Gaza Strip

[FAI]

Steve, if you want to make this argument you need to present evidence that the aim of Israel's military ops is to induce terror in the local population, rather than this being an inadvertent byproduct of pursueing other specific goals. Otherwise, this is like saying that Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor failed because the local population didn't immediately capitulate and swear lifelong fealty to the Emperor, and that because of that Japan should never have attacked in the first place (i.e. you are right for the wrong reasons).

Didn't Israel tried that in Lebanon too? Bombing civilians/ wrecking civilian infrastructures hoping that somehow the populace would start ousting Hezbollah?

[Guest Guest]

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[Guest Guest]

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[Guest Guest]

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[Yair Iny]

Man, your posts must the most biased and clueless I have read in long time on these boards. Palestinians for decades are being forced out of their homes with bulldozers and uzis and now are piled in a ghetto called gaza strip. Israel maybe was fighting for its survival in 1948 but the time has changed and they are now the aggressors. And "Nazis" suits them fine since they treat palestinians like inferior species and have a decent record of crimes against humanity. From the sabra and shatila massacres to the bombings of today Israel has shown that it has no interest in palestinians existance and is in the same league with common jihadist terrorists. It is encouraging that many Israelis dont have biased views like yours, condemn the violence of their own state and recognise the right of the palestinians to exist. People like them are the only hope for getting the region out of the mess.

Ali,

I do not support Israel's actions, definitely not to the extent they are being taken to currently. But I would have to say that you should learn a bit more before mouthing off like that. For starters, the Sabra and Shatila was actually perpetrated by the Maronite Militia and happened under the knowledge of the Israeli Army. The Israeli defence minister, Ariel Sharon, was removed from his position after this happened. How many Nazi ministers were removed from power by Hitler?

Israeli, barring exterme-right nuts, DO NOT treat palestinians as an inferior species. I have heard many horrible things said by people when I lived there, such as "for every rocket they fire on us, we should kill 1000 of them" and others, but I have not heard people saying they are not as human or that they were "unter-menchen". Compare this to the mainstream arab press which regularly uses phrases such as "descendents of snakes and monkeys", "children of the devil", etc, when describing jews (not even israelis, jews as a whole).

I know, in person, people who were in Auschwitz, and your comparison of israel to the nazis is as ridiculous as it is unhelpful. Most people in israel, who hear this sort of comparison, immediately dismiss it as being extremely biased and anti-semitic, which I would have to agree with. It is also useless, because it implies that as long as the israeli army isn't as bad as the wehrmacht/SS, it is OK, when clearly you don't need to descend that low to not be ok.

[Yair Iny]

Back to the NCO discussion. The IDF is not based around an NCO "culture". In fact, in the army and outside of it career NCOs, which as Lang rightly stated, exist in technical capacities only, are lowly regarded. Recently (about 5 years ago) there had even been a changed in uniform, moving their rank insignia from the collar to the shoulders, to more closely resemble officers in a (vain?) attempt to "uplift" their image.

The whole concept of NCO ranks is different in Israel. For example, all men have to server for 3 years. At the end of such service, unless disciplinary matters intervened, all soldiers, regardless of their actual duties, i.e. infantrymen, cooks, tank commanders, etc. would have the rank of a staff sergeant. As you then continue to do reserve duty (which is also compulsary until around 40 y.o.) you continue to gain enlisted ranks in an accelerated schedule. An infantryman who consistently did his reserve duty until being fully discharged would probably be at least a master sergeant in rank while never being in a different "MOS" other than that of a squaddie.

That being said, by having a heavy emphasis on reserves, the Israeli army manages to have a fair amount of experience and maturity in its fighting ranks, which is unfortunately less apparent and available when only the regular army is involved.

[costard]

I remember hearing about a report of treatment of captured Allies in GW1 - the officers and privates were left alone, the NCOs, and in particular the British NCOs were interrogated fairly thoroughly. Not tortured, mind, interrogated for some clue as to why the British Army functioned as it does.

The mythos of the organisation - the culture of the army - is propagated and maintained by its senior NCOs. When you have a unit that has been successfully (more or less) campaigned for 400 years, the culture of that unit, evident more in its traditions than its laws, is an extremely important part of the organisational makeup. It defines the cohesiveness of the unit, the efficiencies gained in communication between the sub-units and their ability to function with uniform purpose. This is especially important when the **** has well and truly hit the fan, the officer corps has ceased to exist and inter-unit communication has practically ceased. Everyone is fighting blind - but every sub-unit has a pretty good idea of what is required of it nonetheless. It is the reason the German Army in WW2 was able to function down to the level of the remnant of the unit, whereas the non-professional armies with no history or long standing traditions ceased to function once its officers had been killed.

[Pvt. Ryan]

Live feed - are those prop sounds buzzing around constantly probably drones?

I believe they are. The other sound is roosters.

