₦airaland Forum

Litmus:
In regards to the bold, I feel that people are just too tired of writing. I know that I am.

I believe the majority agree with Covert’s Bidden assessments, they’re mostly hoping that a president Bidden administration would take a more favourable approach as far as Nigeria’s interest are concerned, ether actively or by omissions. It is possibly Covert’s assessment of Trump that many here find disagreeable. Personally I think the best thing Trump did for Africa was abandoning Africa. We did not merit his consideration in his warped philosophy and this indirectly advantaged Africa. Trump would sell us top of the line nuclear submarines with their full assortment of arsenal if he thought America would benefit financially from the transaction and we could gain nothing from the technology, other powers could not get their hands on the tech and we could only destroy ourselves and Africa with the missiles. In Trump, Africa was safe from destructive Liberal didacts. It is telling though that when Trump did consider Africa, the consequences for Africa were mostly unfavourable. I mean his racists pronouncements and immigration policies. However, these were the overt considerations.

I mentioned Telling earlier because it seems that, taking into consideration Obama/Biden Nigeria policies and Trump’s (the few times Trump considers Africa) US policies towards Africa have been negative. In short, there seems to be a negative trend in US Africa policies generally.

timay:
Even though I'm not a frequent commenter here, but the points the guy made is not out of place and it's a logical prediction of how the Biden administration could look like for Nigeria. Democrats generally usually follow the same play book, and here we are talking about a potential administration who had also served as VP under an administration that was hostile to Nigeria arms procurement efforts.

Instead of countering him with valid points and rational deductions , you resulted to name calling which is typical of people bereft of any intellectual contribution to a discourse .

LTGEN:
The Tuscanos will be delivered.
Biden will be different from Obama he will have a functional perspective towards Africa and Nigeria.
Biden’s view towards Terrorism is shaped by his Son( Late Hunter Biden) , Not Obama’s who never had any Children in harm’s way.
Biden’s main priority right now is the Covid virus.
The deal is done .
There also is a much better relationship between the two.
Relationships matter.
The Planes will be here.

jln115:
What relevance does your deluded opinion have with the subject?

Sizzorkay:
lol, might wanna calm down, is it today soldiers have tried dominating police officers in Nigeria? Get outta here dude, this is one incident, but there are hundreds more, soldiers inherently believe they have more authority than the police, and that shouldn't be the case.
The soldier clearly said "I will charge you" and i will also charge you to your force headquarters. Unless you have a different definition of charging someone for a crime, i take his statement as him arresting the cop and charging him with a crime, and i stand by what i said, a soldier shouldn't have such authority.
unless you have hearing problem.
But hey, carry on.
And stop quoting me if you are gonna be rude, i never said a darn thing to you.

LTGEN:
We are now to believe that a situation should not be doused/not de-escalated.
Somehow A NPF Officer who clearly has lost control of the situation by firing his weapon and teargas is in a better situation than the NAF Officer who clearly KNOWS how to de-escalate the Situation and ASKED for recording nothing hidden
Whom would y’all trust
We move on this too shall pass.

Lurker4Long:
In 1995, SAS Drakensberg, on her voyage home after participating in exercises with 25 other ships in the US, visited Tema, Ghana.

In 2011, SAS Drakensberg again called on Tema, Ghana to pre-position Oryx helicopters, Special Forces and other equipment in case the deteriorating situation in Cote d'Ivoire necessitated the evacuation of the embassy there.

GabrielYulaw:
I hope you are right. But I don't think the present crop of rulers we have give a nice shit about their popularity among the masses

GabrielYulaw:
I don't understand this o, cos I distinctly remember tales of our troops being rationed to 2 magazines of 30 rounds apiece of AK 47 ammo. Or is my memory deteriorating?

GabrielYulaw:
And the mobility issue he mentioned? We shouldn't be using unarmored Hiluxes to move our troops in a combat area. If we are broke, the armored vehicles being used by our senators and house of reps should be donated to the army.

GabrielYulaw:
A cold peace? Lol. You don't seem to understand that these guys will never rest till they have conquered all of Nigeria, West Africa and the world. That is what makes negotiations with them impossible. It is like negotiating with the zombies from The Walking Dead.

The war can still be won. But it will require drastic changes in strategy, tactics, equipment, personnel and more.

Why hasn't the NA put together a committee to study the course of this war, what it has done wrong and needs to do right and what it needs to buy now and in the future? This will be very helpful, especially if the conclusions reached are implemented.

