dimensional pattern I have described here - specifically fleshing out the simple 2-D design into a more detailed 3-D design which introduces further efficient tile-to-tile / brick-to-brick interlocking or making-rigid features to enable the tiles or bricks to be able to be assembled together then disassembled when necessary without having to be cemented together like a brick wall and without having to be glued onto a mounting surface like conventional tiles The aim is to allow assembly and disassembly of tile or brick structures such as can be done with Lego and Meccano (kid's building toys) and using common methods employed in the design of many manufactured products which use such typical features as nuts and bolts and bolt-holes but many other variations to secure one part to another strongly but in a reversible and flexible way. The ability to disassemble is particularly useful for temporary structures, as is strength-to-weight ratio so that the parts of the structure can be moved easily to where they need to be erected. So I still have some design thinking and technical drawing to do and then I'll need a fabrication plan suitable to my own means of production, limited to making small models. For high strength-to-weight ratios for practical applications of this design, I suggest that materials useful will likely be metals such as steel and aluminium and for some applications plastics and in particular fiber-reinforced plastics offer very high strength-to-weight ratios and so may be even better.

View a larger scale version of Tessellated I A tessellation of a capital "I" shape employing the colours of the spectrum which I created using Paint.NET the free image and photo editing software which runs on Windows. The "I" Shape. The "I" shape is square in proportions, with the vertical column one third the width of the square by design. The thickness of the base and top of the "I" are the same thickness and consequently have to be one quarter of the height of the square to tessellate in this precise fashion. The shape of the "I" I arrived at during consideration of one of my engineering design projects. The Colours. My use of the colours of the spectrum, half of the "I"s Red-Orange-Yellow and the other half Green-Blue-Purple, and the black lines to define the outline of the "I"s was directly inspired from a work of art I found on DeviantArt website, named "Colorful Tessellation" by ~TheShadowRider123, Cori Davis of the United States of America. This work of art is dedicated to Cori with my thanks for the inspiration her work gave me. Using Paint.NET I was able to add what I would describe as a "metallic texture" to the colours, although the program function I used is called "Effects - Distort - Dent" by Paint.NET's menus. This version of the work has my own watermark added.

Aspects of my plan are more aggressive, though some aspects are more competently defensive. That aspect of my plan is a more defensive stance as regards Afghanistan overall, not a more aggressive stance. It's more cautious in not trying permanently to occupy any of Afghanistan which we can't fully control. It says we would only be more aggressive locally in the vicinity of our supply routes where would we impose much tighter control. The US population can't want my plan unless and until it is presented to them by media commentators or political leaders they trust. Even then it will be more acceptable if it is presented as "a new US plan" rather than as "a new plan of some Scotsman no-one has ever heard of". So unless I suddenly and miraculously become as famous to Americans as someone like Tony Blair is then I suggest my plan will need first to be adopted and sponsored by some Americans, maybe who have first found my plan on internet forums such as this? Another misreading of my plan. Where did I ever describe my plan as "a full-scale occupation"? Nowhere. You seemed to be replying to this quote "Should be" or "must be"? Isn't fighting to win a necessity for you? Is it acceptable to you if our lame politicians and generals fight so incompetently as to risk a draw or a loss in a war? So it would have been fairer to understand that I am calling for a more competent partial occupation of whatever size of occupation force we decide on, and that I am not calling for a "full-scale" occupation bigger than we have but with the same basic strategy. The military options available to us are infinitely more complex than "Surge or withdraw?" I haven't suggested "surging" or "full-scale". If you want a summary of my plan, I gave one, in 4 points. How to beat the Taliban and win the war on terror It’s never too late to learn lessons and adopt an alternative competent and aggressive military strategy. I have already mentioned the outline points of my plan but I will explain those in a little more here and then provide a lot more detail in subsequent posts. The US and Western allies ought to name Pakistan and Saudi Arabia as "state sponsors of terrorism". We ought to name in addition, the other oil-rich Arab kingdoms who are also financial state sponsors of terrorism. This has implications such as ending bribes and deals with back-stabbing hostile countries and instead waging war against our enemies with the aim of regime change or incapacitating the enemy so that they can do us little more harm. The war could be of varying intensity depending on the enemy concerned and how they respond to our initial attacks, whether they wish to escalate the war or surrender to our reasonable demands. There ought to be drone strikes on the University of Jihad. (Darul Uloom Haqqania, Akora Khattak, Pakistan) In addition, we ought to employ aerial bombing of all other bases for the Taliban in Pakistan. This may have to be extended to include certain Pakistani state bases which are supporting the Taliban - such as the Pakistani ISI headquarters mentioned a lot in the BBC documentary "SECRET PAKISTAN". If this is not handled very carefully, it could escalate into open war with the Pakistani military. I will explain how to manage Pakistan later. We ought to seize control of Pakistani and Saudi TV satellites and use them to broadcast propaganda calling for the arrest of all involved in waging terrorist war against the West. These satellites are made, launched and maintained by Western companies and should be easy to take over. Other satellites provided to the enemy by non-Western countries could be jammed or destroyed. Air strikes against the enemy's main terrestrial TV transmitter aerials is another option to silence enemy propaganda. When occupying territory, always ensure secure supply routes from one strong point to another. I will provide a lot of details about how this can be done militarily. Well there are some Vietnam-era politicians like John McCain who do have a courageous but rash tendency to support "surging of forces" to do much the same job as existing forces are doing but more so. I say "don't trust the generals, don't give the same generals more military forces to fight with. Let's try to find some smart people who know military strategy to become our generals.". I bet back in Vietnam there were clever military strategists like me who got ignored by stupid generals. I say, no, let's not do that again! So it's incorrect to misread my ideas and to translate a misunderstanding of my plan by categorising it falsely as a "re-do of Vietnam". Rather my inspiration comes not from Vietnam-era generals but from more recent leaders specifically Condoleezza Rice who ended and even won the Cold War as a tough warrior ready to use proportionate force as and when required but who succeeded in ending the Cold War, where others before her had only contained it, by using her keen political insight and diplomatic skills. Condi didn't win the Cold War by surging forces to West Germany and neither is "surging" my approach to Afghanistan. American forces were happily stationed in very large numbers in Britain before D-Day, the invasion of mainland Europe in World War 2. Britons knew very well that Americans had sent forces to help liberate us from the enemy who threatened us. Likewise, if Afghans and Pakistanis are told the truth about our motives for intervening there, and if we stop enemy propaganda telling lies about our motives, then there is no reason to expect that Afghans or Pakistanis will support the Taliban. We should be trustworthy but not trusting. We should not be so foolish as to trust people we don't know. We can find allies amongst the population who are familiar with the language and customs of the people but who agree that our values of freedom and democracy offer a better future for the population. Both are sponsored by elements within the Pakistani state. Bin Laden was most likely being harboured by the same Paksitani ISI which funds, trains and supplies the Taliban. Do you mean on the battlefield? Those who attack our defensive positions can be identified as enemies. That seems so obvious that I wonder if that is what you are asking? The Taliban are the enemy. They've killed thousands of our soldiers. Where's the difficulty in identifying the enemy? Are you of the VP Joe Biden school of thought which says "the Taliban are not the enemy" and which seeks peace talks with the Taliban? The Pakistani ISI organises many different terrorist organisations, each designed to fight one country or group of countries. The many terrorist heads of the Pakistani ISI hydra The Taliban to fight Afghanistan and anyone helping Afghans Lashkar-e-Taiba to fight India and anyone helping Indians Al Qaeda to fight the USA and anyone helping Americans Therefore the answer to all those terrorist "heads" is to kill the body - kill the Pakistani ISI, to stop it growing more terrorist organisations. An important point to note is that we have been feeding the hydra by paying the Pakistani state billions of dollars for so-called "help" against the very terrorist forces their ISI set up. We need to stop funding the enemy. Come on now. You are being silly. Are we still at war with Japan and Germany because they are taking revenge for world war 2? No, of course not. There is a time for peace, when the good guys win, as we will win in Afghanistan if we fight smart. There is the University of Jihad and the Pakistani ISI HQ. See point 2 of my plan. The Al Qaeda terrorist operatives who attacked USA on 9/11 and London 7/7 could use some initiative, spend money and use the local economy to attack us. However, with the Taliban, most of them are simple people. They are supplied by the Pakistani ISI and get some weapons and money from Iran and Arab kingdoms as well. They don't go shopping for chemicals to make home-made bombs. Most of their weapons are mass-produced for regular armies. Yes a few of the Taliban will be specialists who can convert normal munitions into improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to use to mine the Afghan roads. However the Pakistani ISI can at any time they wish provide higher technology mass-produced versions of those IEDs if and when the Taliban IED-makers get killed or captured or if the ISI wish to increase the effectiveness and number of bombs on Afghan roads to kill our soldiers in greater numbers. Most of the Taliban's weapons will be from Pakistani (some Iranian) military stores, maybe some weapons will be bought cheaply from the black-market supplied with weaponry stolen from our NATO supply lines coming through Pakistan. £160 per truck? You may ask - what can the Pakistani ISI buy for £160 per truck for their Taliban proxy forces to use to kill us? Quite a lot actually, especially if the Taliban buy cheap on the black market. Recent news. This arms dealer from Quetta, Pakistan - that is where the Taliban have been based. So he will be selling NATO weapons stolen from NATO supply trucks, sold to the Taliban, funded by the Pakistani ISI with our money given to Pakistan to get our trucks through, which weapons will be used to kill our troops in Afghanistan! Our insecure supply routes through Pakistan and through Afghanistan are supplying the very enemy we are there to try to defeat! Strategic folly of the lowest order of stupidity! The reason is that the Pakistani ISI have betrayed the people of Pakistan, dragging Pakistan into wars with their neighbours and world-wide. Pakistan has every reason to confront their enemy within - their own backstabbing ISI, which was only ever loyal to the fascist generals who set up the ISI to help them impose a military dictatorship on the people of Pakistan and to start seizing other lands to impose an empire. The ISI never was loyal to the Pakistani people nor to the Pakistani nation and we ought to explain that to Pakistanis. The Taliban don't have much of a choice about getting along with whoever their Pakistani ISI masters tell them to get along with. Again and again I get the feeling that people reading this topic have not taken the 2-hours required to watch "SECRET PAKISTAN", the video from the BBC I posted in this topic. I am still asking this. I'd still like to know who has watched all 2 hours of it? I am reasonably confident that any scientist, because scientists are intelligent people, having watched all 2 hours of that video, will identify that the Taliban, whatever else they may be, are also proxies for the Pakistani military intelligence, the ISI, and so this war on terror is, or ought to be, with the Pakistani state sponsors of terrorism.

