How long does it take to train an Army?

[Ken White]

You have to have an idea first. Training is the easy bit.

I'd add not only do you have to have the idea, the nation / army / people to be trained have to accept and buy into that idea -- totally. If they do not, there will be passive resistance that can take a long time and much effort to overcome.

The things that screw up and prevent good training and pretty easy to identify, with national culture and religion being the top of the ladder. And the top spot is probably cognitive dissonance, and traditional male culture - "Willy waving" as my wife calls it - Some "waving" is required, but it should not be the desired end state.

Too true. A good example is the Iranian Army -- and the Air force. They, as opposed to the Pasdaran / IRGC were well trained, fairly disciplined and quite effective forces during the Iran/Iraq War. Khomeini had to let some of the Shah's General out of jail to prevent a disaster (as my Son reminded me last night in phone conversation about another matter).

The US Training of the Iranian Army started in WW II; it effectively took off as a real development and training mission in the late 40s. By the time I arrived there in 1969, the Army was basically operationally and tactically competent, however, the logistic and maintenance elements were still only marginal. The few remaining op / tactical problems and all the log problems were cultural (and educational, a subset of culture). While there was some effort to appoint people on the basis of merit, the class level and who one knew or was related to had far too much impact and degraded capability and even affected operations. I recall one Bde level exercise where an attack got delayed for three hours while the "honor" of which Battalion would lead was sorted out -- and social parameters of the three Bn Cdrs became the determinant, not location or capability.

An additional and very significant impactor throughout the ME (and South Asia) is that the intrinsic politeness requires that subordinates tell seniors what they want to hear, not the truth of the situation -- thus, wrong impressions led and lead to bad tactical decisions. It takes years to break that habit (if, indeed, it can be done at all).

The South Koreans are also worth a look.

True, they're good and it took them almost fifteen years to break the class and face saving habits to become effective. Those habits weren't necessarily bad or wrong but they were and are different and they do impact military performance.

A part of the problem with training of the ROK Army was that, of necessity, early training focused solely on defense, there was no offensive training as the concentration on the immediate need. Same thing occurred with the Georgians lately; all the training effort was aimed at preparing just three (out of twelve or so) Battalion combat teams for service in the COIN role; no offense / defense -- and no higher formation training at all; no log training to speak of. It is one thing to train people quickly to integrate into a functioning Army, a whole different game to grow that Army from scratch -- and the culture and willy waving (or its local equivalent) are the big problems.

The Palmach is indeed an excellent example -- and it was mostly done internally with little exterior help (unless you count Orde Wingate ).