We're the Military and Airpower Guys of Jonah Goldberg of National Review Online + a stray we found wandering around looking lost. All original material JHD, BHD, JR, WT, and KA 2003-2007 http://www.thedonovan.com/archives/2006/10/theyre_playing_my_tune_now.html Sun, 03 Aug 2008 16:50:02 Z Movable Type 4.12 en Copyright 2008 http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification Here's an interesting collection of stuff from yesterday's MSM articles... a little window into the minds of the 4-baggers (that's 4-Star Generals for you normals). First up, the Army. Heh. You could always call us auld pharts back... it's all we know how to do. Which Ry keeps kicking me in the teeth about. Warfare skills eroding as Army fights insurgents By David Wood Sun reporter Originally published October 24, 2006 WASHINGTON // Pressed by the demands of fighting insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. Army has been unable to maintain proficiency in the kind of high-intensity mechanized warfare... http://www.thedonovan.com/archives/2006/10/theyre_playing_my_tune_now.html http://www.thedonovan.com/archives/2006/10/theyre_playing_my_tune_now.html Wed, 25 Oct 2006 08:00:15 -0600 And to be honest. I'm not sure I agree that your example is 'guerilla' warfare. Sneaking up and ambushing your enemy in a battle of annihilation ain't quite the same thing(from a theoretical/definitional perspective). THat's very reminiscent of Civil War cavalry or Mongol horsemen. Not guys in little black pajamas employing the dictums of Mao to gain the hearts of the masses into revolution or uprising. It's the ideas behind what you do more than what you do from where I sit. Sneaking up and bushwacking someone while they laager isn't necessarily guerilla warfare. Smart, effective, and, from where you sat, Unca Bill, fun? Most definitely. But it isn't Roger's Rangers hiking into the boonies to sucker punch some French supply convoy or scare the bejeesus out of a critical fort. I guess I could've used the term '4th Gen War' instead of geurilla but I'm becoming less and less sure that that or any of the other 'buzzword warfare' really amounts to much. (Hides last beer I'm likely to get outta Bill's garage fridge for a while and starts estimating what a Big Boot from Bigfoot will feel like. I already know what Big Tribble's feels like.) http://www.thedonovan.com/archives/2006/10/theyre_playing_my_tune_now.html#comment-52088 http://www.thedonovan.com/archives/2006/10/theyre_playing_my_tune_now.html#comment-52088 Fri, 27 Oct 2006 00:09:55 -0600 That's not the same thing though, Chief. I may have mis-spoke when I used the word guerilla warfare. Let me clear up. Sure, you can take a LT or a SPC or a CPL and teach him fight low intensity conflicts, fight high intensity(total mobilization), and reconstruction winning of hearts and minds. I just don't think it's smart. Learning to do things the enemy doesn't anticipate is smart. Taking advantage of an institutional bias is smart. But that's not the same thing as having some 22 yr old kid one day be a tough as nails grunt and the next be a really efficient beat cop making friends and placating the locals while catching bad guys while not making people mad thru cultural insensitivty. Two wildly different skill sets, and, more importantly, mind sets. I got my head kicked in by a guy who used to teach at the survival course down in Panama(waaaay back, maybe before I was even walking. Guy by the name of Thurston.) over the idea of making mechanics in the Army practice more 'warfighting' mindset. Following HL's line of thought. He quite clearly and poly-syllabically informed me that the amount of training it takes to be a good infantryman and a good mechanic made the two virtually incompatible. I'm saying it's a mind set problem. At 22 I was far more odd than I am now. i've mellowed. I'd say the same proll'y is true for a lot of us. Do we want to risk taking a guy like Ghent and make him hesitate because he's having to go thru the mental checklist of whether he should be in policeman mode or in warfighter mode? I don't. Would I want a 35 year old who has kids whose first reflex learned thru having those kids is not to kick tail and take name, unlike the 22 year old without kids, being the beat cop? You bet. The thought process that leads to zipping below the horizon to get in close and clobber the enemy before he even knows what is going on is *not* the transparent, good will making, engendering good will thru cultural tolerance mind set. I think that the latermind set is either something you're inherently are born with or something you gain over time thru aging/maturation. So we set up a 'occupation force' and a 'warfighting force'. The warfighting force gets the people who are 'let's go blow chit up real good' types, and made up of people who really see war as being only or even mostly that. That's indicative of a Ralph Peters(war is a struggle of annihilation of enemy forces) mentality instead of the Tony Corn(cultural sensitivity) or even Liddel-Hart mentality(give them an out so they can quit). There's lots of guys out there that cannot be both beat cops and tough as nails. Let's not forget that strageic "insert rank" has as much a potential to adversely effect things as positively. Shuffle the guys who don't naturally think like PAtreus into 'warfighting' and those who do into 'Occupation'. Doing otherwise leaves us open to things like the Pendleton 8, Haditha, etc. Some people simply can handle complex situations and others can't.