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Flikken posted:Various Air Dropped bombs and Torpedos. Read about the Attack on Pearl Harbor, the Battle of Midway, The Battle of Coral Sea, The Sinking of the Bismark, The Battle of Leyte Gulf, The Battle of the Philippines Sea, and many more WWII naval battles.
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Oct 12, 2011 19:04
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Intel5 posted:The nice thing about going to a major university is that they have inter-loan agreements with a bunch of libraries. So even if you go to a local branch, chances are that you can get drat near any book ever published sent there within a couple of weekdays. Replying to an old post, but I am loving glad that someone appreciates the libraries these days. (I work in ILL)
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Oct 12, 2011 20:57
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Gah I missed out on the meat of the Falkland chat! Allow me to recommend a read if anyone wants to know more about the long range Vulcan bombing of Port Stanley. Vulcan 607 by Jeremy Clarkson. From wikipedia, "The raids, at almost 8,000 nautical miles (15,000 km) and 16 hours for the return journey, were the longest-ranged bombing raids in history at that time (surpassed in the Gulf War of 1991 by USAF Boeing B-52G Stratofortresses flying from the continental United States but using forward-positioned tankers[15])."
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Oct 12, 2011 23:50
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The flow chart of the Vulcan raid is nuts. Anyone have that on hand? Also if the Royal Navy was knocked out of action, I think it would have been a no brainer to assume that the US would have stepped out of the behind the scenes support and committed naval assets to the fight. I might be way off base thinking that, but I doubt the US would have let the Argentinians achieve a victory over our closest ally. That might have had some serious effects on our own interests in the region.
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Oct 13, 2011 00:04
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VikingSkull posted:The flow chart of the Vulcan raid is nuts. Anyone have that on hand? I'm too lazy to convert it from .svg, but it's available here. I really doubt the U.S. would've done anything...if you look at the run up to the war, the Reagan Administration was initially sharply divided on whether to even offer overt support to the U.K. The war was prior to the return of democracy to Argentina and the junta that was running things at the time was viewed as a pretty close U.S. ally due to its staunch anticommunist stance. A lot of the initial behind the scenes support that the U.S. provided was done unilaterally by Caspar Weinberger (Secretary of Defense) without the rest of the cabinet's knowledge. Weinberger apparently even went so far as to offer the services of a U.S. carrier if both the Hermes and Invincible, but I don't see that being politically feasible. Our siding against Argentina actually probably did more damage to our interests in the region since, as I pointed out above, Argentina was a fairly close ally who we basically left out in the cold when it came down to choose between them and a European ally. Ultimately, I just don't think Reagan would've been able to sell the war. If you look at the other overt military operations taken during his terms, you have Grenada (COMMUNISM!), the "Line of Death"/Ed Dorado Canyon, which was about retribution against a state supporter of terrorism who had killed Americans, both of which had a solid basis on which to sell the use of force to the American people (even if it was largely overblown in the case of Grenada) and then you have the open ended ill thought out intervention in Lebanon, which I think is the exception that proves the rule. You would have a very hard time selling a conflict that involved taking a side with a very close ally against a country that was still considered a close anticommunist ally.
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Oct 13, 2011 03:02
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Insane Totoro posted:Replying to an old post, but I am loving glad that someone appreciates the libraries these days. Libraries are  AWESOME! The Orgasm Sanction fucked around with this message at 03:41 on Oct 13, 2011 |
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Oct 13, 2011 03:36
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Totally TWISTED posted:Gah I missed out on the meat of the Falkland chat! Allow me to recommend a read if anyone wants to know more about the long range Vulcan bombing of Port Stanley. Jeremy Clarkson didn't write that, it was Rowland White.
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Oct 13, 2011 04:17
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Jeremy Clarkson didn't write that, it was Rowland White. 
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Oct 13, 2011 06:53
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Jeremy Clarkson didn't write that, it was Rowland White. It would be an amazing book full of explosions if he had written it though!
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Oct 13, 2011 11:50
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iyaayas01 posted:You would have a very hard time selling a conflict that involved taking a side with a very close ally against a country that was still considered a close anticommunist ally. And you can bet the Argentinian generals had thought of that. Essentially what they didn't think of was dumb luck for the Brits, the relatively poor training and morale of their own troops, possibly occluded to them by overly optimistic reports coming in from lower parts of the hierarchy, and the level of patriotism and support of the war the British were able to muster. As I understand it, they basically assumed the British would say "gently caress it" and throw off some symbolic retaliation. Never set a general to do the work of a sociologist.
