Does the US Military lack the skills to conduct combat operations in a proficient manner?

Question

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070824/ap_on_re_as/afghanistan_friendly_fire
Seems this happens way to often.
Not looking for wise asz nationalistic comments.
I want constructive comments on how to improve the US Military so it can be respected around the world.

When innocent people or British troops are killed even if by mistake then you can say a military may be powerful but you can NOT say it is competent. There is now way to define it as such.

Yes
Just blame the British.
Its there fault.
And the US bombed and killed 27 afghanis at a wedding in 2003 and then apologized.
The US military is INCOMPETENT.

Answer 1

Those of us who have observed British troops have noted that frequently they are someplace other than where they said (and think) they are.

This was the cause of both the 1991 and 2003 fratricide incidents.

I'm willing to bet that -yet again - the British troops misreported their position.

And I'm also willing to bet that the British will - yet again -blame the Americans instead of recognizing that they seem to be unable to provide their allies with accurate locations of their people.

Answer 2

I've suggested many time that the US should raise 2 "peacekeeping" divisions in additional to the 10 combat divisions. Such divisions would have fewer manuever battalions (Infantry, Armor, Cavalry) and more Military Police, Civil Affairs, Engineer, and Psyops units, and would have numerous permanent teams from relevant civilian agencies (USAID for example). And it would work closely with NGOs to accomplish it's goals. Further, it wouldn't train and promote like the combat divisions, but train mainly for the peacekeeping mission and all that entails, rather than for high intensity combat training.

I put peacekeeper in quotes because such a force would be good for other missions besides peacekeeping. In the after math of the Iraq War, such divisions would have been a perfect ready made occupation force to augment the remaining invasion forces.

Now, you can make the argument that such a force would not work in Iraq today, which is a counterinsurgency. You would be correct. After all, you don't call the fire department to arrest people, or an ambulance to put out fires, units should do what they are designed for. However, such a force would help avert the conditions that help insurgencies arise in the first place.

Answer 3

Accidents happen. Its one of the many things that makes war bad. Decesions have to be made on a split seconds notice under a lot of pressure. Its easy to armchair things from your computer. Its easy to look back in hindsight. Its not so easy to be the one on the trigger having to make the decesion in a split second. We are all human, there will always be mistakes no matter how many safeguards you put in place, there is always something that may not work right or give out.

They are working on Friend or Foe identifiers for ground units, but they are not quite out to the force yet. Even with those, its hard to tell from a jet when the action is in small arms range.

Answer 4

What they need is the proper equipment to do their jobs properly ans safely, without having to be micro manged from 10,000 miles away. They also need a government that will listen to it's military commanders needs and recommendations.

Just as an example, you can't expect our forces to conduct house to house searches, yet allow each person in that household to keep one firearm (Rumsfeld).

Secondly, you can't put your troops on trial for allegedly killing and beating the wrong person. I'm not saying it's right or fair, that an innocent person may have died, but the truth is that it's a war and sometimes innocent people die, which is sad, but to give US forces contradictory orders only makes a situation worse. Regardless of how politicians feel about the war they need to remain united and support our troops.

Answer 5

The US Military is by far the best in the world at conducting combat operations.
What they are not good at is being a police force and patroling to "keep the peace".
After the US won the war, they should have allowed the UN to be the peace keepers.
The military is designed to win wars, not to police.

Answer 6

Well the obvious answer is to not put our military into impossible situations, and where it is put into a situation that it can deal with, to train it properly to do that job.

The problem with Iraq for instance is that we are trying to solve a political situation militarily, and that won't work.

In Afghanistan, before we decided to occupy it, the Army did a great job of kicking the Taliban out. But then we screwed up and decided to fight World War II all over again, as if the Taliban would play that game---of course they did not.

Nor did the North Vietnamese.

So I'd say we need a more highly mobile Army that is basically logistically-free, and that it built to fight short sharp wars in winnable situations.

Also we need a Commander in Chief who is not a moron---that would help obviously.

Answer 7

In war, as in many other lines of work, people make mistakes. The difference is when working with munitions, the mistakes are often deadly as apposed to, say, misfiling a report.

The US military is well trained and equipped. But no fighting force is error-free. To think that arm conflict will ever be error-free is naive.

Answer 8

Maybe the question should be, do british forces actually get any training on how to call in air strikes ?

Do they know enough to not tell the US pilots to drop a bomb on their own coordinates?

As we have seen from past british military engagments,

The level of training in the British military leave much to be desired.

6 british soldiers killed in iraq since 2003, by their fellow british soldiers in friendly fire incidents.

A British air contraoller, three times telling an American
A-10, there were no Allied Forces near the area.

Poor maintenence on British Fighters, resulting in their IFF identifer not working, resulting in their jet being shot down by a patriot crew.

During the Falklands capaign:

Two British Companies, engaging each other in an HOUR long fire fight.

( how do you not know after an hour, you are fighting your own side? )

The SAS and SBS getting in a fire fight with each other, resulting in casualties.

The Royal Navy shooting down one of its own fighters.

The rate of friendly fire incidents in both Iraq and Afghanistan, are so far below any nations previous totals, as to be considered a feat of magic itself.

But listening to the British public, one would think that there are friendly fire incidents weekly or monthly, instead of just 7 or 8 over 6 years of war in two countries.

Answer 9

No. Politicians lack the common sense to allow them.

Answer 10

It is because of the "Shoot now, ask questions later" or "Shoot at anything that moves" attitude that is prevalent in the US military. They know that they're not going to go to jail for shooting anyone by mistake. All they have to do is to declare that they followed the rules of engagement. That's all and they're off the hook.