I was listening to an ABC program called Counterpoint. At the end of the program they interview John Farrell who is the founder & managing editor of Australian and New Zealand Defender magazine. Its focus is on Aust. and NZ military.

In the interview John makes an oberservation that the US Army and USMC has always been brave but has greatly increased its professionalism particularly in tactical aspects. A "begrudging respect" of the US Army. My past experience was the old school US Army and USMC. No noise discipline, losing weapons, etc.

Another interesting anecdote he relates is a conversation he had with some senior US navy seals. A private came of a landing craft with full kit, webbing, steyr etc, the SF forces asked "Who's he". They were told he was the cook. "No way". After confirming this the seals touched their noses knowingly and commented "Alright. He's the cook."

I just thought these were some interesting topics. The item can be heard here.

Cheers

Very interesting Shane,

I must admit that I have always thought the US Army and the USMC (especially) to be fighting in Iraq/Afghanistan similar to how they fought in the Pacific war and Vietnam. I could've just been generalising or implementing the stereotypes i.e "gung ho", huge losses etc.

An example of US "gung ho-ness" occurred during the beach-head fighting at Papua, WW2. The US Army fought terribly, sustaining massive casualties and were unable to break the Japanese at any of the beach-heads. It wasn't until the AIF were brought up (some units had only recently beaten the Japanese off the Kokoda track) that the Japanese were ousted from East Papua.

The AIF has always been a smaller, well trained, professional force (and in the past, have demonstrated they have the combat edge over the US). However, after hearing this dialogue, I'll certainly be looking around to find evidence that the US Army/USMC are becoming more tactically professional.

Chas