"The greatest detergent salesman" Rumsfeld passed away. However, it is still thanks to former US Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld for completely bringing down the US Army. Not just in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Rumsfeld's greatest thing was the massive warfighting that completely overwhelmed the U.S. Army. At the same time, two consecutive wars were waged in Afghanistan and Iraq, leaving us with 20 years of development time.
Rumsfeld was the first U.S. secretary of defense in the 21st century, and after graduating from Princeton University, he joined the U.S. Navy in 1954 as a pilot for a Shanghai warship-based aircraft and became a member of the U.S. House of Representatives at the age of 30. In 1975, at the age of 43, Rumsfeld served as U.S. secretary of defense and later served as CEO of two Fortune 500 companies in the United States.
In 2000, at the age of 68, Rumsfeld again became U.S. Secretary of Defense. Rumsfeld was a man of great superstition about high-tech weapons, which led to a drastic drawdown of the U.S. military, especially the U.S. Army. Rumsfeld believes that the U.S. military no longer needs a large army. Because the U.S. military will no longer have a large-scale tank army war with the Soviet army in Europe.
The U.S. Army's future mission is to deal with the threat of pluralism and uncertainty, requiring rapidity and lightness. Those heavy infantry divisions with many personnel and vehicles, too many heavy weapons, and high logistical requirements need to be eliminated.
Rumsfeld believes that "no matter how good an invincible army is, if it can't appear in time where it is needed, it is not much different from a waste army." "At the same time, the military threat to Europe is already small, and the US military does not need to stay in Europe." At the same time, the limited U.S. military should not be fixed in unnecessary fronts, but should be completely redeployed.
Rumsfeld asked the U.S. military to act as a vanguard in combat, first, with special forces acting as the vanguard, and second, coordinated operations in the air and on the ground. Third, the Air Force conducts precision strikes, and fourth, the intelligence system matches it. The U.S. military's mission is "unconventional" — to be able to detect, resist, and prevent attacks by networks of armed groups. With fewer troops and better performance, we should detect and attack the threats and dangers that already exist.
During Rumsfeld's time, the U.S. Armored Division, which had been generously eliminated for a decisive battle with the Soviet Tank Army in Europe, began to reduce its number across the board and create newer brigade-sized units that used wheeled armored vehicles more quickly.
Before the end of the Cold War, the U.S. Army had 18 divisions, but by the end of the Cold War, the number of divisions had shrunk to 10. In 2004, the U.S. Army began a radical modular force reform: heavy and light divisions were abolished, and all direct support forces were decentralized to brigade-level combat teams. As far as possible, light troops were changed to wheeled armored vehicles.
As a result, everyone can see that the US Army has been weakened to the point where even guerrillas like the Afghan Taliban cannot defeat it. 1 company to 1 company Of course, the combat effectiveness of the American army far exceeded that of the Taliban. However, no one went head-to-head with the U.S. military.
But the U.S. Army's ground combat units add up to less than 200,000 people. Remove the garrison in Japan and South Korea, remove the Hawaiian garrison, remove the garrison in the United States, remove the garrison in the Middle East and other European countries. The U.S. Army can come up with very few troops. For most of the time in Afghanistan, there are fewer than 10,000 army units.
What control do more than 10,000 people have? Want to control hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of mountains and more than 300 counties in Afghanistan? To suppress the activities of hundreds of thousands of Taliban troops and militias? The United States could not go to war without numerical superiority. If there is a war with the Russian army in Europe, the Russian army has 1 Guard tank group army, and the US Army has 10 divisions, and at least half of it needs to be dispatched to form a suppression.
The U.S. Army is indeed technologically powerful, but its numbers are too small for even guerrillas like the Taliban to suppress. Defeating guerrillas like the Taliban in an area as large as Afghanistan would require at least 200,000 ground troops. In order to form complete tight control, it is necessary to suppress all the field forces of the US Army. In the end, the army's numbers are always extremely important. Therefore, Rumsfeld's most powerful thing is a change, and the US Army can't even beat the Taliban.