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 2003-2010 http://www.thedonovan.com/archives/2009/10/random_synaptic.html Sat, 24 Mar 2012 15:12:36 Z Movable Type 4.12 en Copyright 2012 http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification http://www.thedonovan.com/archives/2009/10/random_synaptic.html http://www.thedonovan.com/archives/2009/10/random_synaptic.html Mon, 12 Oct 2009 11:41:40 -0600
COIN use, at the troop level, is nearly 100% common sense and requires no more real training than a few lectures on how not to be a complete and total asshat among the indigs. Anyone how's made it past basic and infantry training, and spent more than a few months in the FMF, and doesn't have their head already wrapped around the COIN concept is a FAIL. Such fails can't be fixed. Find em, get rid of em. Send em off to logistics or admin.

The only real complexity in COIN ops is at the battalion level and above where decisions have to be made. All the rest of it is SNCO and NCO leadership with some O type management thrown in at the company and platoon level. If you've got NCOs and SNCOs that don't fully comprehend the COIN issues by now, you've got embezzlers in the ranks stealing paychecks.

Folk do love to throw that COIN term around like it's some magic talisman, dont they?

What does need to be trained is live fire and move to contact while under fire. That's killing work and can lead to dieing when done sloppy. That needs to be trained at every possible point in a grunts life, since those skills can erode. And, when you need em, you either have em or you die.

One of our HUGE problems in this war, besides giving over operational command to an incompetency like the ISAF with its rotating vanity commands, individual little fiefdoms set up by each "contributing" country, and the egregious surrendering of all possible momentum from day one of it's installation as a command, is this "UN Peace Keeping" mindset that far far far too many associate with counter insurgency, counter guerrilla warfare and disaggregated enemy organization warfighting.

You know. The UN Peace Keepers. Like those who served as human shields for Hezbollah, those who were chained to their vehicles to serve as human shields for the Serbs, those who had to stand around with their hands in their pockets and escort Serbian death squads through their UN "Sanctuary Zones" to pick the day's murder/rape material, etc and so on.

You can not, will not, ever never, win a war unless you close with and destroy the enemy. That's a fact. All the whining, pseudo philosophizing, wish it wereing wont change that.]]> http://www.thedonovan.com/archives/2009/10/random_synaptic.html#comment-94309 http://www.thedonovan.com/archives/2009/10/random_synaptic.html#comment-94309 Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:00:48 -0600
http://www.moteinteractive.com/tutorials/gameDev/battlezone2.gif]]> http://www.thedonovan.com/archives/2009/10/random_synaptic.html#comment-94293 http://www.thedonovan.com/archives/2009/10/random_synaptic.html#comment-94293 Mon, 12 Oct 2009 13:05:23 -0600
Seriously, thank you, for all that you have done for all of us *GRUMPY OLD VETS*, not just Grumpy. If we can laugh a little bit, it is the best medicine in the World. ; ^ )
]]> http://www.thedonovan.com/archives/2009/10/random_synaptic.html#comment-94290 http://www.thedonovan.com/archives/2009/10/random_synaptic.html#comment-94290 Mon, 12 Oct 2009 12:54:05 -0600