Battle Company Is Out There

Wow, your really spearing the hell out of that strawman.

Who said Americans were stupid? Who said that the entire military needed to be exactly modeled after elite units?

You did. I didn't.

All I'm saying is that our enemies manage to take average soldiers and manage to train them to outmaneuver us and our superior firepower. Therefore, it standes to reason that perhaps we should think less about firepower and more about maneuver.

Those Taliban in the story are not "elite, specially trained forces", they are average goat farmers that are using their own common sense and initiative to outthink and out maneuver our men. If you don't see the problem in that I don't know how to help you.

“Who said that the entire military needed to be exactly modeled after elite units?”

#48, Lusis: “The problem here is one that has continued since the Korean War...we are not prepared to fight an enemy that uses maneuver, fieldcraft, suprise, and psychology with a decentralized command/control, instead of firepower and attrition with a centralized command/control. In short, after 50+ years, we are still not prepared to fight those who use guerilla-style tactics.”
snip
“When I was an infanty squad leader, I would have loved nothing more than to take my squad out to the nearby woods and train on our own. But no, there were too many bereaucratic tasks to be done (endless details, paperwork, etc), and someone up the chain-of-command would have frowned on the idea; and God forbid that we would ever decide to come up with out own solutions to tactical challenges, because we would still be forced to fight the same way we have over a half-century ago.”

In other words, train as guerrilla fighters outside the control of chain of command as is associated with what is termed in our military “elite” units. Presupposing, of course, that you had the skill set to actually accomplish anything useful by running around and making shit up as you went along.
Continued..

#50, Lusis: “As for the point about forces specialized in non-conventional warfare, the fact remains that it is the conventional forces that are facing the tasks in the story, and it was conventional forces that did most of the work against the guerillas we’ve fought in the past. So the common-sense questions arise: why aren’t conventional forces taught those skills?”

Assuming of course, that this hasn’t already been done to the degree that it can be done in an actual functional sense. You base your assumptions from what is said by a journalist at the site. What the journalist chose to write about, was able to understand, thought would be interesting, understood what would get them a prominent byline credit.

#50, Lusis: “Specialized forces in our military also enjoy something our enemies do as well. That is the freedom to develop one’s own “playbook” at the squad level and use each individuals skills to the collective advantage. We expect soldiers to be homogenized, when in fact people aren’t.

Our enemies do not use conventional skills, since they rely on maneuver rather than firepower to defeat us, even at the “hard points” (Battle of Hue, anyone?). So again, why are we sticking to 50 year old doctrine?”

Do you even try to keep track of what you say? This isn’t a whine about all our military NOT being built around a SF model or some raider type function?

News Flash: The Battle of Hue, among other hard point fights broke the VC as a functional force for the duration of that war.

#54, Lusis: “All those units you just mentioned...have had very little effect in the strict-control and doctrine of the conventional US military. In fact, they were very much removed from all that. God I’d love to carry a suppressed Swedish-K, an AK, or whatever weapon I thought would help me do the job (like they did). But instead, we have to do with what someone else in the Army bureaucracy has deemed sufficient.”

Again, everyone aint SF and it’s all Army bureaucracy fault. Is that right?

Now, for the Stupid American part:

#54, Lusis: “And remember, wars are won through accomplishing strategic goals, not through body counts, especially ones gained by dropping bombs on neightborhoods. That is the lesson in 4th Generation Warfare that we refuse to learn.”

Lifted almost verbatim from the usual “Americans are just too stupid” playbook of leftards and other snot gobblers.

Now, I’m not going to put any more effort into pretending to be friendly in this. So, for my part, consider me done with you. You follow up with whatever you wish.

BUMP

The Russians big mistake was they wanted to fight these people. That got their people killed and their enemy pissed off. In WW2, we skipped Japanese held island if they were meaningless. We picked our fights.

We would be better off dropping porn and TV’s and generators and jewelry on these people and let nature takes its course. Let them implode from within.

Excellent article!