Combat advisor

Military advisors, or combat advisors, are soldiers sent to foreign nations to aid that nation with its military training, organization, and other various military tasks. These soldiers are often sent to aid a nation without the potential casualties and political ramifications of mobilizing military forces to aid a nation.

The French Marquis de Lafayette and the German/Prussian Baron von Steuben offered key assistance to the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War.

Contrary to popular belief, developing capabilities and increasing capacity through advising is an operation the U.S. Army has conducted for more than one hundred years. The Army has performed advisory missions to increase the capability and capacity of foreign militaries from the Philippine Insurrection at the beginning of the 20th Century to more recent conflicts in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the early 1960s, elements of the U.S. Army Special Forces and Echo 31 went to South Vietnam as military advisors to train and assist the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN) for impending actions against the North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN). United States Marines also filled a significant role as advisors to Vietnamese forces.

Combat advisors served on the front-lines of the U.S. War on Terror. They were designated as Embedded Training Teams (ETTS) in Afghanistan and Military Transition Teams (MTTs) in Iraq. These soldiers and Marines live with their Afghan and Iraqi counterparts (often in very austere and stoic conditions) in remote combat outposts often a great distance away from any U.S. or coalition support.

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