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The problem is, IMO, that you have brass that care more about their next promotion than they do their troops. They are not soldiers, they are managers. There's huge difference as you well know. You also have rules/regulations being written by DOD civilians and/or politicians who have never served in combat a day in their lives and truly don't give a f**k about soldiers but care only about either staying in office and/or being PC

All these things are true and are a deep concern to me as well.

What he IS saying though is that when we do have another full scale war, many soldiers are going to die due to the lack of training standards and the lack of discipline.

And what I am asking is WHEN? When are all these soldiers going to die? Afghanistan was supposed to be the one that kicked everybody's a$$. The Afghanis kicked Alexander's a$$. We were supposed to die in droves there. What happened? When's it going to happen? You can already hear rumbles of "Well... Gulf War 2 won't be anything like the pushover Gulf War 1 was. Americans are going to come home in body bags (repeat in capitals and exclamation points for those not paying attention)". Do I think it will happen? No.

We are the biggest baddest dog on the planet. It's NOT all doom and gloom. This is just like those "End Days, Revelations! DOOM! DOOM! DOOM!" snakeoil salesmen who are currently doing so well in America. They're telling you what you want to hear and they're making good money doing it.

Let me repeat, the American Military is going to kick the Holy Sh!t out of our enemies. We are going to do this in the most impressive manner possible. Military scholars are going to puzzle and masterbate over our coming victories for decades to come. Do we need improvement- yes! No organization can make the statement that they are perfect. But are we ready! Hell Yeah! Just turn the boys loose and let 'em do what they need to do. Support 'em for Chrissakes! It's only the politics that are holding them back.

I participated in an exercise once when we were supposed to attack and capture a signal outfit. We "killed" them all without taking a single loss within 5 minutes and without anyone being able to "destroy" anything.

You ask when. I don't know when. However, my opinion is it will be within the next 10 years and it will be a WW against China, Russia, and pretty much the whole middle east and maybe even Indonesia.

Right now we are kicking ass because we're using mostly bat-boys, d-boys and SF against the Afgani's. The 10th Mountain folks are sucking wind and haven't been cutting the mustard. Maybe they'll do better once they are acclimated to the altitude, I don't know. However, the mission of 10th Mountain being what it is, they should have already been acclimated. So that right there points to a failure in training on the part of the leadership of the 10th. Of course with the budget shortfalls the way they are, training for even bat-boys and SF have dropped dramatically, so I can imagine what it must be like for normal line units.

When we are forced to fight a nation that has airborne/specops capabilities, then you will see ton's of poorly trained support personnel being killed in theatre. When they start hitting our logistics and communications abilities, then everyone will see that Hack was right.

Does that mean we'll lose? No, I don't think so. It just means lotsa folks are gonna die. The rest will take up the slack and pray that the reinforcements are better trained. History will repeat itself (i.e. TF Smith).

RLTW!

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