Some of us are engaged in fighting a Global War On Terror (GWOT) and see Afghanistan not on its own but merely one hot spot in a much wider conflict so actually some of us do consider that we are at "world war" of sorts but it being such a low intensity world war it doesn't really warrant the title "WW3" so maybe "WW2.1" or something would be a suitable alternative name to "GWOT"? The extreme military decision was to invade Afghanistan. The question is what do your forces do while they are there? Do you secure your supply routes or do you not? Do you spend a lot on very heavily armoured vehicles to travel routinely along insecure routes and brave road-side bombs hoping that the bomb is smaller than your vehicle can withstand or do you not? Next to the extreme decision to invade, those other choices are really a question of military strategy and tactics. What works best? The historical examples I gave demonstrate that when a military force invades enemy-controlled territory to stay for any length of time (or wants to defend their homeland against hostile neighbours) then it makes military sense to secure your positions with defensive fortifications of some kind. Do you think the French would have forgiven the Germans for invading France if Rommel had not have built his Atlantic Wall? Would the French have greeted the Nazi invader general - "Hey Rommel, Bienvenue and Sieg Heil - just so long as you don't build any coastal fortifications here mon ami!" Not that I am comparing our liberating and democratic forces to the forces of the Reich but from the point of view of the enemy the logic of which invader is or isn't "extreme" is not really effected by whether we secure our positions or not. The enemy is going to try to kill us so long as we are there - the question is how do we prevent that until we decide we are pulling out? As for cost, our forces have to live somewhere, the Afghan forces we are paying for have to deploy somewhere. So I am not actually proposing we spend any more than we are already spending. The question is "how should we spend what we are spending?" I am suggesting that we might as well arrange our forces to defend our critical supply lines instead of having our forces sitting like fools along the Afghanistan / Pakistan border while our troops get killed trying to supply along insecure roads. If nothing else, we should learn lessons that the US & NATO generals and their civilian bosses are incompetent and if we are going to win wars we need to have new management of our military. Well Obama did withdraw US forces from Iraq so maybe he is your best bet for withdrawal from all "conflicts"? Though I don't know what you define as a "conflict"? Is the long-running stand off between North and South Korea a "conflict we are currently in"? 28,500 American military personnel are now deployed in South Korea. Do you think a good percentage of Americans want those withdrawn? Or are you thinking about a good percentage of Ron Paul supporters? Anyway don't feel you have to answer that - it is heading off topic so forget it if you wish. I suggest in this topic we stick to Afghanistan / Pakistan and any other war on terror places but as for withdrawing from Afghanistan immediately, that doesn't seem to be on offer from the only person who can order a withdrawal - the US President. Obama is de-surging his troops which will leave many still there but is running for re-election on a promise that the US combat mission will end "by 2014". What then? It is unclear. Obama says he has signed a "Strategic Partnership Agreement" with Afghanistan but what does that amount to if after 2014 the Afghan government can't hold against the Taliban? Would Obama stay out and let his strategic partner get kicked out of South Afghanistan, out of Kabul? We don't really know. If Romney takes office on 20th January 2013 his approach promises to be "Withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan under a Romney administration will be based on conditions on the ground as assessed by our military commanders." So do you reckon a third party / independent candidate can win election for US President on an isolationist / withdrawal-from-all-conflicts policy? That would not be the brave America we know and love. I think it is getting our soldiers killed which is most unpopular. If a fortress supply line saved lives it could be more popular than more deaths by road-side bomb and ambush. Afghanistan doesn't have any oil. There was a proposal years ago to run an oil or gas pipeline through Afghanistan but that doesn't particularly figure in my proposals. I'd just like a secure route to supply our forces. A nice extra might be to do things like put in a railway to help the Afghan economy while we are there. But I have not really got in mind any particular pipeline plan. Afghanistan should just be a normal country - having appropriate economic activity like anywhere else in the world, activity which the Afghan people there want to get involved with - and it should stop being a place for terrorist training camps set up by the Pakistani ISI to launch attacks on the rest of the world. That's the true plan I have for Afghanistan and anywhere else plagued by these jihadi terrorists. We should beat the terrorists and get back to peace and prosperity. I don't really care much for spinning that as "taking control for oil" because it is untrue and misleading. Iraq was more about oil but not because we wanted control of Iraq's oil ourselves, just that we didn't want Saddam Hussein having control of it to buy / make nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction to threaten the world with. The control of Arab and Iranian oil by pro-jihadi regimes does make it easy for them to fund jihadi terrorism globally so setting an aim for regime-change for those regimes looks like a better war-on-terror move than attempting to completely pacify Afghanistan. To some extent we were lured to Afghanistan like a bull charging a Matador's red cape by our Al Qaeda enemies so as to take our forces out of Arabia and away from where the oil is. So abandoning most or all of Afghanistan, bombing the Pakistani ISI from the air and invading Arabia to control the oil fields might be a better strategy than holding on to worthless Afghanistan. Again it would be not be because we want to seize Arabian oil-fields per se - just that we don't want Arab kings to use their oil wealth to fund jihadi terrorism. Any invasion of Arabia ought to be synchronised with regime-change to democratic regimes which benefit the Arab people above all. The greedy Saudi royals don't donate to the Palestinians to help compensate them for lands lost to Israel. Perhaps a more democratic Arabian regime would be more generous to disadvantaged Arabs? It is not right to say the Roman Walls or the Great Wall of China "failed" altogether. Those empires lasted a long time and their armies defended much and even won battles using defensive fortifications. One tactic one Roman general used was to surround an enemy fort with a defensive wall of his own and starve the enemy out! The Maginot Line did fail. The Nazis went around the strong parts of the line and penetrated it where it was weakest, by-passed most of the fortifications and proceeded to the undefended interior. Paris itself was undefended by any significant fortifications and its immediate capitulation to the Nazis is an example of how long you can expect to hold out against armoured ground forces without any relevant fortifications. So the fall of Paris and France was more a failure of the particular design of French fortifications nationally rather than a failure of the principle of defensive fortifications. One could imagine another design of fortifications, around Paris, around a supply line to the Channel coast, which could very well have held against the Wehrmacht. The lesson of the Maginot line for Afghanistan is not to put all our eggs in expecting the Afghan / Pakistan border to defend the interior of Afghanistan because enemy forces will get into Afghanistan one way or another and attack our forces while supplying our isolated border bases. As the Nazis got behind the Maginot line, so can the Taliban get into Afghanistan whatever we do on the Afghan / Pakistan border. Our forces have not learned the failure of the Maginot line because they are as recklessly driving around Afghanistan, wrongly expecting themselves to be safe if the border with Pakistan is secure as the French were recklessly thinking themselves safe behind the Maginot line. It depends on the relative strength of defence and offence. Before the failure of Rommel's Atlantic Wall to Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy by the Allies, the defensive fortifications of the island of Britain held against the threat of Nazi invasion since the retreat from Dunkirk in 1940. The Nazis could not, dare not pursue our forces offensively into Britain because of the strength of our defences. This was partly due to Britain's static defences but equally due to Britain's ability to cut off invading German forces by deploying its naval forces dynamically. My design for supply route defence also depends on dynamic defence which is the ability to deploy reinforcements to any attacked point faster than the enemy can. Therefore it is wrong to see my design as a purely static "wall". Then later in history after the development of nuclear weapons, the best defence became rather threatening the best offensive but never actually using it but instead employing cold war methods until peace might be found. The super-powers avoided taking the strongest offensive action possible against each other for fear of mutually assured destruction. Again with Pakistan we should first attempt more of a cold war approach with the conventional Pakistani military and only go hot with the Taliban and perhaps also go hot with the ISI if needs be using deterrence to avoid a full scale war with Pakistan. Unfortunately, it is not that easy. Generals are proud people and I lack the diplomatic skills to approach generals in a way that could get them to understand and change their methods. For skills like that we need someone like Condoleezza Rice who negotiated the withdrawal of the Soviet forces from Eastern Europe thus more or less ending the cold war. How's your German? But it is important that we do not send Condi to Pakistan because the enemy would not hesitate to assassinate her as they did Benazir Bhutto. We must keep Condi safe at all costs. There was no security under Taliban rule for women or for teachers or doctors or engineers or aid workers or non-Muslims. There was security only for some warlords who could defend themselves against the Taliban. The Taliban thought they had created security for themselves but as we will prove in this war on terror ultimately they will not even have that security in their safest of safe bases in Pakistan. When was Britain last invaded? Not recently. When was the US last invaded? Not recently. Defences do not have to fail if the design is right, updated as appropriate and well defended by alert defenders. Correct. This is why defensive fortifications must not depend on only one all-or-nothing line of defence but be organised as multiple lines of defence one within another.

More or less. In post #8 of this topic. No, I first posted my BBC documentary in post #4. I had meant to post it in post #1, the Opening Post, the Original Post, the "OP" but I messed up. So sorry, my fault, but at least now we've established that this video was not posted as an after thought or as a side show but that it is very important to the topic. The video had been posted before your post #8, in my post #4 (which you did not notice) so it did exist. What confused you, it seems, is that I also posted the same video in my post #11 and in my post #18 (which you noticed) which were both after your post #8. I'd still like to know who has watched all 2 hours of it? I am reasonably confident that any scientist, because scientists are intelligent people, having watched all 2 hours of that video, will identify that the Taliban, whatever else they may be, are also proxies for the Pakistani military intelligence, the ISI, and so this war on terror is, or ought to be, with the Pakistani state sponsors of terrorism.

Neil Armstrong (August 5, 1930 – August 25, 2012) the first man on the moon. Neil Armstrong came in peace for all mankind. The coolest guy, ever.