GabrielYulaw:
My apologies. I should had said that they didn't lose any battle that mattered. The quote about their never losing any battle came from an American quip to a North Vietnamese general during the peace talks. I am unable to remember precisely who. From the top of your head too I am sure you can remember the massive amount of material each American base was stocked with that made it able to resist attacks by enemy forces many times its size. Like 250,000 rounds of small arms ammo for the Lang Vei you quoted. Do we do the same thing here or do our soldiers complain of lack of ammo?

So far as I know, we have lost at least one Mil 35 to enemy fire. Either that or I am higher than a kite on crack.

GabrielYulaw:
Let me ask you something bro, if this war goes on is it likely that military conscription will be introduced?

Odunayaw:
Yeah we suffer from ammo stocks. If only we had a functional Mil Industry.

The Mi35 crash was not due to enemy fire ooo

Odunayaw:
Military victory in its real sense is possible. All we see now is because they're fighting wrong.

Odunayaw:
The Super camp strategy will utterly fail if we don't fix our mobility & communication issues.


Furthermore, these guys still don't know how to employ SF!

GabrielYulaw:
These are tin pot terrorists with global ambitions. They aim not just to loot, but to kill, conquer and destroy. They have long been giving us a bloody nose and are dictating the pace of war.

More, sure the Chinese have like 40 variants of the F-7, but I don't think any has a loiter time of 2 hours. Or even 1 hour.

12 Tucanos to cover the whole North East? And do remember that not all will be available at all times due to maintenance.

Can you point me to an American FOB that was overrun in Afghanistan. Tucanos acquitted themselves well in Colombia, but that is not the case in Afghanistan. You can can give the ANA 2,000 Tucanos and if the Americans pulled back all their forces today and withheld material support, I am pretty sure that Afghanistan will fall to the Taliban in a week or so.

My apology, but I think our aim right now should be to bring massive force to bear and win this war fast, costs be damned. In case you haven't noticed, the exploits of these crazies have been giving bandits courage and boldness. They might soon metamorphose into another ISWAP.

Also, the objective of any war should be to strike fast with a flurry of punches that the enemy cannot counter and eliminate him while he is disoriented.

GabrielYulaw:
Actually, what I advocated for has not been tried by the NA with no success. I advocated for FOBs armed with short range MLRS, under permanent cover of drones and surveillance platforms and with multiple observation posts in case all these gizmos fail at the most inconvenient time. That has to my knowledge not been done.

You say ISWAP has learned to swarm the FOBs, that is because the FOBs were not as well constructed and defended as they should be. Swarm tactics have been proved as ineffective since the 1st World War, where men were mown down in the hundreds of thousands by machine guns. So, were ISWAP to swarm a FOB, nothing stops our men from engaging their gun trucks at range with anti-tank missiles and engaging their infantry with mortars and short range rocket launchers like the Vasiliesk.

Should these prove ineffectual, our men can retreat into bunkers and have their base pounded to bits by friendly artillery to blast any enemy that is above ground. This has not been done and was previously used to great effect by the Americans in Vietnam, especially in their CIA outposts in Laos and Cambodia.

More, yes the NA has lots of long range artillery. But for some reason it is not using these as much as it should. If it were, no base under artillery support can fall. These heavy armor vehicles as you call them do not need to be based in the FOB themselves, but in safe places far away. Should a FOB be out of range of friendly artillery fire support, rocket artillery should be more than enough.

As for the Americans in Vietnam, you are comparing apples and bananas. One, the Americans lacked domestic support for the war and saw a lot of protests and draft dodgers like Trump. Here, domestic support for the war is strong. Two, the Vietcong were given all the material support they needed by the Russians and the Chinese. ISWAP and Boko boys only get most of their supplies from attacking NA bases.

Third, lack of clear policies made the war unwinnable for the Americans. At first, they prioritized the body count, and this against an opponent that was fully ready to die for what they believed in. This has parallels with the current NA strategy. Fourth, the war in Vietnam was fought in jungles. The thick vegetation made it really difficult to come to grips with the enemy. We don't face this problem, because much of the North East is open land and desert. As such, the enemy can be easily spotted via surveillance platforms that detect heat, movement and the like.

Fifth, the Americans never lost a battle in Vietnam. This can't be said of the NA. Sixth, American tactics in Vietnam were much more flexible and reactive. More, they used Huey helicopters to conduct constant raids and deny the enemy of rest. Sure, they used FOBs, but none were ever overrun, because just a phone call would get B-52s, Thuds and artillery pounding away in support. The comparison is not even close.

