"since conventional and unconvetional warfare are fought against different types of enemies, you can’t use the same equipment for both"

Sean DeCoursey on 124 Monkeys with an interesting post on Modern Warfare:

"The Center for American Progress recently released a report on the future of the defense budget. One cool thing they included was an interactive defense budget simulator. Here’s a link

to it. Fun to play with. Sort of. One thing that really stood out at me when looking at it was the little wobble bubble on the side that was labeled 1/2 “Conventional” and 1/2 “Unconventional”.

That little bubble really crystalized something for me that I’ve been seeing a lot of lately in defense think tank circles. The notion that you can have a force that fights conventional wars, or one that fights unconventional wars, but not both. That’s frankly bullshit.

You know why insurgents and guerrilla’s use unconventional warfare strategies against conventional armies? Because they work against conventional armies better than conventional strategies do. Anyone who tells you that unconventional tacts and strategies are useless in a full scale war between countries is a goddamn liar or incredibly stupid.

When infantry soldiers fight, we patrol in spread out groups, with spaces between us for bullets and shrapnel to pass through. When we take fire, we get down on the ground and hide behind stone walls or trees or cars or whatever is available. This is conventional warfare. But we’re not the first people to practice it.

Francis Marion aka “the Swamp Fox” utilized a lot of these tactics during the Revolutionary War. His men fought from cover, traveled off roads on swamp paths, and engaged in mobile hit and run warfare, rather than the “stand in formation and shoot in volleys” strategy that comprised the conventional warfare of the day. It took nearly two centuries before people realized that this “unconventional” strategy of NOT standing in lines to get shot was a good idea. Once this was accepted and it became completely apparent that this was a more effective strategy, it became the “conventional” way to fight wars."

He's give a few more examples, which make sense to me, and they seem to throw some doubt on the wisdom of our Military Spending as well. Here's the conclusion:

"It’s almost like someone said that since conventional and unconvetional warfare are fought against different types of enemies, you can’t use the same equipment for both. Which is just a total crock. Unconventional tactics and strategies are designed to work against conventional forces. If proven effective, regular forces should adopt these techniques and strategies because they work. When I was in Iraq we once raided a town with some MPs. During the course of clearing the village’s buildings, the MPs told us they couldn’t conduct clearing operations inside building because they had M16s instead of M4s. This is exactly the type of nonsense thinking that says conventional and unconvetional warfare requires different weapons and systems and that you can’t fight both or be good at both at the same time. And it’s significantly more dangerous to America’s future than anything done or designed by our enemies."