I have a question /k/.
How important is actual combat experience to an army?
Does it make them, all other things roughly being equal, significantly more effective than an army that hasn't had real combat experience in a long time?
What sort of things do they learn as a result of being in combat that you can't learn from war games? What did the Russian Army learn from its war in Georgia for example?
How big of an advantage would it be to the US that the US military has been fighting wars for decades if it fought an army like the PLA, that hasn't fought a real war in decades?
>>29316608
Generals with experience > Generals with none/limited
Equipment that's been tried and confirmed on the field and in battle > Equipment that has just gone through testing and whatever
Simple as that anon.
>>29316608
Nobody knows how well something works for real until it starts flinging live ammo at something that's flinging live ammo back.
that's the case be it planes, tanks, equipment, doctrine, training program, or the quality of your officers/NCOs.
You don't necessarily need experience
However experience teaches you what works from what doesn't
Proper doctrine, tactics, training & good equipment will trump an experienced army any day.
>>29316822
>>29316710
Practical testing & large scale exercises can be done
It's just usually not common because there are bureaucratic incentives of not "rocking the boat".
>>29316822
What if the chinks have officers who have goatees and wear those dragon robes and ponytails?
Everyone knows those things make you wise and smart.
*strokes goatee thoughtfully*
this is why you create and fund terrorist groups to hone your military
>>29316710
NCO's with combat experience > literally everything else.
>>29318999
^^^Trips. Of. Truth.
>>29318999
This
It makes good training and discipline better. It doesn't fix incompetence.
>>29316608
Very important. See the Battle of Kasserine Pass.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kasserine_Pass
A painful "lessons learned" session for the US. Once taken on board the US turned it around in North Africa.
You'll be paying the price in bodies til your boys relearn how to do things and pass it along to the replacements
>>29316608
>How big of an advantage would it be to the US that the US military has been fighting wars for decades if it fought an army like the PLA, that hasn't fought a real war in decades?
Lot of people make casual shit jokes about the US military, but when I was in Iraq and Afghanistan they put in some hard work. Especially the spec forces guys, they'd be pulling door kicking jobs 2-3times a night, they're extremely good at fast moving, mobile warfare and generally dropping staggering amounts of fuck on the enemy. About my only real professional criticism is they're often terrible at organic recon and tend to forget some aspects of field craft amongst their troops and officers, they lean on the technological edge they have a little hard.
But the main reason blooded troops do have an advantage over 'theory' exponents is that they know what works, what wont and how to ad-lib along the way to get the job done. Its very important as a human resource that knowledge gets passed along to the next lot of troops- either through experienced officers and/or NCO's.
>>29319380
Pls someone not on a mobile in a shitty hotel room, screen-grab this for future use.
>>29319347
Such a truly good example of us getting our shit pushed in and learning from it. Pretty much directly led to America's retarded level of force integration which is primarily shown in Artillery request/response times.
>>29319380
It's important to note with all the changes in IED's and the like that they would routinely send guys home early just to teach on the new shit that they were finding in regards to placement, detonators, tactics, etc. This kind of shit would get disseminated down quickly and efficiently from guys with hands on experience.
Another major player is mind set. You truly never know how someone is going to react under fire. Training is all and good especially when you train how you fight but lets face reality. Everyone "knows" it's training and that little section of the brain doesn't truly switch over into "i might die mode". A unit, division, Army in general that has been through combat and that kind of stress and environment (not training) will know how it's men and the men next to them are going to react to such a situation and act more fluidly in response. This is were the idea of "Veterency" comes from.
>>29319704
Did a couple of peacekeeping tours in Timor prior to changing units and ending up in Afghan/Iraq
While those where peaceful, for the most part, from a basic command perspective it taught me a lot about what to take, who to manage and figure out all the little bits that we missed the first time. By the 2nd time it ran really smoothly.
As much as people hate officers and stuff, I'm still the go-to guy when it comes to fixing everything from your broken long distance relationship to your AN-PRC
Trigger time is a funny thing.
Seen a lot of people who do really well on a range, (lot of the women do really damn well on a range) but are next to useless when it comes to focusing aggression, controlling fear, communicating and maintaining spatial awareness under fire. I mean personally I'm a fucking rubbish shot with a rifle really :)
I mean I can hit stuff, but I'm not a real marksman by any stretch- give me a pistol or a submachinegun and I'll drill holes in heads all day for some reason.
However, what I can do is return fire.
I don't think about it, its just *click* and the kill switch goes to ON.
Training and reflexes come down to most of it and we can train people how to react, but there's also a heck of a lot of team building that needs to be done as well, people are individuals, but not in the armed forces you aren't and getting them to work as, plus trust each other as part of a team is something that's only really hammered home in a combat environment. That's where it all makes sense.
