New enemy gains on the Pentagon

[bemildred]

WASHINGTON Pound for pound and pounding for pounding, the Israeli military is one of the world's finest. But Hezbollah, with the discipline and ferocity of its fighters and its ability to field advanced weaponry, has taken Israel by surprise.

Now that surprise has rocketed back to Washington and across the U.S. military.

U.S. officials worry that they are not prepared, either, for Hezbollah's style of warfare - a kind that pits finders against hiders and favors the hiders.

Certain that other terrorists are learning from Hezbollah's successes, the United States is studying the conflict closely for lessons to apply to its own wars. Military planners suggest that the Pentagon take a page out of Hezbollah's book about small-unit, agile operations as U.S. forces battle insurgents and cells in Iraq and Afghanistan, and plan for countering more cells and their state sponsors across the Middle East and in Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America.

IHT

[soothsayer]

1. Seriously, this lesson from Iraq has been lost on them 'til now?

Duh, fellas!

[bemildred]

5. Nobody likes to find out they have been made technologically obsolete. nt

[patdem]

2. But to WIN in those situations you must BELIEVE in what you are fighting

for...I do not think our small insurgent type of force will have the same ideological bent when fighting for big oil companies as the occupied, outraged insurgents.

It is more about WILL than ability.

But the GOOD thing would be fewer civilian casualities.

[bemildred]

4. That is an important point.

And the military theorists don't seem to want to come to grips with it. Net war or 4th gen. war or guerilla war or whatever is not useful for holding ground or for occupation, it is inherent in its nature that one does not try to hold ground. There is something fundamentally defensive in it, it is a counterstrategy to aggressive use of conventional force, and only really works in that context. Two net-war groups going at each other simply produce chaos. It is not useful for conquest. It is usable in true civil wars, but risks a "failed state" situation. With the advent of modern light weapons, ATW, RPG, SAM, Rockets, it bids fair to make conventional arms obsolete as aggressive weapons of conquest.

The current fight in Lebanon is interesting partly because it is the first test of these issues (that I'm aware of anyway) that puts the issues so squarely. Both sides have had six years to prepare. One side is attacking with a large modern conventional force, and on the other side is a smaller, heavily armed, well prepared, and well dug in net-war force. Neither has been embargoed or sanctioned etc. in the lead-up to the war.

[laststeamtrain]

3. Giap: People's War

"I appreciated the fact that they had sophisticated weapon systems but I must say that it was the people who made the difference, not the weapons."--Giap

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/11/interviews/giap/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vo_Nguyen_Giap