I've ran across two articles now regarding OP Badel http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/2011/10/firefights-and-frustration-remote-outpost-afghanistan and http://www.aworldoftroubles.com/2010/05/trigger-pullers-frustration-counter.html Basically it sounds like they're in some weird situation with very frequent firefights at extreme ranges in situations with civilians bumbling around in the hills in the same clothes as the insurgent, and so the RoE, and access to indirect fire and air support are heavily limited. Of course given the range the insurgents "snieprs" aren't exactly so effective either. It sounds like coalition forces haven't had a fatality there yet judging by the quote "If we don't get out of Badel soon, somebody's going to get killed," Just a weird sort of situation. But I wonder if it's more typical of these wars, where coalition military casualty totals for the entirity of Iraq and Afganistan are less than an average day of fighting during the peak years of WWII. I'm hoping the new XM25s help in these sorts of situations once they're deployed.
Kunar province, Afganistan Seems that it's sparsly populated, mountainous, scrubland, with herders wandering around all over making telling the difference between civilians and insurgents a pain in the butt.
I ran across this and found it interesting. It's from the UK, but I think it gives some numbers that specify what we've sort of known qualitatively.
