If you dont mind:
"knowing where and how to hit and having the knowledge where the enemy is, including his centres of gravity, I can start reducing them from Army to Corps to Division to Brigade."
"The centre of gravity for guerrilla warfare has been known for over 5000 years. It's women and children. Get rid of them and the guerrilla disappears."
Some things in war don't change. Killing is one of them and killing by starvation is an age old tactic.
However, what you kill and how you kill has changed over time. Obviously since we're no longer issued the short sword. In today's battlefield, the main fight is the recee (reconnaissance) battle, not the main force battle. You win the recee fight, then the main force battle is a mop up operation; an extremely bloodier operation but still a mop up operation.
Thus in today's wars, you seek to blind the enemy starting from the national level, then isolate the battle area, then the battle field, and then you proceed downward onto the individual armies, corps, divisions, brigades. When the battle groups and battalion task forces hit the enemy lines, they should be able to know who and what is hitting them and more than likely, they also would not know from where.
I think this is the embarrassment of Bush administration, you know American law, might-be-guilty is not guilty. (guilty here I refer to attacking USA) in the US a street man bearing a gun does not break the law,as long as he's got a licence. and it's no doubt he could kill many people if he wants to. Saddam did not have the licence anymore.
Saddam was guilty of being an idiot. What's even more perplexing to me than how was I fooled (and to this day with today's evidence, I still do not see how I could be convinced that he did not have WMDs) is just how the hell the man stayed in power. He maintained his grip through fear but hy like his WMDs, it was a bluff. Why no one inside his Iraq called his bluff is beyond me.
when was your last visit to China,officer?
I feel sorry for your bad experience in China.
It wasn't all bad. Didn't like the pollution but shared alot of war stories. It was not everyday a Canadian Major get treated like a 5 star general. Alot of things in common, the budget wars we have to fight and we can't figure out how the hell the other services spend their money. One SrCol griped that a Shenyang Airbase got $50mil US for air conditioning while he couldn't get $500 for shoes.
Traded stories about people who should not be in the army and a few who've made their living scamming the army while in uniform. They were amazed at how much power Regimental Sergeant-Majors have ... even over Captains and Majors. Those PLA officers were flabbergasted and fumed that they would bring them up on charges. I ask them who handles the paper work and they reply the clerks/sergeants. I ask them how long before the paper work is lost? I crack that room up big time.
Still, I would have loved to see a company field ex instead of watching kung fu.
I bet you're talking about Shanghai. Mandarin is most popular in Beijing, even beyond any foreign languages. and that's why the Beijing administration has to call for English study in order to get prepared for 2008 Olympics. Shanghai is more international than Beijing and SHers are going farther in secularism than any other Chinese.
Well, in Shanghai, I start speaking either Cantonese or Mandarin, I say two times out of three, they reply in English. They said that I speak Chinese with a foreign accent.
let's get to the point, Asymmetric warfare. it actually happens all the time. if any country or group in the world wants to fight the US, it has to think about asymmetric warfare.
I don't like the term Asymmetric warfare. To me it's just basic principals being cloaked in a fancy title that does absolutely nothing in teaching you how to think and execute. The fact of the matter is that we all do asymmetric warfare, even the US. We, as officers, do not want to fight force on force. We do it because it's necessary but we aim to have force on weak. I rather kill an army by killing its HQ than going through man-by-man.
no more question and thanks tons.
A pleasure.