{"id":38614,"date":"2013-11-26T07:14:31","date_gmt":"2013-11-26T12:14:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=38614"},"modified":"2013-11-26T07:14:31","modified_gmt":"2013-11-26T12:14:31","slug":"mcmaster-on-the-pentagons-short-memory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=38614","title":{"rendered":"McMaster on the Pentagon’s short memory"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most of you probably know the name Major General Herbert Raymond “H.R.” McMaster. The younger generation remembers him from commanding the 3rd Armored Cavalry regiment that tamed Al Tafar, Iraq, the older soldiers will remember him from commanding the 2d ACR in the grand armor battle at “73 Easting” during Desert Storm. The Colorado Springs Gazette<\/a> reports that he told an audience there that the Pentagon is forgetting the tough lessons that it learned in Iraq and Afghanistan;<\/p>\n

“What we are at risk of today is neglecting some of the hard-won lessons of our war in Iraq and our ongoing war in Afghanistan,” McMaster told 130 people gathered for a luncheon of the Colorado Springs World Affairs Council.<\/p>\n

McMaster said he watched the military in the 1990s mistakenly bet its future on the power of technology.<\/p>\n

The armed forces were designed for tank-on-tank battle in a rapid conflict similar to the 1991 Persian Gulf War and faced an insurgency in Afghanistan and Iraq it was ill-prepared to fight.<\/p>\n

McMaster said the insurgent fighting is something that could be a recurring theme for America.<\/p>\n

“There are two ways to fight the U.S. military – asymmetrically or stupid,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Our enemies will interact with us in ways to evade our strength and attack what they see as our vulnerabilities.”<\/p>\n

McMaster said it’s also impossible to divorce warfare from political goals in the nation the U.S. is trying to change.<\/p>\n

“We encountered this gap in our flawed thinking both in the early stages of Afghanistan and the early stages of Iraq,” he said.<\/p>\n

While the military experienced early success in Afghanistan and Iraq, the quick victory proved elusive.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, that always happens after war, the difference in this case is that it’s happening DURING a war. But there have always been stellar officers like McMaster to keep the pressure on Big Army and be their memory.<\/p>\n

As if to punctuate McMaster’s talk, the Army Times<\/a> reports that the pointy-headed thinkers at the Pentagon are discussing reducing the number of troops all the way down to squad level and making the vehicles that transport and protect them, smaller and lighter;<\/p>\n

Going smaller while focusing investments on increasing the combat punch a small unit can bring to bear will \u201cmake us more affordable, yet as capable\u201d as the service is now, one leading general said. A key point is also to become faster and more expeditionary.<\/p>\n

One senior leader said that in coming years, the Army will have to \u201creduce the size of our formations but increase the capability of our formations. …If we can be more effective with less people it will make us more expeditionary.\u201d<\/p>\n

A handful of reporters were allowed to sit in on the briefing under the condition that names not be used.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, I wouldn’t want my name attached to that bullshit either. So, let’s pretend that they go ahead and reduce the number of troops in a squad and make vehicles to accommodate the smaller units and then we end up in a war where we need need larger squads – so we go to war with the Army we have rather than the Army we need. Sound familiar? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most of you probably know the name Major General Herbert Raymond “H.R.” McMaster. The younger generation … McMaster on the Pentagon’s short memory<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[198],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-army"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38614\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}