US infantry individual infantry skills

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ambush RE:US infantry individual infantry skills-kgbduck 11/14/2004 9:44:13 AM

My experience has been that your best units are basically run on "NCO recommendations". I amsort of Old COrps in tah trespect. I cmae form a time when you nomally only saw your fficers was when you went to the field or were in trouble. Of course that is an exaggeration but in my opinion the best units are those run by Platoon Sergeants and Squad Leaders.

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Ehran RE: Ambush 11/14/2004 11:50:01 AM

obviously you are unfamiliar with the canadian training curriculum. Keeping the Beer COLD is week 2. Week 1 is of course spend on "finding beer anywhere, anytime and on the cheap".

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Yimmy RE: Ambush 11/14/2004 1:28:10 PM

How can beer not be cold in Canada? The entire place is friggin cold!

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ripsaw RE:US infantry individual infantry skills-kgbduck 11/15/2004 1:15:15 AM

this has been an institutional problem for a long time. a soldier by the name of richard gabriel wrote a very good book on the problems of the u.s. military. he looked at grenada and compared it with the falklands campaign. the u.s. didn't come off looking so good, largely due to the problem of unit turnover, fear of making mistakes and poor leadership all the way up the chain of command. some other things pointed out were actually funny, like when some airforce clerk on his first enlistment, who hasn't left california, has more rows of ribbons than some israeli general who fought in three wars. there are no bad soldiers, just bad leaders and making excuses gets the wrong people killed

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USN-MID RE:US infantry individual infantry skills-kgbduck 11/15/2004 2:55:20 AM

I'd like to think we've changed quite a bit from Grenada.

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Clausewitz RE:US infantry individual infantry skills 11/15/2004 7:11:08 AM

I would like to remind you that nothing goes as usal if a camera in focused on you. Maybe the scenes of battle we see on TV are faked. In other wars most images were faked. In most situations without enemy contact I watched on TV the marines7soldiers looked very professional. If there was real shooting I got the impression that something was wrong. But I have to remind you too that in urban combat small fire teams (up to 4 soldiers marines) have to stay together if they want to enter a room. I areas without much visibility (dschungle, urban areas) infantry just don't spread itself like in the open. Another impression I got was that we are not informed well on hardware losses. Many of the wounded (on TV) looked like as if they were tank/IFV crews (they got special uniforms given to tank/IFV crews)and they got burns on their hands and elsewhere. So the corpsmen undressed the uniforms. Such burns a typical for tank/IFV crews after being hit by shaped chare warheads (RPG).

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Aussiegunner RE:US infantry individual infantry skills - Clausewitz 11/15/2004 8:41:09 AM

"I would like to remind you that nothing goes as usal if a camera in focused on you. Maybe the scenes of battle we see on TV are faked. In other wars most images were faked. In most situations without enemy contact I watched on TV the marines7soldiers looked very professional. If there was real shooting I got the impression that something was wrong." The professional soldiers I worked with and have met wouldn't be caught dead putting on a fake show for the TV. In any case, you are just guessing that this is the case. I know what I saw and until I see more footage of troops doing a better job, that is what I will go by. "But I have to remind you too that in urban combat small fire teams (up to 4 soldiers marines) have to stay together if they want to enter a room. I areas without much visibility (dschungle, urban areas) infantry just don't spread itself like in the open." I know smaller spaces mean troops have to be closer together, but these guys were literally shoulder to shoulder. They were not inside either, but in open streets with some cover, not being used and enough space to spread out. I even saw some in large groups running from buildings across the street. If you have to cross a street like that, you do it one at a time, or you can all end up dead from one HE round. Associates who have seen active service, including my grandfather, who saw extensive urban combat with the New Zealand army in WW2, said that "spreading out" was about the number one lesson driven home to them by their NCO's. Like I said, I know what I saw and it didn't match up to my training or the anecdotes of soldiers who have served in active duty, who I have had the privilage of associating with.

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AlbanyRifles Were any of us there? 11/15/2004 11:15:55 AM

I would just caution everyone about drawing too many judgements on 30 - 45 second news clips. Were these guys shoulder to shoulder because they were stacking prior to entry into a door?....normal doctrine for urban combat. In urban com,bat you normally respond to a muzzle flash, rather than a seen target. The normal method is then to suppress with everything you got to maneuver your forces to get a kill. Also, doctine has changed also to stay away from a wall or the side of a building by about 12 - 24 inches....bullets and ricochets wil travel along the wall. Also, cover sometimes is relative from where the individual is taking fire. Finally, while there are soem ballsy news cameramen most of the time they are behind where the actual front line of troops is.....because the commander doesn't want them in the way. So are you seeing the platoon in support of the platoon in the assault? And last but not least, half of the Marines for this mission were deployed into Iraq for this.

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Aussiegunner AlbanyRifles and everybody else - please be so kind as to read the thread before posting. 11/15/2004 7:58:06 PM

I have explained in detail that these conclusions were derived from viewing a number of clips, not just one or two, and seeing a distinct pattern, that was backed up by the observations of experience soldiers who have worked with American infantry. I have also explained that they did not involve indoor combat, where naturally the troops are far closer together, but combat in outdoor areas where they should have spread out. I know that some of them were not support troops, because they were referred to as Marine rifle companies and had specialists like snipers and ATGM operators with them. I suppose it is possible that there is a pattern of faking a poor performance for reporters, but I doubt it. In any case, I can only go on what I have seen and what I have heard from others and if I were from a country that pays for these soldiers training, I would be asking some serious questions about it, rather than looking to make excuses. This is the last time I explain these things, because you are all capable for reading the posts already submitted, before commenting.

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USN-MID RE:AlbanyRifles and everybody else - please be so kind as to read the thread before posting. 11/15/2004 8:08:20 PM

I don't think anybody's actually disagreeing with you on the principle of the issues. I also think the only responsible thing is to field an elite force from the get go in all aspects. OTOH, I think combat stress combined with a lack of experience will result in what we've seen so far. You tend to forget things under stress, and the bunching is a natural instinct under fire. Without experience, you don't realize what you're doing is wrong. Thankfully, we've outfitted our troops with better protective gear, so they can learn from their mistakes rather than simply die. I don't think it's the best approach, I'm kinda just saying that's a saving grace. Along with the majority of the insurgents being bad shots I'd presume.

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