Fair enough. So you should appreciate posting in such a forum as this where you get to post your own replies in your own words. Actually, I was asking the questions you quoted. "Should be" or "must be"? Isn't fighting to win a necessity for you? Is it acceptable to you if our lame politicians and generals fight so incompetently as to risk a draw or a loss in a war? Is it ever acceptable that our soldiers' lives are sacrificed on the battlefield to little strategic purpose? Isn't that an outrage, for you? If you don't like the loaded wording of my questions, fair enough, then you can address my points in your own words if you prefer. Well my point of view is rather more than "we should fight to win" and my questions suggest that I am saying we must fight to win but our generals aren't clearly winning as they must do and that's unacceptable performance in office to me, though US and other NATO country politicians seem to prefer to pursue peace talks with the enemy whereas my political approach would be to replace the poorly performing generals with better, more competent ones who are capable of winning. Do you agree with me on that or if not, why not? My style of questioning seems to have worked because you went on to offer up the sort of excuses our generals may be giving for their poor performance. OK so let's examine those excuses. Any population has little difficulty in identifying guerilla fighters in their midsts to the police if they hate the guerillas and trust the police. However, if the population hates the police and trusts the guerillas then of course it is different and we need to ask why on earth we are working with police who are so hated by the population that they prefer to trust the guerillas? In such circumstances we should cease our co-operation with hated police and ask the population to elect police chiefs they trust and work with them instead. That's right. We are fighting terrorists. We are there to help the population. Oh I think there are many in Afghanistan and in Pakistan too who yearn to be free of the Taliban. Well there's no reason to demand or expect that we'd be welcomed with open arms. I'd rather expect a population to prefer a foreign army which has come to help to keep its distance most of the time and only come in when we are really needed to deal with enemy Taliban who have set up a base or checkpoint or some other clear target we could hit and help the people defeat the enemy. Yes pull back our forces from cities, towns and villages and don't use insecure roads, pull back into our most useful military bases and our secure supply routes in the countryside with miles-wide secure perimeter borders to keep the enemy well back as I have described. But no do not pull out of the country altogether while the enemy still threatens us and the population. Whilst security and defence is essential the best defence is attack and that's why we have pursued the enemy back to their homeland or where their bases are. A purely defensive strategy is vulnerable to the next unexpected attack and there is always some attack the more imaginative terrorists or Holywood movie writers can think of which we have no good defence for. One cannot rely on homeland policing alone. We need an aggressive military strategy to go after the enemy. That does not mean searching Afghan households for Korans - it does mean targeting Taliban enemy forward bases and rear bases such as the University of Jihad and maybe the ISI headquarters as well. We are not trying to make "these people" surrender but "the enemy" surrender. The enemy is not "the people" it is Al Qaeda and the Taliban and their state sponsors. You win wars by killing the enemy. Everyone where, Afghanistan, Pakistan? What a horrible genocidal thought if that is what you are suggesting I might be capable of being willing to contemplate - horrible! Everyone in a Taliban base? Sure you can kill everyone there but most people do not live in or work out of a Taliban base. Sure winning is going to happen if we kill the enemy. That is not true. It is not simply not the case when you win a war. When you win a war the other family members don't become fighters or if they were fighting already they surrender and become peace makers. It is not Nazi Germany but it is a war between governments, or it should be. We ought to name the Pakistani state and Saudi Arabian state as state sponsors of terrorism we are at war with - a war on their terrorism and that's all. No terrorism, no war. The military intelligence parts of the Pakistani state are indeed supporting the Taliban terrorism. Not all parts of the Pakistani government do sponsor terrorism - for example the Taliban have attacked the conventional Pakistani military and police so there is no love lost between most Pakistani officials and the Taliban. But certain parts of those states or governments do have their proxy agents, the Taliban killing Afghans and our soldiers in Afghanistan to try to establish a client state for those imperialist states of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. We can actually help the democratically elected government of Pakistan deal with its ISI sponsoring terrorism which the Pakistani people and their politicians don't want to go to war to defend. Jihadi terrorism is a militant perversion of a peaceful religion but this is not our crusade against Islam. That is an enemy lie which you ought to dismiss. We have no problem nor war with zealous, devout Muslims but that is not what the Taliban are. We have problems and a war with terrorists and that's what the Taliban are.

Would that be the "backward" enemy who flew our jet-engine powered air-planes into our skyscrapers, broadcasts its propaganda from our satellites in space, promotes martyrdom videos of suicide bombers on our internet, sustains itself from our supply lines and which is allied to the military intelligence agency of Pakistan armed with nuclear-weapons first developed by our scientists? It seems this "backward" enemy is very adept at employing our own advanced technology against us. Modern civilization arms both sides of this war. If we fight only for a civilisation which prefers neutrality then the inevitable result will be politicians appointing generals who seek peace talks with the enemy at the earliest opportunity. See how civil and civilised our leaders are when meeting and greeting the enemy leaders! But that's not how you win a war, is it? President Bush with General Pervez Musharraf - The Pakistani ISI organises and supplies the Taliban President Obama bowing to the Saudi King - Saudi Arabia funds more jihadi terrorism globally than any other state. VIDEO: America's 'allies' Saudi & Pakistan: 'enemies' more like! I maintain that the description of our war as a "war on terror", on terrorists, on the states who sponsor terrorists, on states like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia is a better description. Civilisation is not somehow going to fight this war to victory for us. If we allow our political leaders to appoint incompetent generals who don't know how to identify the real enemy and fight to win then civilization will allow the march of history to our eventual defeat in this war. If we are to win this war we must take political action to appoint competent generals. I quote a lesson from history of what happened to "civilization" represented by the British Empire in Afghanistan, the Graveyard of Empires in 1842 under Her Majesty's Major General William Elphinstone. Afghanistan is not a forgiving place for incompetent generals. "trillions"? The US has spent only $1.3+ trillion and counting according to the Cost of War website. The UK's costs have been modest in comparison - maybe $30 billion. So I would have thought the grand total for all countries is unlikely to break the $2 trillion overdraft limit - the banks will be pleased! "invested"? Actually, some of this money has been "invested" but some has been wasted, not invested. Our homeland security is much improved thanks to investment and focus on the gaping holes in our previous security plans. Billions of dollars given to Pakistan for questionable "help" in the war on terror has been wasted. Yes Pakistan has handed over Al Qaeda small-fry and allowed (at a high price) our supply lines to run through Pakistan to Afghanistan but Pakistani has not stopped its ISI sponsoring terrorism and simply have taken our money and spent some of it on recruiting, training and supplying more terrorists and on more on nuclear weapons and missiles. The war on terror has been fought inefficiently. Some low cost anti-terrorist measures such as stopping satellite TV promotion of terrorism have not been taken. The Taliban would ban the girls from going to school and insist that the boys learn the Koran and some grow up to be suicide bombers. Any teacher who defied the Taliban could have their heads cut off, be stoned etc so most teachers would run a mile from Taliban schools. How much more clean energy would the Taliban need to grow poppies to make opium from? The sun provides plenty already. The Taliban don't want to promote clean energy like wind turbines because they get a lot of their money from sponsors who are very rich from sale of oil and gas - Saudi Arabia and Iran. If a clean energy person goes to the Taliban to promote clean energy to them the chances are the Taliban are likely to drive him or her away for being, in their eyes, "an infidel". We can't change the Taliban's ways by bribing them. NATO-ISAF has been bribing them to let our supplies through and they use the money to re-arm with more bombs and ammunition to kill our soldiers with. The only wise course of action to deal with the Taliban terrorism is to win the war against the Taliban more efficiently by insisting on political action to appoint competent generals who don't waste money. Once the Taliban have been defeated the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan will turn to better leaders who would fund schools and install clean energy generators. It is difficult for almost everyone to understand my complex point of view and although agreement with me may often be reached on the broad thrust of my point of view nevertheless few truly understand all the details which comprise my point of view. The obscure details of my point view others find convenient to be unaware of, ignore, skate over, misunderstand, conflate or tacitly disagree with me about. Whereas I would rather be fully understood and any disagreements aired than be misunderstood and humoured. Unfortunately, this does often appear to make me present as confrontational or "antagonistic" and consequently I often find people refuse to entertain my point of view any further and shut me out wherever possible. Forum administrators ban me. University managers exclude me. This is why today as on all days I am home alone. My powers and interest in diplomacy are inversely proportional to my powers and interest in forensic details. Unlike my favourite political scientist Condoleezza Rice, I lack the personal skills to disagree without becoming disagreeable.

Well before Massoud was assassinated, before 9/11, most people would have had little interest in the anti-terrorist fight against Al Qaeda unless they were CIA and law enforcement anti-terrorist specialists no interest in the Taliban, Afghanistan, Pakistan & Saudi Arabia unless maybe they had emigrated from those countries or were salespeople trying to sell products and service to those countries . Before 9/11, essentially, the West did not care one way or another about Afghanistan so Massoud would have been talking to deaf ears if he tried to warn the West about the security dangers arising from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Sadly, there are still powerful people in the West who think selling satellite broadcasting time etc. to the Saudis and Pakistanis is more important as a business opportunity than any danger of those regimes sponsoring terrorism. The point is Afghans are not on their own, even if we withdraw, even if they want to be left on their own. Any weak, failing state attracts neighbouring countries like Pakistan to move in and set up proxy regimes like the Taliban. Powerful neighbours are drawn to interfere in a weak country like vultures are drawn to a dying animal. What, the 77 virgin-brides waiting in heaven for young male suicide bombers? Are you sure? Well progress can be fragile. And there are often important choices to make when you try to make progress. Two out of three little pigs believe they are making "huge progress" with their houses, right up until the wolf blows their house down. The green force is rotten, if not to its core then to much of the periphery. Some of the green is more like gangrene (gan-green, get it! ) The problem I see is in the disconnect between the political control (Karzai) and the funding (mostly from the USA but anyway internationally funded). Karzai as the "duly" (ahem) elected president of Afghanistan is perfectly entitled to run an Afghan national army but Afghans should pay for that themselves. Afghanistan is a poor nation and could not afford that much of an army but if they paid for it themselves, at least the Afghan national army would likely be honest, accountable to Afghans and take on limited tasks - secure the presidential palace, military headquarters and might be up to defending the capital Kabul and surrounding land, maybe. Now the issue is this - to secure all of Afghanistan, even to secure our supply routes, we need lots of troops and it makes sense to have some kind of Afghan force to help us - but we need a bigger and better green force than the Afghans can afford to pay for. (Also why would a national Afghan force want to prioritise defending our supply routes? They wouldn't want to.) So the West, NATO needs to pay for some green Afghan forces - that's a good idea, if, if, if, if and only if, those green forces we are paying for are auxiliary to NATO-ISAF - run by NATO-ISAF - under the control of a NATO general, maybe an American general if you could find a good one to do it. That way we would only recruit capable Afghans into the green force we pay for and interact with daily. We'd be sure our green troops were loyal - wouldn't shoot our blue troops. No way would we have any incentive to spend our own money on disloyal incapable Afghans in green uniform so we would not do it, if we had political and military control over our green forces, which we would have if they were called "The NATO-ISAF Afghan auxiliary force" - with no pretence of them being an Afghan national force under Karzai. However, some idiot has come up with the idea of paying Afghans to have an army funded by us but controlled by Karzai so there is no accountability. The people in charge, deciding who to recruit, can recruit bad soldiers because they get paid more by the US for soldiers, whether they be bad soldiers or not. Why wouldn't Karzai and this guy Lt. Gen. Sher Mohammad Karim, Commander of the Afghan National Army not recruit junkies, thieves, murderers and agents for the Taliban into the Afghan National Army? Why wouldn't they recruit anybody they can find into the Afghan national army if, for every soldier they can name, they get paid more US dollars? Where's the incentive for Karzai and Karim to recruit only good soldiers? There isn't any incentive at all. Again the US ends up funding corruption. If a green soldier kills a blue then who gets held responsible in the chain of command? Nobody gets held responsible. Who should get held responsible? The US and NATO should. We should blame ourselves for paying anything for an army which we do not have any political control over. What on earth does Panetta (and what did Gates before him) think he is (was) doing trusting this guy Karzai and his general Karim with billions of US tax-payer dollars to pay for a green army? Why are NATO defence ministers happy with the poor leadership from NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and the NATO Supreme Allied Commander Admiral James Stavridis? Shouldn't the NATO leaders have spotted this fatal flaw in green troop organisation and tried to re-organise green forces as I suggest here, if they know what they are doing (which they don't)? The competent answer to green on blue attacks is to split up the Afghan army into two distinct forces - a national Afghan army which Afghans pay for and is commanded by Karzai and whichever general he wants to appoint. (dark green) a NATO-ISAF auxiliary force of Afghans, funded by the US and other NATO counties and international donors. This would be commanded by our generals. (light green) So there should be two green armies - each of a different shade of green. Karzai's dark green he would use to defend himself and his capital. Our light green we would use to defend our supply routes and to support our operations in Afghanistan generally. Only when the Afghan economy had grown to the point that they could afford to pay for a big enough army to defend the whole country would we transfer our light green army over to Afghan national control and then we could leave Afghanistan in the hands of Afghans. So long as we are paying for an Afghan force we must retain political control over it otherwise it fuels corruption and does little or nothing to help to fight the enemy we are trying to defeat and the green-on-blue attacks simply undermine political support for the whole Afghanistan / Pakistan mission.

