Interestingly enough, a Donbass commander relayed the story of how Ukraine faced disastrous losses in the SMO partly for this reason. When NATO came to overhaul the AFU into their much-vaunted Western NCO system, the Ukrainian officers subsequently saw opportunity to “pull back” from the frontline, considering that to be an obsolete “Soviet” tactic, and figuring the new NATO-trained sergeants can handle leading the charge. The problem is that in the U.S., as Ryan Mcbeth repeatedly emphasizes, sergeants undergo many years of progressive training in order to truly develop the leadership and famed “initiative”-building qualities touted in the West. You...