Hmm, I'm pretty sure the ladders thing was a valuable, if limited, lesson from direct operational experience. Carrying ladders originated in Sangin (possibly earlier from the US in urban fighting in Iraq) and then spread outwards, because it allowed you to cross walls and ditches in places other than the chokepoints, which is where IEDs would be placed. It's the same function as carrying ropes in mountains: it hugely expands the route options your patrol has when mountain routes are otherwise highly constrained and so vulnerable to ambush.
In those cases, I think it was probably the experienced SNCOs who coughed loudly and whispered "we're doing it". Of course, this doesn't mean we should issue every platoon flying out to eastern Europe with a ladder.