The people can't listen unless the message is broadcast very widely and they don't want to listen to most messages and will tune out if they are not interested. It takes a lot of skill to get people's attention even to something very important. Consider this thought experiment. Or consider it the plot for a hypothetical movie if you prefer. Massoud was assassinated on 9th September 2001, two days before the 11th September 2001 attacks on the USA we now call 9/11. Now imagine that on the day Mossoud died, you, or the star of the movie, got some kind of psychic foresight as to the terrorist attack Al Qaeda was planning to make a couple of days later. Supposing in some sci-fi way you knew what you know now was about to happen in 2 days time. Then suppose you, or the movie star, gave yourself the task of saving the lives of the thousands who were killed on 9/11. Could you do it? Could you make people listen and do something to prevent the attacks? Suppose you tried but people didn't listen and the 9/11 attacks happened pretty much as before. Suppose then, Groundhog Day style, you reawoke on the 9th September and got another chance to try to get people to listen but failed again and got stuck in a cycle of reliving those two days again and again each time trying in various ways to stop the 9/11 attacks and save the lives of the innocents. How would you make people listen? How would you save the lives? How would the movie end? My point is it is all very well if you know what is going to happen, know what should be done to avoid disaster. It is quite another much more difficult thing to try to get people to listen and to act to avoid a disaster.

Snipers are good and it might be an idea to have a sniper speciality for master gunners to train for so as to have that extra ability for the supply route protection force. However, with a mounted machine gun with a telescopic sight, firing in single shot mode, great accuracy can be achieved and a machine gun has the ability for rapid fire in case of a massed infantry attack so I strongly recommend the machine gun with telescopic (and armoured) sights for a pill box position to defend the perimeter of a secure supply route. Yes. Pardon? What do you mean? Do you mean people want to withdraw our forces out of Afghanistan by 2014 or perhaps even sooner? Well while we are there we should secure our supply routes. Another 3 troops killed in Afghanistan by a road-side bomb, reported today, or yesterday. I am not proposing that we spend any more money than we are spending already - simply that we spend it wisely. Right now we have many troops stationed in outlying isolated forward bases, maybe 200 bases in total and it is a nightmare to supply them at all because the roads are so insecure and air drops are often the only way to supply them. Now instead of that, we should deploy our troops along critical supply routes - say connecting our main air bases together and perhaps one route all the way to friendly territory as well. Spend what we are already spending on securing that critical supply route and never mind about having outposts along the Afghan - Pakistan border. The Taliban would hate it because they could not kill us with road side bombs and road-side ambushes the way they do now. The Afghans may object to losing control over a main road but we can sooth hurt feelings in time if we run things like a free bus service along our supply route for civilians or build an alternative insecure road for other Afghan traffic. There are ways to deal with such dislocation as could happen if we impose a secure supply route for our own use. Isn't it the real bad idea to keep allowing our soldiers to get killed on insecure roads in Afghanistan? The bad idea is to keep getting ourselves killed. Becoming safe by securing our supply routes is a good idea. "mile"? Was that your typing mistake? Did you mean to type "miles"? The diagram shows the width of the fortress is 12 miles wide. Take a closer look. It is as long as it needs to be - maybe hundreds of miles long. No actually defensive fortifications are an established practice in military engineering - and evidence for that is all around. For example, starting with the Great Wall of China. Next example, I stay in Scotland where Roman commanders built two defensive walls - Hadrian's Wall and Antonine's Wall. Before the 2nd world war, the French built the Maginot Line fortifications and during the war Rommel built the Atlantic Wall. Defensive fortifications are absolutely standard military orthodoxy. Driving along insecure roads through a war zone and getting hundreds or even thousands of soldiers killed is a relatively new trend perhaps started in Iraq and Afghanistan by generals who clearly are not fit to command. Perhaps they copied the Soviets insufficiency of fortifications in Afghanistan? Not wise if our generals were as negligent as Soviet generals considering the Soviets got defeated in Afghanistan. Having any trust whatsoever in the donkey generals who are misleading our lions of soldiers to their deaths is what is really ridiculous.

The next generation of Pashtuns are being reached out to by the Taliban and being recruited into being suicide bombers and will keep doing so until and unless we smash the Taliban in a strategic manner similar to the 4-point plan I have described. If you were to be so foolish as to reach out to a Taliban-taught 14-year old suicide bomber driving a truck bomb you could get killed and so could anyone travelling with you on your reaching-out to the next generation mission. So get yourself killed reaching out if you insist but please have the decency not to take or send anyone else to die pointlessly attempting the task you suggest. Good. You watch BBC documentaries. So would you please watch this one I posted here? This 2-hour video is of a British TV programme which explains in great detail the role of the Pakistani state via the ISI (Inter-services intelligence) has in supporting the Taliban's war against our forces in Afghanistan. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_SkNUorWhc BBC Documentary - "SECRET PAKISTAN - Double Cross / Backlash" (2 hours) You absolutely need to watch that to understand what we are facing here. What I want to know from you and from everyone else who posts here - did you watch "SECRET PAKISTAN"? Afghanistan is a big country and dropping anything on it at random without purposefully targeting the drop somewhere will likely make no difference. A lump of rock cares not if it gets food or a bomb dropped on it. Either way, the food or the bomb is wasted. We can target our forces and friends with food drops if we need to. We can target our enemies with bomb drops. Targeting is all. If you think in terms of the geography rather than people and how they factor with respect to the military balance of forces then you won't understand war and you won't be able to make any meaningful comment. Well hang on, if the war on terror is won, we all win, not just "someone" but everyone would have won the war on terror. The war is against state sponsors of terrorism. So a victory would arise when no states of the world were sponsoring terrorism. I think Condi put it quite well. On the other hand the thing about states like today's Pakistan is that they sponsor terrorism without admitting to it, so you could never trust what they said if they signed something pledging that they would not sponsor terrorism and would "outlaw acts of international terrorism" as Condi put it. So it would be a more credible peace process to have some kind of certification process rather then accepting states at their word. Possibly the United Nations or NATO or similar war-on-terror prosecuting political and military organisations would certify that certain countries were no longer sponsoring terrorism and give them a certificate and a round of applause at a ceremony maybe. Dunno exactly really. Do the details matter? Actually the converse situation is the real problem in prosecuting the war on terror. I still doubt that Pakistan's name appears on the USA's official list of state sponsors of terrorism and neither does Saudi Arabia's name - both are prolific state sponsors of terrorism yet still states which the US wants to have dealings with and so has been slow to officially name them as the Taliban state of Afghanistan was named. Hence it is an important point in my strategy that we officially name "Pakistan" and "Saudi Arabia" as state sponsors of terrorism so that we can bring our full military power to bear on the enemy if needs be.

"Should be" or "must be"? Isn't fighting to win a necessity for you? Is it acceptable to you if our lame politicians and generals fight so incompetently as to risk a draw or a loss in a war? Is it ever acceptable that our soldiers' lives are sacrificed on the battlefield to little strategic purpose? Isn't that an outrage, for you? Sacrificing lives in vain never seems to be an outrage for our incompetent politicians and generals who'd rather stay in charge, keep calling the shots than suffer the perceived loss of face which seems to be involved in handing the job of leadership of the war over to someone more capable. So there is much to consider under the general heading of "the politics of military leadership". Well the war on terror is not a fight against a religion, it's a fight against terrorism. We don't. Those of us fighting a war on terror don't make it about fighting religion. However, the enemy does spread their propaganda to attempt to portray our fight as against a religion, so as to assist with recruitment of new volunteers from that faith. But please don't be fooled by an enemy lie. Those who agree that "it is a fight against a religion" are those who agree to accept without question the enemy lie that "It's a war on Islam!" No it isn't. It's a war on terror. Terror is spelled "T-E-R-R-O-R". Terror is not spelled "I-S-L-A-M". So yes, there is indeed a need for education involved. Scientists of every speciality do need to get a basic education in political and military science, perhaps from specialist scientists with an interest, experience and dare I say some expertise in the war on terror, like me I suggest. Scientists need to learn that this war on terror is not, and has never been, a "war on Islam". I have heard true Islamic scholars on TV explaining that the very word "Islam" means "peace". Those fighting the war on terror have no issue or problem with those who peacefully observe their religion. These jihadis we face in the war on terror are following a militant perversion of the Islamic faith, that is all. That is easily disproved when we bomb their jihadi university and colleges which after all are actually paramilitary indoctrination bases, whose sole purpose is to recruit people to war against us and it is also disproved when we confiscate their satellites and bomb their TV transmitter aerials. It is very easy to demonstrate that there is another point of view - but the poor generals we employ have so far refused to adopt such methods to wreck the enemy's propaganda and recruitment efforts. We need better generals. No when fighting a war, it should only be acceptable to fight it with wise, competent, able generals. Foolish generals should not be accepted and neither should you accept politicians who accept foolish generals. On the contrary, it is often the case when a war is being won that the enemy's ideas lose potency, soldiers begin to lose confidence and morale in their leaders and their ideas, and they desert, defect, lose heart or go home. Ideas are easy to kill if you are fighting well and winning the war. The people we are fighting are doing so as proxies for the Pakistani military and the Saudi royal family and allied elites. Pakistani generals and Saudi royals have been welcomed to the White House by the US President and are seen on US TV. Many have been part-educated in the West, studied courses at our universities or at our military academies. When Jon Stewart interviewed the Pakistani ex-general and ex-dictator Pervez Musharraf on the Daily Show watched by millions of Americans he was very much part of US culture, not in the least isolated. The Taliban are proxies for men like Musharraf. He knows our culture better than we know his. He played President Bush like a fiddle. You really must watch the video "SECRET PAKISTAN", embedded here. It is 2 hours well spent. This 2-hour video is of a British TV programme which explains in great detail the role of the Pakistani state via the ISI (Inter-services intelligence) has in supporting the Taliban's war against our forces in Afghanistan. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_SkNUorWhc BBC Documentary - "SECRET PAKISTAN - Double Cross / Backlash" (2 hours) The Pakistani generals want to be free to send terrorists to kill our soldiers and citizens whenever they like. We want our civilians to be free to live in peace, free from the terrorism of jihadi terrorist attack. So yes there is a difference. Only one of those freedoms can stand. If we win the war our civilians will be free. If we don't they'll be terrorised. Wars are never won by waiting for the enemy to change. They are won by forcing defeat and change upon the enemy. A MOAB on a jihadi university will change the bad education coming out of that place. Likewise seizing a satellite and changing the broadcasts can change the educational message to one which wins us peace and freedom. It's not difficult if you fight it to win with a good strategy. It is difficult if you keep leaving the prosecution of the war to politicians and generals who don't have a clue about strategy. No, we are fighting ourselves from this year, 2012. This year we are paying the enemy, funding the enemy costs of war. The US pays the enemy Pakistani state billions of dollars, for low-ranking Al Qaeda terrorists they capture, for protection money to get our supplies through to Afghanistan. All this money we pay we earned this year in 2012. We are paying both sides' costs in this war because of the strategic folly our generals have gotten themselves into. If we keep paying the enemy more and more, sure. So don't. Use the stick, not the carrot. It's not about "trying harder" it is about "fighting strategically". Wars are not about killing those who disagree but those who are part of the enemy army. You get to grips with the enemy's bad ideas by winning the war. When those with the militant version of the religion get defeated then the genuine peaceful version of the religion will be all that is left standing. Then there will be peace because we have won the war. It is not about religion. It is about fighting the war to win. Scientists above all must understand how to win the war on terror.

