Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
"That systems engineering jazz never worked during the Cold War no matter how hard some tried to push it. Plus, the problems we face today are not more complex, they're just different."
Right! The COIN avant-garde seem to keep using the word "complex" to cover for "ignorance". Nothing we see today is new. We just haven't seen it for a while , or we haven't seen it around "here".

To paraphrase a senior civilian instructor at the IDF staff collage "we need less systems theory and more military history."

I'd add we'd be much better off with some bright, intuitive solutions than with the well thought out adaptive solutions from a lot of really smart people that we've tried thus far...
I am very much for the bright intuitive stuff if it stands up to examination. A lot of the really smart stuff is falling apart faster than chocolate breech blocks, once the shooting starts.

EG: As much as I like and respect Frank Hoffman, I still can't see why "Hybrid" is deemed useful or even an accurate description of the phenomena it seeks to describe.