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Retired US Army Colonel Tom Kratman is writing a column for Everyjoe.com. Although I don't agree with Kratman's politics, he does have a wealth of knowledge on things military (mostly Army) and has written a number of insightful articles. I found especially interesting his various articles on training and the failures of the US Army to do so effectively. This led to two profound thoughts.
Profound Thought #1
Most militaries are like a high school football team that only plays a game once every eight years. What happens is that people who haven't actually played a game (or fought a war) are training other people who haven't actually played a game or fought. This almost inevitably leads to degraded training. Some militaries are better at delaying this degradation then others, but it happens. If, as happened during the 19th and 20th centuries, one throws in rapid technological change, one ends up with lancers on horseback charging tanks.*
Now, for the Army at least, and to a lesser extent the Air Force and Marines, the past decade or so of war has changed that equation somewhat. To paraphrase Churchill, nothing kicks the cobwebs out of training like getting shot at for real. Having said that, Profound Thought #2 kicks in.
Profound Thought #2
As I've mentioned before, this century is rhyming with the 19th. One of the ways that's happening is our military. Much like the Victorian British Army, we're not actually fighting anybody who is a serious military threat. They can be local problems, and some of them (Afghanistan) are the same enemies, but there is no way in hell an Afghan army is ever going to take Washington DC. This leads to a situation where, to some extent, we don't take our enemies seriously.
In 1854, this led to the Charge of the Light Brigade, a military fuck-up of epic proportions, which instead of getting generals shot became a famous poem. In 2015, this leads to a reliance on drones that couldn't fight off a determined cropduster controlled from lightly-secured office buildings. This isn't a good thing - it's just a thing.
* There's actually significant evidence to suggest that at least in Poland this didn't actually happen.
Profound Thought #1
Most militaries are like a high school football team that only plays a game once every eight years. What happens is that people who haven't actually played a game (or fought a war) are training other people who haven't actually played a game or fought. This almost inevitably leads to degraded training. Some militaries are better at delaying this degradation then others, but it happens. If, as happened during the 19th and 20th centuries, one throws in rapid technological change, one ends up with lancers on horseback charging tanks.*
Now, for the Army at least, and to a lesser extent the Air Force and Marines, the past decade or so of war has changed that equation somewhat. To paraphrase Churchill, nothing kicks the cobwebs out of training like getting shot at for real. Having said that, Profound Thought #2 kicks in.
Profound Thought #2
As I've mentioned before, this century is rhyming with the 19th. One of the ways that's happening is our military. Much like the Victorian British Army, we're not actually fighting anybody who is a serious military threat. They can be local problems, and some of them (Afghanistan) are the same enemies, but there is no way in hell an Afghan army is ever going to take Washington DC. This leads to a situation where, to some extent, we don't take our enemies seriously.
In 1854, this led to the Charge of the Light Brigade, a military fuck-up of epic proportions, which instead of getting generals shot became a famous poem. In 2015, this leads to a reliance on drones that couldn't fight off a determined cropduster controlled from lightly-secured office buildings. This isn't a good thing - it's just a thing.
* There's actually significant evidence to suggest that at least in Poland this didn't actually happen.
