All matters Rhodesian / Rhodesia (merged thread)

[Jslade0]

So one day the whole battalion would be gathered for these camp attacks (using conventional tactics) and a few days later sub-units were back to operating in four man "sticks". The ability to switch instantaneously between the two became second nature.

1) I have not written the paper. I am in the very early stages of it, thats why I came to this body, to ask for advice, and direction.

2) I've not gotten any conclusions already, but there are a few facts that I see as pretty telling.

3) As just having gone through standing up a US army brigade, and its now apparently ready to fight, I'm very curious as to the training done by other successful forces. Most interesting to me is the Rhodesia experience.

JMC, thanks for your input. What strikes me most is the "ability to switch". I've seen staff officers who have no idea what maneuver warfare is. Intel officers who don't know how to analyze terrain. Captains. Because thats not what they're being taught. Basic training doesn't even teach squad attack anymore, its all traffic control check points, search detainees etc. I never dug a fog hole, (and no one in my company did either) in my semi-recent experience at basic. It seems, which I seek to get a clearer picture of, that the US army is slow to change, but when it does, it's total.

The ability to balance COIN with conventional seems to be pretty interesting, and I don't know of many armies in the world that did it as well has the Rhodesians. Maybe it's not true; but I hope whatever research I come up with will give me a clearer idea about it.

[Jslade0]

This paper isn't an analysis of Rhodesian COIN fighting. That's been done plenty. I think the Rand Corp did a fairly authoritative study on it. It's comparing the Rhodesian ability to train HIC and COIN to the US's ability to balance both today.

Some interesting things I found out so far:
-Training cadre spent cycle breaks at the front.
-All Officers had to be NCOs first.
-Scout makes intel, which drives ops. US seems to understand Intel drives ops, but where does it come from?
-Rhodesians won almost every contact without support of Field Artillery.
-Combat tracking is an essential skill in COIN.

These are interesting facts, (maybe JMC or others could dispell some of them as untrue) and I'm curious to see what they could mean in a broader context, specifically as contrasted to the US army training and doctrine production machine.

Did Rhodesians read their own printed doctrine? how often was it updated? What were battle drills that were trained? Was there the concept of the "strategic corporal"?