Tanks for the Memories: What Sort of Training Does the Army Need to Focus On? - Tom Ricks, Best Defense at Foreign Policy.
By chance, when I reached into my ragged black Land's End bag for my "subway reading file" during my commute home yesterday afternoon, out popped Military Capabilities for the Hybrid War: Insight from the Israel Defense Forces in Lebanon and Gaza, by David E. Johnson of RAND Corp. I'd printed it out a few days ago and forgotten about it.
It is a good short summary piece, and speaks right to some of the questions I had after reading Col. Gentile's worries about the US Army's tank force. In Lebanon in 2006, Johnson concludes, the Israeli military "was largely incapable of joint arms fire and maneuver." Tank training especially had been neglected because it had been "deemed largely irrelevant." ...
... In other COIN news, I am impressed that David Kilcullen's forthcoming book on counterinsurgency, out from Oxford in June, is appropriately dedicated to Dave Dilegge and Bill Nagle, the founders of the Small Wars Journal. If you are not regularly checking that website, you should be, little grasshoppers...
And a key quote from Russell Weigley's History of the United States Army in Weigley's discussion of the forgotten Seminole War:
A historical pattern was beginning to work itself out: occasionally the American Army has had to wage a guerrilla war, but guerrilla war is so incongruous to the natural methods and habits of a stable and well-to-do society that the American Army has tended to regard it as abnormal and to forget about it whenever possible. Each new experience with irregular warfare has required, then, that appropriate techniques be learned all over again.
More at Best Defense.
Adding to earlier commentary at World Politics Review, Judah questions an armor-rich China scenario but notes here:
In the meantime, it looks like China and Turkey are two other places where the job prospects for tank commanders are bright. The fact that China still place such a heavy doctrinal emphasis on armor is certain to embolden the COIN-skeptic tank defenders.