Originally Posted by
William F. Owen
If you mean me, you are right. I am assuming that the infantry do not choose when and where they fight - but have to be able to do it.
We don't have enough of em to waste em in wrong tactical employments once we get into a great war.
That assumes terrain types are homogeneous. They're not. I live in a Middle-eastern town and I can see terrain well over 600-1000m, in every direction.
This is entirely irrelevant, and you should be aware of it. It's not relevant how far you can see, but how well the terrain can be used for cover & concealment. I can see down the road for hundreds of metres, yet someone could easily sneak up to me into hand grenade range without giving me a chance to see (much less identify) him.
What kills and suppresses the Taliban in 2010 did the same to anyone and everyone in 1944.
Except that most of it wouldn't work against a high end opponent, of course. OEF-A and ISAF forces would be slaughtered mercilessly if they used their tactics against the Russians, Chinese or any other halfway effective infantry force.
The behaviour observed in AFG is outright suicidal in modern army-on-army warfare.
The ratio of CAS to ground forces (platoons being able to call in CAS!) is the exception of the rule, as is the 99.9% lack of fire support on the red team.
A few bullet near misses may suppress a real soldier as well as a Taliban - but the chance to score these near misses drops considerably if you face real soldiers because they would kill your battalion in a day at a rate that the whole TB doesn't match in a year, much less with small arms and grenades.
A tripod machine gun team on open terrain would be killed ASAP with mortars and alternatively by a sniper in a European-style war. Alternating concealed and if possible flanking MMG positions are practical, MMG employment as done in AFG is rather not ... against a competent opponent.
Let's face it; the conditions are so extremely different and the competency and capability of the TB is so marginal that almost nothing from AFG will serve us in the next great war. Much will hurt us, though.
About your example "1944"; even 1944 Finns or Germans would easily multiply the losses of ISAF and OEF-A if they replaced TB 1:1. A finnish sniper killed more Russians during the winter '39/'40 than the TB kill Western+Pakistani soldiers in a whole year. The TB are ridiculously harmless and incompetent. German bus drivers are a greater threat.
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