N/A ([info]mavx) wrote,
@ 2008-10-06 15:00:00
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And the Aviation Captains' Career Course became obsolete this morning...
Standard Warfare may be Eclipsed by Nation Building

Quote:

The Army on Monday will unveil an unprecedented doctrine that declares nation-building missions will probably become more important than conventional warfare and defines "fragile states" that breed crime, terrorism and religious and ethnic strife as the greatest threat to U.S. national security [at least for the next few years].

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[info]dekarch
2008-10-06 09:43 pm UTC (link)
The last time the US Army decided conventional warfighting was obsolete, TF Smith was the result. Just sayin'

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[info]mavx
2008-10-06 09:46 pm UTC (link)
How'd that "we must send troops to intervene in Georgia" work out for you? I mean, just sayin'.

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[info]dekarch
2008-10-07 09:39 am UTC (link)
With Georgia getting their asses kicked and ineffectual Euro-style harsh language being the only thing done about it.

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[info]mavx
2008-10-07 12:40 pm UTC (link)
I know, and I stay up all night just worrying about it. When I'm not busy playing video games and blogging.

Seriously, Georgia's no angel. They certainly played a role in provoking a role with Russia and assumed that the US would back them up. Now, I know it's touchy-feely liberal teaching (which, if that's your point of view, I admire it) to stick up for your friends no matter what, but seriously, shouldn't we be bemoaning the fact that Georgia is the best ally we have these days outside of the Anglosphere? SRSLY.

I, for one, toss and turn all night that US forces--badly overstretched as they are--didn't travel thousands of miles overseas (over a period of months?) to fight one of the largest and most powerful armies in the world that pretty much withdrew its forces after a week. But then again, I am a bit of a drama queen and get excited about these things.

I also stay up at night dreaming of the $8 billion arms deal the US is brokering with the Georgian government in the aftermath of the war. I mean, what good are your international "friends" if you can't get money from them?

Course, I don't view nations as friends. I only view nations as interests. And ultimately, where are our interests? Do we want to continue to send astronauts to space over the next five years? Thanks to inadequate funding, it looks like we'll be hitching a ride with the Russians to space for about five years. Unless you want the US to be like all those European nations with no space program...

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[info]mavx
2008-10-06 09:49 pm UTC (link)
But pre-canned smart comments out of the way (don't you love anticipating your own hate mail), I think the US needs to go to two forces, conventional and unconventional. Unfortunately, I'd like to see that happen now that we dropped $700 billion (and probably more to come)

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[info]dekarch
2008-10-07 09:38 am UTC (link)
That would be interesting. Some things would overlaps (a lot of CSS) but. . .

The question would be how large of each force would we need? We have been using the hell out of the current force structure and the RC folks to fight this thing in Afghanistan and Iraq, so it looks at first glance like the COIN force would need to be nearly the size of the current force with RC. Then how large a HIC force on top of that?

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[info]mavx
2008-10-07 12:41 pm UTC (link)
At $500 billion (or so) and a budget greater than the next 12 nations combined (and this can vary based an many analyses), we should be able to mount some sort of capable force of dealing with both, right?

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