From Paul Huard, War Is Boring: “On a freezing January day in 1809, rifleman Thomas Plunkett of the British 95th Rifles was flat on his back in the snow outside of the Spanish town of Cacabelos. Some might say that was no place for an Irishman, but this was the waning days of the Battle of Cacabelos during the Peninsular Campaign of the Napoleonic Wars. Plunkett knew exactly what he was doing.”
From Nathan A. Jennings, Military Review: “While many are turning to the two world wars and interventions in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq for applicable lessons, the campaigns of the nineteenth century—with the exception of the Civil War—may offer more relevant case studies where relatively small, technologically advanced, and professionally led forces deployed to distant theaters.
From the Indian Wars that raged across expanding American frontiers to the global attacks of the SpanishAmerican War, the republic’s oldest military service evolved to negotiate rapid and economized expeditionary warfare in both conventional and guerrilla settings. In the Mexican-American War, 1846–1848, a series of sparsely resourced but highly effective expeditions exemplified the U.S. Army Operating Concept’s imperative for future forces to jointly “present the enemy with multiple dilemmas” by being able to “conduct expeditionary maneuver through rapid deployment and transition to operations,” and “overwhelm the enemy physically and psychologically.””