Training observations

[Bill Moore]

That's incredibly stupid *******.

You can play the veteran card as much as you want, this doesn't change the fact that it's excessively bloody to figure out everything new during a war only.

There wasn't enough theorizing prior to the First World War, and the Second World War showed the power of theorizing done well. Combat experience is no important ingredient; the combat experience was more often than not largely irrelevant to the new challenges, if not misleading.
The US Navy didn't figure out air-sea battles based on North Sea patrols of 1918, nor did the USMC figure out the need for forced landings based on its trench war experience. Guderian didn't figure out the employment of mechanised combined arms formations based on WWI barrages and infantry assaults. Bloch didn't serve ever, but still proved to be a better seer in regard to military affairs than generals and field marshals with decades worth of small wars on their resume.

Nobody ever said "Let's wait till WW3 before we make up our minds on how to deal with a nuclear battlefield" because that would be an extremely stupid and potentially fatal idea.

This is an interesting and important post in my opinion. I can understand the different views and think they all can be defended by cherry picking historical examples that fit a particular argument. Nonetheless I agree with Fuchs' assessment on the value of military theorizing, and that many valuable theorists didn't have combat experience. Seems the best theorists don't correlate to combat experience, but correlate instead with high intelligence, curiosity, and creativity (regardless of whether or not the theorist had combat experience). Famed and successful insurgent leaders often developed useful theories/strategies to pursue their ends without the benefit of even previous military experience, much less combat experience. Of course they adjusted their theories as they tested them in the lab of conflict. This is something Western leaders often fail to do, and years later those who blindly followed these theories of Mao, Lenin, etc. were often defeated, as were those who embraced theories to counter these approaches. The world always moves on, unfortunately our institutional thinking doesn't always keep pace.

In the U.S. military there was considerable military theorizing prior to entering WWII which included the use of air power, projecting power via amphibious assaults, the use of armor, etc. which ultimately contributed to victory despite some initial tactical set backs. On the other hand, there didn't appear to be much theorizing at the military level during the short gap between the end of WWII and the Korean War, and we sent an unprepared military that the nation underfunded due to the illusionary peace dividend post WWII. I'm not sure about Vietnam, we may have theorized (special warfare concepts and such), but the theories we applied as well as the way we approached special warfare wasn't relevant to achieving our desired ends. That indicates to me that while theorizing is essential, there is no one size fits all theory that we can build doctrine and strategies on. We clearly theorized after in depth after the Vietnam War and saw great success in both Desert Storm and the initial phase of what was later called ironically Iraqi Freedom based on those theories, to include the air-land battle, cyber, and information operations (smart weapons, not psychological or other influence operations). Yet, once we transitioned into an irregular conflict conventional military theories fell short, and our old (relabeled as new) COIN doctrines proved to be irrelevant. Interestingly enough, those with combat experience are both its biggest advocates despite its many failures and it biggest critics. It is the media in our nation that decides who is correct and they have labeled those opposed to our COIN doctrine as a group of anti-intellectuals who simply don't get it. Something appealing about the language of winning hearts and minds in our culture, the illogic behind it doesn't matter when we manage perceptions through sound bytes.

Getting to JMA's point about training, the U.S. Army in many ways was better trained before 9/11 (at least in our combat arms units), but of course once you start fighting you adapt your training quickly to meet the demands of the current fight (the adversary, the terrain, the ROE, etc.), so for executing our COIN doctrine we're better trained now, but today's Army probably isn't as well trained to conduct major combat operations like the ones that defeated Iraqi's conventional military forces. I don't think peacetime is the sole factor that degrades combat readiness, because in many cases we have ample evidence that our forces retained a high degrade of readiness through long periods of peace, but our readiness was impacted at certain times in our history by insufficient funding to sustain combat readiness (training, equipment, etc.) between the wars. Other factors also contribute to ill-preparedness like political correctness, social engineering, and embracing faulty theories (COIN doctrine).

In the end it is all relative, if we end up transitioning to another COIN/stability operation in the next five years the combat experience we have now will be relevant. If we get into a conventional fight, the combat experience we have now could actually be detrimental to our success, but the young bucks on point will quickly identify what isn't working and will once again challenge the wisdom of their irrelevant seniors and adapt at the tactical level.

When I consider readiness, I try to consider ready for what because the answer will be different. I still embrace what a former team sergeant told me, "we don't know where, who, or how we're going to fight in the future, but the basics will always apply. You need to be physically fit and tough (its different), know how to shoot expertly in all types of conditions, be able to navigate, and use your radios." After that it is identifying the right tactics at the grunt level where it counts. I think we sustain all the above during peacetime in the regular army. I have my doubts regarding the reserves and National Guard. Of course there are other things that must be trained to include collective exercises and joint interoperability, etc., but the basics are essential.