Quote Originally Posted by Pete View Post
What I'm saying is that these definitions of conventional and unconventional warfare may be a bit arbitrary...This feeds into the notion of full-spectrum operations, that some things can have elements of both conventional and unconventional warfare at the same time. It isn't wise to let SOCOM be the UW experts, and to make armor and mech infantry the Fulda Gap guys. Both communities have to be able to adapt to the situation at hand.
Well said and quite true. There's nothing wrong with SF -- not SOCOM, two different kettles of Squid, Catfish and the occasional Frog there -- having the lead and primacy in FID but they need to be able to do the MCO UW stuff as well. Likewise for the GPF, they've got to be able to do the whole spectrum.

Your point on arbitrary definition and delineations is important. That sort of stuff leads to overly focused views of the world; target fixation is a dangerous thing. Every war is different. We cannot forget that and trying to believe or convince folks that all types have a similar cause or an effect or methodologies that can be codified is really dangerous.

Uniforms are cool, no problem figuring out what to wear in the morning. Uniformity is okay if not taken to excess as the US Army far too often tends to do.

Uniformity of thought is a killer.