[panzermartin]

Ali,

I do not support Israel's actions, definitely not to the extent they are being taken to currently. But I would have to say that you should learn a bit more before mouthing off like that. For starters, the Sabra and Shatila was actually perpetrated by the Maronite Militia and happened under the knowledge of the Israeli Army. The Israeli defence minister, Ariel Sharon, was removed from his position after this happened. How many Nazi ministers were removed from power by Hitler?

Israeli, barring exterme-right nuts, DO NOT treat palestinians as an inferior species. I have heard many horrible things said by people when I lived there, such as "for every rocket they fire on us, we should kill 1000 of them" and others, but I have not heard people saying they are not as human or that they were "unter-menchen". Compare this to the mainstream arab press which regularly uses phrases such as "descendents of snakes and monkeys", "children of the devil", etc, when describing jews (not even israelis, jews as a whole).

I know, in person, people who were in Auschwitz, and your comparison of israel to the nazis is as ridiculous as it is unhelpful. Most people in israel, who hear this sort of comparison, immediately dismiss it as being extremely biased and anti-semitic, which I would have to agree with. It is also useless, because it implies that as long as the israeli army isn't as bad as the wehrmacht/SS, it is OK, when clearly you don't need to descend that low to not be ok.

About the Sabra and Shatila. It is a widely known incident and we dont have to go in details.

IDF is as guilty as the ones who pulled the trigger. And some suggest that part of IDF personnel was directly involved besides just watching the executions and firing flares in the night to "help".

Of course, I'm not directly comparing 3rd Reich with today's Israel. "Nazis" has a more symbolic meaning, its not meant to be taken literaly and its not used to characterize the whole of the population. However these right wing nuts extremists you are talking about seem to have taken over, since the current campaign is nothing sort of fascist, with collective punishment and asymmetrical repisal tactics.

And sometimes we get emotional with what is happening down there, since as FAI said, countries that have a historical memory of occupation and unjustice share a bond with the opressed.

[Yair Iny]

About the Sabra and Shatila. It is a widely known incident and we dont have to go in details.

IDF is as guilty as the ones who pulled the trigger. And some suggest that part of IDF personnel was directly involved besides just watching the executions and firing flares in the night to "help".

Agreed. And the Israeli Supreme court found that the defence minister is complicit and ordered that he be stood down from his post, which he was. I agree that this is not a just punishment for Ariel Sharon, and I have no love for the man. But you cannot say that the state of Israel completely ignored what happened.

Of course, I'm not directly comparing 3rd Reich with today's Israel. "Nazis" has a more symbolic meaning, its not meant to be taken literaly and its not used to characterize the whole of the population. However these right wing nuts extremists you are talking about seem to have taken over, since the current campaign is nothing sort of fascist, with collective punishment and asymmetrical repisal tactics.

Well, in that case it is a stupid symbol to use, especially against Israel. Israel's (and other, cf. GW Bush) politicians sometimes make quite cynical usage of the holocaust (e.g. comparing Yasser Arafat, Saddam Hussein, Ahmedinejad, Hugo Chavez, Mugabe, etc. to Hitler) and using the term Nazis about Israel is exactly playing the mirror image of that. There are still many people alive who were in concentration and death camps in Israel, and definitely their children are alive. When people in the far-left in the West use the term Nazis about Israel, all introspection stops, and people stop listening to the criticism that is sometimes spot on. This plays exactly into the siege mentality that is prevalent in Israel, that same mentality that hardens people's hearts to the suffering of their neighbours and allows such military operations to happen.

If you want to go about shouting in futility that Israel is Nazi Germany in disguise and that the world would be better off if it were wiped off the map, by all rights be my guest, but realise that this extreme voice is only to the detriment of the Palestinian people.

[panzermartin]

If you want to go about shouting in futility that Israel is Nazi Germany in disguise and that the world would be better off if it were wiped off the map, by all rights be my guest, but realise that this extreme voice is only to the detriment of the Palestinian people.

Sorry, I never said things like wiping Israel out of the map, you are twisting my sayings here and it doesn't look good.

[Yair Iny]

Sorry, I never said things like wiping Israel out of the map, you are twisting my sayings here and it doesn't look good.

My Apologies, Ali. I didn't mean to imply that you personally said that, but rather put you in the same bag as some of the far left critics of Israel in Europe. I made that assumption based on your "Nazi" comments, but had no right to, hence my apology.

[panzermartin]

Apologies accepted ;-) Well, you see sometimes we all do the same, I used the "n" word before thinking twice and I was automaticaly put in the same bag with the extremists when its more of an emotional reaction than an established political bias. I do admit it was a bit extreme but I got carried away responding to rather black and white comments here like "UN is a Hamas collaborator" for instance. My apologies too then.