Thank you to all who have replied to this topic so far. I intend to answer all your points when I have time but giving a considered reply is quite time-consuming, much more so than copying and pasting my opening post which I authored over a number of years. So please be patient and I will get to your points but feel free to add more replies to give me a never-ending task if you wish. The Taliban is still an organised group of people even though it is inspired by jihadi ideas taught at that "University of Jihad" which features in the first video I posted. A group with ideas is still a group. Bin Laden was a Saudi, not a Pashtun, so he should not be thought of as an archetypal Taliban. Bin Laden led Al Qaeda which is an international jihadi group which has training bases in Pashtun lands. Bin Laden was finally found and killed in a safe house near the Pakistani military academy which suggests he was under the protection of the Pakistani military. We have not taken out the leader of the Taliban in the field, Mullah Omar because like Bin Laden he is a difficult target because he is rarely seen in public and his whereabouts are unknown to our forces. We have not taken out the Father of the Taliban, Sami ul Haq, the "Dean" / "Chancellor" / "whatever" of the University of Jihad at Akora Khattak. His whereabouts are often known - he does appear in public but he is given political status by the Pakistani state and until now the West has foolishly respected that political status and tried to engage the Father of the Taliban in peace talks. It is likely we could demand the arrest of the Father of the Taliban and if Pakistan fails to arrest him then we could quite easily take him out but to get to that policy it looks like we will need to make a change in Western leadership so our leaders give orders to our forces to go after all the Taliban leaders, be they University of Jihad managers or teachers, Pakistani military intelligence controllers, or Saudi financiers. So when our politicians and generals are not even trying to take out those who run the Taliban then we have a critical failure in managing this war. To win the war it is simply necessary to take out new leaders faster than they emerge which would leave the Taliban disorganised and its foot soldiers ready to surrender. The point to note is that the Pakistani military, for now, thinks it enhances their own security to have the University of Jihad and like institutions "educating" (indoctrinating) Pashtuns to support and join the Taliban. The way to change that malign thinking on the part of the Pakistani military is to demonstrate to them that the Taliban is weakening the Pakistani military's security immensely because the West's best war strategy is to order our air forces to bomb the Taliban bases in Pakistan. Incorrect. The West hasn't really employed a "military strategy" per se that would pass even an elementary scrutiny by a qualified military strategist. All we have really seen in Afghanistan is platoon tactics writ large. In computer games terms, the war against the Taliban is being run as a first person shooter game. There seem to be no officers who are able, qualified and experienced enough to operate at the level of Army Captain or above in the field right now. Or if they are qualified someone is telling them to shut up and obey the incompetent superior officers who have been promoted above the able people but who are clueless about strategy. In computer games terms, there's no-one running the war even at a Company of Heroes level of competence. Elementary strategic matters such as securing supply routes have been neglected. I am not expecting or asking for "amazing". I just think we are entitled to expect a basic level of competence from our military officers and we need political leaders who won't accept poor leadership by the general staff, who will appoint Defence Secretaries and ministers who will insist on able generals who understand enough about strategy to make winning as straight-forward a matter as it should be. This is not a cultural matter. The Taliban is a not a cultural organisation. It is a political and military organisation. Understanding the Pashto language so our military intelligence officers can eavesdrop on their military communications is a good idea so that we can anticipate Taliban military plans and move to counter them on the battlefield. Understanding the indigenous language and culture is useful so we can beat the enemy but the enemy is not the culture per se. The Taliban are not easy for the host communities to reject because if they dare they get shot, or beheaded. We need to weaken the Taliban sufficiently so that they are easy to reject without fatal consequences for those who do reject them. We need to stop the jihadis indoctrinating the people first, by closing the University of Jihad (and any similar indoctrination bases), by bombing it (them) if that's all that is left to us since the Pakistani state seem unwilling to close it (them) themselves. It does need to be safe enough for responsible educators to stand up and educate and it won't be in North-West Pakistan so long as the Taliban would kill any teacher attempting to teach moderation. The Pakistani state and the rich Arab states who also fund jihadi universities, colleges and schools, do 21st century business with the West and use the profits they make from us to buy our satellites to brainwash the population with 14th century ideas and then arm the armies of jihadi terrorists they raise with our 21st century weapons. In addition the Pakistani state has received billions of dollars from the US for its so-called "help" with arresting some low-level Al Qaeda terrorists. They use that money to fund the indoctrination and training of more terrorists (and to fund other pet military projects such as adding to the Pakistani nuclear arsenal). So in a very real sense, we are fighting ourselves, but we are fighting our 21st century selves. We pay good money to help fund the enemy in many ways and until we have leaders who get a grip over that and order our states to stop supporting the enemy and start fighting it strategically then we will struggle to make progress against the Taliban. Education is important but first I have to educate my fellow scientists about where the West is going so dreadfully wrong in this war so that at least scientists know how to turn this war around. Thank you. There's a lot of detail. You might enjoy starting with the BBC documentary "SECRET PAKISTAN" which is quite easy watching and very informative.

I didn't embed this video properly in the opening post. This 2-hour video is of a British TV programme which explains in great detail the role of the Pakistani state via the ISI (Inter-services intelligence) has in supporting the Taliban's war against our forces in Afghanistan. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_SkNUorWhc BBC Documentary - "SECRET PAKISTAN - Double Cross / Backlash" (2 hours) and this video So a "MOAB" would be one of those. Ultimate Weapons- Mother of all Bombs (YouTube)