My first thoughts under fire for the first time was that yes, I'm fucking scared, but there was no way in hell that I was ever going to let my guys lose this fight or their lives and at worst you can always tap into the 'fuck that guy shooting at me', get angry!
No more Task Force Smiths!
They all got waxed because they were inexperienced.
>>29319557
Here you go sempai, with a few extras.
>>29321092
no
They got waxed because the incompetent generals of the US army had not equipped them with weapons capable of killing T-34 tanks
Also because they had no armor themselves, another incompetent decision by US generals.
>>29321159
Not quite incompetent generals. The generals only have what the politicians give them to play around with. If the politicians don't give you enough money to afford a tank regiment forward deployed to Japan, you don't have a tank regiment to throw into Korea on short notice.
Consider this, the defense budget in 1946 was 556 billion, the budget in 47 was just 52 billion.
Cut to the bone doesn't even begin describe how much the army lost after WW2. The US was damn lucky that Korea happened while the kids who fought WW2 aren't so far into their lives that they couldn't be recalled to active.
>>29321092
>No more Task Force Smiths
That was painted above the CIF in Infantry OSUT reception / 30th AG
>>29321271
Doesn't cost too much to simply store 1000 shermans in south korea/japan.
>>29321381
It absolutely does when 1000 shermans also means 30,000 tons of scrap metal, or a couple million dollars from selling them to other countries. The US scrapped or sold a fuckton of Shermans right after WW2.
Everything that can be cut was cut. 1000 Shermans stationed in Japan means 1000 less Shermans stationed in Germany or converted to money.
There were whole parking lots of P-51D's in 1946, where a civilian could just walk up with $500, and walk away with a demilitarized Mustang.
That's what the budget situation of the US looked like in 1946. Truman and Johnson wanted a WW1 style peace, where the defense budget fell to pre-war levels after 1 year, and the pre-WW2 US army was a fucking joke.
>>29316608
It makes a pretty significant difference. From top down
>General/Marshals
Typically, war is an extremely complicated business. Let's not even get into combat here, let's talk about food. So, typically the military would offer contracts for specific types of food that would then be classified by the method or use of it in the field with oversight allowed for local procurement.
A poorly tested military will often have cronyism, ineffective procurement, over estimate the effectiveness of transport and delivery, or over/underestimate required rations. Not to mention that often bean counters decide what is the most effective course of action; you know, having canned food rather than dried because dried is simply too expensive.
>Higher ranking officers
So, now you have your higher quarter masters that are receiving huge amounts of food inputs, and now have to set up field kitchens, and figure out if people are actually eating their fucking rations, setting up their field kitchens properly, and not poisoning their men.
Typically quartermasters get really good at getting good local food. Shitty quartermasters or quartermasters that have no practical experience simply have no connections or ideas on how to go about this.
>Lower ranking officers
So, at this point, most choices have already been made, but there is still a large amount of fucking up to be had. With a poorly ran kitchen, you can have unfortunate cases of food poisoning. With a poorly trained officer not only can some people skip meals, but often they'll jump to simply not set up simple field kitchens since "MRES ARE GOOD", etc. This tends to get bad quickly, not to mention eating emergency rations is a pretty bad idea.
>The Troops
So, you've gotten food to the lowest level. Well, fuck you, some soldiers simply won't eat their rations out of preference.
>>29321435
Ah well maybe Acheson shouldn't have told NK they wouldn't defend the south
>>29316710
Desert Storm. That exact situation and the Asraquis still got curbstompted.
>>29319347
Another good example of combat experience playing a role in WWII is what the US did with its fighter pilots. Like >>29319704 mentions, dissemination of info and lessons learned is key. America routinely rotated back veteran fighter pilots back to train the next crop of fighter pilots or would put them in command of newly formed squadrons. The Japs however had a habit of concentrating all their veteran pilots together in 'elite' units and leaving them in circulation until they were shot down and captured or killed leading to woefully undertrained pilots.
>>29321538
Thats not so much combat experience, but the issues that can develop in a peacetime garrison army
>>29321553
Dean was a cool guy. Don't be dissing.
>>29321983
No, daily operations are the most important part of combat experience.
Sort of related question, when should a weapon system be considered combat proven?
For examle dropping a laser guided bomb on a taliban from 10 000 ft means that an aircraft has seen "combat" and can be called combat proven.
But it doesent really test the preformace of the aircraft at all.
>>29321622
Arabs don't learn from experience, anon.
>>29322105
You are not thinking this through. It is combat proven when you attain real world results. You destroyed 10 buildings or wiped out 20 is-tali-qaidas, etc. Results.
>>29321381
>Doesn't cost too much to simply store 1000 shermans in south korea/japan
you also need crews, maintence, fuel, ammunition and parts for 1000 tanks within reach, or they're just scrap metal.
>>29322132
b-bbut muh "real war"
