Wolfie, Wolfie, what in the world are you trying to say, there are literally thousands of Posts by bd, Jeff, Navy Reco, TP, and the Eng and that just scratches the surface, combat is combat, no one is better equipped or trained than the US military and our Allies, we have trained like we intend to fight, training that is so intense and realistic that it is nearly as realistic as the real thing, in fact a lot of good people die it is so real.
Well, can you not see the inherent contradition in what you just said? Either combat is combat (and nothing comes close), or training can be so intensive and realitic that it is almost as good as the real thing. In fact, you have been quite careful in your choice of wording, which I applaud you for, but I have often seen people, including active or retired members of US and western military's state that combat was easy compared to training.
The point I was trying to make is that in the real world, either one or the other of those statements can be true at any one time, but they cannot both be true at the same time. The reason for that is the challenge real combat offers, and hence the experience and skill soldiers can learn from it, is directly proportional to the capabilities and skill of the enemy.
So, either you are facing a hopelessly outmatched opponent who cannot even fight back, in which case training really is far harder than the 'real thing', or you are facing a capable and well equipped foe who can give you a good run for your moneny, in which case there is simply no substitute for the real thing.
You will never find me arguing against the hard won experience and expertise US and western ground forces have gained in close quarters combat, co-ordinating close air support and airborne assault etc, because they were truely challenged and forced to adapt and change the way they operate compared to what they trained for by a smart and determined enemy in those fields, and that experience and knowledge was incorporated into training programmes. That is how real combat can greatly improve a military.
However, nothing of the sort has happened for the USAF or USN, because there was no enemy for those service branches to really fight against. Their involvement in recent US led wars have largely been limited to CAS, long range missile strikes and the such, and they have no doubt improved in those fields from that experience. But they faced no enemy fighters or warships, so how can you or anyone else honestly argue that for US seamen and pilots, that they gained any real insight into fighting other fighter jets or modern enemy warships from their time in support of the various recent US led military adventures around in world that they did not already know?
I do not doubt what Popeye has said about US forces continuing to train hard even in war time, but the undeniable fact is that when you are operationally deployed, you simply do not have nearly as much time and energy for training as you would do if you were back home and training was pretty much all you did.
When you are deployed to a war zone, you need to put in the hours to fly CAP and be on standby for a CAS call. In addition, equipment availablity will inevitably be lower for training missions when assets need to kept on alert standby and/or need to spend more time in the shops because of the massive increase in their usage compared to peacetime levels.
I cannot find the report, but I am pretty such that I saw a break down of budgets for the USN where there was a huge amount of money earmarked to help USN airwing that have been operationally deployed to retrain after they get home. If anyone knows the report I'm talking about, I would appreciate it if they could post it or point me in the right direction to find it.
Why pray tell has the PLAN emulated the carrier ops of the US, ONE reason, and One reason only, we have a history at this, we lost some and we won some, we have payed a huge price, and everyone who is an honest student of history knows the truth, we are good at what we do.
I fail to see how that has anything to do with US modern combat experience. China is copying the US in carrier deck ops because the US has operated more carriers, more intensely and more efficiently than anyone else.
But even for the US, the question of how one goes about fighting another modern carrier is one of theory and conjecture since the last time the US fought an enemy with carriers was in WWII, and I dare say things have moved on a smidge since then to render most if not all of the tactical insight the US gained from those battles largely unless today.
Furthermore, those WWII battles have been so thoroughly declassified and widely studied, and the people who actually fought in them largely deceased, that it is hard for one to argue that even if there was still tactically relevant information from those WWII battles to be learnt and applied today, that the US would hold any real monopoly on that information. If anything, the Chinese are more likely to have studied US and Japanese WWII carrier combat tactics and strategies more closely than modern day US captians and admirals since the US commanders would have more modern texts and theories on his reading list. But, pretty much all of those modern texts would have been dedicated to how one most efficiently employs a carrier to beat the pulp out of an enemy who cannot strike back, and would offer very little real world insight into how one fights with a carrier against a foe who not only can shoot back, but who have carriers of his own.
IMHO one of the reasons the world as we know it continues to turn on its axis, with the relative peace and prosperity of the post World War II challenges, is the security provided by the US military and our Allies. Did we learn something in Korea, SEA, Iraq and Ahghanistan, absolutely.
Well, I think we are going to disagree pretty foundamentally about just how much peace the US and allies are responsible for providing the world of late, and since this is wildly off topic, let's save everyone a lot of scrolling and just not even go there mate.