Introduction and summary In this short video, I reject of the idea of peace talks with the Taliban and present an outline of my proposed strategy to beat the Taliban (and win the war on terror). Transcript from the video - The desire for "peace talks" with the enemy is where poor generals with a failed war strategy end up Why would NATO and specifically the US want to encourage "peace talks" with the enemy Taliban? Why not simply crush the enemy? What's the political or military issue here that might mean "peace talks" would be part of an exit strategy for the US and allies? Key failures have been - Weak strategic thinking and planning by US and then NATO generals has dragged out the Western intervention in Afghanistan since 2001 and caused far more casualties to our soldiers than was ever necessary. The military general staff has lacked vision about the enemy and failed to comprehend and react appropriately to intelligence reports that Al Qaeda, the Taliban and other jihadi terror groups are proxies for hostile states, typically managed from Pakistan and funded from Saudi Arabia. This 2-hour video is of a British TV programme which explains in great detail the role of the Pakistani state via the ISI (Inter-services intelligence) has in supporting the Taliban's war against our forces in Afghanistan. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_SkNUorWhc BBC Documentary - "SECRET PAKISTAN - Double Cross / Backlash" (2 hours) Military strategic essentials have been neglected, such as - when occupying territory, always ensure secure supply routes from one strong point to another. Instead NATO-ISAF forces in Afghanistan have been deployed in isolated bases, deployed more like tethered goats as bait for the enemy than a conquering or liberating army. Some combination of military incompetence by the generals and a preference for appeasement on the part of the civilian political leadership has perversely left the West bribing our enemies within the Pakistani terrorist-proxy-controlling state and continuing business-as-usual with our enemies in the Saudi jihadi-financing state. How to beat the Taliban and win the war on terror It’s never too late to learn lessons and adopt an alternative competent and aggressive military strategy. I have already mentioned the outline points of my plan but I will explain those in a little more here and then provide a lot more detail in subsequent posts. The US and Western allies ought to name Pakistan and Saudi Arabia as "state sponsors of terrorism". We ought to name in addition, the other oil-rich Arab kingdoms who are also financial state sponsors of terrorism. This has implications such as ending bribes and deals with back-stabbing hostile countries and instead waging war against our enemies with the aim of regime change or incapacitating the enemy so that they can do us little more harm. The war could be of varying intensity depending on the enemy concerned and how they respond to our initial attacks, whether they wish to escalate the war or surrender to our reasonable demands. There ought to be drone strikes on the University of Jihad. (Darul Uloom Haqqania, Akora Khattak, Pakistan) In addition, we ought to employ aerial bombing of all other bases for the Taliban in Pakistan. This may have to be extended to include certain Pakistani state bases which are supporting the Taliban - such as the Pakistani ISI headquarters mentioned a lot in the BBC documentary "SECRET PAKISTAN". If this is not handled very carefully, it could escalate into open war with the Pakistani military. I will explain how to manage Pakistan later. We ought to seize control of Pakistani and Saudi TV satellites and use them to broadcast propaganda calling for the arrest of all involved in waging terrorist war against the West. These satellites are made, launched and maintained by Western companies and should be easy to take over. Other satellites provided to the enemy by non-Western countries could be jammed or destroyed. Air strikes against the enemy's main terrestrial TV transmitter aerials is another option to silence enemy propaganda. When occupying territory, always ensure secure supply routes from one strong point to another. I will provide a lot of details about how this can be done militarily. 2. Bomb the enemy in Pakistan More on point 2 of the plan. Air strikes, bombing raids, missiles, drone attacks on enemy bases in Pakistan. Bomb Taliban Jihadi indoctrination bases in Pakistan. I am suggesting that our forces bomb the Taliban Headquarters known as "the University of Jihad" or Darul Uloom Haqqania, Akora Khattak, 50 kilometres (31 miles) east of the provincial capital, Peshawar. More about the place in this BBC webpage BBC NEWS | South Asia | The 'university of holy war' The significance of this place is that it is the main recruitment and command centre for the Taliban which must be known to our military intelligence officers and so it is a mystery why they have not advised our generals to bomb this place before now or if they did advise our generals to bomb it why they didn't actually bomb it? It makes no sense in a war to give the enemy headquarters a free pass and immunity from being targeted. It just makes their commanders feel untouchable which is not how we want them to feel. We want them arrested or dead or in great fear that soon they will be arrested or dead and bombing their HQ gives them that idea. Our forces do not have ground forces close enough to use artillery to destroy this target so that leaves NATO to use its aerial power - drones and bomber planes, to bomb the target from the air. So apart from not wanting to use nuclear weapons on such a weak target which would be over-kill, I think bombing using the very heaviest conventional bombs, MOABs or heavy bombing from B52s or C130s is appropriate. So a "MOAB" would be one of those. Which has a blast radius of 450 feet or 137 metres. Heavy bombing could be used to totally level such targets, or turn the target site into one huge crater field - obliterate it. Give the Jihadis a demonstration that they won't ever forget! Then if the Taliban and Jihadi leaders relocate to a new recruitment, indoctrination and command base, blast that to pieces as well. Our forces will have to establish air superiority over the target areas to allow not only unmanned drones but piloted heavy bombers with a much heavier bomb load to over-fly the area reasonably safely. How to manage Pakistan If and when Pakistan objects to our plans to aerial bomb these enemy indoctrination bases we should tell them that because our view is that Pakistan does not control the ground there to our satisfaction - because Pakistani police or military have not arrested and handed over the likes of the Darul Uloom Haqqania and other Taliban leaders operating on the ground for removal to Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp and not closed down the University of Jihad and other Taliban bases then the Pakistan military don't deserve control of the air space over that ground which they don't satisfactorily control. So we can say "Sorry" if the Pakistanis don't like this violation of their sovereignty but the needs of war mean this is something we must do. We wouldn't intend to permanently deprive Pakistan of control over its air space; this would be a temporary measure until the war on terror is won. Pakistan had their chance to arrest or kill the Taliban leaders in their Pakistan bases but now it is too late so we are going to flatten the Taliban bases in that part of Pakistan from the air and we need total air superiority over the target area in order to protect our pilots. The Pakistan government and military has complained about drone strikes in parts of Pakistan but Pakistan has not gone to war with us about it, thankfully. Hopefully, the Pakistanis will not want to contest air superiority with their military but if they do decide to fight to resist our air-superiority where we need it to bomb the Taliban then we must be prepared to take out all nearby Pakistani ground to air missile batteries and any air fighters they send against us to contest air superiority. If the Pakistanis decide to fight us over control of Pakistan's air space then of course there is a risk this could escalate to all-out war if the Pakistanis really want to make a casus belli out of the sovereignty issue and the matter of us requiring to destroy the Taliban so possibly we should make it clear to the Pakistanis that the US President or the NATO supreme commander have the option to use nuclear weapons against Pakistani military bases anywhere in Pakistan if that was necessary to win an all-out war with Pakistan. That's not our aim to escalate to an all-out war with Pakistan here but Pakistan should be careful not to escalate the situation from one where we need to go after the Taliban only into one where the official Pakistan military gets dragged into a war with us unnecessarily. This risk of having to fight and win an all-out war with Pakistan is a lesser risk than failing to defeat the Taliban, withdrawing from Pakistan having achieved little to secure Afghanistan and thereby giving encouragement to Jihadis the world over to commit more acts of terrorism and war elsewhere in the world including in our homelands. So Pakistan should not force us to make that choice of two risky options because their defeat is preferable to our own defeat in our opinion. Pakistan should avoid war with the West by stepping back and allowing us to destroy the Taliban in Pakistan because it is the Taliban and the Jihadis who are the true enemies of the Pakistani and Afghan people. We are the friends of the people of Pakistan and we will prove that by defeating their and our enemy, the Taliban and associated Jihadis. Hopefully the Pakistanis will back off and let us bomb the Taliban without threat from Pakistan's air defences. We should tell Pakistan that we are doing them a favour which they will thank us for in the long run though we appreciate the embarrassment for them in the short term. Targeting the University of Jihad, Akora Khattak Here are the co-ordinates for Akora Khattak. Geohack - Akora Khattak 34° 0′ 2.17″ N, 72° 7′ 18.06″ E 34.000603,72.121683 and if you look on Google Maps the co-ordinates for Akora Khattak seems to be centred right on the Darul Uloom Haqqania / University of Jihad. That location is in a built-up area (of course the cowards would use civilian human shields) so using the MOAB is bound to do a fair amount of collateral damage to surrounding buidings and people. So the word should go out now - evacuate Akora Khattak and don't live within 5 miles of any such jihadi university otherwise you could be seriously inconvenienced. The target area of the campus of University of Jihad looks to be about 100 metres x 100 metres. Hard to guess from the satellite photo. Here is the Jihadis' own website for the base International Islamic University: Darul Uloom Haqqania which has a number of photographs and is helpfully in English. Anyway a MOAB on that lot is certainly going to spoil their day and their terror-war plans. 4. Secure supply routes for Afghanistan. Overview from 'Warlord Inc.' I have a lot of information to post about this here so I will start with a post presenting an overview of the issues and problems starting with this CBS news story which identifies a critical weakness in our military configuration - poorly defended supply lines whose vulnerability the enemy exploits to gain funds for its insurgency in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Download Warlord, Inc. Extortion and Corruption Along the U.S. Supply Chain in Afghanistan - Right-click, Save Target As ... Map inserted by Peter Dow Supplemented by Subcommittee staff 4. Secure supply routes for Afghanistan. Land routes. Supplying along a land route (road and/or railway) through friendly territory is easy enough. Supplying through a war-zone, or bandit country requires a military approach, something like this. Secure supply route border defences plan diagram My plan is to establish a secure wide border either side of the supply route to keep enemy mortar and rocket launcher teams out of range of the supply line. Apparently, the Taliban are being supplied indirect fire weapons from Iran so defenders need to be prepared to expect attacks using weapons such as 120 mm heavy mortars, with a range of 6200 metres and 107 mm rocket launchers with a range of 8500 metres. So regretfully there is no avoiding the requirement for compulsory purchase of land and eviction of occupiers along a 19 kilometre or 12 mile wide corridor, the whole length of the supply route. More aggressively NATO might like to consider long-range missile attacks against Iranian weapons productions facilities in Iran to dissuade the Iranians from supplying the Taliban. Secure border for a supply route - 19 kilometres or 12 miles wide Secure supply route border defences plan diagram (large - 960 x 1374 pixels) As can be seen in the diagram, the border perimeter defences are much the same whether you are securing a railway or a road. Diagram features. Explained for secure Afghanistan supply routes. Dangerous ground Enemy forces such as the Taliban, Afghan warlords or Iranian proxies may be attacking the supply route from here Vehicle barrier - deep trench / giant boulders / steep slope - so that truck bombs cannot be driven onto the route STOP - Police check-point - police check civilians are unarmed and those in police or military uniform are genuine. Needs to be very robust so as to survive an enemy truck bomb. Barbed wire - enough to keep out people and larger animals - so more than a horse can jump or cattle can trample over No Pedestrians! Cleared ground Target zone for the machine gunners. A hostile intent should be assumed if an intruder is seen here and the intruder should be shot. The ground needs to be cleared of cover so that intruders can be easily spotted and cannot sneak their way past the machine gunners. GUN - Fortified machine gun nests / pillboxes 3 man crew. Armour should be able to withstand an RPG hit and contains one machine gun with an effective range to 1000 metres, such as PKM or better. One every 1000 metres on both borders should be manned 24/7. Binoculars, automatic rifles such as AK47 and night vision for 3. Two or more other gun positions per 1000 m on each border are normally unmanned and don't need the expense of real guns sitting there all the time. Such extra positions confuse attackers and serve as firing positions for mobile reaction teams to occupy in emergencies and who can bring additional weapons with them. Access road Where authorised traffic and people can access or leave the supply route. Mortar teams' ground Defender mortar teams arriving from mobile response depots should set up somewhere here to fire at the enemy in the dangerous ground. The mortar teams' ground should have features to help to win mortar duels with the enemy such as observation points on higher ground or tall structures to serve as observation towers. Safe building ground Somewhere relatively safe to build a heliport, runway, supply store or other facility or base. Supply route The road and / or railway we are defending Crossing Where the access road crosses a supply route railway Station - Railway station to load and unload supplies and people onto and off the supply trains. Cross-roads - A four-way junction where the access road crosses the supply road. Mobile reaction depot - contains single armoured fighting vehicle. This is also where the off-duty mess is so that soldiers are available to react to sustained attacks anywhere along the supply route. One every 2km. Contains additional infantry weapons and ammunition such as additional machine guns, automatic rifles, rocket propelled grenade launchers, mortars and the rest. Armoured personnel carrier Such as an up-armoured humvee. Most mobile reaction depots have one of those. To transport soldiers to the proximity of the enemy attack where soldiers dismount to fight. Infantry fighting vehicle or armoured combat vehicle. With stronger armour and able to fire on the enemy from enhanced weapons mounted to the vehicle, as well as able to perform the soldier transport role of the APC. Ideally the defenders would prefer the more powerful IFVs to the battle taxi APCs but fewer mobile reaction depots house IFVs because IFVs cost more and so fewer are available to the defenders than the lower performing APCs. Secure supply route protection force organisation I am proposing a dedicated force within the Afghan army to secure main supply routes through Afghanistan. Organisation. Ranks in increasing order of seniority - Gunner Master Gunner Team Leader Shift Officer Depot Commander Reaction Captain There will be higher officer ranks yet to be specified. Duties of the ranks. 1. Gunner - infantry soldier, serves as a member of a 3-man team which serves on one GUN - Fortified machine gun nests / pillboxes position normally for an 8-hour shift. A Gunner performs other routine duties for an hour or two each day in addition to his 8-hour shift at the gun position at the nearest Mobile reaction depot under the supervision of his Team Leader, Shift Officer and Depot Commander at which location he has quarters in the depot mess. A Gunner can also be called to emergency duty when required. Gunners must be able to see well operate the machine gun fire accurately reload the machine gun, change the barrel on the machine gun use the guns' optical sights and night sights use the binoculars and night-vision equipment be comfortable in a GUN - Fortified machine gun nests / pillboxes position, point out where the No Pedestrians! Cleared ground is and where it ends and where allowed ground behind the gun positions is, understand that he is forbidden to enter onto the No Pedestrians! Cleared ground on or off duty, even if ordered to do so by anyone in his team because he may be shot if he does so, understand that he is ordered on and off his duty shift at the GUN - Fortified machine gun nests / pillboxes position only by his own Shift Officer and own Depot Commander and he cannot be relieved of duty by his Team Leader nor by a more senior ranking Master Gunner, nor by any other Shift Officer nor Depot Commander nor by any more senior officer whom he does not know. understand that while on duty he is not to surrender his personal assault rifle (such as an AK47) to any person, even to someone in his own team. Therefore his Team Leader cannot relieve him of duty nor demand that any Gunner surrender his personal weapon, understand that it is the Gunner's job when on duty, his job, to shoot on sight anyone on the No Pedestrians! Cleared ground coming or going, even someone dressed in Afghan army uniform, of whatever rank who could be an intruder dressed in disguise or even be a colleague who is deserting in that direction. If he is not manning the machine gun at the time he is to use his personal assault rifle to shoot the person on the No Pedestrians! Cleared ground if they are in range, but he is not to follow in hot pursuit anyone onto the No Pedestrians! Cleared ground because again he may be shot. understand pillbox defensive tactics as follows. perform other duties as supervised by the higher ranks. 2. Master Gunner - skills-based promoted ranks for Gunners with additional specialist skills such as weapons maintenance, binocular and night-vision maintenance, vehicle driving and basic maintenance - checking and maintaining tyre pressure, fuel and oil levels, etc. infantry fighting vehicle specialist mortar team skills, first aid, communications - operating telephone (landline and mobile / cell ) and radio. Master Gunners get an appropriately and differently designed skills badge and salary increment for each specialist skill learned. So typically that would be a badge with a machine-gun icon for weapons' maintenance, a badge with an APC-icon for vehicle driving and basic maintenance and so on. A Master Gunner with more badges and skills outranks a Master Gunner with fewer badges and skills. 3. Team leader A promoted post. The most experienced and able Gunner in each team of 3 on a GUN - Fortified machine gun nests / pillboxes position. Team leaders should have multiple specialist skills and in particular the communications specialist skills is one of the required skills to be eligible to become a Team Leader. Team leaders are always the senior ranking members in every 3-man team irrespective of badges and skills. So a Master Gunner with, say, 5 skill badges does not outrank a Team Leader with, say, only 4 skills badges. 4. Shift officer - normally on duty back at the Mobile reaction depot and in command and in radio, mobile (cell) or land-line telephone contact with 4 teams, which is 12 men, on duty for an 8-hour shift. The shift officer acts as a deputy commander for the shift for 4 GUN - Fortified machine gun nests / pillboxes and for the Mobile Reaction Depot. The Shift Officer is also in radio, mobile (cell) or land-line telephone contact with Shift Officers in neighbouring Mobile reaction depots. The Shift Officer decides whether or not to consult the Depot commander in response to a request for assistance from any of the 4 teams under his command or to a request for assistance from a Shift Officer in a neighbouring Mobile Reaction Depot. 5. Depot commander - in command of one Mobile reaction depot , the vehicle, weapons and everything therein. Commands the 3 Shift officers and 12 teams which totals 39 men under his command. He can declare a depot emergency, and call the off-duty shifts in the mess back on emergency duty. The Depot Commander can order the depot's vehicle and men to attend and to defend the GUN - Fortified machine gun nests / pillboxes under attack or order mortar teams into action from the Mortar teams' ground. In an emergency, the Depot Commander notifies his immediate superior officers, the Reaction Captains who are the reaction director and deputy reaction director assigned command responsibility for his Mobile Reaction Depot. 6. Reaction Captain has some command responsibility for the reactions of 8 neighbouring Mobile Reaction Depots is the reaction director for the central 4 depots of these 8 neighbouring depots is the deputy reaction director for the peripheral 4 depots of these 8 neighbouring depots. Reaction Captains direct Mobile Reaction Depots The diagram illustrates how the command responsibility of neighbouring Reaction Captains is organised. Mobile Reaction Depots 1 & 2 - the reaction director is Reaction Captain C - the deputy reaction director is Reaction Captain A Mobile Reaction Depots 3 & 4 - the reaction director is Reaction Captain A - the deputy reaction director is Reaction Captain C Mobile Reaction Depots 5 & 6 - the reaction director is Reaction Captain A - the deputy reaction director is Reaction Captain D Mobile Reaction Depots 7 & 8 - the reaction director is Reaction Captain D - the deputy reaction director is Reaction Captain A Mobile Reaction Depots 9 & 10 - the reaction director is Reaction Captain D - the deputy reaction director is Reaction Captain B Mobile Reaction Depots 11 & 12 - the reaction director is Reaction Captain B - the deputy reaction director is Reaction Captain D Mobile Reaction Depots 13 & 14 - the reaction director is Reaction Captain B - the deputy reaction director is Reaction Captain E Mobile Reaction Depots 15 & 16 - the reaction director is Reaction Captain E - the deputy reaction director is Reaction Captain B This overlapping organisation ensures that emergencies which are declared at any Mobile Reaction Depot can be supported if needs be by Reaction Captains with responsibility for the depot under attack ordering neighbouring depots on either side to react to the emergency. A vehicle is assigned to each Reaction Captain who routinely drives to visit the 8 Mobile Reaction Depots for which he has command responsibility for daily meetings with the Depot Commanders and with the other 2 Reaction Captains he shares depot command responsibility with. The Reaction Captains can arrange to receive a salute at attention from each off-duty shift twice a week with an opportunity for the Reaction Captains to boost morale by reminding the Gunners that every Reaction Captain has 8 Mobile Reaction Depots and 320 soldiers under his command and that the 2 Reaction Captains with command responsibility for a particular depot have between them 480 soldiers under their command. So in emergencies the Secure Supply Route Protection Force is well organised to defeat any attack the enemy dares to try against any part of the supply route. They shall not pass! (No passeran!) The Reaction Captain has a captain's office and quarters adjacent to one of the 4 Mobile Reaction Depots for which he is the reaction director and the Depot Commander of that particular Mobile Reaction Depot also serves as the Reaction Captain's secretary to take telephone calls to the Reaction Captain's Office if he is out of his office and quarters at the time. Being so mobile in his daily routine, the Reaction Captain must be contactable via radio or mobile (cell) telephone when he is out of his office. In the event of a major attack, the Reaction Captain will set up a tactical command headquarters at his office to direct the battle and call for further reinforcements from neighbouring Reaction Captain's offices if required. Staff numbers Reaction captain's office 1 office every 4 depots 161 men four depots of forty men (4 x 40 = 160) plus the Reaction Captain (160 + 1 = 161) Mobile reaction depot 1 depot every 2 kilometres (1.25 miles) 40 men three eight-hour shifts of thirteen men, (3 x 13 = 39) plus the Depot Commander (39 + 1 = 40) 40 men per 2 kilometres = 20 men per kilometre = 32 men per mile Depot shift 3 shifts per depot 13 men four three-man gun teams, ( 4 x 3 = 12) plus the Shift Officer (12 + 1 = 13) Reserves Approximate numbers of infantry required including reserves. For a 25% reserve of 5 reserves per kilometre, 8 reserves per mile Force including reserves is 25 infantry per kilometre, 40 infantry per mile For a 50% reserve of 10 reserves per kilometre, 16 reserves per mile Force including reserves is 30 infantry per kilometre, 48 infantry per mile Support staff Infantry deployed in the field or on guard somewhere can require numbers of support staff (such as delivery and rubbish collection, engineers of all kinds, trainers, medical, administration, military policing etc.) which I am told can be multiples of the numbers of deployed infantry they support, depending on the support facilities offered, the quality and efficiency of the support organisation. I believe the support staff requirements for a static guard force are somewhat different to mobile infantry advancing (or retreating) in a conventional war because the guard force's requirements for fuel and ammunition deliveries are less but a guard force may expect more in terms of base facilities - running water, electricity and so on. I am not recommending figures for support staff because such numbers are more dependent on the infrastructure of the army and nation concerned and are independent of the details of how the infantry are deployed which is my concern here only. Numbers of support staff are to be filled in by NATO-ISAF and the Afghan government and army themselves later. How my plan solves the issues raised in 'Warlord Inc.' My plan can achieve the "Warlord, Inc." recommendations 3 and 6, not merely to stop extortion and corruption along the supply chain but to gain a further significant advance to NATO-ISAF mission goals. I propose secure supply route border defences and a dedicated Afghan protection force to man those defences which would achieve all along the main supply routes a level of security which is similar to the security inside a military base or fort. "Warlord, Inc." uses the NATO-ISAF parlance of "inside the wire" to refer to the security achieved within their own NATO-ISAF bases but to virtually nowhere else in Afghanistan. It is about time NATO-ISAF and the Afghan government and military were extending that true security "inside the wire" to more of Afghanistan. My secure supply route plan would bring more of Afghanistan "inside the wire" so to speak. The secure supply route border defences require only authorised persons living inside the secure defences. The general population sadly may harbour enemy agents and so must be required to live outside the border defences. Where isolated houses and small villages can be relocated to use a suitable existing supply road then that should be done with compensation for the relocated residents and landowners. Where the settlements along the old supply route are too big to move then new roads should be built for a new supply route, by-passing those bigger settlements by at least 6 miles. 4. Secure supply routes for Afghanistan. By air lift. Then let NATO-ISAF supply fully 100 percent of its cargo by air by increasing by 5-fold the airport infrastructure and capacity of Afghanistan, building perhaps one or two more big hub airports around the country or a few more long runways and additional cargo handling facilities at existing airports like Bagram or Kandahar - to accept the incoming international flights, such as Hercules C-130s, then from those large hub airports transfer the cargo into smaller planes to fly from new short runways at those few hub airports on to dozens of new smaller airports all around Afghanistan. To pay for this, money can be reallocated to airport construction by rationalising some of the 200 most expensive and remote forward operating bases and combat outposts. Close those which cost more than they are worth. Retreat to the really important bases, build airfields for them and build secure supply route defences to and from them and that's a very strong defensive position from which to launch offensive operations against the enemy. No longer will the legitimate military and civilian traffic require the permission of warlords to travel along Afghanistan's highways. Securing an air base. Example - Camp Bastion / Camp Leatherneck Well here's another reason for Bastion to exist - to become a logistics hub for operations across Afghanistan, well beyond Helmand province. With strategic airlift capacity, think strategically. A few more runways like the new longer runway at Bastion and Afghanistan's airfield infrastructure would be sufficient for all of NATO-ISAF force supplies to reach Afghanistan by air - removing dependence and vulnerability on Pakistan's land routes and eliminating the extortion and corruption along the Afghanistan ground supply chain, as detailed in Warlord, Inc.. After supplies are landed at the few huge hub airports - Bagram, Kandahar and Bastion - cargo could be transferred into smaller airplanes using adjacent smaller runways for connecting flights out to smaller airfields associated with NATO-ISAF forward operating bases. Whether by luck or by design Bastion is well chosen in being far from a population centre which makes it politically feasible to impose a rigorous security exclusion zone on the ground for many miles around the airport. Controlling the ground far around a military airport is very necessary to defend the incoming aircraft against missile attack by ensuring no enemy can get close enough to launch a missile anywhere near below where the planes descend to land. Landing at night is not a sufficient defence. Aircraft engines and their exhaust jets are very hot and infra-red shines just as brightly at night for missiles to lock on to. We cannot assume that the Taliban will be unable to source the most advanced ground-to-air missiles. We should assume they will source such missiles and take the necessary security precautions. So at Bastion NATO-ISAF must control the ground in a vast security perimeter out to the horizon and beyond which means closing the nearby road to Afghan traffic and providing an alternative circuitous route for civilian traffic. I need hardly mention the military, economic and political disaster of allowing the enemy to bring down one of our big aircraft. So this must not be allowed to happen. Therefore a very wide secure ground exclusion zone around Bastion should be imposed. In addition, I need hardly remind people of Al Qaeda's willingness to use aircraft themselves as weapons and therefore airport air defences need to be operational and alert at all times, not just when scheduled aircraft are landing. The progress at Bastion is very promising for the whole Afghanistan mission. It shows the way ahead. We can contemplate one day removing the constraints limiting NATO-ISAF supplies reaching Afghanistan by air. From a limit of about 20 percent now, I foresee a 100 percent supply-into-Afghanistan-by-air strategy as both feasible and desirable. Securing the land around Camp Bastion So it matters that Camp Bastion is well defended and I want to make sure we are using the correct tactics to secure the land around any airfield camp we are defending. So I have some new comments to make which occurred to me after seeing that photograph of our soldiers patrolling through poppy fields. I am wondering if there are poppy fields in that 600 square kilometres around Camp Bastion? Anyway, we don't want or need any high vegetation around the air field which would allow insurgents cover to sneak close to the base, either to launch missile attacks or to plant anti-personnel mines, I.E.D.s or anything else. Much better if the land is cleared of all tall vegetation so that it is much easier to keep clear of threats. Short grass is good. That may mean buying out farmers who are growing crops, buying their land around the camp, compensating them but only if they are growing worthwhile crops. If they are growing poppy fields then they don't deserve compensation in my book. Either way there is a big job for our engineers to clear the land all around the camp of all cover useful to an enemy. So that's clearing all the 600 square kilometres which was mentioned as being patrolled by our forces. It is a big job to keep such a large area of land free of cover and yes it is OK to hire local Afghan labour to help with keeping the vegetation down. After all, we will have put some local farmers out of living so they'll be looking for employment. It might be an idea to have grazing animals on the land to keep the vegetation down but I would not be surprised if the Taliban shoot grazing animals if they can but if they do that's a reminder to us that the Taliban are still out there if a reminder is ever needed. I assume in a dry land like Afghanistan that burning vegetation is easily done and that'll be the easiest way to clear the land I suspect. So I approve a "scorched earth" policy. At night when it is not so easy to distinguish between a farmer tending his grazing animals and an insurgent pretending to be that, I suggest that the 600 square kilometres should be an exclusion zone for everyone except Camp Bastion personnel. So all local Afghan workers who clear vegetation during the day need to go back to homes outside the 600 square kilometres every night. This is the attitude NATO - ISAF and our base security forces need to take. We need to take ownership of all the 600 square kilometres of land which we are patrolling around Camp Bastion and optimise it for security. It would be the same outrage if the Afghan government dares to suggest that we don't take ownership of the surrounding land, don't clear the land, and should instead allow existing cover for insurgents in land surrounding Camp Bastion as it would be if the Afghan government dared to suggest that we open the doors of the airbase itself to the Taliban.

