Scenario: Acceptable US Casualties Against 3rd World Armies

[IronDuke99]

I think this, sort of, fits here: This is some talks from the UK Royal United Services Institute on adapting the military for new challenges.
For my money the third speaker deserved more time...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zOEpJtqjCw

[Suhiir]

Originally Posted by IronDuke99

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zOEpJtqjCw

VERY good series !

[IronDuke99]

Originally Posted by Suhiir

VERY good series !

Yes much of it is good.
I've now watched all of it and it was, in my opinion, very uneven.

The Four British Staff College officers were, with the partial exception of the last bloke, very, very, bland, using a lot of words to say not very much at all. And why no infantry office?

As an Englishman I am not in favour of supporting a German/EU desire (despite lacking the military strength to do so) to confront Russia in Eastern Europe, something for which the British Army is not suited in size, and that seems to me considerably less than vital to British, or even NATO, self interest.

The ex RAF Officer who predicted a 35,000 man British Army honestly horrified me. UK might, with a considerable increase in the Royal Navy (and perhaps the RAF) live with an Army of a regular strength of 70-80,000, since that is not so different from the general historical strength of the British Army in the UK when the British Army had to garrison an Empire, but any reduction much below this will make it useless for almost any serious military purpose.

I thought the CGS speech was so, so, good in parts but really rather too PC when talking about a military force that is designed, at the end of the day, to kill the enemy. As Rudyard Kipling, rightly said, "Single men in barracks don't grow into plaster Saints." Nor should we expect them too.

[IronDuke99]

In some respects this is the most interesting speech at this Conference. He identifies a lot of common military thinking failures.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2zLzW86134

Worth noting though that the US Army took great note of the German Army in WWII because no one ever really defeated them with equal resources. All the Western allies required more men, more air power, more guns, more tanks and more supply to win large scale battles, the same was true of the Soviets (who also needed a whole lot of US trucks and half tracks often fought through to them, at considerable cost, by, mainly, the Royal Navy).

German doctrine and officer, especially staff officer training, was simply better than her enemies on a tactical and, often, operational level. Thankfully this was not true on a strategic level, were Anglo-US cooperation worked, on the whole, very well, despite disputes and often strong arguments.

A lot of the modern idea of a thinking and flexible Army, to me, has its roots in German WWI and WWII doctrine and Staff training.
Especially when you hear about Senior officers being "eyes on and hands off." That is pretty much exactly the pre WWII German idea of give a subordinate an objective but let him come up with the means. C. 1937-2016 and it is, supposedly new...

[Airborne Rifles]

Originally Posted by IronDuke99

In some respects this is the most interesting speech at this Conference. He identifies a lot of common military thinking failures.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2zLzW86134

Worth noting though that the US Army took great note of the German Army in WWII because no one ever really defeated them with equal resources. All the Western allies required more men, more air power, more guns, more tanks and more supply to win large scale battles, the same was true of the Soviets (who also needed a whole lot of US trucks and half tracks often fought through to them, at considerable cost, by, mainly, the Royal Navy).

German doctrine and officer, especially staff officer training, was simply better than her enemies on a tactical and, often, operational level. Thankfully this was not true on a strategic level, were Anglo-US cooperation worked, on the whole, very well, despite disputes and often strong arguments.

A lot of the modern idea of a thinking and flexible Army, to me, has its roots in German WWI and WWII doctrine and Staff training.
Especially when you hear about Senior officers being "eyes on and hands off." That is pretty much exactly the pre WWII German idea of give a subordinate an objective but let him come up with the means. C. 1937-2016 and it is, supposedly new...

Yep, we still study WWI and WWII German doctrine in our professional education.

[Suhiir]

There are always things to be learned from history. To bad so few seem to actually do so.

Thats a human constant I think because most people are too focused on the "here and now" or think they have "evolved" more than past generations so "assume" they could not possibly make the same mistakes.

I wonder if the Russians in Finland in 1940 remembered what happened to three Roman legions that were destroyed in the Teutoburg Forest 1,931 years earlier long before the term "Motti" was coined

Don