Hi Raymond Duray; Re: "Even if the two sides had equal logistics, a US army of 100 would beat the daylights out of a conscript army of 100 because our front line soldiers are specifically selected and trained for that particular duty." This is more than just a fact of training and selection. US soldiers are better fed, have had better diets their whole lives, have fewer diseases, are stronger, and are tougher. Their soldiers include boys too young to have sense or strength and old men not fit for combat duty. Our soldiers have better vision, and come equipped with full sets of arms and legs. (I won't vouch for fingers. Anyone who messes around with blasting caps eventually loses one or two.)
Re: "Now, as I recall, our failure in Viet Nam was because the Viet Minh were ready to field and lose 1,000 men for every 100 Americans, and were willing to do this for not years, but decades."
You recall wrong. Our failure in Vietnam was due to (1) their being continually supplied by two outside superpowers, coupled with (2) our inability to invade the source of supplies in North Vietnam.
Re: "In the current episode in Afghanistan, would we say that a proud nationalist force, with intense tribal loyalties and dramatically superior local knowledge, willing to suffer at a ratio of 10:1 or perhaps 100:1 due to religious fervor wouldn't be a completely formidable adversary?"
Your logic is busted for these reasons:
(1) So far, our kill ratio is probably around a few thousand to zero. Accidents happen in training wherever the military is, they don't count.
(2) By the way, our kill ratio against the Vietnamese was somewhat better than the "1000 men for every 100" that you refer to. Actual figure for Vietnam were slightly better than 20 to 1. For instance:
geocities.com
(3) Since we now allow women in combat positions in the military, we've got twice as many "men" available to throw into the meat grinder.
(4) The US is about 3.5x larger in population than Vietnam, while the US is about 10.9x larger than Afghanistan. This means that the situation is considerably better than against Vietnam:
cnn.countrywatch.com
(5) Vietnam was far richer, on a comparison basis to the United States then, than Afghanistan is now. War is still the most expensive thing humans do, just as it has been since Paris stole the queen of Sparta, and that means that the Afghans have more trouble fielding a fighting force.
(6) The South Vietnamese didn't have the unpleasant experience of having to live under the Taliban for a few years. There's plenty of reports indicating that the Afghans are not particularly friendly to the Taliban. Note that if Mazar-e-Sharif falls in the next few days it will have done so with essentially zero American assistance on the ground.
(7) American air power was not supreme in Vietnam. Technology has improved, and the Taliban have shot down zero of our aircraft so far.
(8) Vietnam was being provided arms and munitions by two super powers. Afghanistan, on the other hand, is an international pariah. As the Afghanis run out of ammunition, the kill ratio gets worse. Probably the most difficult thing for the Afghani guerillas will be obtaining water.
(9) Vietnam was covered with forests that gave incredibly good cover to a guerilla force. You could walk from any point in any direction without being seen from the air. While Afghanistan does have tunnels, those tunnels are far more restrictive than good triple jungle canopy. Vietnam was an ambush waiting to happen.
(10) American resolve is probably higher now than at any time with Vietnam. For that reason, considerably higher casualties are probably acceptable. A kill ratio of 100 to 1 with 50,000 US deaths would work out to 5,000,000 Afghan deaths, and after subtracting out the various tribes that are on our side, that's more men they have in the country between the ages of 4 and 49.
Re: "In the current episode in Afghanistan, would we say that a proud nationalist force ..." Afghanistan has been in civil war for 23 years, it has not proud nationalist force. Remember Churchill's radio speeches in WW2? The problem for Afghanistan is that they don't have any radios.
Re: "... with intense tribal loyalties ..." Give me a break. Surely you don't believe this.
Re: "... and dramatically superior local knowledge ..." We're allied with the locals. The "superior local knowledge" cancells. They're shot through with forced conscripts and backstabbing minority tribesmen. I doubt if anyone ever does anything in Afghanistan without half the country talking about it the next day.
Re: "... willing to suffer at a ratio of 10:1 or perhaps 100:1 ..." Since we haven't taken any casualties yet these numbers are probably way understated.
Re: "... due to religious fervor ..." If you want to see "fervor", go hang out where unclewest hangs out. (I mean this in a nice way.)
Re: "... wouldn't be a completely formidable adversary?" No! A "completely formidable adversary would be a major industrialized nation with state of the art technology and a military with the latest weapons and, for instance, Communist or Nazi fervor. Having the opponent armed with nuclear weapons, or already in control of 90% of Europe would be more formidable as well.
