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| Generations of War in the New Century |
| 2015-03-04 |
| A general description of the evolution of warfare The DoD and the Army have now inaugurated yet another iteration of the constant doctrinal battle to balance irregular warfare and conventional warfare. Since the beginning, the US armed forces have struggled to deliver on a force concept that could do either or both well. As William Lind has pointed out eloquently, the US and western powers have enunciated the generations of warfare, but failed to deliver on advancing through the sequence or even gleaning the wisdom they hold. There are four generally accepted generations of warfare, and the succeeding generations that provide grist for the mill among the defense intellectuals and military-industrial illiterarti who constantly tilt at the next big thing. For the purposes of this introduction, we will stick to the four generations commonly accepted. The rest at the link |
| Posted by:badanov |
| #2 The 2ACR reached back to its indian wars journals for some of the operations stuff they did. And 3ACR did as aell. Its how the Surge worked in Anbar. Only thing missing was political will to sustain it for a couple of decades. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2015-03-04 12:48 |
| #1 Since the beginning, the US armed forces have struggled to deliver on a force concept that could do either or both well. Yep, a hundred years on the frontier and it's experience didn't hold cotton with the big boys back in Washington. Chapter3: The Problem of Doctrine. “Three special conditions set this mission apart from more orthodox military assignments. First, it pitted the army against an enemy who usually could not be clearly identified and differentiated from kinsmen not disposed at the moment to be enemies. Indians could change with bewildering rapidity from friend to foe to neutral, and rarely could one be confidently distinguished from another...Second, Indian service placed the army in opposition to a people that aroused conflicting emotions... And third, the Indians mission gave the army a foe unconventional both in the techniques and aims of warfare... He fought on his own terms and, except when cornered or when his family was endangered, declined to fight at all unless he enjoyed overwhelming odds...These special conditions of the Indian mission made the U.S. Army not so much a little army as a big police force...for a century the army tried to perform its unconventional mission with conventional organization and methods. The result was an Indian record that contained more failures than successes and a lack of preparedness for conventional war that became painfully evident in 1812, 1846, 1861, and 1898. - Frontier Regulars: The United States Army and the Indian 1866-1891 by Robert M. Utley |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2015-03-04 09:28 |