Quote Originally Posted by Rhodesian View Post

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.
No need to apologise. When I joined the British Army, I actually did basic with 3 former RLI. Had a very good ex-RLI mate as well, so I am pretty up to speed on how the fire force worked. - and the British Army has a fair degree of so called "COIN" skills, so I am more than aware of the problems.

Point being the Selous Scouts, like FRU/JSG/Det in Ulster, were an "ISTAR" group type capability, specific to theatre.

Rhodesia fought a domestic Insurgency, as did the UK in Malaya and Kenya, so the context of the training was always leveraged in that direction. Tracking is purely a "Find" function support tool. Much underrated and mostly not exploited (the UK does have a funded and current tracking school!) - but that does not indicate to me that we need to create platoons of Hiawathas.

- and as an aside, back in 1988, I actually learned how to "track" Soviet AFVs at the NATO-LRRP School. Not sh*t. We had to learn to recognise all the different track pad patterns!