Vero Beach, Fla.:

[SWCAdmin]

The Post recently reported on the Army's land acquisitions for training. Reading the story made me think of tanks -- lots of them. I was left with a feeling that a great deal of preparation is going into a next Large War that might never come (or matter). On the side, the Roman Empire might have kept up its Large War capability while it lost the small wars. A couple of recent books on Rome's collapse are discussed in this article.

[RTK]

Having been posted at Fort Carson for almost 6 years, this has come up often since 2000. Pinon Canyon is a great maneuver training area that is necessary since the training land at Fort Carson proper is horribly small - so small that even a cavalry squadron cannot train together at the same time.

The real question is whether the country is willing to take the steps to keep all arms and branches ready and relevant for the next fight. It would be negligent to make Armor Battalions give up offensive operations as a METL task in favor of soccer ball procurment.

You really wouldn't want a doctor to perform open heart surgery on you for the first time without practice. The bottom line is that it takes land - and lots of it in varying conditions- to train mechanized forces.

[Rob Thornton]

Concur - if we create a vacuum - somebody will come along and fill it and there will be hell to pay. Our potential adversaries are learning - they'll have a soup to nuts capabilities if they can afford it and it will be tailored made to their home court. Here is to balance and consistency and adaptive leadership with good recipes for chicken salad.
Best, Rob

[selil]

Iraq/Afghanistan is a war that we are fighting now. It is easy to get stuck think that it is the only war, the future of war, what we should be training for at all costs. War though is malleable and filled with the twists and turns of each adversary trying to overcome the other. The job in defense is to analyze all possible adversaries and create tools that will overcome the enemy. The job in offense is to analyze the capablity of possible adversaries and create the tools to dispose of the adversary. New adversaries such as Iraq do not negate old adversaries and possible future adversaries. We must train for all forms of war or lose due to the one we didnt' train for as that is the vector an adversary will attack.