Leading infantry tactics theoreticians/experts today
I'm curious about who is being considered being one of let's say 20 top infantry tactics experts/theoreticians in the open domain (=some chance to find articles or books to read his/her ideas).
I am specifically interested in the kinetic aspects when I wrote infantry, else I'd have written "PsyOps" or "MP expert".
Any suggestions?
Following-up on my earlier SWAT idea ...
Charles “Sid” Heal is well-known and respected, says one of my Thin Blue buddies. Heal is with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office. Regarding the question of relevance of his work to your post, a point of entry might be his Sound Doctrine: A Tactical Primer.
On its face, Paul R. Howe’s Leadership and Training for the Fight looks like more of a military/business-leadership-self-help book, but there’s apparently at least one chapter that might get at your topic. Howe was with Delta Force in Somalia, according to my buddy. On-line bios support but do not confirm.
Much of Howe’s thinking may relate more to training on tactics--rather than philosophizing on tactics--although I’d be hard-pressed to distinguish one from the other in works such as CQB: Direct Threat or Points of Domination? Other writings and writer-contact info contained in the linked PDF.
There is, admittedly, a lot of rip-and-read stuff from Army field manuals that ends up being re-packaged and sold to tactical law enforcement personnel. I'd continue to be interested in finding out, however, whether any of the philosophical and/or TTP stuff flows the other direction ...
I ordred one of his books that my son wanted for Christmas
four or five years ago; that entailed talking to him on the phone for about 30 minutes. Interesting listening... :rolleyes:
Got the book, read it, passed it on to the Son and suggested he take it with a dumptruck load of salt. Haven't wasted any more money on 'em.
They did to a fair extent...
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Originally Posted by
slapout9
...Also Bill Moore talked about lessons from Vietnam Vets I was exposed to a lot of that myself and it was a shame that the Army never did something to debrief and record those lessons.
Get Tom to dig into the CALL archives -- not the current stuff, the old stuff; there should be tons there. Lord knows it was all over Bragg in the late 60s; li'l white books, li'l green books from the brand new C.A.L.L. and blue ones from Benning, too...
We did it then -- but I suspect most of it got tossed in the 70s and 80s so we could relearn lessons the hard way; to do less would be un-American. :mad:
Looking for the Big Guns, too?
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Originally Posted by
Fuchs
The language barrier must be terribly powerful.
Every time I ask in English-language forums for expert names, I get minimum 90% US/UK/CAN/Israel replies as if there was no innovation in other languages.
Come on, we're in an alliance. There should be lots of innovators in other countries as well. Doesn't NATO have some institution to distribute new ideas?
Merci! Great question and point! We Yanks remain quite indebted, of course, to the work and writings of Friedrich Wilhelm Ludolf Gerhard Augustin von Steuben. It can't have been all downhill from there, could it?
I notice the thread is trending toward identifying sources for "lessons" vs. your original question of who might be out there capturing/generating infantry theory. While I'm sure these are interlocking fields of fire, I got the feeling you were originally looking for sources who might one day gun for the title of "21st century infantry intellectual grand-daddy," someone along the lines of Heinz Guderian ("Achtung-Panzer!") for armor, or Billy Mitchell ("Winged Defense") for air power. Am I wrong?
How about Major E. James Land?
As far as influencing TTPs for small wars, COIN, LIC, etc. goes.....
Major E. James Land: I believe the standard of sniper training today in both the USMC and the Army is due to Maj. Land's efforts to establish a permanent Scout/Sniper instructor school at Quantico after Vietnam.
Colonel James N. Rowe: What Maj. Land did for sniping Col. Rowe did for SERE.
David Scott-Donelan: The importance of combat tracking (and likely some other lessons from the Rhodesian bush wars) is starting to make it's way into certain segments of the US Military through the efforts of David Scott-Donelan.
And least we forget.....The US Army's Ranger Department and 75th Ranger Regiment has raised the standard of light infantry throughout the US Army.
Arguments? Rebuttals?
Expeditionary law enforcement as possible research direction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Fuchs
I'm curious about who is being considered being one of let's say 20 top infantry tactics experts/theoreticians in the open domain (=some chance to find articles or books to read his/her ideas).
I am specifically interested in the kinetic aspects when I wrote infantry, else I'd have written "PsyOps" or "MP expert".
Any suggestions?
My earlier musings as to whether the civilian tactical law enforcement community might have anything to offer in this area--despite your stipulations against "MP experts"--was based on two assumptions/suspicions. The first was that tactical LE TTP might have some (limited) application for infantry-work within a population, particularly if that population was limited in scale, such as a building, a complex, a block, etc. ... Can't say that line of inquiry or thought worked out, but it was an idea.
The second was that there might be some gendarme/peacekeeper theorists out there, which would blend infantry and police (small "p") thought and practice. An SWJ article on "expeditionary law enforcement" this morning captures the spirit of latter possible research direction, in my opinion. I offer it here for your consideration.
Do the Right Thing vs. The Next Big Thing
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Fuchs
There NEEDS to be a new infantry tactics generation in use in the next war against competent and well-equipped enemies (the last one ended in 1945) or we'll see disasters as were seen in 1914-1917.
Old treatises on infantry tactics from WW2 and Vietnam don't help much. They can still tell us about the psychology of combat and some ruses, but not much about tactics.
