The Infantry Alternative

General Robert Scales discusses the limits of airpower and what we can do about it:

What about the ground alternative? Haven't Israeli losses in places like Bint Jbeil (or Marine losses in Fallujah) shown that it's too expensive in soldier's lives to confront the enemy on his turf? Haven't we learned in places like Korea and Vietnam that tactical close fighting on the ground is exactly what the enemy wants? Maybe. But experience in Lebanon seems to have resurrected once again the concern that perhaps we haven't tried, really tried, to find ways and means to engage an insurgent on the ground without suffering excessive casualties...There are many areas that desperately need attention if we are to commit to keeping light infantry alive in battle. Just a few: Put precision small arms in the hands of infantry; give them better networks to connect them to the outside world and to each other; provide even better personal protection from small arms; and most importantly, find a technological breakthrough that will conceal light infantry as it rushes across the last 50 meters, the so-called "deadly zone" where most of them die.

I believe the foot soldier is the only alternative to the insurgent, if we are to win the Long War. I have written about airpower's limitation in a recent article The Decline and Fall of Airpower.