You can't cyber-special a land war

Imperical colonial war nonsense

Dedicated to the wonderful Susan, who became our biggest backer.

As a meat grinder war continues in Ukraine, being fought between dads my age and Russian prison convicts, you can bet the British will think up some nonsense.

Gen Walker has also called for the Army to be "more like the special forces", inspired by his background with Britain's elite military branch.

He also believes the country should discover new solutions to dealing with threats without always relying on expensive weaponry and brute force.

General Walker has commanded at company, squadron, battle group, brigade, and special forces group levels, variously in Northern Ireland, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

A special war ninja cyber

Right, so his combat experience was at colonel or brigadier level. In WW2 majors and lt colonels were running brigades in combat.

But I’m being unfair, Britain hasn’t deployed a division in combat since Desert Storm (correct me if I’m wrong, there might have been a deployment of something called a division but was actually a battalion in strength). The ‘brigade’ he commanded was a big battalion, though. If you’re not up on military structures, nowadays a brigade of about 3-5.000 troops is the independent combat unit America uses, and the rest world tries to. A brigade of 3.000 is barely an independent battalion. A regiment is about the size of a brigade as well though it lacks specialist troops and equipment a brigade should have. A regiment is what is mostly used in Ukraine. Britain in its imperial past used mostly battalion sized units of 1.000-3.000 men around the world, mostly the low end of size. WW2 had divisions of 10.000 to 15.000 men, though Waffen SS had 20.000 men monstrosities, while say Russians had 3.000 men in a division on a good day. See Absolute War by our pal Chris Bellamy.

Anyway a battalion is a tiny unit. A brigade is a stepping stone for American officers on their way to general if they’re lucky. The vast majority do not get their ‘star’ which means general rank and a division - its really really difficult to get to that rank compared to all others before that. Gen Walker’s command experience here is that of a fairly average American officer who topped out at major or colonel, ranks which you can reach if you’ve got a half-functioning brain and can keep your privates in your pants.

At that level, you could know every officer, junior and senior and senior NCO by name.

As behooves a man boasting of an imperial colonial elite army, he was born in Kenya, and went to an elite private (public) school and a rather middling university. Not Oxbridge of course - which doesn’t mean there aren’t many excellent universities outside of that duopoly, just that you don’t get many army men from Cambridge or Oxford. Not an intellectual per se. Say compare to American generals who are quite often PhDs, its basically obligatory if you want to get past the one star of a general, though requiremenst have slipped as the brown people wars got more bitter and less winning. As a scion of empire, possibly without too much bothersome introspection, he went into the elite Guards Division.

For foreign readers, Britain had and has a terrible class system. One aspect of that is that the male children of the elite nobility went into various types of professions. First-born would go into the Navy unless he was too stupid, because the Navy had high standards regardless of how well-born you were. You don’t want the idiot son of a Duke grounding a battleship. Second-born would become a bishop or barrister if he had the brains for it. The stupid and less well-born would go into the Army. Nobody much cared if you lost a company or battalion as compared to a warship, they were cheaper than warships, and it was much more difficult to kill your men in one go compared to a ship - though there was a grind in the backwaters similar to America’s recent imperial wars.

1901 cream of British officers

But your son couldn’t go into the ‘normal’ army. Nope, they went into the parade army. The Guards cavalry division.¹ Or, if he was particularly stupid, the Guards infantry. Maybe the Irish Guards (despite being ‘Irish’, a very elite unit with all that entails.). These units got the biggest, fittest and most likely private soldiers, the best NCOs and the worst failures of the nobility. Nowadays the children of nobility marry Russians, become Tory politicians, crash run robber funds, and generally otherwise prostitute themselves and destroy society instead of imperial outposts and colonized nations.

Back to Guards. Lions led by donkeys. In the British army officers are called Ruperts. Not too smart. But brave and loyal and stubborn. Guards officers are the most Rupert of the Ruperts.

As a note, Montgomery, one of Britain’s finest war leaders, was not a Guardsman. In fact during long wars, the Guards officers at the top were often quickly replaced by ones who could actually fight. Preferably they had some Guards experience, say the Irish Guards, along the way but not absolutely necessary.

General Alexander

Being a Guards officer meant you were high-born and on a fast track to promotion. In time, a junior officer of the Guards, who managed to avoid getting stuck on a fuzzy-wuzzy spear or putting his privates in a scandalous place, would rapidly rise in the ranks and get command of other combat units.² Senior generals too often came from a Guards background. They had the birth and the court support.