You call the territory being currently occupied by ISWAP and the Boko boys useless and you are right. But would you say the same thing if that territory was your village?

What the NA is currently doing is like the lord of the castle hearing that marauding hordes are ravaging the countryside. So, he does what he can by instructing his people to take refuge in the castle. Now, when the hordes finish pillaging, will they leave for home or will they lay siege to and destroy the castle? Your guess is as good as mine. ISWAP will never be content with the slice of territory granted to them by current NA policies. I don't know why that is hard to grasp.

Left to me, I would use the over $600 million we paid for the Tucanos to buy like 50 Chinese UCAVs. Half would be purely for reconnaissance and the other half would be armed to the teeth and ankle bone with cheap and smart Chinese/Russian munitions. These would be permanently parked over the North East and will cover every inch of it. Should this be done there is simply no way ISWAP can fart without the NA hearing it and pounding them to bits.

Lastly, please and please, the North East is NOT a low-threat environment. Our Mil Mi 35s have been shot down there and trust me they didn't throw potatoes at it to bring them down

GabrielYulaw:
Yes, this enemy is not afraid to die, and that is why I advocate using overwhelming power to crush them. The previous FOB didn't work cos they were not implemented well, not cos the strategy itself was faulty. If overwhelming power is brought to bear and used well, the enemy will have no option than to run or risk extermination.

The type of FOBS I'm suggesting make use of lots of advanced technology. Like MALE drones for permanent situational awareness, antitank missiles to engage enemy technicals at ranges the guns on these technicals would be ineffective and short range artillery and rockets fired from within the FOBS to break up massed infantry attacks.

Like I also said earlier, each FOB should be permanently under friendly artillery and rocket cover. That is not difficult to do. We do have some long range artillery and can buy more from the Chinese, Russians or South Africans. The G 6 Rhino for example would be perfect.

China sells UCAV drones very cheap, as well as not-very-sophisticated antitank and anti-personnel missiles. They also have lots of long-range rockets in the Weishu series. Why haven't we gone shopping there?

I don't understand how you can't see that the Super Camp is just giving the enemy all the breathing space they need. You said the front is quiet, that's cos they are resting, recuperating and rearming.

As for the Tucano, I like them too, but we are not buying enough of them to matter. More, they don't have armor and can be shot down with the heavy weaponry the enemy have in abundance.
What's more, the speed is uninspiring. Say a base is under attack, can a Tucano get there in time to alter the outcome of battle? I don't think so. If we are buying 40, then I would be impressed. And don't tell me we don't have money to buy 40 or even 100, cos money is not something that is lacking in Nigeria.

I don't know where you get your figures from, but I'm not sure a fast jet can loiter for just 20 minutes. If you are talking of the Mig 21 that would be true. But that is not applicable to 4th gen and up combat Jets. These can in fact loiter for several hours and even shut down an engine if needed to improve on loiter time. No jet I know save for interceptors and high speed reconnaissance platforms have just 20 minutes loiter time. They can carry external fuel tanks or air refuel if required.

More, I don't really know if you are aware if what the Tucano can do. It can carry just 1.5 tons of armament. You call that a heavy load? Even a few Chinese armed drones carry more ordnance.

And there's something I need to address. You talk of air assets and weapons and complain that they are too costly. That is good, but in my opinion an erroneous view. Our existence as a nation is at stake. As such, cost should be irrelevant for maintaining our unity and territorial integrity.

We should buy whatever weapons that are required to win this war regardless of cost. If it's an aircraft carrier that we need, then we should place an order for it today. The reason is simple: whatever might be able the cost of acquisition, it is easily dwarfed by the cost of our doing nothing.

Let me ask you this, how much has been lost in economic growth and development since this war started? How much has been lost in the form of lost taxes and revenue? How much has been lost in destroyed goods and services? As we speak the North East grows ever more inhabitable due to mines, IEDS and desertification effects worsened by the ravages of war.

More, this war is giving bandits uncommon boldness. Just this week some troops were killed by bandits. That wouldn't have happened if the war had long been won, cos it would have made it possible for the army to bring peace and security to all of the North.

