 Hey everyone, Dylan Schumacher, Citadel Defense, and today we're going to talk about H. John Poole's Super Squad, and I got some feelings. So I have a mixed feeling about this book and some mixed thoughts for you, so this might be a little bit longer one. First thing, let's talk about the positives, okay? So H. John Poole, for those of you who don't know, he wrote The Last Hundred Yards, which I actually have not read, but it's a fairly famous tactical book that is out there. It's like 75 bucks on Amazon right now, which is one of the reasons I haven't picked it up, because it's just a lot of money to spend on a book. So this is my first book I have ever read by H. John Poole, and he's written a lot. He's a fairly prolific author and has probably over a dozen different books on tactics and tactical-like things, is my understanding. So this is his newest one, came out in 2020 here, and I picked it up and read it probably over the course of about a week or two. It's not a short book, it's like 390, 370, 370, something like that. So let's talk about the things I do like, because there's a very serious thing that I do not like, but before we get to that, so things that I do like. So basically the book is about how to make a super squad, right? Like the best squad possible that you can do, that can do all these cool things on the battlefield and be more efficient and more sufficient on the battlefield. One of the things I do like is that he places the optimal squad size at 15. In my head it's always been 16, I pulled that from Max Velocity Tacticals, a small unit tactics book, great book if you haven't read that, you should definitely read that. So it puts the optimal squad size at 15, and his reasoning here is he wants squads in the US military to be self-sufficient. So he wants them all to carry their own light machine gun, like an M249, something 7.62, a bigger real machine gun, not just a saw, he's very specific about that. And he also wants them to be able to have some kind of anti-tank capability. And that should be inherent in each squad, it should be organic in each squad. Because usually the way the US military works now is they will attach weapon squads or machine gun squads at the platoon level. But each squad, usually in the army at least, it's just nine guys. It's just two fireteams and a squad leader. In the Marines, it's three fireteams and a squad leader. And yeah, they have some squad automatic weapons in there, but those are automatic rifles as compared to full-on machine guns. So give and take, we can debate the nuances of that forever. But I do like that, I like this idea of a squad being self-sufficient, I like this idea of it having the necessary firepower in it. He does a great job of driving home the importance of machine guns, specifically how since World War I and since we've had machine guns, which is over 100 years ago now, squad tactics have just changed. They've just been different because of the advent of the machine gun. And he makes the point that that's different. There was a before and there was an after World War I. World War I, for those of you who don't know, it's called the First Modern War. And we call it that because it used and we use all the stuff then that we do now, right? Tanks, machine guns, planes, stuff like that. So that's your fun history lesson. If you want to know more about World War I, I suggest listening to the Hardcore History podcast, the Blueprint for the Armageddon, just fantastic podcast. And the last thing I will say that's positive about this book that I really like is it's a really good tour of history. He does a very good job. The full first part of the book is a tour of history. One of the things that I do like about this book is he does describe the difference between 2G warfare, which is kill as many of the bad guys or kill more of the bad guys than they kill of us and then we win the war versus 3G warfare, right? Which is this idea of destroying their equipment, crippling their ability to fight, taking out the command and control center, stuff like that. And he's trying to say, you know, hey, a 3G warfare beats a 2G warfare and we're still stuck in a 2G warfare, America still stuck in 2G warfare because we're just trying to throw as much shrapnel at the bad guy as possible and we're not doing this cool other stuff that we could be doing to fight 3G warfare. I talked to one of my friends who was in the Marines and he retired some time ago, like four or five years ago, something like that. But he said, no, we try to conduct 3G warfare. Like that's a current thing that we're trying to do. And I think some of his assessments of the current US military aren't accurate or fair. Every military manual that I have read up to date talks about conducting 3G warfare. It might not use that term, but that's the tactics they're trying to use. They're not trying to use a 2G warfare tactics. And he's saying, hey, we're still stuck in 2G warfare and we're not moving on to 3G warfare like these other places are or there are or have in the past. And that's tough for me to swallow because I don't know if that's an accurate assessment of the current state of the US military. So that was definitely another issue where I don't feel like a key addresses that. And again, I'm not saying that 3G warfare is a bad idea. But as you continue to look at these casualty numbers that we're going to talk about, it just becomes more and more of a problem to me that these tactics he's pushing aren't as effective