[13of40]

Remember how the US went into Afghanistan with HMMWVs (aluminum bodied cars with canvas doors) and M16a2s (full length battle rifles with iron sights) and left with MRAPs and A4s. You learn stuff when you switch from training to combat.

[ared38]

The US and the HMMWV did great at the combat part of Iraq and Afghanistan. The real switch was from conventional military operations to the long peace.

"Instead, the new incentive for most countries would be to build a military in a way that aims to minimize the political costs... it makes sense not to build an army for conventional operations but instead with an eye towards the kinds of actions which mitigate the harm caused by failed states: armies aimed at policing actions or humanitarian operations."

MRAPs exist to minimize the political costs (dead and wounded soldiers) in a policing action. When you look at conventional wars like Ukraine, HMMWVs remain very relevant in their doctrinal role.

[hunter-gatherer]

> The US and the HMMWV did great at the combat part of Iraq and Afghanistan. The real switch was from conventional military operations to the long peace

The combat part was ok I guess, but what OP is pointing out was what we went to conflict with. Lots of money was spent upgrading Humvees with armor and turret mounts that didn't exist. The equipment fielded by US troops actually looked very different from a comparison of 2001 and 2005. Body armor went through development iterations, camouflage patterns, infantry equipment like magazine carriers and weapons optics, and so on.

Had the US tried to drive into the Afghan and Iraqi desert the way we did against fighters armed with heavier weapons and fighting skills then the US losses would have been a lot higher.

The Iraqi military had more formidable equipment but was so ill-trained and the moral so low that it was very much a paper tiger.

I think people underestimate hiw much the US military has transformed over the two two-decade long conflicts. There have been striking changes both organizationally, culturally, and technologically.

[jonstewart]

I think the hypothetical you posit is wrong, as US doctrine places primacy on air power. In Iraq, I & II, air strikes at the outset destroyed much of the Iraqi armor and spurred a lot of desertion.

I’m not a military and/or Iraq war expert so I don’t want to argue definitively, but I don’t think you can say US losses would have been significantly higher had the Iraqi army had heavier weapons and fighting skills — they’d have needed effective air defense, too.

I think the Ru-UKR war shows the vulnerability of contemporary air forces to air defense, however, and that Western/NATO forces themselves lack cost-effective short-range and medium-range air defense systems. The US Air Force fields exquisite weapons (“platforms”) and these may prove useless in a conflict like Ru-UKR. Or, perhaps, they’re good enough to overcome the difficulties that the Sukhoi/MiG-based air forces of either side have encountered. Hard to know.

Range and mobility in artillery systems also seems like a weak point for the US military. The Excalibur precision shell is very expensive but likely cost effective—one shot, one kill. But the US M777 towed howitzer costs ~$3.7M (titanium) while the French Caesar costs $5-6M and can outrange the M777 in addition to driving away immediately after firing.

[torstenvl]

Excals are not very high precision in my experience, and definitely not "one shot one kill." I don't remember exact data and I'm sure it would be classified even if I did, but... suffice it to say that laser guidance for final targeting is not good for dusty environments. (Ditto for GBU-12s, which were worthless.)

Afghanistan may have been a different story.

[rascul]

> But the US M777 towed howitzer costs ~$3.7M (titanium) while the French Caesar costs $5-6M and can outrange the M777 in addition to driving away immediately after firing.

The US has the M109 which can serve in some of the same roles the Caesar can.

Also, does France have much rocket artillery? That might play a factor in the requirements for other artillery systems.

[WeylandYutani]

America didn't learn it forgot. Many people wrote about counter insurgency warfare in the 70s after Vietnam.

Mind you much of it was political: "we're about to occupy a country where 20 million people want to kill us" would have sounded pretty awful at the State of the Union.

[roarcher]

The military took many lessons from Vietnam that didn't work in the Middle East.

As one example, at the start of the war in Afghanistan, Marine scout snipers would operate in two-man teams. This was a Vietnam-era SOP that favored stealth over firepower--two men can't lay down much heat, but they don't need to if the enemy can't find and engage them. It's pretty easy to hide a couple guys in a jungle, so it worked well.

The problem with that doctrine in Afghanistan is that hiding even two men is difficult in arid environments. A team is far more likely to be seen regardless of its size and needs to be able to defend itself if compromised, which happens far more often in a desert. By 2010 the SOP was 8-man teams. At least one bloody incident was the cause of those numbers being bumped up.

There's a saying that rings true, "The military is always fighting the last war".

[remarkEon]

>There's a saying that rings true, "The military is always fighting the last war"

It's a saying that people in the military are well aware of (OEF Veteran here). We were well aware of what happened in Vietnam with counterinsurgency. The problem is that counterinsurgency just doesn't work unless you treat the country like an imperial colony. We didn't do that, in Iraq or in Afghanistan. It wasn't worth the resources to "do Imperialism" in those places, and so we got a half-assed "strategy" that wasn't really related to any seriously considered national objective.

>The problem with that doctrine in Afghanistan is that hiding even two men is difficult in arid environments.

The Taliban were able to do this with ease.

[roarcher]

> It's a saying that people in the military are well aware of (OEF Veteran here).

Same. That's where I heard it.

> The Taliban were able to do this with ease.

The Taliban weren't doing what we were doing. They generally did not, to my knowledge, go out and sit in an OP on a rocky hillside for 3-5 days straight, where any random goat herder might happen to decide to graze his herd one afternoon. Their MO was to set up an ambush that would be executed the same day and that was not likely to be discovered by a passing American, since Americans weren't wandering randomly through the hills at all times.

