Weaknesses Inherent To Large Military Forces.

A massive military force is certainly impressive and in most cases it is indomitable

. Its biggest strength can be in its sheer size which it can use to steamroll all opponents. We learned what a small, intelligent, and determined army can do in Vietnam. It can not win by sheer force alone. What it doesnt have in numbers it must make up for with the tactics that it uses.

In the case of the Vietnam War the Vietnamese knew that they couldnt successfully mix it up in a force on force showdown so they fought a war of attrition. They would snipe at us and then disappear into the jungle. This was successful because we eventually ran out of patience. Our public began to criticize and condemn our war effort. There was not much to show for the lives and materials expended which served to further weaken our war efforts. We lost our will to fight in what might have been an ill conceived war effort.

Size is the major weakness of a big force for several reasons but I will name what I believe to be the main one here. The biggest downfall of the large force is that it has to be somewhat inflexible. The reason for this is that it has to use various methods of establishing and maintaining control of its many different elements. Routine has to be established and enforced. This makes the unit predictable.

Every task must be spelled out so that the unit will function as the unit commander expects. He must know exactly what each element of the unit will do in certain situations so he can make decisions in a vacuum if he has to.

The small force can use this predictability against the larger army. If it has done its homework it knows the best time and way to strike. It does not have to operate by such detailed guidelines so it is much less predictable in its actions. This is comparable to the fact that right handed boxers usually have problems with lefties. The reason for this is because they very seldom have to box with lefties so it causes them to have to break away from the boxing experience gained from fighting other right handed boxers all of the time.

One example that I will give is from my experiences at the National Training Center in Fort Irwin California. The usual action that any unit will take before it attacks will be to bombard its objective with artillery. The artillery preparation always precedes the main attack and will continue until your units have gotten as close as possible to the enemy positions without coming under the danger of friendly fire themselves.

On one exercise we accidentally started the preparation too early. This caused more casualties than it would have if we had done it the textbook way. The reason was due to our enemy force knowing the time that we would start to fire artillery at them. They would leave their positions until it was over. We had gotten so predictable in our execution that they had developed the perfect response. We did not know that this is what they were doing until the OPFOR Commander told us in our after action review that the preparation caught them by surprise.

The little man in this case may not be able to win the war, but he will be able to give the larger opponent a bloody nose. This was the case with Russia in Afghanistan but our military ring customers who are serving there did a better job of adapting to the situation than the Russians. This is due to the fact that our leaders studied the Russian invasion and learned the pitfalls. It is also due to the fact that the Russian armed services are not known for being flexible in their military tactics. Military Ring Express

by: tishbite

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