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Oct 13, 2011 12:00
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Insane Totoro posted:Replying to an old post, but I am loving glad that someone appreciates the libraries these days. You should have known, had the amount of experience necessary, and willingness to live in North Dakota to get our head of access services job. If you want there are some lovely paying cataloging positions opening up soon. 
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Oct 13, 2011 15:02
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Naramyth posted:You should have known, had the amount of experience necessary, and willingness to live in North Dakota to get our head of access services job. I only graduate with my MLIS this semester. Anyone need a humanities librarian? To be on topic, I was Googling Cold War stuff for a patron and came up with this: http://www.navy.mil/navydata/cno/n87/usw/issue_25/sosus.htm Submarine detection is cool stuff. (I think it's open access, didn't test it on our external test computer)
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Oct 13, 2011 15:15
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Flikken posted:It would be an amazing book full of explosions if he had written it though! Written in crayon.
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Oct 14, 2011 08:02
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Insane Totoro posted:I only graduate with my MLIS this semester. Anyone need a humanities librarian? Thank you for this - a good read 
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Oct 14, 2011 20:45
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Here is a Cold War airpower photo with multiple layers of rad embedded in it: This is an Israeli Kfir fighter. If it looks familiar, that's because the Kfir was a "derivative" of the Dassault Mirage 5. Israeli Aircraft Industries somehow acquired thousands upon thousands of pages worth of technical schematics and diagrams, enabling them to reverse-engineer the Mirage 5 with incredible precision and make their own virtually identical plane. Depending on who you ask, it was either the single greatest industrial-espionage operation in human history, or it was an inside job, with various Dassault employees or the company itself ensuring that Israel received the necessary blueprints. (For a period of time, France, far more so than the United States, was Israel's major arms supplier; virtually the entire IAF at the time of the 1967 war was French Mirages, Mysteres, and Ouragons. France's support for Israel took a nose dive after that war, which is why the IAF was flying Phantom IIs and Skyhawks by the time the 1973 Yom Kippur War rolled around.) If you're looking at a jet and need to know quickly if it's a Mirage 5 or Kfir, look at the front edge of the vertical stabilizer. If it's squared-off like that, it's a Kfir. The next layer of rad is that these Israeli copies of French fighters are wearing US Marine Corps markings. The Marines (and the Navy) used them in Dissimilar Air Combat Training, using them to represent Soviet MiGs or some other kind of adversarial jet at TOPGUN school. The United States, unable as we are to simply admit that someone else had a good idea, modified their shipment of Kfirs by adding the nubby little canards that you can see below and behind the cockpits. Sadly, the Kfir was never the home-grown success the IAF hoped it would be. By the time of its introduction, Israel was flying F-4s and A-4s, and would soon be flying F-15s and F-16s. The Kfir never stood much chance against that kind of opposition, and tellingly, Israel hasn't made a major attempt to develop its own aircraft since then. I am by no means an expert on Israeli military history, but it's a fascinating subject to study, because Israel had major wars in 1948 (with WW2 weaponry), 1956 (with second-generation fighters), 1967 (third-gen), and 1973 (fourth-gen). The history of Israel is the history of jet power and its role in modern warfare.
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Oct 16, 2011 03:41
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That picture owns so hard. I haven't come across too many pictures of Kfirs/F-21s in USMC or USN colors, and I haven't seen any where the jet is wearing either the Israeli style green/brown/tan desert camo scheme or the Arab/"Flogger" style desert camo scheme; the only pictures I've seen are the three tone blue-grey "ghost" scheme. ATAC (a private contractor) currently flies some of these, as well as a few Saab Drakens and Hawker Hunters, as red air and other functions for various militaries and defense contractors. They didn't bring any up here for Northern Edge (unfortunately...the rumor was that they were going to) but they did bring some Hunters. Few points of order: the canards were actually also added onto the C.2 (and later) models flown by the IAF and exported by IAI since they significantly improved maneuverability and low speed performance. Speaking of IAI, they actually did develop an indigenous design after the Kfir: the Lavi. It was supposed to be a 4.5+ generation fighter, roughly comparable to the Euro-canards (probably closer to the Gripen than the Eurofighter or Rafale). The project was canceled after the American government decided it didn't want to be financing a foreign jet that could compete with American manufactured products and the Israelis realized they could either spend several billion dollars on building their own aircraft or get an American manufactured aircraft that was almost as good for next to nothing and get the American government to pay to upgrade it with Israeli electronics, thanks to the insanity of the way the U.S. does FMS to the Israelis. Pretty much a no-brainer. The biggest impact of the Lavi was the strong possibility that it and/or some of its technology was exported to the Chinese government and formed at least some of the basis for the PLAAF's J-10.
