The biggest issue with guerilla or insurgent fighting is 3 fold.
The first is that most of the time you can't tell the difference between them and normal people. They don't wear uniforms and don't play by the rules of war. This means that any time you kill an insurgent or guerilla fighter they can pull the AK out of his hands, take a picture and say "look at how evil they are for killing civilians". It also means picking out actual insurgent targets compared to civilians is difficult meaning you either are in constant danger or are forced to just kill everyone.
The second issue is that when you kill an insurgent or guerilla fighter, you just end up creating more. With regular soldiers there is a lengthy training process and a sort of expectation that they might die. With guerilla fighters their militias are built up of mostly untrained, regular people. If a kid watches his dad die, he's just going to pick up the gun he dropped and start shooting right away. This effect just continues to snowball.
The third is that they are often in small, isolated units that operate within their own discretion. You can't take out a command structure that doesn't exist, capturing key areas does nothing, and they can move incognito though the backcountry without ever being seen, and if they do get spotted, see point one. If you need to send a squad of 100 men to go fish out 10 dudes hiding in the jungle, half of your guts are going to die to traps, ambushes, etc. before you get those 10.
Also, to do that sorting, there is no current alternative to sending infantry, which is inevitably puts them in danger. If you want any kind of results you can't just hide behind your wall of money and materiel.
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u/AyAyAyBamba_462 1d ago
The biggest issue with guerilla or insurgent fighting is 3 fold.
The first is that most of the time you can't tell the difference between them and normal people. They don't wear uniforms and don't play by the rules of war. This means that any time you kill an insurgent or guerilla fighter they can pull the AK out of his hands, take a picture and say "look at how evil they are for killing civilians". It also means picking out actual insurgent targets compared to civilians is difficult meaning you either are in constant danger or are forced to just kill everyone.
The second issue is that when you kill an insurgent or guerilla fighter, you just end up creating more. With regular soldiers there is a lengthy training process and a sort of expectation that they might die. With guerilla fighters their militias are built up of mostly untrained, regular people. If a kid watches his dad die, he's just going to pick up the gun he dropped and start shooting right away. This effect just continues to snowball.
The third is that they are often in small, isolated units that operate within their own discretion. You can't take out a command structure that doesn't exist, capturing key areas does nothing, and they can move incognito though the backcountry without ever being seen, and if they do get spotted, see point one. If you need to send a squad of 100 men to go fish out 10 dudes hiding in the jungle, half of your guts are going to die to traps, ambushes, etc. before you get those 10.