Here’s a hypothetical. Lets say you signed join the military as a plain ole’ front-line infantry rifleman. Your division of 15,000 men has the potential to be sent into one of two theaters of battle:
OPTION A - Your division will participate in one massive battle that will consist of several days of intense combat. Think the Battle of Ia Drang, Iwo Jima or the Normandy landings. Casualties will be high and the fighting will be brutal.
OPTION B - Your division will participate in a long, low intensity conflict similar to the current conflicts in Afghanistan or Iraq. Actions will mostly consist of small unit patrols, skirmishes and contact with snipers, IEDs, and boobytraps. Ultimately total casualties will be the same, however in OPTION B, they will be spread out over a much longer period and take place at a rate of a few a day.
Which would you prefer?
I’ll take Option B. Even though it’s the same mathematically, with smart choices and a good division/squad, I think my chance of surviving is much higher in B. In A it’s almost a total crapshoot.
With all respect to the OP, it isn’t a very good question given the qualifier: “Ultimately total casualties will be the same.”
That makes the actual question irrelevant, as it’s summed up more easily: “Would you rather die quickly, or die slowly?” Battles and counterinsurgencies and etc. have nothing to do with that question.
Now, taking the original question WITHOUT the qualifier: there’s no contest, you take Option B. Low-intensity conflicts and counterinsurgencies are historically far less lethal for armed combatants than traditional battle, regardless of the timescale.
American casualties in nearly nine years of war in Afghanistan recently topped 1,000 dead. Union casualties at the Battle of Cold Harbor topped 1,800 in less than nine hours.
Now, low-intensity conflicts can be very HIGH intensity at times, particularly for non-combatants caught in the crossfire, or the “losing” side (for instance, no one knows how many Al Qaeda and regime dead-enders died in the Iraq War, but the numbers are assuredly quite high).
But for the most part, traditional warfare is something no one wants to get involved with, for good reason.
By the given scenario, A, even if I was slightly less likely to die in B. Don’t know where I’d flip on that; probably around 60% as likely to die. (Though it also matters how long I’d be over; if it was only a year, maybe 80%?)
To an infabntry man the larger picture is irrelevant. Your divison, corps, ar,y or hell even brigade regiment and battalion might be heavily enaged, you may not be and vice versa. Even in Stalingradm, Kursk, Normandy etc some sectors were quite. While in Iraq some units have seen exceptionally heavy action.
At Waterloo famously some British officers were unsure whetehr they had even been in a battle that evening. while at Little Round Top at Gettysburg one Coy ofr the 20th Maine was positioned at a sector where they saw little fighting, the rest of the regiment, not so much.
Indeed in the World at war, I think there is a point where some British soldier remembers that he saw little actual fighting at El Alamein or Gazala, but his platoon was destroyed in an ambush during the reletivly quite months after Operation Torch.
Point being that there is little if any correlation b/w the action that a formation sees and how much an individual soldier see.
Scenario A. I think the constant low-level stress in B would take its toll psychologically on me if it was spread out over too long of a period. You start distrusting people and situations much more than if you have one intense period.
Also, I think the low level stress would make it hard to sleep at night, further enhancing the stress and making me constantly tired and dull-minded. That would increase the chances of me making potentially life-threatening mistakes. On the other hand, I can handle little sleep for short periods better in my opinion.
How is that possible? Of course there’s a correlation. If a formation sees more action, individual soldiers also do on average, individual exceptions not withstanding.
**AK84 **and davekhps, (and others) basically the spirit of the question is more or less whether you would prefer to be tossed into a meatgrinder or deal with the long, slow monotony of attrition. I get that in reality, these situations aren’t neccessarily mutually exclusive.
I had the idea the other night while watching The Pacific, Saving Private Ryan and The Colbert Report where his guest was an author who had just spent some time at a military outpost in Afghanistan.
I have to think Option B might be the way to go. It seems like your survival might be more affected by training and skill. Option A seems like it would simply be overwhelming.
But the more elite units probably landed first didnt they?
As a non-elite getting on in age type, that makes option A even more attractive to me. The chances of me getting to be that elite ‘see its coming’ type of soldier arent so good.
Option C: cut off the supply routes along the perimeter, bomb the center. Option A involves a needless waste of life if I have superior firepower, and Option B would give the advantage to a smaller, less equipped, domestic force if I have the advantage in technology.
You’re not Sun Tzu. You’re one of his foot soldiers. Your choice is to join the unit that will cut off the supply route to the East by storming a massive, heavily defended mountaintop fortress that guards the main highway or to join the other unit that will cut off the supply route to the West by endlessly patrolling the jungle the enemy is sneaking supplies through.
I know a few people with various levels of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, ranging from “that dudes a bit odd” to “its a wonder this guy can lead a normal life”.
I would suspect a long term low intensity conflict (with rare moments of shear terror) would be much more likely on average to create this type of mental problem than one massive short battle.
Maybe more description here? I’m assuming you are comparing the Battle of Normandy vs Vietnam or Iraq, and the invading force has superior weapon technology over the domestic force. In this example, I would recommend long-distance bombardment via howitzer or plane, and the ground troops could just mine the supply route and/or create a choke point and guard that area only.
I’m for one massive battle and be done with it. Long term conflict, even a bad marriage can make you see the beauty of a quicky divorce vs. a long, drawn out, expensive and unnecessary divorce. I’m thinking of the futility of the movie, “The War Of The Roses”.