Army Announces Stationing Decisions for New Troops

Army News Service ^ | Dec. 19, 2007 | Elizabeth M. Lorge

[quadrant]

Lets remember a lesson learned in the Vietnam War. In an war of insurgency - the sort we fought in Vietnam, are fighting in Iraq, and are likely to fight in the future - a whole unit can never be deployed. Part of a unit - generally 1/3 - has to be deployed to protect the base camp, the facilities of non-combat troops, and the surrounding area. This reduces considerably the number of troops available to search for insurgents.
And as anyone knows, cannon cockers are not grunts. If they’re used in that role, they not available to provide fire support, which is their primary job. Neither are MP’s grunts. They job, as important as it is, is to keep the peace and secure areas that are relatively safe, not to hunt the insurgents on their own ground.
My point of this is that for all the hoopla surrounding this announcement, the number of boots on the ground is relatively small. Indeed, Army seems determined to continue along a tried and true path, rather than striking out along a road that a new situation requires.

[quadrant]

Let me suggest that a 1to10 ratio is no longer sustainable. A ratio that extreme was one of the reasons General Giap was able to say that US forces in Vietnam were too numerous and too few: too numerous not to have a very negative effect on Vietnamese society and too few to control the country.