Quote Originally Posted by William F. Owen View Post
a.) Someone has to understand that the US (and the UK) were not good at fighting regular forces. Since about 1988 we just happen to have been faced with very very incompetent regular forces. Korea and Vietnam clearly showed the great limits of the US's ability to fight any type of enemy.
I would indeed point at the summer of '45 as the line between 1st class and lesser opponents. The enemies in Korea and Vietnam had a very narrow set of competence; their combined arms capability was in its infancy.

Many U.S. FMs are still full of the same B.S. that the French used to defeat themselves in 1940. Especially the emphasis on planning & firepower as well as the lack of emphasis on agile decisionmaking and agile formations are terrible.
Several U.S. divisions were probably ahead of current U.S. doctrine in 1944.

The quest for "situational awareness" is in part explained by a desire to gather information for planning because of a doctrinal inability to handle the fog of war.

Reformers should listen to the readily available "3GW" crowd, for their lessons don't seem to have been understood yet.