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When You’re Outnumbered: Lessons from Two British Masters of Irregular Warfare

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Re: When You’re Outnumbered: Lessons from Two British Masters of Irregular Warfare

#41

Post by varjag »

vlovich123 wrote: post #36
varjag wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of Mujahedeen never underwent US training. Most of their small arms (those that didn't originally float in the always militant tribes) were provided by Pakistan and China. Also, becoming a half competent combatant is not like getting a PhD, more a function of you surviving your first few encounters. The world does not revolve around America, people were able to fight and kill each other well before…

Is all the combat training the US military gives its own grunts and leaders not effective at making the US military more formidable? Didn’t these mujahadeen stick around to train the next generation of soldiers? Aren’t there consistent conflict in the Middle East to harden that kind of training (eg Chechnya)? Aren’t there mercenary opportunities to deploy and evolve that training? Whether they would have developed it…

Mujahideen force was never near the level of the U.S. military in basic training, and they suffered heavy losses even against the conscript Soviet army. Still that gets you rather far if you are motivated and fighting a war of ambushes on home turf.

If the US training was all it is hyped to be, surely the US-trained ANA could have rooted the Taliban by now, even without American help.

Re: When You’re Outnumbered: Lessons from Two British Masters of Irregular Warfare

#42

Post by boomboomsubban »

yorwba wrote: post #12

> Per 10 U.S. Code Section 127e, the Pentagon can spend up to $100 million annually on support to foreign forces for counter-terrorism operations. In these programs foreign units conduct combat operations with US operational guidance. However, unlike 127e programs the Special Night Squads and the Gideon Force in Ethiopia were directly led by conventional British officers and non-commissioned officers embedded in thos…

>But unlike the British colonial empire, the American sphere of influence is mostly comprised of sovereign countries whose governments might object to foreign-controlled guerillas operating in their territory primarily to protect American interests.

I think their use of "foreigners" there just refers to non-British, as both of their examples largely used locals for that role. Countries are often quite willing to allow US officers in train and assist their army.

Re: When You’re Outnumbered: Lessons from Two British Masters of Irregular Warfare

#43

Post by iguy »

specialist wrote: post #40
barry-cotter wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are far too kind to the US military. Afghanistan was too tough a nut for the British long before the Americans showed up. Pastoralist herders with a country that’s mostly mountain is practically perfect for making ungovernable people. See the Caucasus, Balkans and upland Indochina for further examples. All the more so when they were swimming with guns already.

Not being a smart ass: Ditto Switzerland? IIRC, Hitler didn't invade for similar reasons. A well armed citizenry. (And a convenient fence for all the spoils of war.) Historically, was Switzerland it's own thing? Did Napoleon, the Hapsburgs, misc Papacies, Franks and Normans, etc, march around those mountains?

Would be interesting to know more, but as far as I know Switzerland (or the area) was never especially like this. I mean it was always mountainous, obviously, but the people were not so different from their neighbors. Cheese-makers who worried about having enough hay for the winter, not cattle-rustlers.

The obvious west-european example would be Scotland. And the "solution" was more or less to deport the people to Ireland & replace them with sheep.

Re: When You’re Outnumbered: Lessons from Two British Masters of Irregular Warfare

#44

Post by emayljames »

conistonwater wrote: post #27
PaulAJ wrote: post #2

Fascinating though this is, the negative long term impact of these guys tends to be much greater than their positive short-term impact. You go in, you train a bunch of locals as guerrillas, you achieve the objective, and then you get out, leaving the local guerrillas behind. These guys now have the knowledge, experience and organisation to make the place ungovernable. At least some of them will proceed to do so; eith…

> Most of the Islamic fundamentalism that the USA is fighting today can be traced back to that one event. This is just plain false. A nice book that I can recommend on the actual history of it is Ghost Wars by Steve Coll.

It is not plain false then, it is much worse; not just that folly but many.

