Amazon Affiliate Link: Strategic Rifleman
This is the next book in our continuing study of H John Poole's small unit training series. For those not familiar, H John Poole was young Marine Lieutenant in Vietnam. He was disgusted with the amount of casualties caused by standard US infantry tactics, so he resigned his commission and then enlisted back into the USMC with goal of sharing his lessons learned. He was made a trainer at School of Infantry East in North Carolina. He was eventually re-commissioned. After his retirement, he started Posterity Press and began training Marines as a consultant. His works are required reading if you want to understand how a small unit can fight a bigger and more technologically advanced opponent.
Early in this book, Poole points out that same thing that Stan constantly points out on the CFC Show, that the US has gone 0-3-1 since the end of WW2. We fought to a draw in Korea, and then have lost every major conflict since. Sure, we claim that we've never lost a major engagement, but since we decide what a major engagement is, it's kind of simple to make that claim. In the 3 losses, we fought against enemies who AVOIDED major engagements.
That's the point of this book, like all of the others. The US military is in love with equipment, gadgets, and firepower, but those advantages haven't enabled us to win. Our enemies, who possess far better light infantry skills, have been able to negate our advantages by going old school.