VIDEO SERIES: Royal Marines: Mission Afghanistan

There is utility to be gained from viewing some documentaries about the war in Afghanistan. I’m not talking about compilations of ‘war porn’, but studied documentaries. There were some comments about the HBO series of the U.S. Marines in Marjah, Helmand that I posted recently, so to follow up, here is a well made series on the Royal Marines in Nad-e-Ali, Helmand.

For those seeking greater clarify in war and conflict, these series provide some perspective. If you are looking for simply ‘Funkers530-type war porn’ then this will require a little too much patience. In fact, one thing it does illustrate is the boredom, 90% of the time.

There are a lot of nuggets to be gleaned from this series, in many different areas. Granted, the patrolling style has been amended to take account of the ever present IED threat, which is not something you are most likely to have to deal with in an SHTF scenario, but if you account for that, you can see the challenges of maintaining a protected location in a hostile environment, while conducting ground domination activity patrolling.

If we move away from specific direct parallels that can be drawn with an SHTF scenario, there is a lot more of interest in terms of training and operating with the locals (ref: the HBO Marjah Show), how TTPs adapt to specific threats, modification to ‘multiple’ (i.e. satellite) patrolling, use of women in combat (Female Engagement Teams) and such.

Bear with it.