I know we’re always a war behind in doctrine, but the last war was Desert Storm. We could at least have trained for that war, instead of VN or the Cold War.

Due to the fact that our .mil is smaller now in relation to our population than EVER in the history of our nation, I would daresay that 90+% of the population have an unrealistic view of the war. For most of them, they have only second-hand information at best, and most of that is from relatives who served decades ago.

It was almost ten years ago that the writing was on the wall in Fallujah: “America is not at war. The Marines are at war. America is at the mall.” I agree with this sentiement now more than ever.

Which makes me wonder if the .mil would in fact side with We The People ……

It may be similar to the way I feel as a volunteer EMT, out on my own time, frustrating Darwin by saving what are many times lazy, stupid people from the results of their poor life choices …… because I think I should help when I can ……

re: ” We shouldn’t have a training system based on wars long past, that requires our troops to learn current threats through blood and loss.”

There is indeed nothing new under the sun: Nearly every Military with any tradition at all has always trained for the Last war, and not the Next.

It is the Nature of the Beast, because those with experience move up the bureaucracy to become those that define the training doctrine, and have invested their careers in developing that doctrine. That’s quite a lot of Bureaucratic Inertia to overcome……. not to mention the Logistical Inertia of the Organization …..

I’ve read somewhere that you can tell the point where “The Oranization” takes on more importance than said Organization’s Purpose in Life by finding the point where “process” becomes more important than “results”. I often think our .mil has passed that point ……. maybe the country has, as well ;” (

In the short term, someone will want to pretend SWAsia never happened.
But the ticket punching that matters was done by guys who were there, like you, and they’ll remember, and bide their time until they get to make policy and conduct training.

Look at pics of the M-113 up-armor kits from 1969, and compare them to what we did with HMMWVs and Strykers in 2003. Or how fast the old M-14s came out of storage stocks when the M16/M-14 showed it’s problems with longer ranges and heavier cover. And, unfortunately, the idea of trying to win an insurgency with undermanned isolated garrisons in secure bases. Then tell me someone, somewhere, isn’t reliving 1969, right this minute. The only step they missed was bombing the Ho Chi Abdul trail in Pakistan, and that’s almost solely due to Pakistan having a few nukes, or we’d have been doing it too. Which, I think, is why we can look forward to an eventual helo lift from the Kabul embassy at some future date.

Vietnam isn’t written into doctrine, but history, even in conflict, rhymes.
Artillery duels and trench warfare started in 1865 at Richmond, not at Verdun. Even though the lessons now may not be written down in the manuals of tomorrow, they’re in some guys’ blood, and today’s privates are the Sgt. Majors of 2030.

Unless we finally get jetpacks and laser rifles.

BTW, the Brits tactics were, unfortunately, honed by multiple decades of fighting in every country BUT Europe prior to WWI, and nearly always against people without guns. Which explains their tremendous foresight in leading massed charges against German machineguns and artillery until they ran out of infantry. That’s what happens when you keep fighting the last war. We, on the other hand, ahd been trying British “real soldiering” against guys WITH guns back in 1861-1865. After Antietam, Gettysburg, etc., we mostly lost interest in the doctrinal “hey-diddle-diddle, straight up the middle” approach. And our guys in WWI ignored things like flanks and support, and seemed to rather prefer finding the enemy and slashing his throat until they were all dead or surrendered, more like our own Indian Wars, which their classic tactical doctrine didn’t prepare them for very well.

Like dancing, war is a dance you want to lead, unless you like moving backwards a lot.

In the Cav Scout course I wrote about, there was a mistake in the armored vehicle slides. An M1 tank was identified as an M1A1. About 60% of my class was tankers like me who had been dragged kicking and screaming from our beloved tanks (the Texas Guard had gotten rid of all its tanks while I was in Iraq). We knew the tank was misidentified. But we had to say an M1 was an M1A1, because that’s what Ft Knox said it was. And if we correctly ID’d it, it would be wrong on paper, and any misidentification of an American vehicle was an automatic failure for the test. If you failed the test twice you were kicked out of the course. One of my friends refused to inoorrectly ID the tank on the test, and almost got kicked out. No instructors were willing to buck that one.

In Vietnam, the only prep schools worth a $#!^ were run in-country, by the divisions/units deploying troops. One of the good things about Iraq/Afghanistan is not piecemealing troops in one at a time. One of the downsides is pulling out the entire unit that knows the area, and letting the replacements re-invent the wheel, every effing time.

Hadji and Abdul, meanwhile, are deployed just like Charlie was, until he wins or dies.

This is yet another ingredient in the recipe for our failure, and their success, despite not being bested tactically. You can’t fight a war of attrition with under 2 million troops, in countries with 30 or 60 million people who vary from atagonisitc to apathetic about your efforts. Unless you’re on the side opposite the troops.

And our troops will always fail at nation-building, because American troops only built one nation ever, and that one was in 1783, after they mustered out. They also had a great leg up that time from the supporting cast.

We send American troops to destroy nations, not build them. Yes, they have a secondary capability to dig wells, build buildings, etc. But that work should be done by civilians, ideally from the host nation, because that’s who’s going to have to maintain it when we leave.

If a country is safe enough to deploy Meals On Wheels, we shouldn’t have troops there. If it’s not, the ones we do have should be waging a war to make it safe.

Look up the infrastructure projects completed from 1783-1960, inclusive, and tell me which time before we were building playgrounds instead of trenches, or stringing power lines instead of barbed war.

Then compare the number of times from 1960-2013 we’ve tried it the other way around, and let me know the box score for those endeavors.

There’s one other thing you’re overlooking, at least for the moment. Once we’re out, doctrine will, as combat experience trickles up, start to reflect the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan. Thus insuring that the future Army will be fully prepared to conquer Iraq or Aghanistan next time. Except we won’t be in Iraq or Afghanistan next time. We’ll be somewhere else, where little if any of those lessons apply, and we’ll pay in fresh blood to learn yet again that the only doctrine that matters is to cram-study before the actual deployment, and learn fast or die after you get there. Pretty much exactly as we’ve done in every war for 235+ years.

The memorable drill sergeant phrase “It’s easy to be hard, but hard to be smart” comes to mind once again.

When I went through the basic SIGINT Officers course, the old school (literally) NCO instructors broke each Air Training Command approved course into 2 parts. The first half to teach us to pass the ATC approved test, the second half teaching us what we needed to know when we hit the field. It wasn’t until much later I realized what a career risk they were taking.

The more things change…

As a political science major, I find it boggling how after every war the U.S. miilitary has ever been in, shortly after victory is achieved, it seems like the entire military does a data dump and deletes the lessons won.