Quote Originally Posted by William F. Owen View Post
OK, but when has this ever not been blindingly obvious? It is very raison d'etre of Irregular Forces.
Obvious? I had to repeat them, since you seem to forget about them. Besides I have always thought that SF are part of the armed forces, not part of MAD.

Again obvious - and it also side steps the very debatable idea that the US and NATO are competent against any regular military force that are not complete clowns.
Obvious? Even if we accept your presumptions given the current examples of other high-tech forces' ""competency"" like IDF 2006 or Russian Army 2008, the sheer amount of NATO's RMA gadgets and their trained crews will prevail in a HIC. According to you NATO troops do their job badly but I am positive the others are even worse. What about that White Paper? You seem to forget about it too. Probably there is a be a newer version of it for sure, which would be more interesting.

You do not need much in the way of military capability, intelligently employed to challenge NATO.
Could you please elaborate?

IMO, there is no IW. Only irregular Forces. How is an ambush, a suicide bomber or an IED something "irregular"?
What was irregular about spanish partidos? Or hussars in the 17-18th century? That they were not regular. Please do not get into semantics.

Modern War flows from modern politics. Nothing changes. All media is political, and therefore actors in the conflict. This has never not been the case, as long as media has existed.
So Clausewitz is right?
I agree with you that politics and war are as ancient as the first tribe or whatever. But these interlinked concepts change over the time. Like it or not. And the current armed forces are still organised, trained and equipped 80% for HIC, while in reality there is only 10-15% maximum chance for that. Yes even if the esteemed Colin S Gray and you say that things have remained the same, they are not. In the 'complacency kills' forum there is a video of ieaqi youngsters blowing up a bradley. I bet it was fueling the whole iraqi resistence's morale for a week or so. When was such small deed not Zaitsev's or Wittmann's heroic deeds capable of achieving such a feat?
Accept it or not the warning signals are here. It is up to us whether we recognize them. I do not dare to compare myself to them, yet De Gaulle and Liddell-Hart met deaf ears. Surprisingly, Guderian and Tuhachevski were listened to.