You get further with a kind word and a gun than with a gun alone.
Sorry.
Cite?
Regards,
Shodan
Afghanistan
Community Policing
Vietnam
Hamas
I can’t believe you’re asking for a cite.
Try using a kind word and a gun with ISIS. The gun is fine but while you’re saying the kind word to one the other will be cutting your head off.
Sure, absolutely. The way you do it is you talk to the people in town, using kind words. Show them your gun also, tell them you’re looking for ISIS, you understand they’ve got agents in town. Use the intel you gather to find the agents and take them out.
What’s going on here? Is “hearts and minds” something y’all have never heard of, or are you just arguing with me out of reflex?
Which of these are Ranger missions? Not military missions overall, that’s something else.
Regards,
Shodan
Sigh. You’re moving the goalposts, but I’m not gonna follow.
So it’s “moving the goalposts” to ask for examples of specifically Ranger missions in a thread discussing Rangers specifically.
:shrugs:
Regards,
Shodan
To be frank, he moved the goal posts back to the thread subject. The fact is the Rangers are a commando unit, not a math or liason unit. The skill set required is just not as wide as say the Green Berets. That being the case, we really should expect that the top candidates are almost always going to be men like any top athletic team would be.
If that’s what I said, that’d be what I said. It’s not, though. You can confirm that by rereading the exchange.
I know it’s easier to argue with someone if you reimagine what they say to be something different from what they actually said. But then, you’re not actually arguing with them any more, are you?
So enjoy that argument you’re having with the imaginary version of me. I’d wish you luck, but I’m sure you’ll win it!
I agree with Shodan here, as I understand this exchange. LHOD asserted that “You get further with a kind word and a gun than with a gun alone” and Shodan is suggesting this may not be true of ranger missions specifically due to the nature of these missions.
I don’t see any goal post moving here, or any substantive response from LHOD. Just weaseling and snark.
Sigh. LHoD, you decided to make a hijack out of Shodan’s silly throwaway cliche and now you decide to act haughty because he brings it back to the actual subject of the thread.
Did we ever clarify that “graduates of Ranger School” (which is the group under discussion) are actually likely to be on “ranger missions”?
From discussions upthread, it seems members of the 75th Rangers, which is the group that actually performs “ranger missions,” usually but not necessarily graduated Ranger School, and lots of people who never serve as rangers DO graduate that school. What are the relative proportions of these two groups among the graduates?
Are we sure and positive that the school’s actual role (not its stated purpose, but the role it actually serves in the modern army) is to prepare people for “ranger missions”?
Determining what the school’s graduates actually do, what their missions actually are, would seem to be a necessary first step in deciding what kinds of characteristics are required to perform those missions.
Sigh. Bullshit.
The central question, as I’ve maintained all along, is whether ranger qualifications and missions are actually the best that we can do, or whether they’re designed around the capabilities of the upper-body-strength dudes that were the only folks eligible for them. Any response that, as Shodan’s did, reiterates what ranger missions have traditionally been is unresponsive.
I responded as I did to his silly comment because his silly comment was just reiterating the central point that I’m questioning.
You seriously think Ranger training focuses around upper body strength? The course outline is available if you want to go from just asking questions to specific arguments.
And when you say “are these missions the best we can do” are you saying maybe they shouldn’t be a commando unit? I don’t see how you have any justification for hand waving away their traditional function. That’s why they were created. It’s not like they are the only unit in the military. Other groups can perform the functions that you are idly wondering that maybe the Rangers could do.
Per wikipedia, an average class at the Ranger School has 366 students, and they have 11 classes a year. Given that about half graduate, that means they are graduating somewhere in the vicinity of 2000 students a year.
Meanwhile, the 75th Ranger Regiment has an authorized strength of 3566 military personnel.
I am going to assume for the purposes of argument that the Army, having devoted quite a lot of time and money training somebody, would like them to stick around for more than 21 months after graduating Ranger School, and likewise I assume that a soldier who has been through the rigors of Ranger School plans a military career longer than 21 months.
If those assumptions are true (and feel free to argue them), then the numbers don’t work. If people stay Rangers for more than 21 months, but the Ranger School graduates an entire body of replacements every 21 months, then some proportion of graduates don’t serve in the Rangers, and DON’T participate in commando raids and other traditional “ranger missions.”
If an average tenure in the Rangers is four years, then more than half of Ranger School graduates will never go on “ranger missions.” If average tenure is six years, that percentage rises to two-thirds. CarnalK, LHoD, Shodan, Fotheringay-Phipps: any of you have better information?
slash2k, I can’t say your line of thought is necessarily correct. Just because some people only use the Ranger badge as a feather in their military cap for future promotion rather than Ranger missions does not mean we should discard the school’s primary mission. A quarter of lawyers who pass the bar don’t practice law. Should law schools thus stop training people to be lawyers?
The Ranger school allows other branches to attend the school* as well as regular infantry. I’m sure plenty of missions benefit from having a Ranger qualified soldier around without it being an explicit Ranger mission.
*Air Force apparently only gets 6 slots per year.
Turn that around, though: if only a quarter of a law school’s graduates ever practice law in a courtroom, should the school’s primary mission be to train courtroom lawyers, and should the school’s entrance requirements be limited to those with the necessary capabilities to perform well in a courtroom?
Or should the requirements and the training focus on the kinds of jobs that graduates will actually perform? For example, many “non-practicing” law school grads work in law-related fields such as compliance or finance, where law-school skills such as thinking and writing analytically, synthesizing research, interpreting statute and case law, etc., come in really handy, and law schools teach those skills too. Are the skills and requirements of Ranger School likewise applicable or transferable to the kinds of jobs Ranger School graduates are assigned?
And arguments about “Ranger qualified soldier” come right back around to what qualifies? Are you looking for leadership ability or ability to lug 100 pounds for so many miles? If the mission is not a commando mission, what are the most important skills FOR THAT MISSION?