One of Ours

...The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have stretched the military in many ways, from personnel to equipment to the number of JDAM bombs in the Air Force inventory. But, I think there's also a very credible argument that these wars have made the military better. The impact of combat experience in the ranks is hard to understate; it really does sharpen the combat readiness of a unit to have so many combat veterans. It's also hard to underestimate the impact of these wars on Army doctrine, because of the awesome extent to which the Center for Army Lessons Learned has gathered after-action reports from the battlefield. The hard question is how long these effects last, and what the long-term effects will be.