It seems that the US has, out of necessity, been reading up on British force concentration tactics as needed.

"Close cooperation between the Army and colonial administrators who implemented reform and the police who maintained order was essential to the British approach to counterinsurgency."

This approach assumes that the insurgents are Nationals which is not the case in the Middle East where every country is united against a common enemy and is well supplied. Also, the locals are collaborating with the insurgents to the point where a police forces can't be trusted.

"After 1945, the British Army faced a new form of insurgency founded on a revolutionary political ideology and political indoctrination. By then, however, the British approach to small wars included observing what were the accepted counterinsurgency principles of military subordination, use of local resources, intelligence gathering, and the separation of insurgents from their local supporters."

This approach had worked so successful in the past that it was ingrained in the General staff and became the rules of foreign warfare. With military leadership which operated on the principles of versatility and frugal use of supplies, the guerilla forces were matched in numbers and overmatched in intelligence gathering.

"The British Army's campaign in Malaya was in many ways the archetypal counterinsurgency campaign, although it took several years to adopt a good counterinsurgency strategy and 12 years to ultimately defeat the guerrillas."

Notice the time required to achieve this defeat. The US has never allowed their forces the time and cost of such protracted campaigns. We never learned that a professional General staff should make the calls, not politicians. Three years just to learn the enemy and develop strategy, then another twelve to fight the war.

Can the US learn from Britain? Sure, but first, there has to be a change in politics and dissemination of news of every operation to the American people. But the first amendment will always be used against efforts which could succeed if the Walter Cronkites can keep their pie holes shut and let warriors fight wars

25 plus years in northern ireland, and a world class NCO base has made the UK the world leaders in low intensity counter insurgency warfare.
speaking from my own experience sgts and cpls have seen it all before, the teach it to their jocks (privates) who in turn do tours (iraq not NI theese days) they then get promoted and pass on what they have been taught and what they have learned themselves



excuse the typing, i've broke my right arm

Originally Posted by K9Dug

excuse the typing, i've broke my right arm

Let me guess. Football.

accident at work!!! might be on here a lot more in the next few weeks!

Missileer I think you have touched upon a fundamental difference between the US and the UK that prevents us from assimilating the experience from the British troops. Is this directly linked to the Vietnam war or was it always present? I would argue from history that Korea was the first unpopular war in the US and towards the end it received a cold shoulder from the press compared to WWII and before. Vietnam following on its heels seems to have led to more and more outright hostility from the media and the culmination of that trend is what we see in the US political scene today. War has become a feeding frenzy for the disgruntled. The press wield it like a sledgehammer and the public is caught in the crossfire blown about from day to day as evidenced by the surveys of the president's approval ratings.

Bulldog, you mentioned that British General officers were from the gentry. The were almost always connected by blood to Royalty and were either knighted or Lords from family fortunes. That was also the only way one could afford to be accepted to a military academy. I would imagine they would not be questioned as to military strategy very often and given complete control after being assigned to command a campaign.

Most often, the American colonists, and probably other British colonies weren't professional soldiers, thus guerilla warfare was the only way to fight a well trained Army and Marines. Since the British forces were spread pretty thin among the colonies, the command staff adapted quickly to counterinsurgency tactics in so many conflicts that it became a matter of survival to become more proficient than the enemy using their own style of warfare against them. After so many years of the same experience being called upon to fight wars, they evolved from huge Napoleonic army battles to the small, well trained regimental forces by design.

So what of the role of the media in all this?

And a further question that I pondered on the ride in to work... is it the very method of knowledge being handed down in an Army that is its own worst enemy when trying to assimilate lessons learned from sources outside its own force?

Originally Posted by bulldogg

So what of the role of the media in all this?

For one thing, the British press, what there was of it, in the 1700s were pretty careful (IMO) what they printed about National policy. As in, "thou hast really pissed us off." Plus, just as everything else evolved, so did communications. America started out from the get go tongue lashing leaders if they thought something unjust was taking place. From a short time after we became a country, the press took a strong position on what the writer considered moral or immoral.

Originally Posted by bulldogg

And a further question that I pondered on the ride in to work... is it the very method of knowledge being handed down in an Army that is its own worst enemy when trying to assimilate lessons learned from sources outside its own force?

Good one. Look at where a country's future military elite normally has military tactics pounded into their heads, Military Academies. Professors are, by definition tacticians or they wouldn't be in that position. So the future leaders are taught from history with a smattering of personal experience thrown in. I really don't believe General Patton could have formed and commanded a small, agile special operations force made up of even more specialized teams. But don't take him on with a large battle group of armor and artillery. The beginnings of an assimilation of knowledge of how to fight insurgents started in WWII by Lord Mountbatten and George Marshall. I think this site gives more info on the changes in thinking about how effective counterinsurgency specialists are by the US.

http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/vie...-23/90-231.htm

"The same events and pressures that shaped directly or indirectly the major part of American foreign policy during the last twenty years led to the formation and activation of the U.S. Army Special Forces."
"American involvement in post-World War II Southeast Asia had begun. Four years later, in May 1954, the French Army was defeated by the Viet Minh—the Communist-supported Vietnam Independence League— at Dien Bien Phu, and under the Geneva armistice agreement Vietnam was divided into North and South Vietnam. In the course of those four years the policy-makers of the United States had an opportunity to observe the struggle of France with the insurgents and to become familiar with the political and military situation in Vietnam. It was also during those years that the U.S. Army Special Forces came into existence."

"The 1st Special Service Force of World War II is considered the antecedent of the present U.S. Army Special Forces. In the spring of 1942 the British Chief of Combined Operations, Vice Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, introduced to U.S. Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall a project conceived by an English civilian, Geoffrey N. Pike, for the development of special equipment to be used in snow-covered mountain terrain. This plan, named PLOUGH, was designed for attack on such critical points as the hydroelectric plants in Norway upon which the Germans depended for mining valuable ores. American manufacturers working on equipment for the project developed a tracked vehicle known as the Weasel and eventually standardized as the M29."