or at least he's not showing why they're as effective as they should be because again, we're going to talk about this, but more Americans survived and less Americans died than the people we fought against. So I'm not really sure what his point is here, okay? I have a vague understanding, but I don't think he really arrives at a sharp conclusion. What he's trying to say is these other groups of people, the Germans during World War I, the Germans during World War II, the Russians during World War II, the Japanese during World War II, the Viet Cong, North Vietnamese during Vietnam, the North Koreans and Chinese during the Korean War, all of those people did small unit tactics better than we do because we being America just have a bunch of firepower. And we just believe in the cult of firepower. So we just send as much shrapnel downrange as possible to try to eliminate as much of the enemy as possible. Whereas they are more working on encirclement tactics and short infiltration, which is like crawling between foxholes and digging tunnels and all the sneaky stuff, and they're doing all these other things to gain surprise in an effort to mitigate our firepower advantage. That's his argument. So their small unit tactics are superior to America's small unit tactics. I think that's what he's driving at. Here's a couple major problems that he runs into that he doesn't address effectively or at all. So if what he's trying to say is, look, there are some things that we could learn here and we could build another repertoire and it wouldn't cost us anything. It just used to be some more training time and we could build those. That would be one thing. I would agree with that. I'd be like, okay, I mean, the more the merrier, right? The more tools in your tool belt isn't necessarily a bad thing. And to have some more tactics that we could use, that would probably be good. He does not ever say what the super squad would be or what these new tactics would be or if we did A, B, and C, then we would acquire these new tactics or these are what the tactics are and this is how we're going to acquire them. He doesn't ever lay that out. Instead, each chapter, just pick whatever you want. Let's say it's a chapter on ambush. He says, again, this is what the Germans or World War One did. This is what the Germans and World War Two did. This is what the Russians and World War Two did. This is what they did in the Korean War. This is what the Japanese and World War Two did. This is what they did in the Vietnam. At the end, there's maybe, maybe a paragraph or two about what America does. Next chapter. So he doesn't really arrive at any point. He just tours you through history of what they're all doing. Then he gets to the end of the book and he says, see, I've shown that all of those tactics, all those people that I just listed, their tactics are better than our tactics. And I'm like, well, you've told me what they did, but he never really explains why they're better. And that leads me to the next thing, which is the glaring, glaring issue with this book that I cannot get past. And that is when you start to look at the numbers, specifically the deaths, the KIA, the Killed in Action numbers, it's a big problem he doesn't address. Because he's saying, look, if we had better tactics, we could save more American lives. I'll agree to that on the face of it, right? There's not a lot to argue with on the face of that statement. If we had better tactics, less of our guys would die. Who doesn't want better tactics, right? But if what he's saying is, and this is what I take him to mean, that these tactics are better than our tactics, and if we did these tactics, we'd save more lives, the glaring problem that he never addresses, and it really drives me nuts the more I think about it, is when you start to look at the numbers of those wars, the casualties of those groups dwarf the casualties of Americans, okay? So we're going to go through the numbers because I thought it was interesting. Now, World War I, World War I is a different deal, okay? You got to remember, in World War I, there wasn't any superpowers. The United States wasn't even one of the big players. We didn't get into the war until the last year, so I'm not going to count our casualties in that war because it's not a fair comparison. Germany and World War I took the most casualties out of any country, except maybe Russia, you know, numbers vary, but Germany took 2 million deaths, okay? 2 million Germans died in World War I, like military deaths. The French lost about 1.3 million, and the Brits, the British Empire, lost about 750,000 killed in action. Okay, so the Germans, again, nobody argues that the Germans were a monster of an army in World War I. I mean, they were one of the top tier military forces in the world. Everybody agrees that, and they were fighting a two-front war. So I'm willing to give them a lot of slack on the numbers on that one, okay? We can say the Germans had some superior tactics in World War I. I'm not going to argue that, and I would probably even agree to that because they had, like, stormtroopers and other infiltrators, these other cool things that were very innovative and kind of ahead of the time. So let's deal with that one. Now, World War I, I'll call it a wash, or I'll even put that one on the scoreboard in their favor, okay? Like, that's legit. This is where we start to get into the problem now when you move that clock forward 20 years. World War II, for comparison's sake, all right? The