Small war experiences like Afghanistan and Iraq highlighted some shortcomings and added some minor capabilities, but many of the lessons are 180° wrong simply because the enemy is not modern and not competent. A soldier can wear a heavy vest and patrol, day after day, and survive for months. He'd be dead within minutes if he did that in a high intensity conflict against competent enemies. The whole armour protection rally of the past years is probably 180° off.
So, that's the problem that I see. I can only hope that those people who work and think behind confidentiality barriers (that I cannot penetrate well) are working hard and well on the challenge. I hope they are not working on just incrementally advanced WW2 tactics.
I fear that's not the case, as the indicators for this are rare.
I don't disagree with your observations and arguments, but I think there are a couple logic-tripwires somewhere down this trail:
If your premise is that we're in danger of "fighting the last war," what with all of the current focus on Counterinsurgency and Small Wars and the like, and are in danger of intellectually disarming ourselves for any potential High-Intensity Conflict, roger and amen. (Although, as a user, it seems to run philosophically askance of the SWJ website mission. Perhaps it's more of a question for a notional Big Wars Journal?)
To say that Low-Intensity Conflict lessons are 180° wrong, "simply because the enemy is not modern and not competent," seems to invite the same criticism, however. The operational military-political realities faced since the 1960s and for the conceivable future (25 years?), dictate that most theory and practice be focused on LIC, not HIC. To this amateur historian, lessons from the likes of Vietnam, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq prove that: You can pick your friends, and you can usually pick your fights, but you can't pick your enemies--or how they fight.
That may mean that the infantry now works in a theoretically/tactically topsy-turvy world, but it doesn't mean it's wrong. Consider the following anecdote shared by Schmedlap in a current SWJ thread on defining Information Operations (IO).
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Originally Posted by
Schmedlap
Someone gave an example H&I fires and asked, "is this PSYOP?" I don't know if it is PSYOP, but purely kinetic operations can and do have effects that many normally assume to be IO. My favorite example occurred in OIF III when residents actually complained that we were too soft and weak because we took well-aimed shots, rather than firing indiscriminately at insurgents. They were truly angry with us, claiming that the insurgents were humiliating us and showing their strength. The support for their argument was that Kent the insurgent was slinging an entire magazine at us, while Stan the rifleman was only firing back with 3 well-aimed shots. We explained that we were trying to minimize civilian casualties and collateral damage, but this did not resonate with the city-folk.
Soon thereafter, we adopted a slightly different approach: we returned fire with 40mm, AT-4's, and 25mm, as appropriate. Hellfire strikes became more common, as did the occasional visit from an M-1. The effect was that we killed/captured no more insurgents than we were killing/capturing before, but the PERCEPTION was that we were routing them. Suddenly the city-folk were expressing satisfaction with our work. One man said, "thank you for fighting back." We weren't before? Thereafter, IEDs and direct fire attacks began to plummet and we got significantly more intelligence and cooperation from locals. No IO annex required.
Bottom-line: We've gotta keep our collective heads in the current fight, stay intellectually flexible, always do the right thing, generate theory from practice*, vaccinate ourselves against next-war-itis, all while keeping the proverbial Big HIC Stick in our back pockets.
* Yes, got my own intellectual tripwire there. File under "schoolhouse vs. lessons-learned world-views"; cross-reference under "religious conflicts."
References on Infantry Tactics
Fuchs,
My library is light on tactics and heavy on macro issues. I am not aware of a single 'go-to-guy' for the answer that you are looking for.
"Infanterie Greift An" by Rommel was a fun one. Unlike many here I enjoyed Poole's Tactics of the Crescent Moon. Rommel's Greatest Victory by Mitcham (ISBN 9-780891-417309) was bone dry. Makers of Modern Strategy by Paret (ISBN 0-691-02764-1) is a good reference that I return to often. I have not yet finished Cambridge Illustrated History of Warfare (ISBN 0-521-79431-5) but portions of it are useful. The Savage Wars of Peace by Boot (ISBN 780465-0077219) is informative. I am a huge fan of most anything by Robert D. Kaplan; Imperial Grunts (ISBN 1-4000-6132-6), Balkan Ghosts (ISBN 0-679-74981-0), Soldiers of God (ISBN 1-4000-3025-0), & The Coming Anarchy (ISBN 0-375-70759-X). Merchant of Death by Farah & Braun (978-0-470-26196-5), and Licensed to Kill (ISBN 1-4000-9781-9) are light reading. Battle Ready by Zinni/Koltz (ISBN 0-399-15176-1), Imperial Hubris by Scheurer (1-57488-862-5), and Fiasco by Ricks (ISBN 1-59420-103-X) are worth the read.
The hard lessons I learned from a ranger captain who taught me as a young cadet, long distance running, using MILES gear, reading ARTEP 7-17-10 Drill (Battle Drills for Light Infantry, Infantry, Airborne, & Air Assault Platoon & Squad), negotiation skills, a certain amount of judicious ruthlessness, and a fair amount of luck kept me & my guys alive in Iraq.
Bottom line, I am not sure that a book can capture what you are looking for. IMHO it has to be more of an apprenticeship and a trial by fire experience.
Regards,
Steve