I'd far rather have a Company of physically fit, technically skilled "tradesman" who understood radios, weapons, and their tactical application. - and could apply it to the terrain and population as required, than some bunch of "wood rangers" who may be out of their depth in down town "Bint Shed" at o'dark thirty in the AM.
It was for exactly these reasons that the Rhodesian Light Infantry, the "Tradesmen," made up of Rhodies, Brits, Yanks and a few drunken Irish Bastards, operated in parallel with the Selous Scouts, Rhodesia`s "woodsmen," made up of Rhodies and turned guerillas. The Scouts, as pseudo-terrs, found (tracked and infiltrated) the real terrs hiding in the bush or among the civvy population for us, and the RLI (and others) went in by chopper and in Tradesman like fashion killed them. Simple. In 19 years of COIN with fire fights sometimes as often as 3 times a day, we (RLI) lost 86 men KIA, and the Scouts over the 8? years of their establishment lost 40. The terrs were killed by the tens of thousands, which is why we are so popular with the PC brigade.

(And no body armour, helmets, high tech rocketry and all the other stuff you poor sods have to hump around.)

Sorry my china, but with genuine respect, you are fighting a COIN war using Conventional tactics, which is why you don`t see the point of tracking hamsters.

Yeah and you gotta watch those pesky Trout too lol.

I.R