after watching different videos on Syrian combat, the infamous one with the us soldier filming himself being hit in Afghanistan, or russians in Tchetchenia i was wondering if real combat most of the time looks so different from what we learned in training?
the gys are shooting on closed tanks with ak-47's, the mentioned us soldier walks without cover, the russians weren't using cover too... i thought maybe after some month of deployment you see the war as something related to luck and you forget all about training.
any idea? or are these just bad examples?
depends on what your watching or doing.
All I remember is its real noisy and a bunch of shit happens all at once.
Nowa days the buzz word is "situational awareness".
After surviving some time in the stress of combat, you develop a sense of the danger you're in at the moment. No one can be fully alert all the time. You can be fully alert and aware of your surroundings for about two hours, and then your ability to focus that intently drops down.
The longer a time period you are in a dangerous situation, the harder it can be to keep your focus at the highest level. People subconsciously evaluate their situation and if they think it isn't immediately dangerous, they let their guard down some.
This could be a real challenge if there is a lot of cover and the bad guys are good at ambush. The marines tried a concept named Stingray patrols. They'd go out into the boonies with an artillery unit dedicated to their support, and would look for the enemy. A few worked, but the patrol was kept small to avoid attracting attention, so if Charlie noticed them, it was easy to take them out before the FO could call in support. You needed a different set of things to look for.
We didn't use the term, situational awareness, back in the 70s. We were told to keep your wits, keep your head up, stay on the bounce. If there was a buzzword, it's dropped out of my memory.