Re: Using Elite SOF

At 04:31 AM 12/9/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>Don wrote:
>Well, I disagree somewhat.  :-)  Regarding
>the Rangers, while their original purpose
>was raiding, if the invasion worked there
>wouldn't be any more raiding.
>
>[Tomb] Really? Wherever there is a LoB,
>there will also be an area behind that (the
>rear area) where raiders that can
>penetrate the LoB can strike. In the
>modern day, heliborne and airborne
>insertions and riverine insertions offer this
>avenue. In the future, add spaceborne.

I meant in a WW2 context.  I obviously hashed my point, and I have a 
feeling if I tried again, I'd mess it up again, so I'll drop the point.

>   Doing something you must do removes the
>possibility of it being either right or wrong;
>it just is[1].
>
>[Tomb] Right or wrong is sort of a poor
>choice. Optimal or Sub-Optimal. Using a
>tool for a job for which it is not well suited
>may work, but it is not the optimal use of
>the tool. If you use a $20,000 electronic
>probe as a hammer, you may drive in a nail
>which matters at the moment, but at some
>point you're then footing a $20K bill for a
>new probe. So the question you have to ask
>is: Does driving this one nail now justify
>the expenditure of a $20K probe? If the
>answer is yes, then you go ahead. But if
>the answer is "maybe", then you run the
>risk of expending your elite troops outside
>of their best-effect type of operation and
>hurting your overall force efficiency and
>efficacy.

See, I said it was a terminology thing. :-)  Optimal vs Sub-optimal is a

much better way to describe it than good vs bad, which was pretty much
my point.