My second take is to use drain-pipes through the base of the dam which now extends all the way down to the bed rock with the drain-pipes built in, instead of continuing the bed drain under the dam as I had at first. The large embedded image in the above post is remotely hosted on my forum so I was able to change that there. However, it is too late now to edit the above post to change the small image and the link to the postimage.org host and neither can I change the attached image. So I am posting the new versions now. Image also hosted here. Why not add a simple impermeable layer to the reservoir bed? I think the additional complexity and expense of a bed drain (and drains for the sides too) is better than simply adding an impermeable layer. Consider the fault condition of the two possible solutions. If a simple impermeable layer fails, if it cracks or ruptures or disintegrates under the pressure changes, how would anyone know? It may look fine but be leaking high pressure water into the bedrock and inducing seismicity which OK the engineers would notice any earthquakes but so would everyone else, the earthquakes could cause damage or loss of life and it could lead to a loss of confidence in the project and in the engineers who built it. They could go to jail! If the top impermeable layer of the bed drain fails then there would be some water pouring out of the drainpipes through the base of the dam when at most it should only be a tiny trickle of water. So the engineers would know there was a problem with the bed drain and they'd know to drain the reservoir and fix or replace the top supposedly "impermeable" layer, fix the bed drain so that it operated as it should. So failure with the bed drain is noticed right away and it is not a catastrophic failure. Whereas failure with the simple impermeable layer may not be noticed until a catastrophic earthquake happens. So this is why I think the bed drain is worth the extra complexity and expense. It is a more fault tolerant engineering solution.