[Secondbrooks]

Steve: You had long post. I started to quote and answer it but after hour i've desided that it's useless and it started to look like a mess. We basically agree with most points, only splitting hairs remains with them.

Only thing i'm interested to hear more is that 'German army without single private'-thing (i did forgot that part of history). What happened when size of army bloated? Did long term NCOs became also so numbereous that one could be positioned to most platoons? Or did NCOs with much less experience take place of long term NCOs in platoons?

[Bigduke6]

Steve,

I think, then, that you essentially are on board with my contention that that Green Beret was offering up a bad interpetation of the IDF. If you are suprised - as you say you are - that the IDF generally does well without a strong NCO corps - then perhaps it might be worth considering whether or not NCOs are absolutely as critical as they tell us they are.

Of course, I am biased. For me, there is only one standard: Wartime success. Everything else, small unit tactical performace, kill ratios, cost accounting, hearts and minds - all of those to me are secondary. For me, the only yardstick worth using is the one that helps you measure war-winning capacity. Great NCOs to me are not a sine qua non to victory, although certainly I'd put them ahead of things like sharp uniforms or absolutely the very latest equipment.

More specifically:

I'm glad you pointed that out because I forgot to mention that myself It also gets to some of what Secondbrooks was saying about the Finnish performance in 1939-40. A well motivated conscript population will have a certain common purpose and "everybody is in this together" motivation that often is lacking in other forces. Including those with highly trained professional soldiers.

Which I would say might make us rethink the definition of "conscript". In CM, of course, conscripts are the bottom of the barrel. But in RL, and more particulalry the IDF, conscripts can be bright kids from a education-valuing society, serving in the same service in roughly the same wartime/semi-wartime conditions, as their Fathers, Grandfathers, and Great-grandfathers. Overlaid on that are Jewish tradition and Israeli nationalism, both of which I would argue make the kids in the IDF alot more trainable than say US recruits, and more importantly since the IDF is mostly reservists, the guy in the ranks is a citizen-soldier, he's taking time off from his regular life because of a military obligation. He is in a unit he has been working with for years, and the unit quite likely has a mission that it has been working with for decades.

Which leads me to believe that at minimim, a strong NCO corps is something the IDF can clearly do without. The more interesting question, of course, is whether or not a strong NCO corps is a great idea across the board.

But...depends on how you defined "professional". I've seen comments, some of which were from you IIRC, about the "professionalism" of Russian troops in Georgia. There is of course Chechnya to point to as well as other incidents where Russian troops didn't perform too well at the low unit level.

We're probably going to just be split on this, my opinion is different from the conventional wisdom. The Russian army units I saw were competent, maybe not so anally intensive focused on itty-bitty details like the Americans, but obviously more used than US regulars to living in the field on not much, for days. You should have seen them dig, you would probably have to pull a sidearm on modern US infantry to get them to dig fighting positions like that. All those busted Russian vehicles you may have read about, well, I was looking and I spent days wandering behind their lines, and mostly I didn't see them. And when I did there were mechanics doing stuff. So it didn't look at all like an incompent bunch of armed civilians (a pretty good description of the Georgian army, as it happens) but rather a Russian army that had taken forces out of Chechnya, sent them in a fairly well-prepared offensive into north Georgia, on the whole was pretty competent and in some bits (helicopter landings in Kodori Gorge, amphibious landings in Abkhazia) the operational act was actually not shabby at all. Sure, they weren't the 75th Ranger battalion, but from my POV the 2008 Russian army was pretty solid.

FWIW, there were of course NCOs in the Russian forces, and for sure almost all of them fit the "short term, six months more experience than the troopers" mode. But I recall a tank crew I spent a couple of hours talking to, sure there was a sergeant and there was not question that he was in charge, but all the other tankers had been years in Chechnya, every one seemed to know his job, and the vibe wasn't so much a strict NCO-junior enlisted heirarchy, as 5 guys in their mid 20s (yes, I know that's more than normal) on a tank who've worked with each other for quite a while, and not just in training but in Chechnya.

All that said, I am aware of the studies and news reports saying the Russians sucked alot in Georgia. I just disagree.

Chinese forces are largely untested, but of course in Korea they were destroyed in massive numbers without tactical and even strategic success.

You're kidding about Korea, right? The CCF managed one of the great strategic surprises of modern military history, chased the UN forces back to the 38th parallel, guaranteed the continued existance of North Korea as a state, and did it with a largely infantry force supplied by porters and animal transport, and medium and light mortars.

Sure the Chinese suffered big personnel losses, but so what? Saying you defeated the Chinese because you killed alot of them is like saying you defeated the Americans because you forced them to extend alot of resources. But in any case during the offensive phase Chinese casualties apparently were not massive, that happened when Ridgeway took over and forced UN forces to fight, and among other things NCOs within US forces particularly to do their jobs better.