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Oct 16, 2011 04:43
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TheNakedJimbo posted:iyaayas did Israel willingly sell that technology to China? I can't imagine the US being too happy about that so I'm assuming maybe they aided in China stealing it from them for $$$?
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Oct 16, 2011 17:13
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Israel does a ton of poo poo the US isn't happy about.
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Oct 16, 2011 18:09
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Israel is a very rich modern nation. Why the US gives them a dime of aid is beyond me since all it seems to do is piss off the rest of the middle east.
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Oct 16, 2011 20:26
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Armyman25 posted:Israel is a very rich modern nation. Why the US gives them a dime of aid is beyond me since all it seems to do is piss off the rest of the middle east. You think we even care what the rest of the middle east thinks? We've locked down the only opinions worth considering. Saudi Arabia is fat and happy, the Qataris and Bahrainis are more scared of Iran than Israel. Turkey has European and American trade deals to worry about losing, in addition to all the poo poo we've sold them. No one gives a poo poo about Syria's opinion until they stop buying Russian and Chinese arms.
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Oct 16, 2011 20:46
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Israel is also one if not the only nation in the region with both strong cultural ties with the US as well as lots of money and business ties. Our choices of allies in that part of the world is limited and Israel comes closer than any other to being a "good" ally.
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Oct 16, 2011 21:11
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Totally TWISTED posted:iyaayas did Israel willingly sell that technology to China? I can't imagine the US being too happy about that so I'm assuming maybe they aided in China stealing it from them for $$$? Pretty much this: Smiling Jack posted:Israel does a ton of poo poo the US isn't happy about. However, to be fair, at the time they started the tech transfer (mid '80s) the U.S. was also involved in a pretty heavy tech transfer project with the Chinese government (the Sabre II F-7 upgrade project with Grumman) that was only canceled after Tiananmen Square. Of course, the Lavi tech transfer (probably) continued after that (under the table) and then they tried to sell their advanced phased array Phalcon AEW&C system to the Chinese in the late '90s before the U.S. government blocked it. Israel is currently China's second biggest arms supplier behind Russia. I'm fine with whoever selling arms to whoever else (it's their country, whatever) but that stops when another country is giving you a couple billion dollars in arms for free every year. Of course, I'd be fine if we stopped giving Israel $3 billion in arms for free every year too.
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Oct 16, 2011 21:13
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iyaayas01 posted:Of course, I'd be fine if we stopped giving Israel $3 billion in arms for free every year too. Or at the very least use it for leverage to get them to tone down the seriously problematic poo poo. Back before the Egyptian revolution (probably post-revolution too, to be honest, although that still needs to shake out) we basically gave them $1B a year in military aid with the understanding that they needed to play nice with Israel or the gravy train would end. I see NO goddamned reason why we can't tell the Israelis that we'll yank their $3B/year free ride if they don't stop plopping settlers everywhere.
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Oct 16, 2011 21:17
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Most, if not all of the recent awesome Intel CPUs were developed in Israel. Nuff said!