[dvt]

Super cool insight, I wonder what the turnaround or bureaucratic process is of fundamentally changing an SOP. It can't just be generals mandating these things (or is it?).

Changing organizational processes tends to be extremely hard in large orgs, and I wonder how the military deals with it.

[roarcher]

Although I was tangentially involved in the aforementioned incident, I'm not sure what level the change came from or what the process is but it was an extremely broad order--at least Marine Corps-wide, and possibly for all units in theather (excluding SOCOM/JSOC, I assume). So pretty high up. The incident made some pretty big waves. As far as the turnaround time, it was quick, within a few days I believe.

It's worth noting that this was one of many incremental changes. When I started that deployment in 2009, snipers were going out in 5-man teams. The team that got hit actually did technically consist of 8 men (as was already the SOP), but they were split into two four-man elements that took different positions about a kilometer apart. The mandate going forward was that all 8 team members had to be within earshot of each other at all times. It was the latest of many orders in the trend of ratcheting up firepower at the cost of concealability.

[jasonladuke0311]

You talking about the team that fell asleep in their nest and all got killed?

[roarcher]

No, they were overrun after taking a shot, which compromised their position.

The incident you're talking about happened much earlier, in Iraq. I believe this article is referencing it: https://www.dvidshub.net/news/6921/former-magnificent-bastar...

It doesn't say they fell asleep, because of course there's no way to know that. It's an assumption that has been repeated as fact, though it does seem likely.

[andrewflnr]

Sort of a nitpick, but really not: length has nothing to do with whether a rifle is a "battle rifle". The difference between a battle rifle and assault rifle is all about the cartridge, not length of the barrel.

[edrxty]

I think that's probably arguable. Most of these kinds of definitions are much more length focused and the length does most of the same things as having a larger cartridge.

[jack_h]

Battle rifle implies a full powered cartridge such as 7.62 NATO. Assault rifle implies an intermediate cartridge such as 5.56 NATO. Intermediate cartridges have lower energy than full powered cartridges.

Barrel length is important to velocity up to a point, but you can also tune other parts of the system to increase velocity out of shorter barrels (M855A1). However, that is far from the only consideration when discussing the ballistics of a cartridge. Projectile mass determines how stable the projectile is. The 5.56 projectile tumbles and cavitates when hitting soft tissue due to its low mass. However, that also means obstructions like foliage can cause it to destabilize in-flight and it is less effective at barrier penetration.

[TexanFeller]

To some degree but even if you put a 24" barrel on your 5.56 it's still got nowhere near the oomph of my 16" barreled 7.62x51.

[andrewflnr]

It's really not. Any serious discussion of "battle rifles", by military history professionals, hinges on the cartridge. I've never seen a definition of it in terms of barrel length.

[eastbound]

Remember when the French went to field war in 1914 bearing the official costume with BRIGHT RED pants? Yeah you really forget about war when there is no war for a generation.

Well they did have unbeatable prices on this red taint from a producer in… Germany. Yup. Some people are actually good at war.

[WastingMyTime89]

It’s not about forgetting about war. France was constantly at war from the fifty years preceding 1914 fighting colonial conflicts.

It’s about misunderstanding new technology notably machine guns or to be even more correct a military career structure and organisation which prevented people who understood new technologies and try to shake the boat to rise in ranks while putting conservative officers in control of the army.

[inglor_cz]

"when there is no war for a generation."

It isn't as if there was no war for a generation. The Russo-Japanese war in 1904-5 was precisely the kind of brutal industrial conflict that foreshadowed the horrors of WWI almost to a T.

But Western powers were mostly unwilling to learn from such a distant war, and lessons learnt by junior officers who observed the carnage closely weren't taken seriously enough.

[speed_spread]

Maybe it was a strategy. Once you lose enough troops, red does become good camouflage?

[gonzo41]

They picked up the M4s in Iraq. Those full length M16a2s go HAM for the engagement distances in Afghanistan. And don't worry, the army is already circling back towards light skinned vehicles.

[ocbyc]

Well we left a bunch of the mraps behind. So I guess they gotta start over.

[tester457]

Why the change? What lessons were learned?

[stanford_labrat]

I am merely a military/tactical gear hobbyist so anyone with actual subject matter expertise feel free to chime in.

In this specific case humvees were particularly ineffective against the IED-based warfare being conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan. Light, fast, vehicles are not particularly resilient to explosives.

Also, while the 20” battle rifle does provide superior ballistics for the 5.56 round, it’s unwieldy and there was a fair bit of CQB during the GWOT. 14.5” carbines were a sort of middle ground that could perform in both long range and short range engagements. Night time direct action raids by special forces even opt for shorter 10.5/11.5 barrels.

I recommend Jeff Gurwitch on YouTube he goes in depth into the history and rational behind equipment evolutions during the GWOT from a first hand perspective as an ex-SF soldier.

[ProjectArcturis]

MRAPs: you need better defense against IEDs.

M4: a short barrel is easier to use in close quarters fighting, and this outweighs the loss of accuracy at longer distances.

[akiselev]

The primary change to HMMWVs is the shape of the hull: they’re now designed in a V shape to deflect the force from explosives away to the sides of the vehicle.

[HPsquared]

They also weigh about 4 times as much.

[ikiris]

that bombs go boom, and militaries don't have the monopolies on them they thought they did.