COIN v. Conventional Capability Debate

[William F. Owen]

@ Although from the little I've read on Lebanon in 2006, it looks like the Israelis had a host of leadership and organizational problems that can't simply be explained away as the result of decades of West Bank and Gaza service.

@ Seems to me that procurement is the big elephant in the room. I saw General Sir Rupert Smith speak last year, and while it was a good talk, he repeatedly said "I'm not here to talk about equipment, it is how that equipment is used that has changed", which struck me as evasive.

The more I study the operation in the Second Lebanon War, the more I become convinced that,

a.) a lack of funding was the critical problem. The cheap options on training, deployments and equipment, all had disastrous effects. The same lack of funding stuffed the British Army in 1940.

b.) there was a leadership failure, at the highest levels, to understand what would have been useful and how it should have been gained.

I don't like Rupert Smiths book, because it is short on solutions and advice, but he makes some good points. He and I had a fairly sharp exchange of views when he spoke at the House of Commons, two years ago, as to where the blame for the current situation lies. However, he is right about equipment. Fighting insurgents does not generally require specialised equipment, that does not have some application fighting other threats. MRAPS could be worth their weight in gold, as concerns some of what they bring to the party.