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Oct 16, 2011 21:19
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Armyman25 posted:Israel is a very rich modern nation. Why the US gives them a dime of aid is beyond me since all it seems to do is piss off the rest of the middle east. While there is much more to it than this, a reason that is often overlooked is the Camp David Accords. Same reason Egypt is neck and neck with Israel for most aid given year after year, and why the Egyptian military is now equipped mostly with American equipment, a sharp turn around from a few decades ago. We signed an agreement to provide both nations with a shitload of free military equipment every year. However, like Cyrano points out, we haven't hesitated to use this as leverage with the Egyptian government while we rarely use it with the Israelis...the only times I can think it has been seriously threatened has been the Phalcon deal with China that I mentioned above and regarding the Pollard spying incident (discussed below). Scratch Monkey posted:Israel is also one if not the only nation in the region with both strong cultural ties with the US as well as lots of money and business ties. Our choices of allies in that part of the world is limited and Israel comes closer than any other to being a "good" ally. Not trying to start/continue an Israel derail, but this is a pretty idealistic view. If you want a good read on the subject of Israeli-U.S. relations as they pertain to international/military affairs, Mearsheimer and Walt's "The Israel Lobby" is required reading. It received a LOT of unfounded emotional "YOU ARE ANTI-SEMITIC/YOU HATE ISRAEL/YOU ARE LITERALLY A NAZI" criticism, which to me speaks to how well it hits the mark. I think they oversimplify some of the issues at play in support of their argument (particularly regarding terrorism...Islamic Extremism isn't going to go away overnight if we stop supporting Israel, just like it didn't go away when we pulled 99.9% of our military forces out of Saudi Arabia) but I still agree with almost all of what they say. (Also, terrorism/Islamic Extremism could and should stop being the focal point of U.S. foreign policy, but that's a discussion for a different day). Anyway, here's a small excerpt detailing how our valued ally acts regarding our international strategic interests: quote:A final reason to question Israel’s strategic value is that it does not behave like a loyal ally. Israeli officials frequently ignore US requests and renege on promises (including pledges to stop building settlements and to refrain from ‘targeted assassinations’ of Palestinian leaders). Israel has provided sensitive military technology to potential rivals like China, in what the State Department inspector-general called ‘a systematic and growing pattern of unauthorised transfers’. According to the General Accounting Office, Israel also ‘conducts the most aggressive espionage operations against the US of any ally’. In addition to the case of Jonathan Pollard, who gave Israel large quantities of classified material in the early 1980s (which it reportedly passed on to the Soviet Union in return for more exit visas for Soviet Jews), a new controversy erupted in 2004 when it was revealed that a key Pentagon official called Larry Franklin had passed classified information to an Israeli diplomat. Israel is hardly the only country that spies on the US, but its willingness to spy on its principal patron casts further doubt on its strategic value. So they sell sensitive U.S. military technology to a rising competitor and aggressively attempt to gain access to all sorts of state secrets. Sounds like a valued ally to me! I forgot to mention the espionage aspect before...Pollard was one of the worst spies in U.S. history, ranking right up there with Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen in terms of damage they did to national security.
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Oct 16, 2011 21:45
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Thanks for the rundown.priznat posted:Most, if not all of the recent awesome Intel CPUs were developed in Israel. Nuff said!
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Oct 17, 2011 00:00
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Cyrano4747 posted:I see NO goddamned reason why we can't tell the Israelis that we'll yank their $3B/year free ride if they don't stop plopping settlers everywhere. Even with the obvious geopolitical and strategic concerns, the level of commitment does seem a quite a bit one sided on the surface. This is why I feel there may be truth in the reports that Israel's greatest trade commodity is intelligence.
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Oct 17, 2011 00:55
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Totally TWISTED posted:I bet AMD works out of North Korea given how poo poo their latest offering has been. Their Libyan fab has been having "issues"
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Oct 17, 2011 00:57
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iyaayas01 posted:Not trying to start/continue an Israel derail, but this is a pretty idealistic view. Id call it more pragmatic than idealistic. Who else that deep in the middle east could we court for a meaningful alliance? iyaayas01 posted:Pollard was one of the worst spies in U.S. history, ranking right up there with Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen in terms of damage they did to national security. The funniest part is that there are still huge number of people in Israel who see his conviction as some sort of unbelievable slap in the face of Israel including the current prime minister! Israel is truly the rich, whiney teenager of the first world.
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Oct 17, 2011 00:57
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Scratch Monkey posted:Id call it more pragmatic than idealistic. Who else that deep in the middle east could we court for a meaningful alliance? That's a fair point, but a large reason why we have those cultural/political/business ties is because of how different Israel is in pretty much every way from all the other countries in the region...which limits their utility as a regional ally, especially given the terrible relations they have with everyone else in the region. Scratch Monkey posted:The funniest part is that there are still huge number of people in Israel who see his conviction as some sort of unbelievable slap in the face of Israel including the current prime minister! Israel is truly the rich, whiney teenager of the first world. Hell, there are plenty of people in the U.S. who feel the same way, which is absolutely ludicrous.
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Oct 17, 2011 01:14
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My grandpa knew Curtis LeMay. Not because he was in any way involved in SAC, but because he owned an island right near where Curtis went for his Canada fishing trips. We were and still are very good friends with the owners of the fishing lodge. Curtis showed up every summer and apparently was a good guest to have at the lodge. Grandpa even showed him where the big largemouths where and how to coax them from cover with Heddon baby torpedo.
