Generals are always fighting the last war, or they're preparing to fight the war they want to fight.
Counterinsurgency is a really tough nut to crack. Viet Nam showed us that.
IMO we ought to be bringing back some of the Non-Comms from that era and paying them to pass along their experiences in this area. I'd personally pay particular attention to finding veterans of Hue and the like.
On top of that, I'd really stress live-fire drills at unknown ranges. The formal range stuff at known distances is great for teaching the basics, but I think some "3 gun match" style training would be a good thing to give every swingin' grunt on the way to the Big Sandy.
Now this part would be expensive and time-consuming, but I think at least one person, preferably two, in every rifle squad should get DLI Language training in Arabic or Pashtun or whatever language is used in the expected AO.
We also ought to bring back (it may be in use, but I haven't heard much about it) the Nam era "Kit Carson" concept. A 'native' Iraqi or Afghan soldier would be given a DLI type course in English and then assigned to each rifle squad.
Organic language skills would be a great help, but having a 'native' embedded with the squad 24-7 would be a real 'force multiplier' IMO. Our guys may be able to speak the language, but they don't know the culture, accents, or idioms in use by the locals so they wouldn't as readily be able to identify a foreign enemy fighter.
This would have an added benefit of, and I'm loathe to use the term, 'cross-cultural bonding'. They'd see we aren't all heartless infidels and we'd learn that they aren't all islamofascist nutjobs.
All of this would increase training time and wouldn't be cheap, but I think the benefits would manifest themselves pretty quickly.
Or....
We could just nuke the entire region and be done with it...
L
Thank you very much for the feedback. I agree 100% with your views as they are mine. I was on one of the first MiTT and SPTT test Teams for the Military. I lived and fought with the Iraqi Commandos with my 10 man team. Outside of interpreters, there was no verbal communication. But, we fought and overcame the deficiencies through trial and error. Save the parkinglot concept for Iran...lol
Can't speak for Iraq / Afghanistan, but in Bosnia, EVERY single patrol that went out had a native Bosnian interpreter. I had 14 interpreters assigned to my company, IIRC.
If you were writing in 2002, you would have a point.
Our current Army knows more about counterinsurgency than any Army ever has before. Down to the lowest levels, they have expertise the likes of which would be anyone else’s wet dream.
My qualifications for writing this include a tour with them in Afghanistan last year. By 2007, the Army had become extremely good at counterinsurgency.
They'd see we aren't all heartless infidels and we'd learn that they aren't all islamofascist nutjobs.I love that sentence...