Читать книгу The Other Side of the Mountain: Mujahideen Tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War - Ali Ahmad Jalali - Страница 12

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Both the Soviets and Mujahideen set patterns. The Mujahideen use the Mamur Hotel ambush site over and over again, yet apparently the Soviets or DRA seldom dismounted troops to search the area to spoil the ambush or to try to set a counterambush. This last example is from 1986, yet there seems to be no learning curve on the part of the Soviets. Air support is tardy, artillery fire is unavailable and there is no reserve to move against the ambush. Aggressive patrolling, specially-trained counter-ambush forces and priority counter-ambush intelligence are lacking. The standard Soviet/DRA counter-ambush techniques include an aerial patrol in front of the column, an engineer sweep in front of the column looking for mines, armored vehicles in the front of the column, occasional armored vehicles throughout the column and a robust rear guard. Once hit, the armored vehicles in the column would return fire while the soft-skin vehicles tried to drive out of the kill zone. Seldom would the ambushed force dismount forces to clear the ambush site and pursue the ambush party.

The Mujahideen did vary ambush positions in the same ambush site. Their primary concern was to hit the column where it was weakest—usually in the middle or rear—unless the purpose was to bottle up the column. In most ambushes, a small number of highly-mobile mujahideen were able to move and attack with little logistic support, but were unable to conduct a sustained fight. The RPG-7 was probably the most effective weapon of the Mujahideen. When used at close quarters with the element of surprise, it was devastating.

In this region, Mujahideen ambushes occupied a very wide front. This was a function of the open terrain and the spacing between con-voy vehicles. Convoy SOP was to maintain 100 meters or more between vehicles. In order to have enough vehicles in the kill zone to make the ambush worthwhile, the Mujahideen had to constitute a killzone much bigger than that employed by most Western armies.