But more to the point of this discussion, when the CCF launched its January offensive, it broke the UN positions using basic meat and potato infantry tactics, you know, night marches, infiltration, use of bad weather as cover, with MGs in overwatch and grenades when you get close. Not that doing that is an incredible feat, lots of armies manage it, but again, the CCF was Red Chinese and their approach to small unit leadership - without which the low tech Chinese could not have knocked the high-tech UN for a loop - had nothing like the long-term NCOs. It was a Communist army, with meetings and commissars and unit gatherings to discuss the operation ahead of time, etc. And unsurprisingly the Chinese committed to Korea were not just recruits, from what I have read China's 62nd Army was about half veterans of campaigns against the Japanese, never mind against the nationalists. And with that level of experience, how much sense would it have made to set up NCO schools so there could be a layer of senior enlisted to enforce the rules on all these soldiers who had been fighting for most of their lives as adults?

My point is that there is more than one route to small unit tactical success, and I would say that the CCF example in Korea makes clear that a strong NCO corps is only one route of several.

From my studies of warfare it appears that the forces with poor low level unit leadership (which very much is dependent upon NCOs) will take disproportionally larger losses when fighting a force which has superior low level leadership and/or morale. If the force has the ability to absorb large loses, while the opposing quality force does not, then ultimately the poorer quality force will win. Worse, if the poorer force improve its quality then the equation turns even more favorably against the smaller professional force.

I agree entirely. And I would say that many Western professional NCOs would not agree, they would say "You can't have a proper army without us, period, and it doesn't matter how much experience the troops have, we NCOs are basically irreplacable."

Israel has benefited from the fact that usually it faces a foe which has far poorer training, far poorer leadership, and generally poorer morale (or at least morale that is easily shattered). The IDF also generally goes in with a technological advantage as well. In most of its recent engagements it has also had superiority of numbers. But against Hizbollah it didn't perform very well considering all of its advantages in numbers and material. One can say its losses were too high proportional to the force it faced, though it is debatable. What isn't debatable is that the military force it employed failed to achieve its strategic objectives and suffered more casualties and loss of equipment than it anticipated. How much of this is due to a supposed gap with its NCOs isn't known to me, but I can't see how it would have made the situation worse to have a more Western style NCO establishment (if fingers could be snapped, of course).

I agree here as well. I think the relatively poor Israeli performance vs. the Hizballah is more a case of the middle and high command not taking the opposition seriously, the Israeli populace not being fully behind the war, and - again this is a problem with draft forces - that lack of motivation penetrated to a certain extent into the ranks.

And at the tactical level the US forces were badly beaten for the first few years of warfare. Look at Kasserine Pass, for example. The US forces going into Normandy in 1944 were, overall, led by the survivors of the 1942 and 1943 campaigns. Also, US replacement policy favored units which took light casualties because individual replacements could not be adequately molded into a cohesive fighting unit when they were in the majority. But that gets us into replacement policies and a slightly different topic. One which I consider myself an informed "replacement policy grog"

Steve

I'd be interested to hear your opinion of how US WW2 replacement policy favored or hindered the creation of a proper NCO corps, and to what extent that impacted on US combat performance.

[Patrocles]

Patrocles,

I think any Israeli sitting and watching the evening news here in the US would think that the US media was "pro Hamas" if anything.

The figures are widely reported as 13 Israelis dead, 3 civilians and 10 soldiers. And yes, thousands of rockets have been fired into Israel. That's not a lie. The thing is that the rockets are largely causing destruction of property and light wounds only. This was the same thing that happened in summer of 2006 with Hizbollah. The rockets are primarily weapons of terror, not effective weapons of destruction. The terror caused by the rockets is not proportional to the death toll from them. Similarly, the terror and misery cause by the Israeli attacks in Gaza go far beyond the death toll.

Steve

No, you are completely wrong. The media here (Fox news, some radio) that I listen to do not appear to support either side, but the media does not put the Israeli invasion into perspective if the 4 dead Israeli civilians is an accurate number (which it appears to be! amazing!!)

[PSY]

No, you are completely wrong. The media here (Fox news, some radio) that I listen to do not appear to support either side, but the media does not put the Israeli invasion into perspective if the 4 dead Israeli civilians is an accurate number (which it appears to be! amazing!!)

Interesting article in the Washington Post on coverage of the war in Israel itself. They say Israeli news outlets have put almost no focus on the how the war is effecting Palestinian civilians and instead focuses almost entirely on Israeli casualties and attacks on Israel.

While television screens around the world display grisly scenes from Gaza of blood-smeared hospital floors and critically wounded Palestinian children, Israelis are watching a very different war. Here, images from Gaza are relatively scarce, while the plight of Israelis injured or killed during the war is covered around the clock.

