Check out the photo of the awesome Taliban military machine.
Urban Assault Vehicle anyone?
Hopefully those tires are Firestones.
Not counting the truck…the stingers are quite deadly.
As an aside…NPR today said the Taliban only has about 45,000 troops. Not much of a standing army.
Why do you suppose it says “Pick Up” on the side? For ready identification?
At any rate, this CNN article mentions that the Taliban have called up 300,000 troops; this would certainly make for a more respectable standing army, at least in terms of size. I have no idea if they have the capability to actually train and arm that many men.
Of course, the most powerful force the Taliban has on its side is the terrain in Afghanistan. You just don’t NEED a big army when:
[ul][li]the soldiers you DO have are fanatical and unafraid to die, and[/li][li]the war is being fought in treacherous mountain terrain dotted with boulders the size of houses and endless caverns and tunnels, which you know like your own stringy beard and your enemy does not.[/li][li]Hi Opal.[/ul][/li]
Sure, they don’t have a lot of soldiers.
Sure, those soldiers are armed with a lot of 40-year-old rusty Russian ordnance.
They will be able to pick off a lot of American soldiers anyway.
I don’t think its very safe to say that their soldiers are fanatical. I’d bet good money most of them are scared shitless their gonna die. From what I’ve learned of Afghanistan in the past while, I don’t think most people are die-hard Taliban supporters.
Ya know, when I saw the title of this thread, my first thought was that somebody was resurrecting Chronolicht’s classic *Do they make PVC big enough to launch a goat out of?.
Darwin’s Finch…
They 45k number was in response to the Tailban saying they called up 300k. reople in the region were saying they couldn’t call up that many.
I’m all for attacking the terrorists and all for trying to keep as many Afghanis from being killed as possible. I sure would hate to see Afghanistan have to go through another war - they’re already desperate as it is just as a result of their own government.
No point to this post and not really looking for discussion or debate; just my $0.02.
Would a goat cannon be considered a biological weapon?
From what I understand, armies laying siege to castles in the middle ages would occasionally catapult human corpses, dead animals (including goats, no doubt), and even large amounts of manure, to spread germs within the walls. Talk about biological weapons…
I hope no one thinks that Monty Python invented cow-a-pulting…
From what I’ve been reading and hearing, the Taliban may be hard pressed to find 300,000 men willing to fight for them.
I’d guess they would be forced to resort to conscription to field any significant number of troops. Of course, conscripts aren’t generally known for being the best troops on the field.
…So the Taliban say they’re calling up 300,000 reservists.
Is it just me, or does that sound like the International Relations equivalent of bragging about “a big 9 inches and thick?”
Pretty much, these assholes have sealed their own fate.
The ‘stinger’ threat isn’t to be sneezed at, but they are very old and hopefully haven’t been maintained in 20 years or so. They also have circuitry which prevents them from being fired at Allied acft, but of course this could be circumvented by sophisticated methods. Our aircraft all have the latest anti-spoofing technology as well. Not to say it won’t happen, but overall the enemy is going to get waxed, and they know it.
You can’t shoot down a bomber with a Stinger, you probably couldn’t reach even a third the necessary distance. Helicopters? Yes, though the preferred tactic against Soviet Hinds was to tie a luna-, I mean, holy warrior to the top of a tree and give him an RPG-7 anti-armor rocket. Fanatical, yes, well-reasoned, perhaps not.
I’ve been hearing on the BBC that the Taliban is actually a minority government, as they don’t even have the full support of their own ethnic group. They’re a militia, fer chrissakes. They don’t HAVE a true standing army, the way I read it. Hardened warriors, yes, professional soldiers, no.