BW, I set everything off on the tangent. My bad. The idea that we are policing, not soldiering in the purest sense of the term, interests me and leads directly into the following...

Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
Uboat509 and Rifleman are both correct -- so are you -- there's a need for less than lethal; Most soldiers should NOT be issued such weapons; they should be clearly and colorfully identified as less than lethal and they should be dedicated to that purpose and used by specially trained guys or gals, probably MPs and never issued to combat infantry units. Ees not their yob...

Doing THAT would be an invitation to the problems you seek to avoid...
In an ideal world, yes. The ideal world being where the infantry are deployed to the higher-intensity areas where the mission sees the close-with, seek-out, sieze-and-hold sorta stuff. Unfortunately the west lacks the quantity of expeditionary police forces and military police forces to be able to specialise in such a way. Thus infantry and, and most likely will continue to be, on the checkpoints and on stability (presence?!?) patrols through populated areas. Do we create a specialised 'less lethal' position in each patrol, or just factor the less lethal capability into our existing infantry tool-kit?

From my army's experience it (less lethal) has to be an infantry task through necessity. Alternatives, short of radical re-rolling of forces and ToEs, just don't exist.

What we can do is clearly define the less lethal weapons/ ammo natures, train the users and commanders and then rely on proper judgement and employment by the operators.