Cub Driver wrote in message . ..
True. No US ground force trains under conditions where it enjoys a
3:1, or even 2:1, superiority in terms of raw numbers.

The original poster said "quality and quantity." Arguably, the U.S.
had a better than 3-1 superiority over the Iraqi army and the fedayeen
when the quality of American weaponry is considered.

Quality *and* quantity? That can be taken in more than one way (i.e.,
a requirement that *both* be 3:1 margins).

When the US Army trains, it does not set up an OPFOR that is severely
lacking in terms of quality (we even saw the OPFOR, in an Iraqi
scenario fought by corps and division commanders and staffs in 1999,
credited with having a heck of a lot more precision guided weapons
capability, not to mention useable airpower, than existed in reality).
In actual modern operations, such as OIF, the preponderance of mass
has generally always been on the other guy's side--remember all those
cheap-seaters who were bleating about the lack of sufficient US combat
power on the ground (a week before the rush into Baghdad, that
is....they all got kind of quiet after that, except for ol' Wes, who
has tried to now claim that he was *really* griping about the entire
conflict in general...)? Again, the key was to pick out and isolate
the required areas (such as that BAI effort south of Baghdad) and
pinch off a more managable chunk in which we could apply our firepower
to compensate for the lack of sheer numbers. The Army, like the Air
Force, has trained to fight outnumbered and win for decades now.

Brooks


all the best -- Dan Ford