"The suffering of the citizens of Gaza is unbelievable. It's hell. But we are not uninvolved. We are broadcasting for our citizens," said Reudor Benziman, chief executive of Channel 10 News, one of the two major private stations in Israel. "We don't pretend to show the whole picture, as though we are covering a war in Tanzania. It's our war."

The disparity in coverage may help explain why Israelis have been so resolute in their support for a military campaign that has still not achieved its objective of halting Hamas rocket fire and that has come under international scorn for the high civilian toll.

When the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations accused Israel in the past week of obstructing the delivery of humanitarian aid in Gaza, neither allegation received much attention in the Israeli news media. But the deaths of three soldiers in one day dominated the news.

Overall, 13 Israelis have been killed since the Israeli military offensive began Dec. 27, and each death has received blanket media coverage, complete with family interviews and anguished funeral scenes.

Benziman said that Channel 10 has camera crews stationed across the south, chasing down the remains of every rocket and going live when they find them. With an average of 30 or more rockets landing daily, rocket-chasing is a fixture of the prime-time schedule.

"Every minor injury is emphasized," said Arad Nir, foreign editor and anchor with Israel's Channel 2, the country's largest private broadcasting station. "Every incident that the soldiers are involved in is discussed at length."

An anchor at Channel 2 recently became the target of an online petition seeking her dismissal because her tone was considered overly sympathetic to the Palestinians. Nir said any additional coverage of the lives of Gazans "would just make people angry."

"We are Israelis broadcasting to the Israeli public," Nir said. "Among the Israeli public, unfortunately, there's no empathy for the other side."

The feeling, of course, is mutual. And the coverage on many Arabic news stations is the opposite of the coverage in Israel.

[panzermartin]

Some facts about the gaza conflict on New York Times:

"This war on the people of Gaza isn’t really about rockets. Nor is it about “restoring Israel’s deterrence,” as the Israeli press might have you believe. Far more revealing are the words of Moshe Yaalon, then the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, in 2002: “The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/opinion/08khalidi.html?_r=2&em

[Battlefront.com]

Patrocles,

No, you are completely wrong. The media here (Fox news, some radio) that I listen to do not appear to support either side, but the media does not put the Israeli invasion into perspective if the 4 dead Israeli civilians is an accurate number (which it appears to be! amazing!!)

Ah, but your first mistake is thinking that Fox News is representational of US media in general "Fair and balanced" is their motto, but that's as far as it goes. It's no secret that Fox is extremely right leaning and pro-Israel. By "no secret" I mean Rupert Murdoch saying that's his point of view and he makes sure the entire Fox establishment reflects it. An interesting documentary about this is "Out Foxed" which is mostly interviews from Fox execs who were thrown out or marginalized for trying to be "fair and balanced". Not to say Fox doesn't do some excellent reporting, because they do, just saying that they are not reflective of the media as a whole. Generally speaking the media in the US is covering the death and destruction in Gaza and not so much the effects the rockets are having in Israel. Which makes sense because the battle is in Gaza, not in Israel.

Steve

[Cpl Steiner]

I would really like to object to the use of the term "collaborator" for UN personnel in Gaza. This term usually refers to someone who helps an enemy power that is occupying your country. Are the Palestinians occupying part of Israel? I think not. If anything, the reverse is true.

[Battlefront.com]

Yair,

Back to the NCO discussion. The IDF is not based around an NCO "culture".

Thanks again for the educational experience!! I find this fascinating.

That being said, by having a heavy emphasis on reserves, the Israeli army manages to have a fair amount of experience and maturity in its fighting ranks, which is unfortunately less apparent and available when only the regular army is involved.

What it sounds like, to me, is that the IDF needs to find a way of blending the Regular Army with the Reserves a bit better instead of having them be separate. But I understand the practical and political problems with doing this, so my guess is the IDF will likely look the same in 10 years as it does now from a structural standpoint.

Secondbrooks,

Steve: You had long post. I started to quote and answer it but after hour i've desided that it's useless and it started to look like a mess. We basically agree with most points, only splitting hairs remains with them.

Only thing i'm interested to hear more is that 'German army without single private'-thing (i did forgot that part of history). What happened when size of army bloated? Did long term NCOs became also so numbereous that one could be positioned to most platoons? Or did NCOs with much less experience take place of long term NCOs in platoons?

Initially the NCOs were promoted to junior level officer positions (for example, leading a platoon or a battery). Then they trained incoming draftees to be NCOs. So for a while the Wehrmacht had a shortage of trained NCOs. But since the Germans were still years away from actually using their military, it didn't matter. By the time combat started in 1939 the Germans had rebuilt their NCOs, with some having as much as 5 or 6 years of experience and perhaps 1-3 non-shooting large scale military maneuvers under their belt (reoccupation of the Rhineland, Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia). Again, the Prussian culture meant that these NCOs were proud to be NCOs, unlike apparently is the case in the IDF.

