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Originally posted by Albany Rifles
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Not exactly true. The Fenian Invasions were a headache and a half for Canada ... and showed just how far behind British doctrines were. -
Colonel, The Fenians were combat veterans of the cauldron of the ACW motivated by politics. They were volunteers, not Regular Army.Originally posted by Officer of Engineers View Post
While US doctrine had evolved these volunteers applied the hard learned lessons. You are correct that the US Army of 1865 prior to demobilizing could have taken on just about any Army in the world and been successful.
However that vast Army was gone by Thanksgiving. It would not be until WW 2 that we would be halfway prepared at the start of war and that only because the fall of France in 1940 woke us up.“Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
Mark TwainComment
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it's interesting to think that the immediate post-WWII army was this lumbering behemoth, officer-heavy yet badly underfunded. the armed forces learned from WWII that officers were the biggest LIMFAC in creating a massive, conscripted army, so chose to keep many mid-level officers to prevent that re-occurrence.
however, the army itself was poorly funded and everyone thought the next war would be a nuclear total war, so the US Army that fought the Korean War and the Vietnam War was really badly positioned to fight those wars.
the US Army of today has some disturbing similarities to the BEF of 1914. well-trained to a fault, huge number of battle-tested veterans (going up the chain), but vulnerable to attrition-based total warfare.
OTOH by far the biggest advantage we have going for us is that absent a massive technological shock, modern warfare is so expensive that no war is likely to turn into the attrition-based model before everyone runs out of ammo!There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."- Isaac AsimovComment
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What does LIMFAC stand for?Comment
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