Ladakh Flash Point

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Richard Santos

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solarz said:
Yes, it's a serious question.

You're the one claiming Iraqi national troops trained and equipped by the US is not a "real army". So what constitutes a "real army" in your definition?
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the iraqi national army trained by the US is at best a militia. you don’t create a real army in 1-2 years, or a real modern one in even 5-10.

A real army combines the following:
1. tactical and operational doctrine - a consistent understand across relevant ranks of how the army should fight, what the role of different parts of the unit should be, how the army unit should react to circumstances as they arise, how the army units should communicate, what type of decision should be made at which level, how to resolve any conflicts between direction/order/objective and actual circumstances
2. logistic structure - effective system to keep forces supplied with fuel, food, ammunition, medical support, morale maintenance, casualty and losses replacement, entrenchments and field fortifications.
3. training - enable all levels of the troops to perform their roles specified in the doctrine effectively, as well as have flexibility to adapt to make up for any shortfall in doctrine, logistics, and equipment
4. equipment - the hardware needed to pull off the doctrine and facilitate the logistics.

when two real large scale modern army fight, even if there is considerable discrepancy between their qualities, the outcome of the battle is usually not determined by morale or discipline. rather, discrepancy in morale or discipline is only thrown into high relief after the outcome of the battle has already been determined by discrepancies in doctrine, logistics, and equipment.

In other words, the bad morale and discipline of the losing side is most often the result of the fact that it has already been beaten, not really the other way around.

The battles between real armies where doctrine, training, logistics and size of force engaged are closely enough to being evenly matched, and a priori morale and discipline becomes the deciding factor, is relatively few and far in between. Usually when it happens the armies involved were more militia than army anyway, and whose claim to being real armies are tenuous at best.
 
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Richard Santos

Captain
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basically, the reason why the iraqi forces deserted their tanks is probably because their crews had zero confidence in their infantry support, which could be chalked up to the forces have not been indoctrinated and trained in proper combined arms tactics. Without infantry support, tanks have little chance against entrenched enemy infantry with antitank weapons in improvised field fortifications. so iraqi tankmen probably did the right thing because they woujdn’t made any difference if they stayed and fought.

To be crude, I might say Iraq armored force is a militia of tractor drivers with some route march and formation drill, not a trained part of a combined arms ground force.

But I suspect you can still get these iraqis worked up with good pep talk to get them to go crack some heads in a brawl if you tell them the opposition will also have nothing more than sticks and stones, and they looked at iraqi women the wrong way.
 
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solarz

solarz

Brigadier
Richard Santos said:
the iraqi national army trained by the US is at best a militia. you don’t create a real army in 1-2 years, or a real modern one in even 5-10.

A real army combines the following:
1. tactical and operational doctrine - a consistent understand across relevant ranks of how the army should fight, what the role of different parts of the unit should be, how the army unit should react to circumstances as they arise, how the army units should communicate, what type of decision should be made at which level, how to resolve any conflicts between direction/order/objective and actual circumstances
2. logistic structure - effective system to keep forces supplied with fuel, food, ammunition, medical support, morale maintenance, casualty and losses replacement, entrenchments and field fortifications.
3. training - enable all levels of the troops to perform their roles specified in the doctrine effectively, as well as have flexibility to adapt to make up for any shortfall in doctrine, logistics, and equipment
4. equipment - the hardware needed to pull off the doctrine and facilitate the logistics.

when two real large scale modern army fight, even if there is considerable discrepancy between their qualities, the outcome of the battle is usually not determined by morale or discipline. rather, discrepancy in morale or discipline is only thrown into high relief after the outcome of the battle has already been determined by discrepancies in doctrine, logistics, and equipment.

In other words, the bad morale and discipline of the losing side is most often the result of the fact that it has already been beaten, not really the other way around.

The battles between real armies where doctrine, training, logistics and size of force engaged are closely enough to being evenly matched, and a priori morale and discipline becomes the deciding factor, is relatively few and far in between. Usually when it happens the armies involved were more militia than army anyway, and whose claim to being real armies are tenuous at best.
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Sure, and the Iraqi army had all of what you listed: doctrine, logistics, training, and equipment.

Remind me why it's not a real army again?
 
solarz

solarz

Brigadier
Richard Santos said:
basically, the reason why the iraqi forces deserted their tanks is probably because their crews had zero confidence in their infantry support, which could be chalked up to the forces have not been indoctrinated and trained in proper combined arms tactics. Without infantry support, tanks have little chance against entrenched enemy infantry with antitank weapons in improvised field fortifications. so iraqi tankmen probably did the right thing because they woujdn’t made any difference if they stayed and fought.

To be crude, I might say Iraq armored force is a militia of tractor drivers with some route march and formation drill, not a trained part of a combined arms ground force.

But I suspect you can still get these iraqis worked up with good pep talk to get them to go crack some heads in a brawl if you tell them the opposition will also have nothing more than sticks and stones, and they looked at iraqi women the wrong way.
Click to expand...

Or maybe it's because the Iraqi infantry fled first because they had poor morale and discipline?
 
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Richard Santos

Captain
Registered Member
solarz said:
Sure, and the Iraqi army had all of what you listed: doctrine, logistics, training, and equipment.

Remind me why it's not a real army again?
Click to expand...

No it didn’t.

Doctrine don’t just exist on paper. It has to be understood and practiced before it means anything. You can’t go from reading it in a book to applying in battle 1-2 years.

It’s training is iffy. Who trained them? How many qualified trainer per recruit? The US probably turned out more Iraqi grunts than american grunts during the same period. Where did the qualified trainers come from?

Logistics. But logistics is a complex process with its own doctrine. See the section about doctrine.

Only in equipment, maybe it vaguely resembled a real army.
 
solarz

solarz

Brigadier
Richard Santos said:
No it didn’t.

Doctrine don’t just exist on paper. It has to be understood and practiced before it means anything. You can’t go from reading it in a book to applying in battle 1-2 years.

It’s training is iffy. Who trained them? How many qualified trainer per recruit? The US probably turned out more Iraqi grunts than american grunts during the same period. Where did the qualified trainers come from?

Logistics. But logistics is a complex process with its own doctrine. See the section about doctrine.

Only in equipment, maybe it vaguely resembled a real army.
Click to expand...

Classic "No true Scotsman" fallacy.

You don't think poor training has any effect on morale and discipline? Where do you think those PLA soldiers besieged by Indian soldiers get the morale and discipline to throw back wave after waves of Indian attacks?
 
R

Richard Santos

Captain
Registered Member
solarz said:
Classic "No true Scotsman" fallacy.

You don't think poor training has any effect on morale and discipline? Where do you think those PLA soldiers besieged by Indian soldiers get the morale and discipline to throw back wave after waves of Indian attacks?
Click to expand...


When you say all scotsman have feet and not paws, and point to a dog and say that is not a true Scotsman, you are not committing the no true Scotsmen fallacy.
 
rhino123

rhino123

Pencil Pusher
VIP Professional
Actually when someone jumped in and say that morale is actually of no use in future war and that was not the making of a real army, I will just ignore the said person. When the Indian ambushes unarmed Chinese negotiators, I would imagine that the Indians had chosen these ambushers well... No one in their right minds will just go about choosing ambushers any old how. And these chosen 'warriors' got knock out by 'men from the street with little training' and immediately these are not the show of good warriors. So these people are saying US is wasting time and money training troops up physically, bcos war can be won by pressing a few buttons? Or was it that the Chinese showed resilience and guts... But are suddenly just a selected handful... While the rest of the PLA was a bunch of farmers in uniform running around with sticks and rotans.
 
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