Quote Originally Posted by Tukhachevskii View Post
As... Ken White has pointed out long service troops can not only handle it its a good thing for the forces.
Mmm. If I said that, it wasn't exactly what I meant. Yes, they can handle it and yes for a small long service Army it makes sense from an economic and versatility standpoint -- but for the reasons Firn, Fuchs and Reed11B mentioned as well as in line with JMA's comment above it is not universally a good thing. It is also not even possible much less advisable in periods of intense war and high casualties.

These bear repeating: "Yet again, it's a METT-TC and situational issue -- there is advisedly NO one size fits all in warfare." and "...it's the cognitve skill enhancement and, even more importantly, muscle memory that become important to survival and success in intense combat and that argues for specialization."

Regrettably the answer to JMA's question is, as I expect he knows, all too often the emphasis is on the more 'sexy' aspects -- and the things that are easier and cheaper to train. The US Army did a good job for a while in providing enough Ammo and the right kind of training but my sensing is that it will too easily slip back into old and bad habits of mediocre training. Good units will persevere, the poorer ones will not..