Forget about meritocracy.

Not much changes.

British Guards units had quite a good record in WW1 and WW2 - but see the note on them receiving the best troops. Plus the best equipment. Stupid officers are also quite often brave officers, especially in the junior ranks. So Guards units also got plenty of medals. If your son died on a battlefield, he’s getting a medal to mention on the family tombstone. Possibly the most legendary British WW2 unit was the bog-ordinary 7th Armored Division, the ‘Desert Rats’

Look, if you’re a Wehraboo, then you should know that Lieberstandarte and Grossdeutschland were based both on the ancient Prussian Guards units which evolved with the British Guards, cough cough same royal family.³ They were meant to compete mostly with the British imperial royal parade units as well as continue or rival Prussian units. Other countries of course had the same Guards nonsense, Napoleon screwed up his army by diverting quality troops into his three types of Imperial Guard units. A point I’ll return to. But Napoleon chose his Imperial Guard, all hail the God-Emperor!, officers by bravery, luck and brains, the last being the least important but still important. Prussian Guards and the General Staff were Junkers dominated, but their system was a lot more of a meritocracy. The German staff system did not turn out incompetent generals, no matter how well born. Britain had an empire to send the moron officer to, he could drink and shag himself to death in some tropical hellhole, while Germany had France and Russia to worry about, incompetence couldn’t be allowed command.

Since the Second World War, the ‘elite’ division has disappeared from most modern armies, especially the US and German armies. It however remains in the UK and Russia - with their Rus Guards divisions and regiments.

It’s a hallmark of British high command that too often it is the Guardsman who gets the top army job or at least is the deputy.

And these guys are politicans.

You don’t survive, sometimes literally, public (private) school without politics. If you went to Harrow, you know the ruling politicians or at least their relatives. The Prime Minister’s cousin might have stuck a crumpet in your arse-cheeks, what jolly fun, and if you didn’t squeal, he might put in a good word for you.

Anyway Gen Walker, in America he would be a colonel, went into one Guards unit at the beginning of his career, went then into the SAS unit descended from a Guards unit, and then back into a Guards unit.

That SAS unit is the 22nd Regiment - a world-class, world beating unit. Its value is in its NCOs. Its officers change as they rapidly rise through the ranks, but the NCOs stay.

His major command, the 12th Armored Infantry Brigade (now an Armored Combat Brigade Team - very American) a very nice but little armored unit which he ran for two years. Its core component is the legendary Royal Tank Regiment, the world’s oldest tank unit, with about 70-80 tanks or about two weeks worth of daily grind in Ukraine. Or one major assault. That’s about a third of the power of a WW2 division, which would have 200-300 tanks.

Mostly though, he’s been fighting brown people infantry wars.

Expeditionary, colonial wars.

Another retreat from Kabul

The sort of wars that have probably ended.

Not his fault because Britain hasn’t fought a stand up war since the Korean War.

His fault, he wants to fight expeditionary cyber ninja wars.

He want special forces wars.

Well, Russia doesn’t fight special forces wars.

Neither will China.

Russia tried to fight a special forces war. Its biggest special forces units got wiped out at Hostomel like the Germans at Crete, except the Germans won that battle but Hitler never again tried that maneuever. The British did, and Montgomery did Market Garden, one his of his worst ideas which possibly prolonged the war by a couple of hundred thousand dead Hungarian Jews.

And then the Russian survivors plus top tier even better Spetnas recon soldiers died fighting very British ‘special forces’ as light infantry in Donbas. I’m calling it a British style usage because Britain got addicted in its colonial past to having tiny British, aka white, units spread around the Empire, to quickly and more importantly cheaply, put down natives and keep other empires at bay, always with much larger ‘native’ units to do all the unpleasant stuff. Unfortunately the natives often fight back, and some of them were very, very good at fighting back, like the gurkhas, the Sikhs, the Zulus and Pashtuns. Some of them got assimilated into the British army, some of them didn’t. Other empires tried to do the same in the future, the French with paratroopers in Algiers and Vietnam, and the Americans with Green Berets in Vietnam. Those operations failed. The British didn’t fail in Malaysia with the SAS, but Malaysians hate the British probably as much as Indians do as a result. The British also tried to special forces Northern Ireland, which did little except turn the Provisional IRA into one of the world’s most elite urban guerilla forces, a match in skill, bravery and tactical and strategic sophistication for the SAS. And the Provisional IRA more or less ‘won’ when they started bombing London’s financial heart, leading to a peace process which had seemed impossible. The SAS didn’t force or win that result. Not to defend the terrorists. But SAS brutality was legendary in Northern Ireland. Something carried unfortunately into Afghanistan.

