British COIN (merged thread)

[Red Rat]

OK, when in doubt revert to the text in question.

OK, so back in the good old bad days of the 70s I studied from the Brit Infantry Battalion in Battle - 1964. Nowhere in there did the term maneuver appear as it was an Americanism which only appeared on the Brit scene later (probably via NATO). Training maneuvers were what we termed large scale exercises, remember? Before your time?

So given all that I stick by my interpretation.

Okay, you stick to yours and I will stick to mine. The term manoeuvres as you describe it has not been in use by the Army since at least 1989 (and we were still doing Divisional and brigade exercises when I joined).

But to use your interpretation of 'large scale exercises' what exercises is he referring to? A brigade has not deployed in the field on manoeuvres since 2002; so it is not as if we are relying on it...

This is why I suggested that in the US they take 250,000 each from active and reserves and focus them on small wars and insurgencies. Leave the rest to drive around the deserts and plains to make dust and prepare for the next big war. This allows for focus and specialisation and accepts that there are indeed a different set of skills required for the two types of warfare.

Works for big armies.

If you take Afghanistan for example there is little point in deploying armour and mechanised troops on a rotation as this over time will just confuse them.

Is the issue deploying armour and mechanised troops or deploying on rotation?

I am back to continuity, tour lengths, specialisation, and focus.

Sigh.. I know!

The problem with the Brits is that whenever the solution is obvious they spend more time figuring out why the problem can't be solved than fixing it. Have you noticed (and this is not a sideswipe at the yanks) how the once "can do" nation, the Americans, are also moving in that direction. They increasingly accept the status quo with a shrug. Man it is such a pity.

Not at all. The argument has never been why the problem can't be solved, but why the problem hasn't been solved (for which there are good and bad reasons).

What the war in Afghanistan has shown IMHO is that apart from the special forces (who have been magnificent) the rest of the forces have proved unable to adapt effectively to the type of warfare required.

Hmm. I don't know how the SF have evolved in Afghanistan and Iraq so I cannot comment. I do know that the green army (non-SF) now uses TTPs and equipment that were SF only capabilities until fairly recently.

The use of the SF has evolved but that was not necessarily an SF decision, but made at Theatre Command level.

It is not that the individuals are incapable it is that there is a combination of misguided political direction (aka interference), doctrine weakness and inept generalship.

Plus lack of accountability and apathy. I suspect that this applies to the US as well, but for both Iraq and Afghanistan it was a case for the UK of an army at war but not a nation at war; that is very constraining.