Lessons of Operation Enduring Freedom

The decision to leave artillery at home and rely on precision air power in Afghanistan left U.S. troops vulnerable, according to an Army briefing paper on the lessons to be learned from the war there.

When those troops found themselves under heavy mortar fire during Operation Anaconda, the only fire support available, other than their own mortars, was close air support from AH-64 Apache helicopters and precision-guided bombing from jets. That approach had significant drawbacks.

The briefing, Emerging Lessons, Insights and Observations — Operation Enduring Freedom, primarily was based on information gathered by teams from the Center for Army Lessons Learned who visited Afghanistan in January, March and April [2002].

The lessons-learned briefing does not concentrate exclusively on such issues as high-level command-and-control relationships and combat tactics, but also deals with more mundane matters, including field sanitation. http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-393823-1027442.php

Link to Briefing:

http://www.armytimes.com/content/editorial/pdf/072302armylessons.pdf

For a good article from the experiences of the 1/319 FA, see:  A Case for Howitzers in Afghanistan, Field Artillery Magazine, pages 6-9, November-December 2003 http://sill-www.army.mil/FAMAG/