[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.