Re: "But I've seen it before, ..." When people don't understand situations they use comparisons to situations that they do (think they) understand, or they compare it to a situation that is already in the past. Since you don't understand military force, you choose to compare Afghanistan to a situation that supports the political agenda that you carried into the analysis. Do you really think that the Germans were less of a foe than the Vietnamese? Why not compare this situation to the one facing the United States in 1941.
Re: "... I did read recently that certain U.S. forward deployment units were getting training in close quarters combat, eg. bayonet technique, from Russian officers in Uzbekistan, because there is no such training offered to our elite troops or infantry in standard practice today."
So US "forward deployment units" don't get training with the bayonet? Where do people come up with this stuff? Do they make it up, or do they meet some stranger and ask his opinion or what? This is like the column recently quoted here that said that the military didn't have flame throwers any more, which is sort of true, but they've been supplanted both in our own military and in the Russian one by improvements. (See #reply-16590921 for the flamethrower rebuttal.)
Why not do a literature search before you make statements like this? It's so easy to merely search through the government's training manuals:
I09-01 Rifle Bayonet Training I
I09-02 Rifle Bayonet Training II
I09-03 Rifle Bayonet Training III
I09-04 Bayonet Assault Course
I09-05 Rifle Bayonet Examination
I09-06 Pugil Training
I09-07 Introduction to Unarmed Combat
I09-08 Fighter Stances and Strikes
I09-09 Knee Strikes and Kicks
I09-10 Falls and Throws
I09-11 Examination
SIDE BLOCK, MOVE.
Extend your arms with the left hand high and the right hand low, thus holding the rifle vertical. This block is designed to stop a butt stroke aimed at your upper body or head. Push the rifle to your left to cause the butt of the opponent's rifle to strike the center portion of your rifle. After a block, counterattack with a thrust, butt stroke, smash, or slash.
To minimize weapon damage during training, the blocks, parries, and weapon-to-weapon contact must be limited to half speed. These movements, at full or combat speed, can be stressed during pugil training.
adtdl.army.mil
Any troops just about to go into combat are going to want as much practice as they can get. In fact, if they don't get absolutely fanaticaly about it they're a lot more nuts than I know they are. And I can guess that it wouldn't hurt to have training from Russian officers (or German, British, Italian, etc., officers.) Who would turn down extra training on something like that? But it's not like the US Military only lets its soldiers use plastic utensils.
Re: "Could it be that our superiorly trained night-sighted sniper specialists are about to have the tables turned in a most amazing technological twist of fate?"
Hey, if the military were composed of limp wristed draft dodging weasels with no patriotism who "loath the military" we might be in difficulty. But it's not. Don't look around at the people you know and imagine that the business of the US Army is composed similarly. The fact is that no matter what specialized occupation you pick, the vast majority of the people in this country would be unsuited for it, but miracle of miracles, there are people who are perfect for it. This is a big country.
Maybe you didn't know people in college who's eyes would light up at the thought of a fist fight (hint: avoid going drinking with them). I suppose you've don't know anyone who's shot themselves in the foot doing something stupid. (I know two.) I doubt you've ever handled explosives, lots of guys find getting proficient with them to be very satisfying. Did you ever go out with a woman who blew things up for pleasure? Have you ever been in a knife fight? Birds of a feather tend to flock together. If you hung around with a different crowd you'd see a completely different face to this country.
Re: "What if the al-Qaeda has conceived a game plan where it is silly to carry a gun in a knife fight? In a cave, anything is possible, except advantage to a foreigner."
This is one of those hypothetical questions like "what if your aunt had balls?" People have been using caves for defensive purposes continually for thousands of years. It would have required massive, almost incredible error for the US Army to have forgotten about caves. Hey, if you want to find out about safe, practical ways of using superior fire power to deal with cave problems read the article linked here: #reply-16624794
Tunnels were the heart of the Japanese defense of the Pacific islands, they were used extensively by the Vietnamese, and you can be very very very sure that they are not something that the Army has ignored. If you want to learn more about US cave fighting doctrine here's some links:
google.com
For example:
TUNNELS
Tunnels are not frequently constructed in the defense of an area due to the time, effort, and technicalities involved. However, they are usually used to good advantage when the length of time an area is defended justifies the effort, and the ground lends itself to this purpose.
adtdl.army.mil
-- Carl |
