So are you expecting a war without casualties?
I'd expect casualties on our side to be kept to a minimum, on the enemy's side to a maximum.
Instead of designing huge, complicated, intricate defenses...
The defences are not huge; the circumference or length of the perimeter circle for such bases starts at about 50 miles long.
What's really huge is
the Afghanistan / Pakistan border which is about 1,640 miles long.
most of what you want accomplished can be done with just plain old good soldiering. It's a helluva lot cheaper, A LOT less complicated, and much more flexible.
What I want is secure bases and safe troops in well designed bases.
Instead our stupid generals thought it might sound like
"just plain old good soldiering" to set up a number of isolated forward operating bases along that huge AfPak border. That's a "helluva lot" costlier, a LOT more complicated, completely inflexible and strategically pointless.
Buddy, with all due respect, I am the scientist here. Understanding is not my problem.
any type of tactic, technique, procedure, etc is constantly being modified over time. Being flexible and adaptable is essential for success because the enemy has a say. They modify their tactics too, and over time will figure out a way to defeat or marginalize any one of the tactics we come up with. There is a constant match between offense and defense in warfare where both sides tactics evolve over time to beat the other side. There's no such thing as one single answer.
I never said there was one single answer. In this topic, I have listened to criticisms and improved my own plan. I started with one answer, and have now produced an improved answer.
The plan you came up with may halt human assaults on the base,
Yes.
but then it gives the enemy an advantage because the very threat of an attack ties up numerous resources
You keep saying "numerous". It's as much as is needed, based around an infantry battalion of about 800.
and all they have to do is lob a few rockets or mortars at the base every couple of days to keep us in our turtle shell. You're counter fire capability will be useless because all the insurgents have to do is set rockets onto easily made timers. They can simply drop a rail out of a car with a preset timer on it and then drive off. It takes less than a minute, and when the timer goes off the rocket launches and hits the base. All that is left is a rail system with noone left to shoot back at. They can do this indefinitely, tieing up numerous resources in the process.
They won't hit anything that way.
Constant patrolling, small dedicated joint coalition and ANA teams living within Afghan villages, and terrain denial through Patrol base operations is the key to denying the enemy access to the people. This is counter insurgency, the people are the battlefield, not the terrain. The fight is for the people...you can't keep the enemy away unless you have a 24 hour presence in the areas they operate out of and a 24 hour presence where the people live.
Our forces are not the Afghan police and our generals are not running for Afghan political office, nor are we there to prop up Karzai's political authority. We should not try to take on inappropriate roles.
The one place we really need a permanent presence outside our bases is to secure and to control any ground supply routes that must be used to supply our bases; perhaps some bases are best supplied by air. We only need a handful of regional bases at most.
We tried the whole operate out of big bases concept in Iraq and it failed.
What failed was supplying and patrolling along insecure roads, getting our soldiers killed by road-side bombs.
The other failure was neglecting to confront other states in the region who were backing their own proxy terrorist groups operating inside Iraq.
In other words, the exact same failures as now in Afghanistan.
We didn't get any head way until we moved into the cities and partnered with the Iraqi's. Until we empowered the Iraqi's with their own security and they saw that we were reliable allies did we see success. Until we engaged the real power, which was the sheiks and the tribal elders and not the talking heads within their government, did we see success. It was then and only then that the insurgency was brought under control.
I agree there was value in not acting as Maliki's enforcers. We should learn that lesson by not acting as Karzai's enforcers either.
We shouldn't hide behind big walls, weapons, and minefields.
Good strong fences make for good neighbours.
We need to get out there and mingle with the locals.
You should become a policeman, in your own country.
Yes, it's dangerous. But being a soldier is dangerous and it's something a soldier accepts when they sign the dotted line.
It's not right for our generals to be reckless with the lives of our soldiers. If there is a need for risk, OK. If there's no need for risk then don't take risks.
Broadcasting (controlling it, is how to win the propaganda war).
To what, Afghanistan? It's a big country so forget that. To our bases and essential supply roads, sure.
and take away their sanctuary,
Sure, we need to bomb Taliban bases in Pakistan, see my topic -
How to beat the Taliban in Afghanistan / Pakistan (and win the war on terror)
and empower the population and you win.
The way we empower the population is by employing some of them, to build our defences, to serve in
our new NATO Afghan auxiliary force which I am proposing. If they have a job and income then they can afford to pay some tax to their own national government to run genuinely national Afghan police and military of their own. We don't empower the people by giving Karzai $6 billion dollars a year to spend on his own private army, also known as the "ANA" & "ANP". We have only empowered Karzai and his corrupt cronies by doing that.
Don't do this and you may not lose many soldiers in the short term, but in the long run you will be defeated and the growing body count, bank account, and diminished political will will breed disaster.
2,000 dead US soldiers in Afghanistan, billions spent. Given the weak enemies we face, who only survive at all off what we pay them, either directly in bribes or indirectly to their Pakistani and Saudi state masters, I'd call that a disaster, for a super-power anyway.
The only country which could defeat the US in Afghanistan is the US. Nobody else could lay a finger on the one super-power in the world otherwise.
but then TacOps demo version was for free so I can't complain. 