So yes, any platform that will help us win this war fast must be speedily acquired, cost be damned. If it's a spaceship, we should place an order fast

My apologies for the long epistle.

bidexiii:
My assertion is not about the idea of the super camps creation camps. Am talking about the gradual withdrawal of troops outpost/F.O.B in the North East theatre since 2017.
You can't compare the numbers of troops/F.O.Bs from 2011 -2017 to 2017 till present day.
This is not I heard it's what I have witnessed, I have been to Borno state and it's enviRon twice this year and before the end of the year it's certain I will be in the north east.
It's of no point you're been biased and no clue of what you're saying.

bidexiii:
Same as you......
Even where the fighting as been predominant, the numbers of F.O.B and military presence/operation has been reduced.

bidexiii:
Let me burst your bubbles.
We had many military base/F.O.B back then than now. Honestly I shouldn't be arguing with you. During the heat of the war three states where affected, so the field of of operation lafia dole was wide in terms of operational field to cover.
Since BHT was pushed some of these F.O.B as been closed and even the numbers we use to have then in Borno as been reduced.

SamuelAnyawu:
I'm still scared of FOBs. We do not have enough Ammo to support them. I once discussed a soldier in Gajiganna village under Magumeri about an attack they repelled. They only had 3 gun trucks while ISWAP attacked with 13 gun trucks. I think the Airforce too has to improve on its response mechanism if we are to move back to FOBs.

GabrielYulaw:
Look, ISWAP and Boko Haram use techincals, aka gun trucks armed with heavy machine guns. It comprises their main firepower. Our troops engage these trucks with machine guns of their own, and the winner is usually those who have the most technicals. And that is why I said we should buy lots of antitank missiles. It doesn't need to be very sophisticated and both the Russians and Chinese make cheap and capable ones that cost a few thousand dollars apiece. For the price it's unbeatable and makes it possible for our troops to engage the enemy gun trucks at ranges of from 4 to 8 km.

As for ammo, our troops should have loads of that at all times and enough supplies to fight for one or two weeks without help. From what I can see, the FOBs make the most sense. We should never give the insurgents room to grow and flourish and that is precisely what the Super Camp is doing.

As for the air Force, I just tire. If they can't provide gunfire support, can't they at least do better in providing advance warning of attacks and ambushes.

GabrielYulaw:
I do not agree with the Super Camp tactic. In my view it is a massive mistake that keeps the army cooped up in a few towns, while giving ISWAP and the Boko boys free rein to roam all over the countryside training, strategizing, laying ambushes at will and generally getting stronger.

In my view, we should revert to the earlier FOB concept. There should be many of these, all of which should be armed with antitank missiles to engage technicals and short range rocket launchers like the Vasilesk to engage enemy infantry launching attacks.

More, each FOB must be cleverly constructed and under permanent rocket artillery cover. The Chinese, Russians and Turks have rocket artillery with ranges of several hundred kilometers. We can as well buy long range artillery if required. Properly provisioned and manned by competent personnel I see no way these FOBs can be overrun.

These FOBs should be progressively pushed forward, with each supporting the other if need be untill we reach the border. Any enemy insurgent there can be crushed under the weight of the armed forces of the international task force.

That is the only way I see victory being achieved, not by ceding territory, but by giving no room to the insurgents to breath, by constantly harassing them and giving them no respite whatsoever. That is how insurgencies are won.

I like your talk of wonder weapons, but do remember that the Tucanos will be delivered in 2 to 4 years. That is simply too long a time. And do remember that we are buying just a dozen and ISWAP is likely to seek a counter by getting MANPADS.

I don't know what the future brings, but I have lots of fears about this shit.

bidexiii:
Says who.....?
Stop arguing dude, who told you there where no military structures/formations with remote F.O.B

SamuelAnyawu:

I do not know why there is no major Military advancement or operation going on in Borno North. I can't imagine till date Bokoharam is still roaming in Baga main town and DoronBaga. All the little Islands after Baga town still got elements of ISWAP

bidexiii:
With what youve said it shows you have not been following some event in these war or you're just been biased....!
Where was irabor and Ezugwu during the heat of the battle .....? One general then I so much respect is Genteral Adeosun and yet his still standing and doing well till now.
He was the G.O.C. Div 7; his responsible for pushing out BHT back to Lake Chad fringes when GEJ was contesting for the 2nd time.
Irabor and Ezugwu are fine generals and soldiers but they where not part of the army top Brass in operation lafia dole during the dark days.
Minimah strategies during the war was calamity.

bidexiii:
Did you know how BHT humiliated and knock down military post way back in 2011 to 2015?

BabaOwen:
I never believed boko haram could overrun bama. Anything can happen in this battle. Don't bet your money on this present Nigeria military, morale in the northern part of borno is low.