Quote Originally Posted by William F. Owen View Post
Well aware. Foch's "Principles of War" dates from 1903 lectures. The Fuller version however were the ones passed into UK training and doctrine.
OK, lets move on from this now shall we? We have established that Fuller did not merely pluck his 9 Principles of War out of the air then.

A book I know, along with the disastorous "Reformation of War" and "Lectures on the FSR". I could write a book on Fullers fallacies - indeed my current Thesis deals with his abysmal ideas on armour. I have little time for the man.
For better or worse nations need their own military thinkers to shake things up a bit... and this is what Fuller and Liddell-Hart certainly did... (and perhaps the status you aspire to?)

Abysmal ideas on armour? Yea I guess with 80 odd years of hindsight one could pick holes in any theory from those times.

Based on many conversations over many years with a lot of serving officers, almost all seem to accept we could do officer training better. It is thus utterly bizarre that grass roots opinion does not translate into action.
Not so difficult to understand. First rule in securing a pension is "do not make waves or rock the boat." The second aspect is that sometimes we need a period of reflection away from a situation so close to the action where we can't see the wood for the trees.

Objective as ever.
Of course. Its called reverse psychology. Let an outsider suggest something to the Brits and one can rest assured that they would rather die than accept advice.

On the training mentioned, yes, certainly even a local Outward Bound course built early into the the training will do wonders... but a similar strongly military approach in an exotic location away from mommy and daddy with no cell phone reception or Internet will be a life changing experience for 18/9 year olds.