First Post
Greetings All!
This is my first post here, so please excuse me if I cover overly-trodden trails.
@Reed11b:
1. Agreed. There needs to be a holistic understanding of warfare. There are multiple phases in every single operation; it is not simply "shoot 'em and go home".
There needs to be specialization, but there are seldom enough troops in the pipeline to do everything. Both troops and units need to be cycled through both HIC, LIC and Sustainability training, because as living-memory history demonstrates, the second you shelve one form of combat, you are going to get hit with the next one.
2. Much, much bigger problem. At its core, this is a failure of "up or out" in an environment of limited resources and money: the fewer the slots, the more talent is forced out -- or worse, encouraged out.
Changing this is not a simple matter of a mandate from on high -- it involves a fundamental change in political and social culture and will.
3. See #1. Sustainability operations are fundamental to any war effort. Let me reiterate that.
Sustainability operations are fundamental to any war effort.
Ignoring Sustainment operations, in effect, reduces us to blowing the cr** out of some place, destroying their infrastructure and ability to control their populace, and leaving them wide open to being taken over by precisely the kind of people that caused us to blow the cr** out of the locale in question in the first place, who will displace whoever we put in charge (if we even bother) in ten years, or less - probably a lot less.
What's the problem? Refer to #2. Sustainment is dirty, unglamorous, un-sexy, expensive drudgery that the current MSM will jump on, like starving sharks swarming a sinking ship loaded with whole blood, to offer up for the latest pundit-fest of "If It Bleeds, It Leads".
Sorry, but that answer is above my pay grade......
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