Mattis calls for small-unit, irregular skills

[unhappycamper]

Mattis calls for small-unit, irregular skills
By William H. McMichael - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Feb 13, 2009 12:01:05 EST

The U.S. military is unmatched in nuclear and conventional warfare but still needs to develop a similar competency in small-unit, unconventional skills of the sort demanded by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the general who leads the military’s Joint Forces Command said Thursday.

“You take on the U.S. Air Force, or the naval aviation, Marine aviation, at 15,000 feet in a fighter ... you only have one role: fugitive,” said Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis during a Washington, D.C., conference on defense issues facing the Obama administration.

“You’d better fly away real fast or you’re going to get shot out of the air. You take on the U.S. Navy on the high seas, they’ll burn you to the waterline. That’s all there is to it. You take on the U.S. Army in the open desert, in open terrain, mechanized warfare, the Army will annihilate you.

“But the area we are not superior in is irregular warfare,” said Mattis, a combat veteran who also serves as NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, based in Norfolk, Va. “And we are going to make irregular warfare ... a core competency of the U.S. military.”

Such competency will require the development of troops, often operating in small units, who can relate to local populations and train local militaries as well as they can engage in the sort of irregular combat operations that have become dominant in ongoing wars where the enemy has fought with roadside bombs, snipers and small unit tactics, Mattis said.


Rest of article at: http://armytimes.com/news/2009/02/military_mattis_irregularwarfare_021309w/%2e