From: Norman Yarvin <yarvin@cs.yale.edu>
Subject: Re: No Army Needed
Organization: Yale Computer Science Department
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 17:25:02 GMT


From Norman Yarvin <yarvin@cs.yale.edu>

Dan Sorenson <viking@iastate.edu> writes:

>  Still, what do you do to stop these
>guys from ambushing the occassional patrol, perhaps just picking off
>your sentries once a month or so?

One way a patrol avoids being ambushed is to take a different route, and go
at a different hour, each time it goes out.  With this, only a few percent
of ambushes, set up at a random point, will succeed.  However a unit which
uses this tactic alone will still suffer losses from those ambushes which do
happen to be put in the right location.  And the guerrillas will not suffer
corresponding losses.

Thus a unit which wishes to give as good as it gets must also attempt to
ambush the ambushers.  In a sense this levels the playing field; the
situation becomes two small groups of men, out in the wilderness, trying to
kill each other.  In such a fight both sides will suffer losses.  Which side
comes out with a better kill ratio depends on the relative skills of the two
sides.  (It depends on relative quality of equipment also, but only
equipment that can be hand-carried is relevant.)  In Afghanistan, for
instance, the locals had a long tradition of warlike shooting.  Their
enemies were mostly Soviet conscripts plucked from farms or factories.  Thus
the Afghans must have established their dominance in small-unit conflicts
early, and kept it up until the end.

In Vietnam there was no such tradition.  However the Vietnamese did have one
immense advantage: they had the time to develop the necessary skills.  Our
infantrymen did not, because they were rotated out after six months.  (I am
unsure of this figure.  Maybe it was nine months or a year.)  In addition
the training US infantrymen were given before being sent over was poor.
However what could have been done is shown by those few Americans who were
highly skilled.  Someone in this thread mentioned that US soldiers could
never venture out in less than platoon strength; while this may have been
true in the vast majority of cases, there was also an organization of
snipers who went out for days at a time in two-man groups, with considerable
success.

As for picking off sentries: if the area is deserted, someone coming in to
shoot at a sentry will also be a target for your patrols.  Patrols, in any
sort of warfare, are not just a formality.  They must move silently and use
their eyes and ears.

The above assumes that operations are in some sort of wilderness.  In a
heavily populated area, if the population were completely hostile, the
guerrillas could take inflict damage in all sorts of ways at little risk to
themselves.  Thus an occupying force would have to take measures to secure
the loyalty of the inhabitants.  Not all negative measures, either.
Treating the locals decently could be one method.  At the same time anyone
caught aiding the guerrillas would be punished severely, likely by
execution.  There would be an accompanying war of propaganda to win the
sentiments of the local population.  While this last is, I think, critical,
the details of it are out of the charter of sci.military.

>  The morale problem would be rather
>difficult to overcome, especially for an occupation force, and the
>resources you expend getting rid of them are immense compared to what
>the militia needs to expend to hurt you a bit.

The guerrillas will have problems with morale too, if they are losing men in
a seemingly endless struggle.

I would offer the IRA as an example of an insurgency that is basically a
failure.  The British do keep a military presence in Northern Ireland.
British patrols are done in armored vehicles.  Certain bases are generally
reached by helicopter rather than by car.  However they have managed to
maintain an "acceptable level of violence", using presumably an acceptable
amount of money.

--
Norman Yarvin						yarvin@cs.yale.edu
 "Defenceless, adj.  Unable to attack."
	-- Ambrose Bierce, _The Devil's Dictionary_

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