A special special Green Beret

In Afghanistan ‘elite’ British and American, and NATO, units chased around Pashtuns and no matter how you spin it, they lost. Along the war we had war crimes and plenty of them. The Australian SAS is shattered by the on-going legal odyssey brought on by a soldier who though he was too special.

Anyway, it seem General Walker thinks he can special a war.

Unfortunately wars are meatgrinders.

Wars against Russia are absolute meatgrinders.

And wait until you see China waging war.

China doesn’t care about brigades, just like Russia doesn’t care about companies (about 100-300 soldiers).

If the British Army lost a company tomorrow, it would be a staggering decisive loss for a decade. For the Russians, its Tuesday. For the Chinese, it will barely make into the record of an invasion of Taiwan.

No matter how skilled your soldier is…

No matter how clever your soldier is…

No matter how trained your soldier is…

Artillery and machine guns will kill your soldier.

A lesson that Lieutenant Colonel H. Jones, battalion commander, barely a rank below Gen Walker, learned when he charged an Argentinian machine gun position. His entire assault on Argentinian positions at Goose Green was based on the imperial idea of elan, battle courage and morale, winning a battle. Unfortunately bullets and shells (mostly) win battles. The Brits won in the Falklands by laying down lots of fire on Argentinian positions as well as being very hardy and very brave (which the Argentinians often were as well). Some of the parade Guards deployed to the Falklands notably were pretty terrible soldiers compared to the rest of the British forces.⁴ Which meant they were good soldiers but didn’t compare to the rest in terms of training, tactics and endurance. ‘Normal’ British soldiers also complained quite a bit about what exactly the SAS was doing because they were off doing their thing and not doing the recon the excellent infantry like the Royal Marines, expected them to do.

General Walker’s predecessor, not a Guardsman, got the sack for saying what I said. You can’t fight big wars with small armies. The guy before him was a Guardsman and loved his special forces. The guy before him, General Nick ‘Taliban country lads with a code of honor’ Carter, was born in Kenya but was not a Guardsman and was pretty terrible (his deputy was better). The Royal Green Jackets regiment, think Sharpe, seems to have become a significant source of both special forces officers and top generals.Mass is expensive and unpopular, especially for the Tories.

General Walker went to Harrow. He knows you need to be popular to survive.

Except popularity won’t keep your soldiers alive fighting outside of Warsaw, Riga or Talinn.

You can’t cyber artillery.

You need guns to go boom.

Recon soldiers are what allows artillery to go boom.

Recon soldiers find the things that need to get boomed.

Recon light armor and infantry is an incredibly, war winning with artillery, part of an army. By recon armor and infantry I mean units and soldiers, integrated into larger units, specifically for the purposes of reconnaissance, which basically means, go forward until they start shooting at you, then report back. Recon needs the smartest and the fittest soldiers. Recon doesn’t do super spectacular stuff generally, it does incredibly difficult missions on the day to day. Special forces units recruit generally from recon units. This is a massive brain drain because those soldiers are the eyes and ears of the units that actually do the fighting. Another drain is that recon soldiers get killed - a lot. The tip of the spear gets blunted first.

At the level of division and corps, there is little difference between recon and special ops, if any. These soldiers can fight as very good light infantry, which is invaluable and key to taking hard fought over terrain. Unfortunately this sort of fighting kills that infantry very very very quickly. No matter how smart and agile and ninja they are, they get killed.

This is what the Russians learned again, fighting in Donbass, by using Spetsnaz, which are basically divisional level super recon assets, to fight, as infantry.

General Walker wants his men to be special forces like. What he will do instead is drain his units of recon soldiers, to create more special forces. Thus stopping them from being able to make artillery go boom and tank to go forward.

Oh and as mentioned - special forces aren’t immune to artillery and machine gun fire.

Check this post for links on how you can’t special a land war and putting all your best soldiers into elite units means the rest turns into trash.

1. Not going to permutate the various names and lineage.

2. I am deliberately laughing at Kipling.

3. Look them up yourselves.

4. They have been deployed more and done more fighting as the British Army has shrunk and especially excellent physical specimens need to more fighting and less boot polishing.