Posted: 5/29/2006 3:17:53 PM EDT
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We Were Soldiers was on the tube last night and I caught a few minutes of it. I'm sure that this has been hashed out before, but I'm wondering if we will ever fight close combat wars again. Will soldiers of developed countries ever find themselves in fox holes and dugouts hacking away at each other with bayonets? or has technology completely changed the way wars will be fought? I realize that special forces in Afgan and Iraq are engaging in close quarter combat in their search for Ossama Bin Laden and other leaders, but that's still a limited situation. I'm talking the scale of WWI, WWII, and Vietnam, where the majority of the troops are laying face down in the dirt. |
I doubt it. Technology has made it too easy for fucktards (terrorists) to do serious damage against innocent people, why would they want to get in the line of fire, being the cowards that they are? |
| It's not just the special forces engaging the enemy in close combat, some of us amateurs are in on the action to. When the initial ground phase of the war started, conventional and paramilitary Iraqi Army forces used dug in defensive positions, and on occassion the insurgents still do. GWI, Falklands, and Chechnya were the same. There will always be someone on the defensive and someone on the offensive. Future wars will not preclude grunts from digging in. |
Our politicians shouldn't be running the war. We need to ammend the constitution to limit their involvement. |
Bayonets were rarely used even in the Civil War. However, there will always be a use for ground pounders, in my opinion. |
Then the US does not fight wars. We half measure and dont do what it takes to win. 
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I agree with this. We try to be Politically Correct fighting a war. They and the world will hate us whatever we do. Take the gloves off and end it quick, not fight for poll points in the media. |
Since WWII we have been kind of like a high School football team beating up on third graders. We are so technologicaly superior to our adversaries, we can get away with this as long as the fighting is limited. |
Correct. We don't play to win anymore. We'd kill 100,000 German civilians in one night during WWII (fine by me) and now Congress & the old media act like we shouldn't even kill our enemies, much less an occasional civilian. Scott |
| In war you mercilessly kill your enemy and utterly destroy their support system to include their families and do not feel one twinge of remorse much less apoligize. We don't do that anymore. Crying shame. If we had leveled Iraq and said "Fuck you" like we did Japan and Germany things would be going better. Take total control, dictate terms. That is war. Of course you don't enter into war lightly. We didn't remove Stalin or Lenin. Didn't care about Hitler until the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor and we declared war on them. Since Germany was their ally we were at war with them by default. It's a new day of structured failure when it comes to military action. For us anyway. |
Extreme amount of casualties? WTF!! We are killing those pieces of shit +20 to 1 and we cant get a straight fucking report from the media. All of the journalists need to be recalled and let the US fight the war to win and and then let us know when it is over! The only shit we hear about through "legitimate" channels is the shit the liberal America hating media spews out. We are killing these shit bags very efficiently but that is not "good" news for the media. People protesting GI funerals, and shitting on American Soldiers is a far more important story. AS far as I am concerned the media is no better that the traitors in congress. It is a sad state that America is in for sure. |
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I don't know WTF your talking about. Close combat is the future. We train our military every day in specialized urban training centers in MOUT operations and CQB operations. Yes, there will always be some field work to be done, but even then, as anyone can see, most of that is being given over to unmanned drones and the development of remote combat vehicles is gaining ground. In MOUT situations though, you cannot substitute remote vehicles for human occupation. Yes, you can use remote vehicles to a limited extent as an intelligence gathering too, but you cannot use it to gain and hold ground in urban environments. Just look at Iraq. Falluja and other situations like it. MOUT, and CQB is the name of the game and it happens all the time. Fighting for control of urbanized areas is the future of warfare. And to answer the original question, yes. Warfare is changed forever. It always does change. Once evolved, it never returns to its orignal place. Sometimes tactics might go retro to better match a given situation, but even then those tactics are changed or modified somewhat to match current technological advances, or lessons learned. Warfare is fluid, constantly changing, In its dynamics, technology, and mindset/understanding of the people who are doing the fighting. Ce la Guerre. Chris |
Tell that to the Marines clearing houses in Iraq. Close combat has been pronounced dead several times, only to show up again and again. Technology will advance, and war will adapt to the changes. But in the end, there will still come a time when our soldiers will be within reaching distance of enemy forces needing to put them down. Unconventional war is the wave of the future, fellas. And as long as there is unconventional war, there will be close combat where you can smell what the enemy had for lunch. |
The last time the Congress declared war was the last time we "won" in the same sense we won WWII. |
Believe it or not the military was WILLING and ABLE to win in Vietnam. In fact, we were doing very well in Vietnam when the SF was trying their hand at counter-insurgency until MACV took over and obliterated their progress via forced relocations and the like. We could have won Vietnam WITHOUT extreme ammounts of casualties with a few tactical changes and without the stupidity here on the homefront that caused us to withdraw. |
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By 2020, 85% of the world's population will live in urban areas. A defensively weak force can multiply it's effectiveness by fighting in this key terrain. The Chechyan defense of Grozny on New Years Day 1995 is the definitive example of this. By 3 January 1995, the brigade leading the assault had lost nearly 800 men, 20 of 26 tanks, and 102 of 120 armored vehicles. Close combat is only going to become more predominate on the battlefield. |
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if anything i think it has reverted back to the point where technology is not going to make much of a diffrence the days of massive nation state armies lining up against each other and bringing massive power to bear is pretty much over but China is always getting froggy so you never know , but even with China I think they want war economiclly much like Japan , but like Japan I think China will cool down its growth as it is not sustanable just like Japans wasn't Thats my copmpletely unexpert .02 |