Bigduke6,

I think, then, that you essentially are on board with my contention that that Green Beret was offering up a bad interpetation of the IDF.

Yes, it does appear to be an apples to oranges comparison. If I walk up to a knife fight with a .38 cal pistol, I don't think the other guy will think "cool, he doesn't have a .45!" In other words, for the most part it appears that the cost associated with a NCO culture, as Yair calls it, seems to be unnecessary. However, I would contend that from my meager knowledge of the performance of the IDF in 2006 it needs some sort of change to meet the challenge of future engagements against small, determined, non-conventional forces.

If you are suprised - as you say you are - that the IDF generally does well without a strong NCO corps - then perhaps it might be worth considering whether or not NCOs are absolutely as critical as they tell us they are.

Well, if an apple to orange comparison doesn't work, neither does an orange to apples comparison The West doesn't have the luxury of assuming its enemy will be a horde of poorly trained, poorly led, and poorly equipped enemy which is barely motivated to fight. And apparently the Israelis shouldn't be doing that either.

Of course, I am biased. For me, there is only one standard: Wartime success. Everything else, small unit tactical performace, kill ratios, cost accounting, hearts and minds - all of those to me are secondary. For me, the only yardstick worth using is the one that helps you measure war-winning capacity. Great NCOs to me are not a sine qua non to victory, although certainly I'd put them ahead of things like sharp uniforms or absolutely the very latest equipment.

Oh, I agree that outcome based assessment is the most important thing when looking at the war just fought. As long as the next one is pretty much like the previous one, and nobody has monkeyed with the formula, then the results should be similar. Personally, I shudder to think of what the US military's occupation of Iraq would have looked like in 2004/2005 without its NCOs. Politically and militarily the force sent to Iraq was not prepared to deal with what they experienced. In my humble opinion the thing that kept things from going into complete chaos, beyond the point of salvage, was the professional military ethos. A huge part of that success, but certainly not the only part, was the professional NCOs.

Which I would say might make us rethink the definition of "conscript". In CM, of course, conscripts are the bottom of the barrel.

No, I think we have it correct. Conscript, as in the game, does not merely represent how one came into a military service (i.e. possibly involuntarily). Rather it represents men taken from wherever, given cursory training, put under command of leaders with only a bit more training, and then sent to the front with inadequate time to bond or self improve. Therefore, the Conscripts in CM are generally horrible. Ticking off the "Fanatical" (CMBB/CMAK) option or setting Motivation to higher levels (CMx2) changes the equation. That gives you military forces which lack cohesive military skills, but are still very willing to fight and fight hard.

Which leads me to believe that at minimim, a strong NCO corps is something the IDF can clearly do without. The more interesting question, of course, is whether or not a strong NCO corps is a great idea across the board.

Applying lessons from one situation to another requires looking at the whole. Based on previous threats they clearly didn't need it. It could be that for future threats they do, or at least would perform better with it. For other nations, their individual circumstances have to be looked at, including their likely military operations of the future.

We're probably going to just be split on this, my opinion is different from the conventional wisdom.

Your experience means more to me than any report I've read. But I don't think "professional" conventional wisdom is all that different, to be honest. I've seen reports praising how well the Russians handled the Georgian operation. Some were even stunned, others bordered on alarmist (i.e. "the Russian Bear is now a threat"). Sure, there were individual instances of discipline problems noted, but overall they executed a complex operation very smoothly. Then again, the opposing force was the exact opposite of what the Russians found in Chechnya. So it remains to be seen how well they would have done against a competent, determined foe. Based on what you experienced, I would say they would probably have done very well.

You're kidding about Korea, right? The CCF managed one of the great strategic surprises of modern military history, chased the UN forces back to the 38th parallel, guaranteed the continued existance of North Korea as a state, and did it with a largely infantry force supplied by porters and animal transport, and medium and light mortars.

They were also facing a greatly disjointed, ill prepared force and still couldn't push it off the peninsula. Then they were unable to prevent the enemy from regrouping and reinforcing, nor where they able to stop the reconstituted force from removing half of its gains. Stalemate occurred in large part to outside factors, specifically the threat of a nuclear engagement.

So I will get back to my earlier point... if the tables had been turned, and a large professional force pounded into the Chinese one made up of light infantry, could they have withstood the onslaught and successfully fought back even though still outnumbered? One can't say for sure, but my thought is not likely.

In any case, my point remains that the modern Chinese military is untested except for some minor internal disturbances. To say they've built a competent military without NCOs (and is that even true?) is something which can't be proven. And honestly, I hope it doesn't get tested.

My point is that there is more than one route to small unit tactical success, and I would say that the CCF example in Korea makes clear that a strong NCO corps is only one route of several.

I agree. However, my point was that if you had to choose between a small unit tactical force with experienced NCOs and one without, which would you rather bet your life on?

