"Keith Willshaw" wrote in message
...
"Yama" wrote in message
...
And what relevant experience would that be?

I'll hazard a guess that you refer to for example, Desert Storm. Bzzt,
wrong: main combat force of Iraqi army - the Republican Guards - were a
volunteer professional force. That didn't seem to help them.


Incorrect

I was thinking of the Argentines in the Falklands but since
you mention the Republican guard they were in fact
regarded as the main threat and at lest put up a fight.

Falklands war was a colonial war, type of conflict where professional armies
perform better. Do you think Brits could have invaded Argentina mainland?
Didn't think so either.

As for Republican Guards putting up a fight, I seem to have missed it. In
more recent war most resistance came from militias. In DS RG was more
involved, but even then their performance was not markedly better than that
of some regular army units.

Tasks requiring signifant technical expertise are manned by professional
soldiers in both conscript and professional armies. That situation has
not
changed a bit since WW2.

This is untrue, during WW2 many of those technical tasks were
done by conscripts, they had to be, the regulars provided the
training and leadership cadres.

Scale of the WW2 was such that it was simply impossible to recruit enough
professionals to perform the tasks. Again, this is not in at all against my
point.

This does not mean that conscripts do not have a
place in those services in supporting tasks. Even in all-pro forces,
most
mechanics etc actually receive pretty minimal training in any case, so
from
skill level point it's totally irrelevant whether one is a draftee or
volunteer.

If you join the British Army as a REME Mechanic you'll get
12 weeks of basic training followed by up to 19 weeks
of specialist training to get you to a basic proficiency level

In other words, pretty similar training period as what equivalent conscripts
receive.

That's because their requirements have changed, not because of some
fundamental change in nature of warfare. If your requirement is to
defend
your nation against unwelcome tourists, a conscript army is generally
better. If your requirement is to subdue natives few thousand km's away
from
your homeland, professional force is better.

In fact the balance of skills needed HAS changed, while the poor bloody
infantry are still the backbone of any army a regiment made up
of soldiers who are trained to act on their own initiative, have a mix
of skills and are well trained will always have an advantage over
ill trained conscripts.

Where does it say that conscripts have to be ill trained? Have you ever SEEN
an European conscript army? For example, German conscripts routinely used to
win NATO tank crew competitions. IIRC US Army managed to win once.

One of the big problems the Argentines hit
in the field was that their soldiers were used to returning
their weapons to the armoury for cleaning and maintenance.
This became a problem when soldiers not only didnt know how
to clean their rifles and clear jams but didnt even have cleaning kits.

Um, do you seriously think this is true for all conscript armies? I
certainly know _very well_ how to clean and maintain my rifle and I wasn't
even an infantryman.