Re: When You’re Outnumbered: Lessons from Two British Masters of Irregular Warfare

#45

Post by 082349872349872 »

arminiusreturns wrote: post #28
PaulAJ wrote: post #2

Fascinating though this is, the negative long term impact of these guys tends to be much greater than their positive short-term impact. You go in, you train a bunch of locals as guerrillas, you achieve the objective, and then you get out, leaving the local guerrillas behind. These guys now have the knowledge, experience and organisation to make the place ungovernable. At least some of them will proceed to do so; eith…

>Afganistan is probably the best example. It was never easy to govern, but after the US trained a guerilla resistance to the Soviet invasion it became impossible. Most of the Islamic fundamentalism that the USA is fighting today can be traced back to that one event. I disagree, but with some context. If you just go back to the cold war, you would be correct, but in a longer time-frame context, I would posit instead i…

As such other wonderful outposts of peace as northern ireland, cyprus, israel, etc. show, back when it was Britannia who ruled the waves, they were fond of playing "let's you and him fight". To my eyes, the long-term drawbacks of these initially-attractive conflicts probably support the ancestor's thesis.

(any oceanic power will likely find making a mess of potential eurasian overland trade routes to be a feature, not a bug.)

Re: When You’re Outnumbered: Lessons from Two British Masters of Irregular Warfare

#46

Post by js2 »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #39
js2 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can start with the US and Britain intervening in Iran in the the late 1940s to protect oil interests and work your way forward from there. You could arguably go back to post-WWI with Britain, France and Russia arguing over the remains of the Ottoman empire (Sykes–Picot Agreement). The last century has been one interference after the next by Western powers and Russia in the Middle East: https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…

>The last century has been one interference after the next by Western powers and Russia in the Middle East The last two centuries, the interference was so common in the 19th century it inspired the name "The Great Game."

Thank you for the reference. I have some reading to do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Game

Re: When You’re Outnumbered: Lessons from Two British Masters of Irregular Warfare

#47

Post by [deleted] »

dx87 wrote: post #14

A more recent example would be the book "The Utility of Force" by General Rupert Smith. He argues that conventional militaries and tactics revolve around a concept of war that was made obsolete by nuclear weapons, and goes in depth regarding recent failings of NATO and the Iraq invasion, and how the conflicts should be handled in the age of instant global communication and media coverage.

[deleted]

Re: When You’re Outnumbered: Lessons from Two British Masters of Irregular Warfare

#48

Post by ardit33 »

PaulAJ wrote: post #2

Fascinating though this is, the negative long term impact of these guys tends to be much greater than their positive short-term impact. You go in, you train a bunch of locals as guerrillas, you achieve the objective, and then you get out, leaving the local guerrillas behind. These guys now have the knowledge, experience and organisation to make the place ungovernable. At least some of them will proceed to do so; eith…

This is not true. After the Kosovo war, the KLA (Kosova Liberation Army), disbanded, and some of their leaders joined politics.

Most just did what they used to do before the war: teachers, mechanics, drivers, engineers, nurses, students and so on...

Same thing happened in many European countries after WW2 was over.

Re: When You’re Outnumbered: Lessons from Two British Masters of Irregular Warfare

#49

Post by vondur »

specialist wrote: post #40
barry-cotter wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are far too kind to the US military. Afghanistan was too tough a nut for the British long before the Americans showed up. Pastoralist herders with a country that’s mostly mountain is practically perfect for making ungovernable people. See the Caucasus, Balkans and upland Indochina for further examples. All the more so when they were swimming with guns already.

Not being a smart ass: Ditto Switzerland? IIRC, Hitler didn't invade for similar reasons. A well armed citizenry. (And a convenient fence for all the spoils of war.) Historically, was Switzerland it's own thing? Did Napoleon, the Hapsburgs, misc Papacies, Franks and Normans, etc, march around those mountains?

The Hapsburgs indeed tried to take over Switzerland. It didn’t go well. The Holy Roman Empire copied the tactics of the Swiss and incorporated it into the Landsknechts of Germany.

Re: When You’re Outnumbered: Lessons from Two British Masters of Irregular Warfare

#50

Post by skrebbel »

doggo1233 wrote: post #26

“Staff with indigenous forces with US NCO/O’s from conventional (not SOF) forces...” is a great idea on paper. When was this last tried? The SFAB. As someone who helped train the SFAB, which is basically what the author is cribbing the idea from, it was a joke in application and reeked of the hot idea from whatever O6 was gunning for O7. Of 8-9 SFAB companies supposed to do this out in the bush in AFG with local forc…

San Francisco Area Bay?

EDIT: less cynical, i guess my point is that your comment is so full of jargon that it's near impossible to follow for me, and likely many other readers. In fact I googled SFAB but the wikipedia article doesn't really tell me what it is either (other than "a group of soldiers doing soldiery stuff")

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