2nd Cavalry.

This is coolbert:

As presented in the Tom Ricks blog a major U.S. Army combat unit found to be combat unworthy?

That 2nd Cavalry regiment, a Stryker equipped combat arms unit even after repeated combat deployments and having a cadre of personnel with considerable experience, deemed as deficient.

"A worrisome report on the eroded combat skills of an Army Stryker regiment"

"The 2nd Cavalry Regiment (Stryker) is reamed out in an internal Army study for its performance last month at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center, a training ground in Germany."

This a result of Saber Junction.

"The exercise, Saber Junction, had a maneuver-rights area that expanded approximately 2,200 square kilometers and hosted more than 3600 2CR troops and 1700 foreign military personnel from 18 countries which makes it the biggest training event of this type for USAREUR since 1989."

Main points [deficiencies] of the negative report to include:

* "--The report found "Commanders and command sergeant majors tethered to command posts,"

* "--Commanders give lip service to 'mission command' (basically, telling subordinate leaders what to do but not how to do it) but in reality micromanage"

* --Units are so reliant on digital connectivity that when it was down, it resulted in a 'total loss of situational awareness of operations.'"

* "--Senior NCOs didn't understand their role in sustainment.  Logistics and medical evacuation of the wounded also stunk."

* "--Soldiers don't even know how to do basic field sanitation"

Almost in apology we have this remark by a senior army officer regarding the performance of the 2nd Cavalry:

"As you know, in the last eleven years, the Army has focused almost exclusively on COIN operations . . . We have Soldiers in leadership positions who have only trained for and conducted COIN operations for the entirety of their careers." - - Col. Lee Rudacille

Exactly so! COIN = counter-insurgency. That is what units such as the 2nd Cavalry have trained for and participated in for the last eleven years. This Saber Junction sounds to me like what used to be called REFORGER exercises. Conventional military operations in the manner of World War Two [WW2] combat. Massed units of armor, infantry, artillery, air defense and combat aviation arrayed against an adversary whose combat force also consisted of massed units of armor, infantry, artillery, air defense and combat aviation. Saber Junction was the Fulda Gap scenario and not COIN?

The many experts that suggest warfare on the scale of and of the type as fought during WW2 is an anachronism to be never seen again had better hold their horses. That mechanized, mass-assembly, industrialized and by-the-numbers type of combat might actually manifest itself if an when the predictions of the British Admiral Parry come to fruition. And don't forget Korea, China, the Middle East.

coolbert.