Joe, don't worry about it. These idiots will not respond with anything in the way of proof...although they will probably say something like: "Everyone knows this fact..." or some other comp out when they know they are wrong.

Just to thrrow some fuel on the fire, but a mate of mine conducted some exercises with American (I asume National Guard) soldiers, centred around section attacks.

 

His opinion was that the American Infanry were awful and showed no sign of tactics what so ever, with their methods more akin to a human wave attack assaulting in large groups all packed together at the same time.

I'm not sure how much fire there is here.  I can assure you that "human wave attack" isn't listed in FM 7-8.  Beyond that, I'd say it's one persons hand me down bit of experience and I can't speak to the readiness of every unit US Army.

 

That being said, I can completely beleive that he may have had a less than spectactular experience with a National Guard unit (or even an active unit caught at certain point in training / replacement cycle).  I had similar experience's while on active duty training with reserve / guard units.  I went from active duty to the National Guard and was shocked at difference.  However, I don't mean that to reflect on all units.  I'm just dubious of the ability to go from basic training to doing 2-3 days a month and 2 weeks during the summer and learning and retaining what it takes. Not sure how you guys do it with your TA.     

Individual experiences aside, I'd say that US infantry has a pretty good record in combat.  Which is perhaps the only place that really matters.

Dropbear, I wasn't calling  you an idiot at all (#1). My point is that we aren't secondrate infantry or below the average French/British infantrymen. Darth is way out there...I don't really agree with him. I would argue that Western militaries are extremely professional and very close in standards to each other, and that we all specialize a little according to our current military doctrine. I would even say that if you took 1 squad from 2 different western nations (say, the US and Australia), and they swapped armies, there would be very little difference if any between the 2 (kind of a weird comparison, I know).

Also, comparing the entire combat arms side of a Western army to another is completely useless. Soldier A from the US Army with 6 years experience who has served a deployment in Afghanistan and 2 deployments in Iraq is probably a better soldier than Soldier B from the British Army who has 1 years experience with no deployments...etc, etc.

I would even say that if
you took 1 squad from 2 different western nations (say, the US and
Australia), and they swapped armies, there would be very little
difference if any between the 2 (kind of a weird comparison, I know).




i see where you are going with this but i've a feeling the culture
shock would be a bigger factor than you think.  brits, aussies and
canucks for example would probably slot into each others forces fairly
easily (once you get past the others speaking something near english
that is) but for any of them to slot into an american company would be
a much bigger transition.

Yeah, I think the culture shock would be something.  I can tell you I was pretty shocked at the equivalent of a "beer tent" being errected just the other side of some of the small arms ranges during a range week with Australian troops (part of my earlier comments with DropBear)  

You are also dead on with language bit .  Each branch of the military seems to have their own subset dialect of "English"..  combine that with an English speaker from a different continent and there is bound to be some confusion.

 

I imagine while we probably do "most" things similar, there are enough differences in SOPs that it would probably take some time to adjust.  From my experience, there are those types of differences even with in the US military. 

Seeing one NG/USAR unit in action does not come close to seeing how the NG and reserves operate. Having been an Observer/Controller for NG/reserve troops for a number of years, I have seen major differences in units, even units in the same state. Training status in the NG system is money driven. Deployment status decides how much money they get to train, and training status (should, sometimes does, sometimes doesn't) drives the unit deployment status.

 

I have seen NG units that I would go through the gates of hell with, and I've seen units that I wouldn't trust to guard a twinkie factory. The same holds true for active component units. A good company commander can make a unit, but all it takes to break a unit for a long time is a bad leadership group.