Originally Posted by FliesWay2Much
You have to approach this from a broad perspective and put figures in context. Obviously, you have your experience base which sounds like it's on the pointy end of the spear. That's fine for one-on-one engagements with a bad guy. But, any military planner (including this one) will tell you that one-on-one engagements (soldier-soldier, aircraft-aircraft, ship-ship) is an incredibly inefficient means to prevail in combat. It's all about doctrine and how to employ it.... factors such as mass, concentration of firepower, element of surprise, etc. By the time you get to shooting pop-up targets and executing your capture of the bad guy, all of this has been thought out and tested in simulations and in realistic scenarios and updated as a result of real-world experience...hence my previous comments on various threads about fighting the next war rather than the last one.
All you have written above is true. But is not any terrorist incident a one-on-one, or force-on-force engagement? Is that not what we are discussing?
You're obviously passionate about your profession and your ability to protect & serve. Most people, I would assume, are grateful. However, don't discount for a nanosecond the ability for the untrained person to do extraordinary things -- even without any formal training. The people on Flight 93, in the 25 minutes before they acted, needed to sort through all of the doctrine and tactics military and police forces take decades to develop and refine. From all accounts, it appears that they effectively executed a couple of the doctrinal fundamentals: element of surprise and concentration of firepower.
I don't discount anything. I just don't COUNT on it. I applaud and deeply respect Flight 93 and what they did. I just state that we must know the nature of the problem and not delude ourselves that this "fighting back" is an assured event when it is not. Any person that is in a hijacking today or tomorrow will have to sort through the same data. They only difference between now and on 9/11 on United 93 is that the data has had time to penetrate. The overwhelming effects of adrenaline are still the same. The debilitating fear, nausea, avoidance (this is not really happening, etc.) still remain. THAT is what training does-minimize that.
We abandoned civilian militias because professional military is demonstrable superior. This is the concept I am addressing here.
On the other hand, a couple of highly-trained FAMs armed to the teeth are no match for an adversary who effectively employs some of the elements of doctrine I noted above.
True (assuming the FAMs do not possess those elements, which is arguable), but I give them a better chance than the untrained civilian who has not been in a fight since the 3rd grade. I hope then, when the FAMs are dead and so are some of the bad guys that the rest of the pax will jump up and finish the job. Leadership is what is necessary, and I am afraid that the first UNARMED leader to jump up will be brutally killed by the terrorists to set the example and cower the rest.
I won't get into a further discussion about defendable arguments. Our experience bases put us light-years apart on the subject.
Too bad. I loved the exchange. Thanks.