'Massive explosion' doomed NZ soldiers

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Mon, 20 Aug 2012 6:16p.m.

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All three soldiers killed were from the same regiment based at Burnham Military Camp, 28km south of Christchurch.

All three soldiers killed were from the same regiment based at Burnham Military Camp, 28km south of Christchurch.

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21/08/2012 7:10:28 a.m.

Mike wrote:

IED's are not just one type of explosive, or even several types of explosive.

This makes sniffer dogs less effective as a trained dog will detect explosives they are trained for, but not necessarily other exposives they are not trained for.

Also at issue is the speed of the dog as a sniffer dog will work at below walking pace. Now in a province where a patrol can be 100's of kms, the dog speed just wont cut it at below walking pace.

If take the airport scanners tech, now they are moving in the right direction to make detection of previously identified materials possible. But again the range to explosive and the speed to scan, plus the size of equipment makes even that tech impractical yet in the above situation.

Its that the Kiwis have done such a good job in the province will have upset the talliban. If take the civilians killed in Afghanistan by talliban, the civilian toll is huge as like most cowards they find killing civilians much easier than killing military.

Yes NZ has lost soldiers and any loss is not good. But compared to NZ road toll where NZ will typically lose 5 just about any week. While significant loss to our small defence forces and their families, on NZ scale, the loss is still small.

NZ's efforts have significantly reduced talliban action in the province, reduced civilian casualties and helped civilians immensely. To pull out would be much like losing some police officers to some madman shooting, and then deciding to stop all policing for the loss. Policing is a dangerous job which helps others, and our forces in Afghanistan were much like that in an even more dangerous situation.

The people we should be asking about pulling out early should be our troops, not some politicians 1/2 way around the world.

20/08/2012 9:03:00 p.m.

Sineon david tamatea wrote:

Miss you cuzzy wish we could have meet up in the army. God bless

20/08/2012 8:53:11 p.m.

Kiwi wrote:

In this day and age if it is technologically possible to build, place and detonate such a device it is technologically possible to detect, warn and protect humans against such a device!

20/08/2012 8:07:34 p.m.

Kiwi wrote:

Any (Kiwi)dog with half a brain could have been trained to smell out this amount of explosive and alert our solders if it was standard practice for the NZ Army to use trained K9s as forward scouts in these high risk situations!