>Marines ended up doing the dirty old style grunt work which was actually closer to policing than it was to warfighting As an observer from afar it strikes me

>Marines ended up doing the dirty old style grunt work which was actually closer to policing than it was to warfighting As an observer from afar it strikes me that science/technology has actually been bad for warfighting as a skilled trade. Back in the 1800's for instance the British had a large corps of experienced experts in foreign language and culture and were able to out-fox many of the locals. Nowadays the Taliban seemed to have out-foxed them pretty badly, and the fact that air support was available quickly on hand removed some of the incentive to "get it right" on the ground.