United States lost 416. I always grew up with a number of 500,000, but whatever. Let's just say it's 500,000. We're just going to round up, okay? 500,000 deaths in World War II. 500,000 US military deaths. Germany, 5.5 million. The Soviet Union, somewhere between 8.8 million and 10.7 million. Japan, 2.1 million. China, somewhere between 3 to 4 million. Those groups, Germany, Soviet Union, Japan, China, which I didn't mention earlier, China, he says all of those groups have superior tactics to the United States. If that's what having superior tactics means, it means you're going to lose, I don't know what, four, five, six, over 10 times, maybe 20 times, the amount of people in combat. If that's what having superior tactics means, I don't want those superior tactics, right? Now, good. You could say, oh, well, there were other factors, you know, like the Russians didn't care about people and they shot their own guys and they retreated at times and, you know, they just sent people into the meat grinder. Okay. I mean, okay. And you could say, oh, Germany's fighting a world, you know, fighting a two-front war again. All right. But again, all of those people lost more people than we did. So that would tell me we did something right and they did something wrong. And if it means that we have inferior tactics because we have superior firepower, I'm going to take the superior firepower, right? Because again, when you look at the numbers, we lose way less people in combat than they did. Korea. The United States had about 34,000 military deaths in Korea. North Korea had about 294,000 and China had about 400,000. And some Chinese numbers that doubles, like might've go to eight or 900,000 if no one really knows. Okay. So total opposition on the low end, 694,000. 34,000 to 694,000. Korean War, by the way, I found out total disaster, at least half of the, something like three million people died. Most of those being civilians. It was crazy. Vietnam. US total US casualties, or total US deaths in Vietnam, 58,000. The US and allied, so us in South Korea and anyone else who happened to be there, 282,000. Okay. Again, North Vietnam, Vietnam, somewhere between 44,000 and a million. So he never addresses the casualties. In fact, if you had just read this book and you didn't know the other history, you would think that we lost a lot of those conflicts based on the way he discusses them and based on the way he talks about them. Now you could argue maybe that we lost Vietnam. All right, we can have that discussion. But I'm not understanding why he's saying these tactics are so superior. When it gets more of them killed, then it did of our guys. That's a really tough pill for me to swallow. He never addresses it. To give you an example of what I'm talking about of if you'd only ever read this book and didn't know the other history, you'd think we lost it. He discusses this battle at the Rorx Drift Outpost, which was between the British Empire and the Zulu tribesmen. I was completely unfamiliar with this battle, so it's a very good example. So the battle of Rorx Drift lasted about 12 hours and it was in South Africa and was on 22nd of January, 1878. So this is what I had to look up after because based on the way he talked about it, like the Zulus would just kind of, they didn't have guns. They would run in and pop up and pop down and hide from getting shot and they were all over and they did this double encirclement technique and they had some superior tactics to mitigate the firepower again, right? And I read that and I'm like, man, that sounds pretty bad. It sounds like no one could shoot them. It sounds like they were winning. Well, when I looked it up, it turns out that the Zulus lost the battle. In fact, it turns out that there were 4,000 Zulus versus 150 British people. It also turns out that there were only 17 killed in action on the British side and 15 wounded compared to at least 351 killed on the Zulus side and 500 wounded. Again, when you look at the numbers, I say the Zulus lost that battle. They did not win that battle. They lost and they lost handedly. When 150 guys beat your 4,000 warriors of the Zulu empire, which was probably the most significant empire in Africa that I've ever known or at least that I know of. If there's something better, let me know. But the most elite African warriors get trounced by 150 guys with guns. It doesn't look too good, right? So again, that's an example where if you'd only read this book and you didn't have outside context, you'd think that these other people did better. And I understand that maybe that's the argument he's trying to make here, but I don't understand how he can make that argument and say that we would save lives if we did it their way when they're dying by multiple more times than we are. So that's it. That's my first H John Poole book I've ever read. I wanted to like it. I really, really wanted to like it and I was excited to read it. And when I read the first couple of chapters, I was really excited to see where it went. But again, it just didn't really go anywhere. He just kind of kept telling the story about what the opposition did. He didn't really explain why it was superior and he never addressed the just overwhelming discrepancy in battlefield deaths. Hope that's helpful. If you got a different opinion, if you've read this book and you got some pushback, I would love to talk to you because I would be really curious to see what you saw that I didn't see. Till then, do brave deeds and endure.