If you read US military theory from around the mid-late 1990s up to 2021 you will see that their vision of future conflict was, literally, pulp fiction like Starship Troopers and Falkenberg’s Legion. Superbly trained light infantry with digital communication networks in the hands of every soldier and post-scarcity fire and air support.
Unfortunately, not a single aspect of this theory was correct. Not a single one.
The difficulty of fighting insurgents in the Global War On Terror created a loop effect of wrong information and wrong conclusions from said wrong information creating wrong ideas moving further away from the correct answer as time went on.
Even today, western military commentators still loudly insist that insurgencies are harder to beat than a conventional military. How they could possibly think guys in sandals are harder to beat than a conventional military with their own air force and ballistic missiles is beyond me.
Apparently, it is because civilians help the insurgents (civilians quite famously don’t help their soldiers in war). So NATO commentators say “We could have won if we just killed EVERYBODY.” Okay, but why do you think it would be easier to kill EVERYBODY if the other side has proper weapons to shoot back with?
But anyway. Fighting insurgents further convinced military minds that super high tech light infantry is the future.
If you pay attention to the evolution of Ukrainian military aid, it all makes sense. Everything before and in the early stages of the war was very fixated on infantry weapons like AT4 and the Javelin. Clearly, the vision was to make every Ukrainian soldier a walking tank destroyer like in Starship Troopers.
But right away it became very obvious that this idea is really stupid and doesn’t work at all in real life. Ukraine’s most useful weapons weren’t the Starship Trooper wunderwaffen, it was their left over Soviet crap; namely tanks, IFVs and all forms of artillery.
So the strategy shifted from Starship Troopers to Falkenberg’s Legion. Okay great, light infantry with antitank wunderwaffen and also the fire support wunderwaffen HIMARS and M777 howitzers, both of which were marketed as “game changers.”
The crucial glue to this idea was grassroots communication. The strategic corporal, every man a forward supporter who can call in unlimited quantities of steel rain.
But again, this idea was completely stupid. The main problem is that nobody has unlimited ammunition for on-call fire support. So Ukraine fell back on Soviet doctrine of relegating almost everything to scheduled fire plans. Of course this is “primitive” and “overly centralized” BUT necessary. Because if you don’t ensure the correct people have enough munitions, then nobody has enough munitions. Because there is a finite quantity of munitions. Who could have imagined?
The other major problem is that these super leet light infantry aren’t anywhere close to mobile enough, and tanks are still needed. So NATO was left scrambling to send every tank in existence. Any tank, even a Slovenian T-55 rusting in a parking lot somewhere. And the infantry needed to be mechanized. Again, who would have thought. So NATO sent every Humvee, MPRAP, APC, scooter and Honda in existence.
Meanwhile, apparently no one thought it was important to train Ukrainian command staff. Not before the war, and apparently not even during it. Ironically, NATO could actually help a lot in this aspect. They could set up warfighter type exercises and have the first crops of excellent Ukrainian brigade, division and corps command teams ready for action around 2024.
But nobody seemed to have even started this process. It is funny to see NATO commentators crying about inept Ukrainian staff work now, which was something I have been saying right from the beginning in 2022. Wow.
Ian Kummer
I now have a new YouTube channel that I will use to upload videos from my travels around Russia. Expect new content there soon. Please give me a follow here.
Also feel free to connect with me on Quora (I sometimes share unique articles there).
I saw this article shared on social media, and someone had a brilliant summary: “They said they wanted ‘Starship Troopers’ the book, but they wound up making ‘Starship Troopers’ the movie.”
That’s funny because I didn’t see that comment. Did you see it anywhere in particular?
I saw this article shared on social media, and someone had a brilliant summary: "They said they wanted 'Starship Troopers' the book, but they wound up making 'Starship Troopers' the movie."
I think that before you can start an analysis/discussion aimed at “lessons learned,” it’s first necessary to ask if anyone in a position of influence exists to listen. In other words, is there anyone with genuine intelligence and integrity left in the Pentagon? Alternately, can you name a single action by NATO that was not counterproductive? Judging solely based upon reality alone, a neutral observer might conclude that NATO is a covert operative of the Russian MoD.
Well, that’s a great question. The Pentagon does seem like a closed circuit at times but I don’t think that’s true. They’re being influenced. But “being influenced” and “being influenced with the correct ideas” aren’t quite the same thing.
I think that before you can start an analysis/discussion aimed at "lessons learned," it's first necessary to ask if anyone in a position of influence exists to listen. In other words, is there anyone with genuine intelligence and integrity left in the Pentagon? Alternately, can you name a single action by NATO that was not counterproductive? Judging solely based upon reality alone, a neutral observer might conclude that NATO is a covert operative of the Russian MoD.
Well, that's a great question. The Pentagon does seem like a closed circuit at times but I don't think that's true. They're being influenced. But "being influenced" and "being influenced with the correct ideas" aren't quite the same thing.
That's funny because I didn't see that comment. Did you see it anywhere in particular?
I have a feeling that this also has to do with the issue of psychological repression problem in the West.
US troops were expelled from Afghanistan not because the Taliban were wearing sandals.
Of course, it was also not because the Taliban’s main weapons were infantry hand-held weapons and not heavy equipment such as tanks and fighter jets.
I think It was simply that the US behaved as an aggressor and imperialist, and the local Afghan public opinion was generally on the side of opposition to it, and resistance became so strong that it was ungovernable.
I think it is the same in Vietnam.
Repeated bombing after bombing, and try to show strength of the Western military-industrial complex (conventional military), the expectation was that region population (insurgencies) would eventually give up, but the anger of the local population has only grown stronger and stronger.
In these battles the US army suffered setbacks, insurgencies achieved win against conventional military.
But of course the cause is not something like “sandals make people stronger”.
Because of the false propaganda of the US and the West to spread democracy around the world, and main stream commentator need to protect this view, so when the debate seems to go in the direction or conclusion that the region’s popular will has rejected them, they substitute strange ideas in an attempt to circumvent that conclusion.
The official view cannot stand the conclusion that “Western imperial purpose were unacceptable to the local population. so locals did strog resistance”.
I have a feeling that this also has to do with the issue of psychological repression problem in the West. US troops were expelled from Afghanistan not because the Taliban were wearing sandals. Of course, it was also not because the Taliban's main weapons were infantry hand-held weapons and not heavy equipment such as tanks and fighter jets. I think It was simply that the US behaved as an aggressor and imperialist, and the local Afghan public opinion was generally on the side of opposition to it, and resistance became so strong that it was ungovernable. I think it is the same in Vietnam. Repeated bombing after bombing, and try to show strength of the Western military-industrial complex (conventional military), the expectation was that region population (insurgencies) would eventually give up, but the anger of the local population has only grown stronger and stronger. In these battles the US army suffered setbacks, insurgencies achieved win against conventional military. But of course the cause is not something like “sandals make people stronger”. Because of the false propaganda of the US and the West to spread democracy around the world, and main stream commentator need to protect this view, so when the debate seems to go in the direction or conclusion that the region's popular will has rejected them, they substitute strange ideas in an attempt to circumvent that conclusion. The official view cannot stand the conclusion that "Western imperial purpose were unacceptable to the local population. so locals did strog resistance".
1
1
1%2527%2522
1%2527%2522