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Subject: ressuply via tunnel
theBird    8/21/2007 1:22:55 AM
with the risk of attack against convoys on the roads or resupply helicopters in the air, what would be the feasibility of using tunnels? I'm not talking of digging a network under every house in baghdad, but instead using them to replace a few high volume routes
 
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FJV       8/22/2007 4:03:20 PM
Supply by tunnels would be hard to pull off in my opinion.

 You would need at least one of these 3 things in my opinion:
- The entrances and exits are succesfully kept secret.
- The entrances and exits are in located terrain secure from the enemy, the need to be free from enemy attack or very well sheltered against enemy attack.
- The number of entrances and exits tunnels are too large for them all to be covered by the enemy.

Moving a large volume of goods through a tunnel makes keeping the tunnel entrances and exits secret more difficult.

Moving large amount of supplies to the location most threatened by the enemy where supplies are often the most needed would mean having the exits in an area that can be attacked by the enemy. And since a tunnel exit cannot take evasive maneuvers this would be a bad thing in my opinion.

A large number of tunnels and exits would work, but you do not know which exits are covered by the enemy. You get a kind of whack a mole game, where you are the mole getting out of the tunnel not knowing if you get you head clubbed in.

And there is the logistical problem, because the tunnel cannot move along with the troops, so as long as the troops basically stay in the same place, they're supplied, but that stops when the troops move a distance away from the tunnel exit.

There are some examples of succesfull tunnel use though. Vietnam and Palestine are 2 of those.






 
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