I agree entirely. And I would say that many Western professional NCOs would not agree, they would say "You can't have a proper army without us, period, and it doesn't matter how much experience the troops have, we NCOs are basically irreplacable."

That is where I would disagree with the NCOs. It's clearly not true to say no professional NCOs means a military force incapable of achieving success. But without NCOs the chance of victory, I think, is far more situationally dependent than with them.

I agree here as well. I think the relatively poor Israeli performance vs. the Hizballah is more a case of the middle and high command not taking the opposition seriously, the Israeli populace not being fully behind the war, and - again this is a problem with draft forces - that lack of motivation penetrated to a certain extent into the ranks.

Disconnect between desired political objectives and obtainable military ones is also a major problem for the Israelis right now as it was in 2006.

Steve

[Yair Iny]

Some facts about the gaza conflict on New York Times:

"This war on the people of Gaza isn’t really about rockets. Nor is it about “restoring Israel’s deterrence,” as the Israeli press might have you believe. Far more revealing are the words of Moshe Yaalon, then the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, in 2002: “The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/opinion/08khalidi.html?_r=2&em

Ali,

Why does Yaalon's quote make it fact? Why does his opinion mean that this is what's behind the current operation? Moshe Yaalon, aka Boogy, is now a member of the right wing Likkud Party. He is in opposition to the current government and spares no chance to criticise it. He can be heard monthly advocating this attack or that one, on Gaza, on Iran, on Lebanon. Heck, if he had it his way, israel would be attacking egypt for allowing weapons to be smuggled into Gaza. Quoting an editorial by Rashid Khalidi is hardly the basis for fact on this conflict. It would be akin to quoting Benjamin Netanyahu (or worse). For the record, I heard this Yaalon quote in Hebrew directly from the horse's mouth (ass's in his case) on the news. He said that the Army should burn into their consciousness that they cannot beat israel. A stupid thing to say, but not quite the same as "they are a defeated people".

I am in touch with many people in Israel, including my family, who, Thank God, don't live far enough south to be in (current) range of the rockets. They, almost to a man, support the operation. Why is this, I ask myself. Do they not care about Palestinians at all? That is not the case. Mostly, my friends, like me when I lived there, voted for Meretz, a quite left-wing party that supports a full Palestinian state in the 1967 borders. But people in Israel are baffled by the fact that Hammas have been firing rockets for 8 years. They don't want to hear about "disproportionate responses" and comparing israeli dead to Palestinian dead (which as I said before, is morally wrong and irrelevant). They say that if other western countries were being fired at by their neighbours, then they would do the same or worse.

Rightly or wrongly, mainstream Israeli perception is that they evacuated the Gaza strip and let the Palestinians rule themselves, only to get a Hammas government which calls for the destruction of Israel and and fires rockets and mortars for 8 years. I know it isn't that simple. I know that as soon as Hammas was elected Israel blockaded the strip and ensured that Hammas would be isolated internationally. I don't know what Israel should have done otherwise in the face of a government that publicly says it wants it destroyed, but I know that what it did isn't good.

I would like to ask you though, what you think Israel should have done after leaving the Gaza strip and Hammas' election, that would have resulted in a different situation. I would like to know what you think Israel should do now instead of this operation. I ask this sincerely, because I don't know myself. I know that what it is doing now is wrong, but I am at a loss to offer a better solution.

[Battlefront.com]

BigDuke6,

I'd be interested to hear your opinion of how US WW2 replacement policy favored or hindered the creation of a proper NCO corps, and to what extent that impacted on US combat performance.

The primary problem with the US replacement system was that it worked best when casualties within a unit were low and there was time to integrate the individual replacements. The system worked very poorly when mass casualties were taken and/or there was no time to integrate the fresh replacements. The reasons are rather simple and straight forward...

When an experienced Platoon lost 4 men there were still roughly 36 that could be moved around to cover key positions. Promising and proven junior NCOs could be promoted and given new positions if necessary, or in some cases older NCOs could go back to positions they knew well from previous assignments. This kept unit cohesion very high because there were enough resources within the formation to keep it staffed.

When a single platoon got hit particularly hard, the other platoons within the company could do lateral transfers. A squad leader from 1st Platoon could go and take over a squad in 2nd Platoon, while someone from within 1st Platoon (with less experience) could take over the newly vacated leadership position. Since the NCOs within the company generally know each other, and by extension the platoon's officers, these sorts of transitions were generally workable.

New replacements were then integrated into the open slots. If new NCOs appeared they were stuck wherever they could do "the least damage". Remember, the replacements weren't often career since they were fresh from training in the states. The ones that were career tended to be the ones who had been overlooked on purpose (lazy, out of shape, bad records, etc.). In this way the buck privates and the newly minted SGTs were eased into their assignments.