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Oct 17, 2011 01:32
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TheNakedJimbo posted:That ghost scheme is so so sexy...  I dunno about this but I think I heard the decision of getting the Kfirs was motivated by Falklands war and how they realized they had no experience against those delta fighters. How true is that?
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Oct 17, 2011 06:01
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Israel's entire military history is one of pulling punches to satisfy the fickle whims of its western 'allies'. Trying not to thread derail/rage (please don't turn this into an LF-fest) but a great example of this is how they sat helpless in Desert Storm while getting pelted with Saddam's Scuds, despite total uninvolvement in the conflict, and made no attempt to actively retaliate. More to the point of the thread, the extent of their military actions during the Cold War were largely dictated by sloppy French/British attempts to maintain nominal control over former colonies and keep nations like Suez-controlling Egypt theoretically on the NATO side. These were wars fought with grossly obsolete equipment (Sherman tanks vs T-55s, etc) because Israel was banned from openly purchasing modern gear and had to trawl the surplus market - again as part of larger moves to keep Arab states friendly, oil flowing and the Suez safe for Western warships and cargo. The idea of Israel as an economic powerhouse (Wikipedia puts its 2010 GDP per capita between fiscal stalwarts Spain and Greece, who, shall we say, don't have the same defense needs) is at best only applicable since the dot-com boom and certainly doesn't apply to the Cold War period.
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Oct 17, 2011 07:39
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Snowdens Secret posted:Israel's entire military history is one of pulling punches to satisfy the fickle whims of its western 'allies'. Trying not to thread derail/rage (please don't turn this into an LF-fest) but a great example of this is how they sat helpless in Desert Storm while getting pelted with Saddam's Scuds, despite total uninvolvement in the conflict, and made no attempt to actively retaliate. Counterpoint: the U.S. literally paid them off with 50 F-16s, given to the IAF for free right after the war (on top of all the other aid the U.S. already gives them), not to mention the deployment of Patriot batteries by both the U.S. and the Netherlands. They were chomping at the bit to retaliate, consequences be damned, but since this would have torn apart the Coalition the U.S. had worked so hard to build, we bought their non-involvement for the cheap price of 50 F-16s (admittedly surplus Block 10s) and the deployment of some missile batteries. Snowdens Secret posted:More to the point of the thread, the extent of their military actions during the Cold War were largely dictated by sloppy French/British attempts to maintain nominal control over former colonies and keep nations like Suez-controlling Egypt theoretically on the NATO side. These were wars fought with grossly obsolete equipment (Sherman tanks vs T-55s, etc) because Israel was banned from openly purchasing modern gear and had to trawl the surplus market - again as part of larger moves to keep Arab states friendly, oil flowing and the Suez safe for Western warships and cargo. This was true for the first couple of wars, and not really even then...while starting off extremely weak in the War of Independence the Israelis had largely gained qualitative parity with its adversaries by the end of the conflict. The same is true of the Suez Conflict, not to mention its Western allies (Britain and France) compared to the lack of allies on the part of the Egyptians. By the Six Day War, the Israelis had qualitative superiority (both on the part of its equipment and its personnel). In the Yom Kippur War the Israelis maintained their personnel and equipment superiority, but had issues with new technologies like the advanced ATGMs and SAMs the Arabs employed. However, by the 1980s the Israelis had clear qualitative superiority in every aspect, as shown by the 86-0 hurting they put on the Syrian Air Force. That's not to say that your points about Israel's relative economic strength aren't valid, but the idea of the IDF as achieving victory despite outnumbered with outdated inadequate surplus equipment solely through the valor of the individual Israeli soldier is a core part of its mythology, but one that doesn't have much basis in reality. iyaayas01 fucked around with this message at 08:22 on Oct 17, 2011 |
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Oct 17, 2011 08:16
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I don't think it should be necessary to make excuses for discussing the Middle East and Israel in a Cold War thread, I wonder how many WW3 scenarios have started with some poo poo going down around Israel? Worth noting in relation to the idea of the Israeli super-soldier who perseveres against all odds is how dramatically the trauma of the near-defeat of the Yom Kippur War affected that myth in Israel itself - complacent officers, content in the automatic superiority of their soldiers, suddenly found themselves being held responsible in the media. Generals were sacked. This tendency to question the idea of the Great Jewish Warrior has continued to this day, lingering in the public discourse throughout the low-intensity conflict of the eighties and the invasion of Lebanon, and suddenly becoming a hot topic around the Second Lebanese War, when the Hezbollah seriously troubled a top-notch, high-tech, flexible, well-trained and well-armed military force. The issue of morale here is pressing - the media were asking if Israeli youth were turning into well-fed cowards, or simply growing increasingly disenchanted? The egalitarian, social-democratic state of their parents is turning into a typical Southern-European post-industrial economy where the young find themselves with few means to build their own lives, and civilian unrest is increasing as economic classes diverge. They've got the means to turn the Middle East into a radioactive wasteland, and what good is it doing them?
