[cl42]

A few years ago I went to a military museum in Vietnam, where they have a lot of equipment used by the US military on display -- helicopters, planes, guns, etc.

What surprised me is how the equipment had labels around where to open things to rescue people, where to pour fuel, etc... It was labelled such that someone with limited (or no) exposure to the vehicle model would know what to do without referencing any sort of manual.

Very different today.

[kev009]

It may well have been done for the benefit of experts too - a hot war is true chaos. Shock, fatigue, sleep deprivation, being under fire and adrenaline dump. Militaries are very good at forgetting the lessons learned in the last war while applying the prior status quo to a novel situation.

[runlaszlorun]

I agree whole heartedly with your main point but I'd say militaries are more likely to overreact to the last war. "Generals are always fighting the last war" is a quote I heard from long ago and it seems to match up. In Desert Storm it was clear that the lessons of not getting entangled a la Vietnam were clearly in mind. When I went in to Bosnia it was clear Somalia was in mind as our RoE basically said if we were being being fired up on by someone using civilians as a shield to "aim carefully", and I keep hearing mention that the US is still trying to shift away from GWOT even though it's been 10 years since that started slowing down.

[randycupertino]

This is a really interesting and insightful comment! I'd add WWI/WWII to your examples- the French were so used to entrenched warfare they poured all their efforts into the Maginot Line because fortifications and prepared positions were the thing to do... only to be trounced with the mobility and swiftness of blitzkrieg.

Also imo USA & the UN let Rwanda genocide happen because they were gunshy after Black Hawk Down in Mogadishu thus everyone was so reluctant to commit forces even though even limited intervention early on could have stopped hundreds of thousands of atrocities. The overreaction to Somalia paralyzed effective action anywhere else.

[baud147258]

> they poured all their efforts into the Maginot Line because fortifications and prepared positions were the thing to do... only to be trounced with the mobility and swiftness of blitzkrieg.

My position might be revisionist on that matter, but I think the Maginot line worked as planned: the goal was to force the German to go around (mostly through the Low Countries), reducing the frontage where they'd have to fight. The German did exactly that, but also pushed through the Ardennes, which the Allied planners hadn't though possible.

[sdeer]

Could this be because there were a large number of enlisted persons serving? An all volunteer force might expect all serving troops to be more familiar with equipment.

[rgblambda]

Small nitpick. You mean conscripted not enlisted.

I have no experience in the matter but I suspect that's not it. A conscript and a recently recruited professional soldier should in theory have the same level of training. Many professional soldiers only enlist for a few years.

I reckon it's more that equipment is a lot more complicated now than in the past. And maybe something to do with literacy levels in the 1960s meaning you couldn't trust a soldier to have read and understood a manual.