All of this was well and fine provided the unit was not in the line at the time. When in the line it became nearly impossible to "baby" the newbies, so there was absolutely a sink or swim attitude. I've read far too many first hand accounts of veterans who wouldn't even bother learning the names or any personal information of the newbies until after a few days of combat. Why? Because they expected them to become casualties and therefore didn't want to get personal until there appeared to be a reason to.

The worst situation, though, was when a unit suffered massive casualties either at one time or over a fairly short time. The experienced soldiers, NCOs, and junior officers were simply used up. The system I described above starts to become less and less efficient as more and more of the existing proven leaders become casualties and the pool of potential experienced replacements is also shrunk due to casualties.

In this case what happened was a disproportionate amount of the unit was fresh or nearly fresh. Unit cohesion from before the losses was lower and experience within that formation generally lower. One or two seasoned NCOs within a platoon doesn't matter much if the LT and the bulk of the soldiers and other NCOs are pretty much fresh off the boat. Over time, if the combat assignments were light, this could be changed. But not if the combat was thick and heavy.

Two classic examples of this can be seen with the Airborne units (82nd and 101st) and those ground down to the bone in Hürtgen Forest (28th ID and 106th ID in particular).

The Airborne units suffered extremely high casualties in a fairly short period of time and had to be withdrawn from combat because they lost their capability to fulfill their role. They simply couldn't absorb so many individuals and still remain an effective fighting force. German units, on the other hand, would have likely stayed in the line and received fresh, cohesive replacement units. In other words, the German methodology did not require wholesale, long term removal of the unit from the front except when the unit basically ceased to exist (as happened often in 1944, both West and East).

The other extreme was the 28th and 106th. They lost a ton of personnel over a few months. The result was that even though the strength of the units was still relatively high, the fighting capabilities had sunk dramatically since it was basically all raw replacements with little long term experience. They were moved to a "quiet" sector of the front in order to absorb new replacements and regain some amount of cohesion. Unfortunately, the sector was ground zero for the Bulge offensive. Both the 28th and 106th suffered massive losses, surrendered in large numbers, and retreated in disarray. Some stayed and fought, and fought VERY well, but as large formations they were basically smashed beyond recognition.

So the lesson for the US forces was that the individual replacement system worked fantastic when in ideal circumstances, but under major stress broke down and actually was counter productive. More than one study of this topic has concluded that many soldiers' lives were wasted because of this system. A fact that was recognized at the time, so much so that after the replacements landed in Europe they were sent to a sort of remedial training program in France before moving on up to the front. This was an improvement, for sure. It's also a policy that the US tries to continue with to this day, for example replacements for Iraq units are supposed to do a stint in Kuwait before moving to join up with their ultimate assigned unit.

Ah... I like using dusty knowledge. Makes me feel like I didn't waste a few weeks of my time learning it

Steve

[Vark]

Yair, is it true that Israelis are far more democratic in their army, officers called by first names, all a platoon asked their opinion about how to attack/defend. Given the pool of experience, would this approach replace a professional NCO class. The young British army officers I have talked to have all said that after an O group they sat down, told their sergeant about the forthcoming operation and waited for his suggestions what to do.

[Battlefront.com]

Yair,

I would like to ask you though, what you think Israel should have done after leaving the Gaza strip and Hammas' election, that would have resulted in a different situation. I would like to know what you think Israel should do now instead of this operation. I ask this sincerely, because I don't know myself. I know that what it is doing now is wrong, but I am at a loss to offer a better solution.

This is the big problem for Israel, isn't it? They simply don't know what to do, while Hamas THINKS they do know what to do. And that is to wage war against Israel at all costs in the misguided notion that they can somehow defeat Israel. The problem here is that both sides are being irrational. In order to stop the cycle of tit-for-tat "I'm justified to do this because they did that" cause/effect counter-productive action one of the two sides has to stop playing the game.

So I'll ask you... which side is more likely to be able to pull back and do what is in the best long term interests of its people AND (incidentally) the regular civilians on the other side? Hamas, a fanatical terrorist organization, or Israel, a cultured society with a long history of democratic principles? If your answer is Hamas then I think we can look forward to another 100 years of this crap If your answer is Israel, then that means Israel has to break the cycle. How? Well, that's the $64,000 question, isn't it?

In general terms Israel is going to have to sit back and absorb losses while it pursues an active, diverse, and highly creative set of policies designed to marginalize Hamas while at the same time not collectively punishing the Palestinian people. It will probably take several generations to achieve this. Many Israelis will die without retribution. But I contend not too many more than Israel looses when it "strikes back", so in real terms I think Israel will loose less people by taking a more moderate approach than it loses now with its military tactics.

If someone has a different idea, I'd be interested in hearing it. Because the only one I can think of is Pogrom, which definitely puts Israelis in the same moral boat as their worst historical oppressors. I also contend that it won't work anyway since genocide in and of itself doesn't produce the results the perpetrators intended and desired.

Steve