(I'm one who couldn't. Too stubborn and prone to acting reflexively still). Pretending otherwise is just being willfully ignorant of the failings of those around them and people in general in my opinion. It isn't smart. It doesn't get the job done. I don't think I'm selling people short. I'm just taking stock of people of my own age frame both in and out of the military. A small fraction have the maturity to be beat cops in a war zone. Most of us, myself included, don't. I don't think it's something you can train to instill. It's something you have to be born with or learn thru experience gained thru having 30+ years under your belt. I could be wrong. http://www.thedonovan.com/archives/2006/10/theyre_playing_my_tune_now.html#comment-52076 http://www.thedonovan.com/archives/2006/10/theyre_playing_my_tune_now.html#comment-52076 Thu, 26 Oct 2006 19:09:36 -0600 When the First Cav used to evaluate us (back in the late '80s and early '90s) during our Three Day War, we flew Vietnam scout tactics with Cobras, because zipping along below the hilltops and screaming down creekbeds was perfectly suited for the rolling terrain at AP Hill. The Horse Blankets were amazed that we'd get from FARRP to fire position, identify the targets, hit them with rockets to scatter the grunts and button up the tankers, polish things off with TOWs and 20mm and get outta Dodge in less time than *they* had planned to get from laager to fire position. "Why do you fly so dam' *fast*?" "So we'll be re-armed in time to catch the follow-on echelon in the same spot. If we hit them further out, then we use more fuel getting to 'em; if we hit them any closer in, the survivors could overrun the FARRP while we're refuelling." Guerrilla warfare tactics and conventional warfare rationale... http://www.thedonovan.com/archives/2006/10/theyre_playing_my_tune_now.html#comment-52011 http://www.thedonovan.com/archives/2006/10/theyre_playing_my_tune_now.html#comment-52011 Wed, 25 Oct 2006 23:53:31 -0600 "Which Ry keeps kicking me in the teeth about." Dude, I'm genuinely hurt that that's what you believe I think. I like simple. Simple works. I don't like trying to have a 'Swiss army knife Army'(an Army that tries to be both the masters of guerilla warfare and conventional warfare). I like segregating responsibilities to eliminate confusion in certain areas(admit that it'll raise confusion in others), not because I think people are dense. I know the Army and the rest of the military could concievably be a Swiss Army knife. One of the first introductions I had to the broad pool of skills available was Leon Uris' 'Battle Cry'. Sure, just like we chemists have to learn all the sub disciplines(organic, inorganic, bio-chem, analytical, physical) just to graduate with a bachelors. That doesn't mean it isn't overly hard for the benefits gained at times, or the best way of doing things. I'm trully sorry you thought that I believed Big Army was incapable of any flexibility. I don't. I just know that specialization is the best way to go in many situations(specialized tools, moving into sub fields for graduate work, different MOS, etc). I also think that there's an element of "if'n it ain't broke don't fix it" at play. Big Army is really good at what it does. That edge saves lives, on both sides. So let's stand up another force dedicated to doing jobs that Big Army doesn't typically do.(and well, it avoids the mental problem of how is a populace supposed to deal with the dissonance of the guys fighting all out one day being the benevolent reconstruction troops the next). I'm really sorry you felt I was insulting you like that, John. It wasn't intentional at all and not what I was trying to convey at all.(Besides, I don't kick in the teeth. I just ankle bite.) http://www.thedonovan.com/archives/2006/10/theyre_playing_my_tune_now.html#comment-52007 http://www.thedonovan.com/archives/2006/10/theyre_playing_my_tune_now.html#comment-52007 Wed, 25 Oct 2006 22:54:10 -0600 I guess if you use simple extrapolation it'd be reasonable that conventional war type equipment training would have drastically fallen. However the war would have purged out a lot of green which is probably worth more IMIO. http://www.thedonovan.com/archives/2006/10/theyre_playing_my_tune_now.html#comment-52004 http://www.thedonovan.com/archives/2006/10/theyre_playing_my_tune_now.html#comment-52004 Wed, 25 Oct 2006 22:43:00 -0600 concur with HL as above. i feel that the mounted combat arms may be losing a wee bit of that fingerspitzengefeuhl necessary for large scale conventional warfare. unless the training centers find a way to push some of that back to the forefront, it will be a long learning curve to regenerate that kind of knowledge base. http://www.thedonovan.com/archives/2006/10/theyre_playing_my_tune_now.html#comment-51981 http://www.thedonovan.com/archives/2006/10/theyre_playing_my_tune_now.html#comment-51981 Wed, 25 Oct 2006 10:57:06 -0600 You know, at the squad and probably up to the platoon level, the Army Infantry is probably the best it's ever been. And after almost five years of fighting, that experience is carrying up to the company level. And battles are won at the company and platoon level. And that probably applies to some other areas, as well, especially the MPs. So I can't totally agree with that sentiment. Now, other folks such as the Armor and Artillery are probably a bit out of practice in maneuver warfare-we don't do big bombardments, and we don't face counterbattery, and even seeing a whole platoon of tanks operating together is enough to get treadheads excited these days. But in a larger, macro sense, I'd say that the current GWOT has done a huge service in helping to return the non-Combat Arms areas of the Army to the Warrior mentality, something that got lost even during the Cold War. http://www.thedonovan.com/archives/2006/10/theyre_playing_my_tune_now.html#comment-51976 http://www.thedonovan.com/archives/2006/10/theyre_playing_my_tune_now.html#comment-51976 Wed, 25 Oct 2006 09:20:57 -0600