It's still not worth it bud...
I'm really upset that these guys died because of this.
We also did the hearts and minds thing as seen here
And here is a Buffel which was used alongside the Casspir
The hearts and minds was never conducted by our Special Forces A.K.A Recces. We would have our "grunts" SADF troops do that after securing the area yet they would always be patrolling with armoured vehicles to avoid this exact incident that happened to these US troops...
I'm not blaming the troops by the way. This comes from a sad heart to see something like this that could have been avoided.
An MRAP or any other armoured vehicle didn't make much of a difference for us with the Hearts and minds tactics in the Border War in Angola and northern Namibia/South West Africa.
Hearts and Minds will only work if you can convince the locals that they would be better off supporting the US presence and the local government than the insurgents.
And the US needs to find out what it takes to convince the locals... obviously for us we weren't fighting religious radicals. We were fighting Communist rebels so it was easier to convince the locals in our war than I reckon it is for US forces in the Niger COIN.
We had troops that were teachers in civilian life teaching the local children, we had SADF engineers building irrigation systems and so on which helped convince and win over support in most areas in South West Africa/Namibia. Much like what I believe US and Coalition troops did in Iraq and Afghanistan?
But again it is a grave mistake forfeiting armoured vehicles for the sake of Hearts and Minds... Because using armoured vehicles isn't going to affect the Hearts and Minds mission that much and if it does there are ways to compensate/offset that negative affect without endangering your troops with unarmored vehicles... I just cannot comprehend sending troops off in vehicles that can't withstand small arms fire, it is just not right.
RIP to those brave men and I pray it never happens again under these circumstances.
If you guys want to read up more about the South African Border War check out these two books. Or you can just look online for articles and check the Wikipedia page. Or search for the South African Border War on Pinterest or any images search engine. And you'll find plenty of pictures of our guys using MRAP and armoured cars which saved a lot of lives.
It is actually interesting seeing how different each nations' military works even in similar terrain.
The UNITA guys we had on our side would be within our own vehicles at times. And any captured BRDM's and BTR-60's we captured were given to UNITA to use. And like the US we have a population that rightly can't stomach high casualties we always made sure our troops had armoured vehicles regardless of the mission.
Because we considered it reckless to send troops out in unarmoured vehicles that could end up blown up by an anti-tank mine or riddled with bullets in the inevitable ambush they would encounter across the border in Angola.
I just think the US could take some pointers from our history. They already did with the MRAP vehicles so I think they could study the tactics we used which were pretty effective in reducing the amount of casualties.
Technically the US was involved in the Border War by the way via the CIA. Also had some US veterans from the Vietnam War that volunteered in the SADF to fight for us.
Timestamp - 15:48
I really recommend these two books for you if you're interested in the Border War because what we learned in that war could very well still be applied with US forces in Niger and other places in sub-Saharan Africa.
SADF in the Border War 1966-1989 by Leopold Scholtz
We learned many lessons in that war as it involved both COIN and conventional warfare.
The US would have intervened in Angola if it wasn't for the Vietnam War it says so in one of those books can't remember which. Instead the US requested South Africa to intervene in Angola which we did in 1975 with Operation Savannah.