British Army Excels at Counter Insurgency

bulldogg

bulldogg

Milforum's Bouncer
The British Army has excelled in small-unit, antiguerrilla warfare as they did in other aspects of counterinsurgency. History had given them an army that was relatively small and decentralized and, therefore, ideally suited to such warfare. Since Britain is an island nation, the navy and not the army has been its first line of defense. Distrusted and underfunded, the junior service was thus relatively unaffected by the revolution in size and organization experienced by continental armies during the nineteenth century. -Thomas R. Mockaitis
Click to expand...

http://www.army.mil/professionalwriting/volumes/volume3/november_2005/11_05_2.html

Please read the rest of this linked article before commenting in an attempt to have a more informed debate. I am seriously interested in the thoughts of some of you as to the proposed thesis of this paper that there is a salient military culture that not only influences the behaviour of an army but acts as a collective intellect guiding its actions.
 
The British Army has been fighting this sort of warfare for hundreds of years. Kipling called it the great game in his books about India when the British Army fought all sorts that came down through the Khyber Pass to ferment trouble. Since the end of WW2 Britain has fought in Malaya, Kenya, Cyprus, Palestine, French Indo Chine [Vietnam] Korea, British Honduras, Borneo, Aden , Radfan and in Egypt in fact the only year since the end of WW2 that a British soldier has not been killed in COMBAT is 1967, now nearly all this work has been counter insurgency so this is one of the reasons they look good is the constance practise they have at it.
 
The US 2nd Ranger Bn was trained in mountain climbing tactics by British Commandos before the Pointe du Hoc assault. The Commandos were experts at this type of warfare for many years of covert actions.
 
Yes, this is wonderful guys but it in no way addresses the question I posed. Is there a collective conscience or intellect that guides an army as suggested in the article linked in the opening post or is it simply a matter of experienced handed down from one generation of NCO's and Officers to the next or is that process the actual conscience and intellect of an Army?

No one is arguing the historical facts of the British Army's extensive experience in the field of counter-insurgency THAT would be an exercise in self-congratulatory grab arse that would be of little or no benefit. The point is what is the benefit gained in a broad sense from those experiences and how does it guide the current actions in tactics, strategy AND policy?? And further to the point of the original article was how can other armies learn from this experience?
 
bulldogg said:
Yes, this is wonderful guys but it in no way addresses the question I posed. Is there a collective conscience or intellect that guides an army as suggested in the article linked in the opening post or is it simply a matter of experienced handed down from one generation of NCO's and Officers to the next or is that process the actual conscience and intellect of an Army?

No one is arguing the historical facts of the British Army's extensive experience in the field of counter-insurgency THAT would be an exercise in self-congratulatory grab arse that would be of little or no benefit. The point is what is the benefit gained in a broad sense from those experiences and how does it guide the current actions in tactics, strategy AND policy?? And further to the point of the original article was how can other armies learn from this experience?
Click to expand...

I believe that it is a collective intellect that guides the army. In the napoleonic wars we had to fight against a much larger army, and this required new techniques of fighting as we could not match the french armies for size. It is then the previous operations in india, africa etc. that again needed the same tactics to be used - smaller, decentralized units. that again showed that this style of fighting suits what the requirements of the British army are.
The intellect guiding the army would not have been sucessful though without the experience of the NCOs and officers being passed down, like they only could with a fully professional army, that is why armies using draftees does not have the same knowledge as the soldiers are not there long enough for the experience to be passed down or built up.
If the culture had not been there of fighting with small decentralized groups then i doubt we would of succeeded in malaya or northern ireland as the culture without the intellect guiding it would be like we are seeing from the US in iraq 'shock and awe' etc. that does not win the hearts and minds of the local population and makes them seem very arrogant.
Hope you can see what im trying to say.
 
And Indonesia to chase those Malayans (along with the Aussie SAS).

Whoops, that's right... WE NEVER WENT THERE! :oops: ;)
(wink wink, nudge nudge)
 
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."
Click to expand...

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."
Click to expand...

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."
Click to expand...

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
 
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?
 
bulldogg said:
So what of the role of the media in all this?
Click to expand...

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.

bulldogg said:
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?
Click to expand...

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/vietnam/90-23/90-231.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."
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top