Lack of training reduces the best equipment into a static target. Russians would not be knocking out Leopard 1s, let alone Leopard 2s, if they had proper crews, and more importantly, proper logistics. NATO likes to brag how they are training Uk troops to NATO standard, but results in the ground say otherwise. One must wonder where all that post 2014 CIA coup NATO training that supposedly went on is. because I haven't seen any sign that your basic Uk infantryman is any better trained or led than the Russian conscript opposing him.
This is not to say I think NATO should be involved at all, nor that NATO should have expanded east from Germany since 1991.
While I too laughed pretty damn hard at the Ukrainian tactic of just driving straight into a minefield, what training do you think the West has that could change the outcome here?
We've focused for more than two decades on counter insurgency, under the very foolish assumption of permanent air superiority. We do not have the tactical, strategic or operative experience to actually fight conventional warfare any longer.
I agree, we don't have the experience to fight in that sort of environment any more. If there is still anyone in uniform that still knows how to do it, they are now so senior in rank as to make their experience useless.
Training to fight a near peer with a combined arms army is something the West once did, back in the 1980s, and still practiced into the 1990s. Word is that the US Army is trying to focus on this sort of thing again, after so long doing the CO-IN thing, but I doubt it is going well, inertia is hard to overcome.
This discussion has come up more than once in the signal group I am in. It has lots of older cold war guys who used to do it professionally, and younger guys who mostly did the counter insurgency stuff.
Lack of training reduces the best equipment into a static target. Russians would not be knocking out Leopard 1s, let alone Leopard 2s, if they had proper crews, and more importantly, proper logistics. NATO likes to brag how they are training Uk troops to NATO standard, but results in the ground say otherwise. One must wonder where all that post 2014 CIA coup NATO training that supposedly went on is. because I haven't seen any sign that your basic Uk infantryman is any better trained or led than the Russian conscript opposing him.
This is not to say I think NATO should be involved at all, nor that NATO should have expanded east from Germany since 1991.
While I too laughed pretty damn hard at the Ukrainian tactic of just driving straight into a minefield, what training do you think the West has that could change the outcome here?
We've focused for more than two decades on counter insurgency, under the very foolish assumption of permanent air superiority. We do not have the tactical, strategic or operative experience to actually fight conventional warfare any longer.
I agree, we don't have the experience to fight in that sort of environment any more. If there is still anyone in uniform that still knows how to do it, they are now so senior in rank as to make their experience useless.
Training to fight a near peer with a combined arms army is something the West once did, back in the 1980s, and still practiced into the 1990s. Word is that the US Army is trying to focus on this sort of thing again, after so long doing the CO-IN thing, but I doubt it is going well, inertia is hard to overcome.
This discussion has come up more than once in the signal group I am in. It has lots of older cold war guys who used to do it professionally, and younger guys who mostly did the counter insurgency stuff.
Part of the reason we have endless wars is to keep our military trained.