Quote Originally Posted by Fuchs View Post
...He had the ambition to be able to do everything, decade after decade, everywhere. That's madness!
We've had that requirement effectively since the 50s; we've done it well on occasion but got over-focused in one direction in the 80s. It's neither that hard nor need it be that expensive.
Such an attitude - if funded - ruins any state in the long run.
Possibly true but certainly arguable with definition or length of "long run" being key. In any event, no democracy including us is likely to fund it fully. Nor, in this day and age will a large force be able to attract enough recruits to do it on a total force basis.

The key is to tailor the force with some elements specialized for the various spectrums of combat and all able with some retraining to adapt to another spectrum. That is not that difficult and I'd argue that the bulk of the US Army and the USMC really did that pretty well from the late 50s until the mid 60s (Viet Nam was a distraction). After Viet Nam, the Army set out to try to produce a 'doctrine' that would focus on one type of war and convinced themselves to hew to that as a means to affect national policy. That didn't work too well...

Problem with that solution is the opposition will aim for your weak spot. As we have seen.

Solution is to have a force that is affordable, able to recruit in adequate numbers and that has elements that specialize in each potential spectrum in order to provide an instant initial deployment to the contingency capability followed by rapid trainup of those folks that were focused elsewhere later deploy to the current contingency.

As I said, it's been done before -- and we're supposed to be smarter and better educated now than we were then. I firmly believe most units I've seen in many nations armies are capable of doing a lot more than the systems expect them to do.