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Oct 17, 2011 08:54
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iyaayas01 posted:This was true for the first couple of wars, and not really even then...while starting off extremely weak in the War of Independence the Israelis had largely gained qualitative parity with its adversaries by the end of the conflict. The same is true of the Suez Conflict, not to mention its Western allies (Britain and France) compared to the lack of allies on the part of the Egyptians. By the Six Day War, the Israelis had qualitative superiority (both on the part of its equipment and its personnel). In the Yom Kippur War the Israelis maintained their personnel and equipment superiority, but had issues with new technologies like the advanced ATGMs and SAMs the Arabs employed. However, by the 1980s the Israelis had clear qualitative superiority in every aspect, as shown by the 86-0 hurting they put on the Syrian Air Force. I feel that when evaluating qualitative equivalence you may be focusing on airpower at the detriment of ground force - and mere qualitative parity in the face of overwhelming quantitative imbalance isn't an equal footing. But I'll acknowledge that you're the professional on these matters while I'm certainly not. The usual means I've heard of explaining away the results in the face of that quantitative imbalance is Israeli use of American-style C&C through strong non-coms and battlefield decisionmaking vs Arab use of Soviet C&C far more dependent on higher-up decisions. Thus the Israeli (i.e. NATO) tactics of focus striking enemy C&C resources as early as possible paralyzed the Arab armies and nullified their numbers. There are Israeli stories of zooming past Egyptian tanks in the Sinai that they thought were abandoned/destroyed, but in fact the crews were paralyzed without the orders to shoot. Then again, this is also part of the American soldier mythos about how we would crush the Commies in WWIII, and if it's just rah-rah Tom Clancy nonsense I'd love to read more sober analysis. This gets back to another point; while these conflicts were deadly serious to the agents involved, and are largely looked at today solely as results of Israeli/Arab malfeasance, they were very much proxy conflicts / extended wargames between NATO and the Warsaw Pact in much the same way as actions in SE Asia and elsewhere around the world. They allowed testing of C&C techniques and equipment design/doctrine while continuing a global power struggle with very little concern for the end results to the pawns involved. To this end the combatants were largely armed and antagonized specifically to force the confrontations. I'll throw in this tremendous wall-of-text to give a better idea of how this was just part of the larger Cold War: quote:The Security Council of the United Nations passed (14-0) Resolution 338 calling for a cease-fire, largely negotiated between the U.S. and Soviet Union, on October 22. [10]. It called for an end to the fighting between Israel and Egypt (but technically not between Syria and Israel). It came into effect 12 hours later at 6:52 p.m. Israeli time. (Rabinovich, 452). Because it went into effect after darkness, it was impossible for satellite surveillance to determine where the front lines were when the fighting was supposed to stop (Rabinovich, 458).
