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Old 07-14-2020, 05:41 PM
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Raellus Raellus is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by stilleto69 View Post
Raellus, I think you might have misunderstood my point. What I was trying to say sometimes exercises can give a team/unit a false sense of reality. I.e. your point about the Iraqi Army, yes in hindsight we know all what happened, but when I was in the copula, commanding my tank, I could only envision them as the Soviet Army, because that's what I had been trained to fight (their equipment/doctrine/etc.)

But my main point about taking an assumption how things from exercises relate to the real world was like watching the Cleveland Browns beat the New England Patriots in a preseason game, and expecting the same result in the regular season. That was my point. Sorry if it missed you.
No need to apologize. Thanks for the clarification. You make a good point. Training and "real life" aren't the same thing. One can definitely draw the wrong conclusions about the latter based on the former. As you point out, sometimes, the underdog can derive false confidence from success in "practice" scenarios. I contend that it's the favorite that more often makes mistaken assumptions based on exercises/training maneuvers. If the favorite "wins", it bolsters overconfidence. If they "lose", they write it off to a fluke, beginners luck, or "we weren't really trying". In either case, when the SHTF, a rude awakening often awaits.

I feel like Desert Storm was the exception that proves this rule. The Coalition had been expecting a tough fight but a cakewalk (by comparison) ensued. They trained hard and were briefed to expect stiff resistance. In most cases, they faced little, if any. It was a best case scenario for the Coalition forces.

The argument that I've been making for years is that the US military drew the wrong conclusion from Desert Storm: that Soviet equipment and doctrine were far inferior to their American counterparts, and that a hot war in Central Europe would have gone much better for NATO than the Cold War think tanks predicted.
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Last edited by Raellus; 07-14-2020 at 07:33 PM.
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