Posted on May 2, 2014
Lessons learned from the insurgencies of the War on Terror
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The insurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past 13 years have shown that small, well-armed forces can effectively engage and disrupt the combat operations of major conventional forces with a combination of cunning and guile. Obviously they cannot defeat these forces but they were able to inflict casualties and hinder movement. Therefore, my question is, would the use of similar tactics, in combination with the use of large conventional forces be an effective means of fighting the next war against large conventional forces? Also, would it be worthwhile as these forces could then potentially "out G the G" as Col. Hackworth put it when fighting insurgencies?
Posted 10 y ago
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Good question. "Traditional" combat as experienced in World War 2, and even Korea, was fought using large masses of troops and equipment. General Guderian in the German Army developed lightning strikes and exploited breaking through key points and drove rapidly to the rear. The contemporary infantry and mechanized infantry mopped up and moved the lines forward to catch up to Guderian. So, while the use of irregular units are a very important element in any order of battle, when armies are utilizing armor and mechanized units in large numbers their effectiveness is reduced other than for their own specialized breed of warfare. The caveat now is that those types of armies are atypical in our current world.
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SGT James Elphick
I feel like these irregular units could seriously hinder the ability of large units to operate effectively if they carried out a prescribed mission against such units. A bunch of LGOPS armed with Javelin's, AT-4's, anti-tank mines, etc. could use hit and run tactics to shape battles in our favor instead of trying to just go straight head to head with tanks
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SGT Craig Northacker
A great opportunity to see how to integrate that approach exists now in the Ukraine - especially since the Soviet Army is pretty tapped out right now.
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