Officers are often friends and family of important people/very little meritocracy. They treat the enlisted men like sh**t. They don't have NCOs/career enlisted with any pull. They don't believe in maintenance and training. They are often using Russian gear against American/western gear. They don't communicate when the sh**t hits the fan (or even when it's not hitting the fan). Low level officers have little independent control over their men, never take initiative.
So you're in charge of random Arab country and go to war with your non-Arab neighbors. You send out your top tank division to the front to knock down your weaker neighbor. You've got 1000 tanks, never used once, straight from Moscow, your neighbor only has 250, this is going to be easy. So the Lt.Col (son-in-law to Secretary of Time Wasting) in charge of the 1st Platoon makes contact with the enemy and starts taking losses because his undertrained crew don't know how to reset the electronics on the range finder, they've got a grand total of 20 minutes seat time before today. Well and that afternoon in the simulator. He calls for air cover, but to do that he has to ask the guy above him, who has to ask the guy above him, who has to ask the guy in charge of Air Force, but he doesn't because he doesn't like the guy's family. So no with no air cover they continue to take losses and fall back. Wash, rinse, repeat.
There are lots of places to read about it, just Google.
The original article. Part of the conclusion:
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