Matilda II

[Sentryduty]

Indeed, however it's forgivable lessons, the idea of combined arms, (Infantry, Armour, and Artillery) operations were really in their infancy at the outbreak of WW2. Truly it is hard to imagine what the next war will be like, and many times doctrine is built off what the last war taught.

The same holds true today in many ways. Prior to my deployment to Afghanistan we trained as we always did, Cold War doctrine; Fire and movement, clearing zig-zag trenches, Fighting in Built Up Areas, tank hunting teams, and Mechanized Warfare, with a tiny sliver of time devoted to "new" ideas from observers in theater.

While all that training was mostly not applicable to the irregular operations of fighting a counter insurgency, we adapted our equipment, tactics, and SOP's on the fly. Mostly we made out all right. The biggest scar that could come away from that mission would be to re-gear our entire army to that style of fighting, which when met with a modern combined arms force would suffer poorly, and may even get chewed up and spit out by a 1960's vintage Russian Motor Rifle Division TO&E.

The Desert Raider small group mechanized patrols we conducted in 2006 would be smashed easily by an enemy with air support. Unless something has changed since my retirement, Canada has no MANPADS, or portable air defense systems, if my Platoon of 4 vehicles was discovered by an enemy attack helicopter it would have been a turkey shoot. Luckily the insurgent forces has no aircraft and the Coalition ruled the skies.

As always hindsight is 20/20 and for early Tank development, much of the direction of invention was geared to solving the trenches of France sort of problem. As things like tanks, attack aircraft, and long range artillery modernized from their WW1 birthright, the whole concept of static warfare became a very dangerous affair, and was quickly rendered obsolete outside of holding the seawalls of Normandy and similar places.