Evolution of weapons in modern warfare.

[n9nwo]

What career management field for 30 years?

Was this all active, or a combo of Guard and Active?

Ambush tactics are as old as the hills for any dissimilar unit strength faced with occupying armies.

Focusing on logistics is time-honored as well. Do you hit the pipe-hitters who look like they're ready to face-shoot anyone who makes a sudden move, or the support troops who ferry their beans, bullets, and band-aids?

I don't know of any military today who has even an inkling of wanting to go toe-to-toe with the US, since we have numerical superiority, logistics trains that are unprecedented in human history, with the ability to run bombing sorties that never end if we don't want them to.

After the First Gulf War, not many Generals and Admirals around the world were feeling confident in their armies, since we decimated Saddam's in a matter of 100 hours, and he had one of the largest, with more fresh wartime experience than the US in conventional warfare with Iran, another of the largest armies in the world who were equipped with cutting-edge US technology even.

In Vietnam, irregular warfare was the name of the game, making us think that massive human wave assaults were the main effort, when it was really a slimy little sapper team with satchel charges that took out C2 bunker, ASP, crew-served weapons, mortars, then slipped out if possible under the melee of the assault.

Any time a smaller force has been faced with a larger, more capable one, they have had to be very inventive with how they avoid their enemy's strengths, while exploiting his weaknesses. A treatise on this dates back to antiquity.

We just throw smaller, faster stones nowadays, with better ways of distributing flammable materials for mass effects.

All true.

However we have too many, especially in the officer ranks, who like the big wars as the metrics are better for OERs. Real World as we have been doing over the last 20 years, and that we are up against insurgents rather than a massive military, has made it tough on the career officer career. It is much like the Army coming off of the Civil War with its big, glorious battles then having to go off to the west to fight Indians. Instead of "civilized" war, they faced ambush attacks, long patrols, and isolation from civilized society.