Afghanistan: ‘Don’t get excited... ’

Press, 27 February 1986, Page 6

Afghanistan: ‘Don’t get excited... ’

By

MARK FRANKLAND,

in London

The skill and tactics of Soviet troops fighting in Afghanistan have been questioned in an unusual series of articles just published in the Soviet armed forces’ newspaper, “Red Star.”

A special correspondent who accompanied Soviet troops into action singles out weaknesses in three vital areas—the use of helicopter gunships, artillery support, and medical evacuation of the wounded.

The series adds up to an indictment of training methods of officers in Soviet military academies, and of military slowness in adapting to the peculiar nature of the Afghan war. The correspondent, Colonel V. Filatov, describes going on operations in the mountains with a Soviet paratroop unit and coming under rebel fire. The paratroopers’ commander radios for air support. Two helicopters appear, but they climb to such an altitude they are scarcely visible and their strafing has no effect Col. Filatov writes that he turned to the paratrooper commander and asked: “Is that what they call air cover?” The rebels are eventually silenced by two other gunships, which seemed to “crawl along the mountain on their stomach.”

The military journalist eventually tracks down one of the first pair of pilots who, as he was flying off, suggested the troops do the job with their own mortars.

The pilot was unabashed. He had “acted in accord with the documents that regulate

fights.” The commander of a helicopter squadron is quoted complaining that lessons learned in Afghanistan should be “more effectively” applied in pilot training: specifically, restrictions on speed, height and angle of turn and attack should be lifted.

The journalist found the same dissatisfaction with home training methods among artillery men. Here the problem was inadequately prepared ar-tillery-spotters. He notes the words of a battery commander trying to calm a spotter who is under fire and apparently losing his grip. “Everything's OK. Don’t get excited, Come on, old chap, give me the coordinates again and more accurately this time. Marvellous. Now look and see how the rounds are falling. Calmly, old chap, we’ll fix everything n0w...” Artillery officers complained that instructors had lost the experience gained in World War 11. “The instructors in today’s schools and academies haven’t smelled powder.” Afghan rebel tactics allow no room for artillery inaccuracy. An artillery colonel explains that rebel troops try to get as close as possible to Soviet infantry. “The calculation is simple. We will be frightened of hitting our own men and cease fire. After all, the ’dushmans’ (the common Soviet word for the rebels) have experienced instructors. It’s only skill that allows you to provide covering fire in these circumstances without hitting your own troops.”

The "Red Star” articles imply that most officers

fresh out of Soviet military school do not possess such skill.

Throughout the series the journalist returns to the problems posed by mountains to ,an army used to fighting on the flat. Helicopters must be able to land with one wheel on mountain tops. Artillery-spotters must be good cliff climbers. Medics must know how to get the wounded down from the mountains. “Red Star” describes how an infantryman had to be carried down 3500 metres before a helicopter could land to pick him up. The descent would have been longer, and even more dangerous to the wounded man, if a sapper had not found a short cut through a minefield.

Apart from commenting on the uneven skills of medevac pilots, Colonel Filatov finds an experienced military doctor who points out that a horse fitted with an ingenious stretcher-saddle invented by a Tsarist officer and perfected in the last war is well-suited to mountain warfare. The horse would replace as many as six men needed to cany.a: casualty down a mountain. Such saddles can apparently be found in military stores throughout the Soviet Union—but not in Afghanistan. “Red Star” sums up: “We need to search. We need a system. We need methods. Changes are needed . energetic measures... This is obvious for the pilots. And for the medics. And for the artillerymen.”

Copyright—London Observer Service.