Back to the OP:
Another thing that hasn’t been mentioned is first aid and combat lifesaver skills. That is another valuable skill that can be taught.
If, as your experience seems to indicate, it’s a waste of time, why continue with this effort? Is it for political gain? Iraqi/Afhan nascent troop moral? Mollification… what?
So what are the lessons learned, based on your experience with training and what do you anticipate the results will be with respect to training the ‘FSA’?
Basically, your related experience validates my opinion that it’s a complete waste of time to keep sending ‘advisers’ to that part of the world, since at the first sign of hostile action, the local troops will turn tail and run regardless of fire/personnel superiority. The latest decision to send in advisers to train untrainable troops that we supposedly already trained is just wasted money and effort.
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This has been seen in many military organisations in Third World cultures around the world. Imparting instruction is one thing. Changing mindsets is quite another. Many of these people have no concept of leadership, beyond personal charisma. Setting an example to be emulated is foreign to them. “First my men, then myself” is foreign to them. Taking a chewing-out, accepting it and moving on is foreign to them. Sinking one’s personal interest in the common goal is foreign to them. e.g., if you have been sent on an expensive technical course in America and returned with a box full of technical literature the last thing you want to do is start training people to do the stuff you have learned. Your newly acquired knowledge now makes you indispensable and that literature goes straight in your office safe and stays there. Acquiring status, rank, and wealth is your goal, not improving unit efficiency.
That was certainly my experience working with indigenous Air Force & Army personnel all across Latin America back in the Reagan era. Some units & people were better than others, but none were much good.
As a Marine Corps fireteam leader I have shown foreign friendlies how ‘spray and pray’ tactics don’t work. It doesn’t matter the noise of their burst…all that matters are hits.
What am I misinformed about? How have I failed people in the training of small unit tactics?
I’m curious: do you think they learned from you?
Bear_Nenno says his attempts to teach were a complete waste of time.
Also, how does this total lack of combat discipline work on the battlefield? Say, in Syria right now. When Isis-aligned gangs fight Al-qaeda aligned gangs, and we read in the news that a certain city has fallen to the attackers. Obviously, somebody wins, even with their lousy training and discipline.
Now I have heard one lesson picked up by Iraqis from working with Americans is that people of different races and religions can work together.
Have you all seen this?
I’ve heard of foreign soldiers surprised that an American force consisted of soldiers of different races and backgrounds and they start wondering why they have their internal disputes.
Bear
I certainly don’t have the same amount of experience that you do. But in my experience the only ones worth a damn were the Pesh. Did you have any experience with them?
Bear_Nenno, is it possible that you’re just not a very good teacher? I mean, I’m sure that you’re good at combat tactics and unit discipline and all of the other things you were trying to teach, but being good at those things isn’t the same thing as being good at teaching them. Do you also have experience trying to teach these things to new American recruits, for comparison? Boot camp drill instructors are heavily underappreciated, but they’re educators, and many of them are damn good ones.
And to everyone wondering about the question in general, remember, we’ve been on the other side of this process ourselves. Remember from your history courses, the role that Lafayette played in the American Revolution? What France did with us is the same thing we’re trying to do with our new allies.
Bear was an Army Drill Sergeant.
In my experience, the Soviets taught their soldiers marksmanship even if they didn’t mythologize it as we tend to do in the US. Marksmanship instruction began in middle school as part of PE classes for both sexes and continued until graduation. The young men then received additional instruction during their training for two years of compulsory service. Overall, they actually received more training and trigger time than a typical American Army or Marine Corps recruit, I expect. Definitely more than a Seaman or Airman gets. I have shot with a good many Soviet-era veterans and their wives. When handed an example of a weapon they trained on (AK, SKS, Makarov, Dragunov) they were all competent marksmen, even if they hadn’t fired a weapon since discharge.
Soviet doctrine emphasized massed fire, but that fire wasn’t random.
I don’t think that’s an apt comparisson. Culturally, the french and the english were no strangers to one another. Teaching farmers to be soldiers was a challenge, but not as big a challenge as the one the west faces when it comes to middle eastern cultures.
OK, I did not know that. If you really are making an informed comparison, then I accept that the Middle Eastern trainees really are just harder to train.
And Quicksilver, I didn’t say that we were doing the same thing that Lafayette did. I said we were trying to. That doesn’t mean we’re succeeding.
Fair enough. But we’ve been trying for a very long time without success. Up thread, I asked what the ‘lessons learned’ were with regards to western involvement in the area to date as far as getting our ‘alies’ to learn to fend for themselves in the face of insurgencies like ISIS. It seems like the US has learned nothing and is about to train and arm the FSA to prove once again that they’ve learned nothing.
But it’s hard for me to believe that no lessons were learned given the posts by Bear_Nenno. So why does the US insist on continuing to do more of the same?
regrettably, there seems to be no viable alternative. Either we attempt to train “friendlies”, send in US troops, or do nothing. Obama has been trying the last for some time. Even that hasn’t worked. No one publicly wants to send in US troops. What is left? And while Arabs aren’t going to learn either western military tactics or western democracy, there can be winners there. Perhaps this time around the US can find a way to have “friendlies” win. I’m not holding my breath, but it isn’t going to cost much and creates a US footprint where we can interdict some bad things.
A very good friend of mine, now a full bird colonel, trained officer candidates from the ME. His opinion was that they were the worst soldiers in the world, even compared to some irregular forces.
At one point in my varied Army career I attended Armor Officer Basic at Fort Knox. We only had one foreign officer in our class which was unusual. He was a Bosnian Croat. A great guy and a very good officer. But most of the foreign officers that would go through the officer training tended to be from the Middle East. They had a very bad reputation. Mostly because officers from those countries tended to be spoiled rich kids. When you are a young lieutenant being trained with a bunch of other lieutenants guess who is doing all the hard work? If your tank busts track there are no privates around. It’s a bunch of LTs turning the wrenches. Lots of ME officers expected everything to be done for them. And there was nothing that could be done if they refused to work. Of course that is a much different demographic than who is being trained in Iraq or Afghanistan. It was the younger sons of oil barons of countries like Saudi Arabia or Kuwait.
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