When my unit was training for Afghanistan in early 2009, many of our instructors assumed we were going to Iraq. “In Iraq you have to do this. In Iraq make sure you don’t do this other thing.” When we told them we were going to Afghanistan, the almost universal response was, “Oh. . . it’s the same thing.”No, it wasn’t.
Imagine that.
Outdated, irrelevant doctrine is the reason my old tank unit was still training to counter Soviet tactics in the late 90’s, a decade after the Soviet Union collapsed and years after we saw the new face of war in Mogadishu... Doctrine is the reason I arrived in Afghanistan trained to interrogate Soviet generals, but not trained to handle Afghan insurgents. Doctrine is the reason instructors said to me, “We know this is stupid. We know it’s not realistic. But we don’t have a choice. We have to train you this way, or get shut down.”
I am not surprised that this exists, but I am surprised at the apparent extent of the issue. I can recall hints of this during my time in the Navy, and that was 20 years ago. Is this a problem that has gotten worse with time, or did I just somehow miss the military's version of "teaching to the test" in the early 90's?
2 comments:
Armies training to re-fight the last war is a meme probably as old as war itself.
True; but I would hope that, given a decade or more of experience in the actual state of the war, someone would raise the idea that training should be at least moved up to the current century...
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