Reservoir bed drain The high pressure of water which is deeper than 100 metres has the potential to induce seismic activity or earthquakes in susceptible rock in which a new reservoir has been constructed.

No takers for the derivation challenge huh? OK then. Derivation Assume various simplifications like all turbine rotors are the same size and height, flat ground and a rotationally symmetrical wind turbine formation so that it doesn't matter what direction the wind is coming from. Consider that an efficient wind farm will have taken a significant proportion of the theoretically usable power (at most the Betz Limit, 59.3%, apparently, but anyway assume a certain percent) of all the wind flowing at rotor height out by the time the wind passes the last turbine. So assume the wind farm is efficient or at least that the power extracted is proportional to the energy of all the wind flowing through the wind farm at rotor height. This defines a horizontal layer of wind which passes through the wind farm of depth the same as the rotor diameter. The width of this layer which flows through the wind farm is simply the width of the wind farm which is proportional to the square root of the wind farm area. Wind farm turbine formations Therefore the width or diameter of a rotationally symmetrical wind farm is a critically important factor and arranging the formation of wind turbines to maximise the diameter of the wind farm is important. Consider two different rotationally symmetrical wind turbine formations, I have called the "Ring formation" and the "Compact formation". Let n be the number of wind turbines in the wind farm Let s be the spacing between the wind turbines Ring formation Larger image also hosted here The circumference of the ring formation is simply n times s. Circumference = n x s The diameter of the ring formation is simply n times s divided by PI. Diameter = n x s / PI Compact formation Larger image also hosted here The area of the compact formation, for large n, is n times s squared. This is slightly too big an area for small n. Area = n x s^2 (for large n) The diameter of the compact formation, for large n, is 2 times s times the square root of n divided by PI. This is slightly too big a diameter for small n. Diameter = 2 x s x SQRT(n/PI) This is easily corrected for small n greater than 3 by adding a "compact area trim constant" (CATC) (which is a negative value so really it is a subtraction) to the s-multiplier factor. The CATC is 4 divided by PI minus 2 times the square root of 4 divided by PI. CATC = 4/PI - 2 x SQRT(4/PI) = - 0.9835 This CATC correction was selected to ensure that the compact formation diameter equation for n=4 evaluates to the same value as does the ring formation equation for n = 4, that being the largest n for which the ring and compact formations are indistinguishable. The CATC works out to be minus 0.9835 which gives Diameter = s x ( 2 x SQRT(n/PI) - 0.9835) (for n > 3) Ratio of diameters Larger image also hosted here It is of interest to compare the two formations of wind farm for the same n and s. The diameter of the ring formation is larger by the ratio of diameter formulas in which the spacing s drops out. Ring formation diameter : Compact formation diameter n/PI : 2 x SQRT (n/PI) - 0.9835 This ratio can be evaluated for any n > 3 and here are some ratios with the compact value of the ratio normalised to 100% so that the ring value of the ratio will give the ring formation diameter as a percentage of the equivalent compact formation diameter. Here are some examples, n = 4, 100 : 100 n = 10, 123 : 100 n = 18, 151 : 100 n = 40, 207 : 100 n =100, 309 : 100 n =180, 405 : 100 n =300, 514 : 100 n =500, 656 : 100 As we can see that for big wind farms, with more turbines, the ratio of diameters increases. Since the Dow equation for the power and energy of a wind farm is proportional to the diameter of the wind farm then it predicts that the power and energy of the ring formation wind farms will be increased compared to the compact formation wind farms by the same ratio. In other words, the Dow equation predicts, for example, that a 100 turbine wind farm in the ring formation generates 3 times more power and energy than they would in the compact formation, assuming the spacing is the same in each case. Practical application when designing a wind farm My recommendation would be to prefer to deploy wind turbines in a wind farm in the ring formation in preference to the compact formation all other things being equal. The compact formation can be improved up to the performance of a ring formation by increasing the turbine spacing so that the circumference is as big as the ring but then if a greater turbine spacing is permitted then the ring formation may be allowed to get proportionally bigger as well keeping its advantage, assuming more area for a larger wind farm is available. The ring formation may be best if there is a large obstacle which can be encircled by the ring, such as a town or lake where it would not be possible or cost effective to build turbines in the middle of it and so a compact formation with larger spacing may not be possible there. Where it is not possible to install a complete ring formation then a partial ring formation shaped as an arc of a circle would do well also.

"Dow" equation for the power and energy output of a wind farm. "The power and energy of a wind farm is proportional to (the square root of the wind farm area) times the rotor diameter". In his book which was mentioned to me on another forum and so I had a look, David MacKay wrote that the power / energy of a wind farm was independent of rotor size which didn't seem right to me considering the trend to increasing wind turbine size. Now I think the commercial wind-turbine manufacturing companies know better and very possibly someone else has derived this equation independently of me and long ago - in which case by all means step in and tell me whose equation this is. Or if you've not see this wind farm power/energy equation before, then see if you can figure out my derivation!