am unsure that FM 3-24 is a good example on several counts. It does have a certain appeal to many due to its essentially College 101 Textbook approach to military writing. It did assemble a broad based historical perspective to remediate errors of omission over a 30 year period. I have also heard complaints from the field about undue complexity and trivial information; it is not designed for the "doers."
It simply is too large and unwieldy for the practitioner at Battalion level and below -- and that's the bulk of the force.
Thus we have FM 3-24.2 Tactics in Counterinsurgency designed to remedy that error -- and which suffers from the same fault; too much backgrorund information and too lengthy at 307 total pages including extracts of Kilcullen and Lawrence among others. It is no real help to the Bn and below worker bee.
Such volume is possibly helpful in a doctrinal sense but I believe it is very disadvantageous in a Field Manual which should be concise, 100 pages or less, designed for the user in the FIELD to rapidly get to the 'how-to' issues that are of concern to him and of pocket size.
The history that must be an interest of any thinking soldier is easily found in many places -- the aforementioned Kilcullen and Lawrence items are widely available. I'd almost be willing to bet that copies of both authors books which are cited would be available in the average deployed BCT ...
What's need are Doctrinal Manuals, in loose leaf binder and .pdf format (everyone may not always have AKO access) which can and should be limited to less than 100 and of less than 200 pages but including background and historical material -- easily achieved by tighter writing and elimination of redundancy -- and Field Manuals, limited to less than 100 of no more than 100 pages that are the operators manuals for the technical publications that are the Doctrinal Manuals which contain all the amplifying detail and the references.
Doctrine is doctrine, it is what should be done and an explanation of why is beneficial. How-to-do-it is rarely the same thing and generally, the 'why' is not necessary and can, in fact, impede understanding.
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