Quote Originally Posted by Vic Bout View Post
Wilf,
as to MAJ Smith....define "normal"; as to the rest of it...yes, I agree, the Army can (and has) produce(d) officers capable of successfully executing COIN in spite of conventional combined arms training. Army efforts are underway as we speak to inculcate the COIN mindset into leaders force-wide, and at nearly every level of leader development, education and training.
Exactly! There is no genetic, organisational or intellectual block to creating officers (and thus and army) skilled in both Combined Arms Warfare/Counter Formation and COIN.

The UK had an entire generation of Officers, who were skilled Combined Arms men - Germany and COIN -Northern Ireland practitioners. We got this purely by accident and ad-hocary. We should (and are apparently failing) to be able to do it by design.

What is lacking is an "This is X and this is Y. You must be good at both" approach to professional military education.