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by ericmay·12d ago·view on hn ↗
I think that's a separate question from the validity of real-life combat experience that American (and other) forces are gaining that Chinese forces lack, with respect to the OP.
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The claim above is that neither side has experience that's all that relevant to the type of conflict we'd expect in a China/US conflict.

Nothing to do with "validity." Your lived experience (or whoever's you're defending) is valid.

That is factually incorrect then if that's the claim. The US has that experience.
No active American servicemember has fought a near-peer adversary lmao

You should do some reading from the people who fought in GWOT and are now volunteering in Ukraine. Obviously combat experience is better than no combat experience, but we absolutely should not assume much beyond that.

> No active American servicemember has fought a near-peer adversary lmao

You don't need to fight China to get experience fighting. The skills and experience translate. Plus America is getting direct experience with Chinese and Russian made systems.

Even the simple act of organizing and deploying the military is incredibly valuable as I've already explained to you in another post.

US Marine talking about Ukraine: “I just think that foreign fighters came here and got a war… a type of warfare that they didn’t expect,” he said.

“Especially American foreign fighters. It’s not Afghanistan. It’s not Iraq. You’re taking the side of Vietnam versus the U.S. over here. You are the underdog, and with no air superiority or anything. And so they just assume they were being used as cannon fodder. But that’s just the way this war is. It’s a nightmare.”

Yes, obviously having experience deploying the military, or driving cars, or fixing tanks, or evacuating casualties, is all far better than no experience doing those things.

Do you think someone is disagreeing with you on this point?

Circling back to where this began...

> The claim above is that neither side has experience that's all that relevant to the type of conflict we'd expect in a China/US conflict.

This is a factually incorrect statement. I'm not sure why you're confused about what you are agreeing or disagreeing with at this point.

Clearly that tickled a nerve for some reason.

Here's a question:

When someone says that you have no experience being a professional baseball player, do you say "errrhhmm ackshually, I brush my teeth every morning just like an MLB player does. I put on my pants every morning. I have even held a baseball bat!"

Obviously a phrase like of "limited relevant experience" is constrained to a semantically meaningful set of things