A military's improvement and perfection is done by experiences. Turkey has been struggling against PKK terrorism for nearly 20 years in very harsh conditions in a very difficult region (mountaneous areas of SouthEastern Anatolia) populated by a very complex demographic and ethnic mixture. Executing low intensity conflict - assymteric warfare in such environment gave great experience about SpecOps, PsyOps, Close Air Support techniques and commando warfare. Lessons learned were used to update and often totally change field manuals which were mostly exact translations of US FM's.
Let's take 1974 Kocatepe incident, for example..
Turkish Air Force fighter aircraft misidentified Turkish Navy destroyer TCG Kocatepe and attacked, causing her to sink. This incident was a clear example of the lack of coordination and misreading of intelligence: A very hard lesson to learn. Combined air-sea, air-ground operations are very difficult even in today's conditions. We see fratricides of friendly aircraft, tanks, other units.
But if 1974 operation did not take place, or sinking of Kocatepe did not occur, Turkish military maybe could not get experience about the importance of proper planning and coordination of joint warfare tactics.
There is another lesson for example..
Most of the wounds in Turkish marines occured in the first phases of the landings and when crawling. That was because soldiers did not lower thier toes and enemy machine gun fire over their heads inflicted wounds to toes. After realizing this, army manuals and marine training changed and a specific crawling method was taught to soldiers which dictated lowering of toes.
There are zillions of "hard lessons" like these that excel armies.
Almost every Turkish officer whom I had chance to chat about defense industry constantly gave examples from two battles: 1982 Falkland and 1991 Persian Gulf. These two battles almost traumatically taught lessons. For example RN learned the necessity of air defense of ships hard way. Malfunction of Argentiean SST-4's, the ultimate failure of Iraqi air defense network to counter Coalition air strikes.. etc, etc. Reading "lessons learned" and experiencing them live are very different.
Modern battlefields will be no more specific battlefields. There will be no boundaries, no specific "war-zones". Cities, buildings, mountains, everywhere can be a battlefield. And future wars will mostly consist of clash of two coalitions, i.e multinational forces will be used more often. "Interoperability" is a key word...
A couple of months ago, Spanish frigate F-100 Alvaro de Bazan joined a US carrier task force and conducted joint maneovers, as if a US element of the said force. We (will) see similar examples in the Asia-Pacific region. UK retired Sea Harriers because air defense of RN will be provided by AAW missiles of ships and probably
allied (US) aerial cover.
In order to develop and improve NCW skills, an army must increasingly involve in multinational exercises and operations (peace keeping / providing). This is something directly related to a greater vision and understanding of modern warfare. And I think only hard experiences help building up that way of strategic thinking.
