Quote Originally Posted by JMA View Post
Has the British military (or the Yanks) really learned anything from the war in Afghanistan? And what if anything that they learned there must be discarded before they can get back to 'proper' soldiering playing soldiers like in the style of WW2 driving up and down in tanks?
As with any conflict the issue is determining which lessons are specific to this time & space (the war) and which lessons are applicable to all times & space (a war). The process that the UK is going through is therefore much like that it underwent post-Boer War (demonstrated in Spencer Jones excellent book From Boer War to World War), indeed many of the lessons are not new and are simply old lessons relearnt.

Afghanistan was a limited war fought with limited means and to uncertain strategic ends. The big lesson from Afghanistan is how to use military means to achieve policy ends in the current (western liberal) social and political climate which demands wars of discretion be fought not for national interest but for moral imperatives, with a finite horizon and very low appetite for risk.

At the lower tactical level the lessons revolve around targeting and planning cycles, understanding and mitigating risk, use of PGMs, the reluctance to use Fires (indirect & direct) to suppress and a focus on using them to destroy (this in turn born out of an intolerance for collateral damage), tempo and combined arms manoeuvre (emphasis being on manoeuvre).

Structurally UK infantry has fundamentally reshaped and augmented battalion HQ structures and Rifle Coy structures. Adaptive Force brigades are geographically focused on specific areas and career streams are opening up similar to the US Foreign Military Service Officer stream.

With most company commanders and below having known nothing but Afghanistan the army is to a large extent captive to its own experiences, there is a depth but not breadth of knowledge. Few have experience of training in combined arms manoeuvre against a peer foe or of operating outside of a Forward Operating Base lay down.

In 1914 approx 40% of the BEF's established 165,000 strength had served with the Colours for 2 years or less. The British Army is already discharging officers and soldiers who have completed their minimum engagement period but who have never deployed on operations. Armies are traditionally young and traditionally inexperienced.