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Oct 17, 2011 10:29
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Snowdens Secret posted:There are Israeli stories of zooming past Egyptian tanks in the Sinai that they thought were abandoned/destroyed, but in fact the crews were paralyzed without the orders to shoot. Then again, this is also part of the American soldier mythos about how we would crush the Commies in WWIII, and if it's just rah-rah Tom Clancy nonsense I'd love to read more sober analysis. I'm loving FAR from an expert on this stuff, and haven't actively even read up on it in an enthusiast way since basically forever, but from what I do recall this idea of small unit, low-level leadership being one of the core differences between western militaries and others (with the latter always being bound up and restricted by near-suicidal dependance on higher authority) is kind of bullshit. I know that specifically in the Soviet case the only period where you can really talk about that kind of leadership paralysis is during the worst part of the Stalinist years - think the Winter War and the early days of Barbarossa. A huge part of why the Red Army was able to rebuild and turn poo poo around in '42 was a package of reforms that started all the way back in 1940 right after the Winter War and which got accelerated to a huge degree by the German invasion. A major part of that was essentially castrating the political commissars and making it so that local officers could make military decisions without fear of being accused of treason for doing something like retreating out of a field and onto a hill or something else equally stupid. A big part of this idea of the enemies of the US/West/whatever being unable to make decisions without the local officer literally telling them to fire their guns seems to come out of a lot of US propaganda from WW2, which unfortunately still permeates a lot of Borders-level military history books. Steven Ambrose was loving terrible about this. I'm pretty sure it's Citizen Soldiers where his entire core thesis is that small unit leadership that didn't rely on higher authority for every little thing was amazing in the US and non-existant in the Germans, and that this was the direct result of one group of people growing up in a democracy and the others growing up under Fascism. Don't even get me started on his reading of the Führerprinzip - he's so wrong it defies description. What makes this school of thought especially egregious is the fact that the Germans, not the Americans or British, were the ones who loving CAME UP WITH what we today clump under the heading of "decentralized command" or "mission-based tactics." Hell, the latter term is actually a direct translation of the German original - Auftragstaktik. The basic idea is that at the very top you have some guy in charge who sets broad goals ("Capture Paris") which are then passed to lower level guys who make the decisions appropriate at their level (head of Army Group says "advance westward across the Belgian plains"), and their underlings make yet more local decisions (corps command says "set one division to keep the fortress at Liege bottled up, have the others flow around it and continue moving westward") all the way down to the junior officer level. At that level it's basically leaving tactical decisions up to the guys on the ground. Everyone is given a task and everyone solves their individual problem however they best see fit. . . . and all of this was developed by the loving PRUSSIANS of all people under one of the more extreme 19th century absolutist monarchies. The very concept of letting the LT who knows what the gently caress the local situation is figure out how to seize that blockhouse rather than just rigidly following whatever grand tactic the COL way behind the lines spouted doesn't come from a democratic tradition of individual agency and ruggedly individualistic decision making, it comes from a process of professionalization of soldiering (especially at the level of officers) and the understanding that trained professionals work better if they are left alone to do their loving job. poo poo, some of the worst problems suffered by the US in WW2 were directly caused by the fact that, by 1944, a lot of the guys filling in for people who died earlier weren't trained all that great and were doing by-rote tactics taking straight out of training manuals (mostly really crude, simple variants on "fix, flank, gently caress."). It was a lack of professionalization on the junior officer level that most hampered the US Army by late 1944-45, and one of the BIG lessons they learned from that war was to emphasize junior officer training. tl;dr - Cyrano is incredibly skeptical of any military anecdote that has the "stupid brown/communist/third world conscripts" so terrified of loving up and facing consequences from their leaders that they don't engage in the most basic of military activities without direct orders. A lot of this comes from WW2 era propaganda painting the "enemies of Democracy" as a bunch of automatons who we would crush due to our superior way of government. Propaganda which, in the early cold war period, was re-purposed VERY quickly to describe our new communist adversaries. Also, Stephen Ambrose didn't know gently caress for poo poo if he wasn't commenting directly on the daily, lived experiences of veterans. Every time that man tried to make a bigger point he re-hashed some tired old saw of a thesis that was usually discredited by everyone who knew better back in the 50s.
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Oct 17, 2011 18:14
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Cyrano4747 posted:
Your last post in the Cold War thread and the books topic are identical (minus the Ambrose bashing). My plebeian mind considered it a great read and I thought you might be interested. fake edit: I was gonna PM you but your box is full.
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Oct 17, 2011 18:35
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about decision delegation and the Prussians.
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iyaayas01 posted:not to mention the deployment of Patriot batteries by both the U.S. and the Netherlands. Yeah, you're probably better off not mentioning that, because the benefit was purely political; the Patriot deployment let the Israeli government pretend it was doing *something* to defend the people who had Scuds fired at them daily, despite being totally useless for actually defending them against Scud missiles.
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Oct 17, 2011 18:41
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The German talent for gathering men and using them to create out of whole cloth effective fighting groups is testament enough to their field level officers' ability to think on their feet. Even the general officers in the Wehrmacht, the guys who talked to Hitler on a regular basis, had relatively little trouble ignoring him when they knew that his new dumb plan or order would get them all killed.
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Oct 17, 2011 18:46
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