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gradenko_2000 posted:
Fever dream I'm afraid. The situation prior to invasion was incredibly complex - the ruling group, the Khalqi branch of the PDPA, were Marxist-Leninist in ideology and tried to introduce some pretty drastic reforms (establishing legal ages for marriages, and ordered all marriages to be entered into voluntarily. Considered the education of both men and women a top priority) which, given the nature of the Afghan tribes, did not go down too well, not even mentioning the brutal ways in which the reforms were implemented. The country was in full on rebellion by the time the Soviets stepped in. As to reasons why - there are loads. Natural resources, preservation of the Brezhnev Doctrine, geopolitics, fear of radical Islam, Andropov generally being a poo poo.
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Nov 29, 2013 18:31
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a travelling HEGEL posted:As far as I'm concerned, it's been the future since 1494. Any reason for that year in particular? The Treaty of Tordesillas?
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Nov 29, 2013 18:32
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The comments earlier regarding the SCA groups has brought another question to mind for me that is related: How were troops trained in large numbers? Earlier in the thread there was the mention of the master/apprentice relationship for mercenary groups, but for armies that were raised up or trained in mass did they have a school of sorts? Were there drills to execute akin to what we have now with modern military training, or is the idea of drilling something until you don't have to think about it relatively modern?
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Nov 29, 2013 18:34
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AATREK CURES KIDS posted:Any reason for that year in particular? The Treaty of Tordesillas?  Edit:  quote:I say that war is made either to defend oneself or to take the offensive; hence, first to be examined is to which of these two modes of war it is more useful or more harmful. Although there may be something to say on each side, nonetheless I believe that without comparison it does more harm to whoever defends himself than to whoever takes the offensive. The reason I say this is that whoever defends himself either is inside a town or is in camp inside a stockade. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 19:50 on Nov 29, 2013 |
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Nov 29, 2013 18:43
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Koesj posted:What's the definition of Armageddon anyway A mistranslation of Har Megiddo.
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Nov 29, 2013 19:20
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Nov 29, 2013 19:36
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Taerkar posted:The comments earlier regarding the SCA groups has brought another question to mind for me that is related: The romans invented this so yeah it's been around for a couple of thousand years. The romans had an entirely professional volunteer army pretty much like any first-world modern state today. Even the organisation of modern armies has evolved from the roman system where a small group is commanded by one man, then another man commands several of those men, and another man commands several of those, and up and up until the commanding general. The idea didn't really catch on with anyone else post-rome though, from what I understand. Part of the reason they're called the dark ages I guess?
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Nov 29, 2013 20:50
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Slavvy posted:The romans invented this so yeah it's been around for a couple of thousand years. The romans had an entirely professional volunteer army pretty much like any first-world modern state today. Even the organisation of modern armies has evolved from the roman system where a small group is commanded by one man, then another man commands several of those men, and another man commands several of those, and up and up until the commanding general.
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Nov 29, 2013 21:15
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a travelling HEGEL posted:The Italian Wars begin. Gunpowder artillery, mother fuckers Would you like to go into detail about the artillery innovations in the Italian Wars? I was under the impression that early cannons just kinda steadily improved from the 12th-century Chinese fire lances until the development of breach-loading guns, but there must have been some paradigm shifts along the way.
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Nov 29, 2013 21:24
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a travelling HEGEL posted:The Italian Wars begin. Gunpowder artillery, mother fuckers Constantinople would like a word in your ear. Also Orleans and Calais. And Crecy. Vincent Van Goatse fucked around with this message at 21:27 on Nov 29, 2013 |
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Nov 29, 2013 21:25
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Azathoth posted:Would you (or someone else) be willing to go into more detail about the command structures of armies prior to the Romans? I know that one of the reasons they were so effective was because they had what we would now call NCOs, or something close to it, but how were the armies they were facing organized? I know the Greeks had a similar set up. I think Xenophon goes into detail on how the Ten Thousand rounded out, and his Cyropaedia (basically his response to Plato's Republic, what he thinks an ideal society ought to look like, which is, Xenophon being Xenophon, a virtuous and valorous monarchy supported by loyal aristocrats) has a big chunk on command. Basically his hypothetical great king gives rewards to the generals with the best section, they reward the tier below them, etc. etc. until... I think it's platoons of 8 or 10 or something.
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Nov 29, 2013 21:37
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Slavvy posted:The romans invented this so yeah it's been around for a couple of thousand years. The romans had an entirely professional volunteer army pretty much like any first-world modern state today. Even the organisation of modern armies has evolved from the roman system where a small group is commanded by one man, then another man commands several of those men, and another man commands several of those, and up and up until the commanding general. All those things were around before the Romans. The reason "the organisation of modern armies has evolved from the Roman system" is because Maurice of Nassau had such a boner for all things Roman, not because they were inherently better in some way. Slavvy posted:the dark ages We don't say that any more.
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Nov 29, 2013 21:40
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Mans posted:I know about idiot commanders being given responsibility that they should never receive in a million years in Nazi Germany. What about the allies? A few pages ago, but Halsey. Dude was totally fine starting the war in the pacific when he pulled out of Pearl Harbor on the second and ordered his planes to "sink any shipping sighted, shoot down any plane encountered" on their way to protect Wake Island from an impending Japanese surprise attack, and then preceded to spend a day hunting the Japanese attack fleet after the 7'th which consisted of 6 carriers by himself, with dumb luck not finding them being the reason why after Pearl Harbor the US still had it's Pacific Carrier Fleet intact. In the Philippians he was ordered to protect the major landing force but instead chased the decoy Japanese fleet north without telling really anyone, and only the absolute balls of steal  of Taffy 3 that held off the Center Force fleet in which the lead Japanese ship had more tonnage than all of Taffy 3 combined protected the US forces that just landed in the Philippians. When Admiral Kinkaid came under fire from the retreating Center Force he radioed the question "Where is repeat where is Task Force 34? The world wonders" he sulked for 2 hours before sailing to help 7'th fleet.About a month and a half later he ignored the weather reports from the people under his command and instead used the ones that Pearl Harbor issued which let his fleet be engulfed in a Typhoon and ordered them to keep in formation for over 12 hours that cost 3 destroyers, 800 men, and almost 150 aircraft. 6 months later, after loosing and then regaining command of a fleet because of the Typhoon incident, he sails his fleet into yet another one although at least he didn't lose any ships this time. Finally, after the war his efforts to turn the Enterprise that was his flagship in WW2 into a museum also failed and it was scrapped in 1958.
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Nov 29, 2013 21:44
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The other side of that Halsey story is that Admiral Raymond Spruance was in command of the main USN task force (TF 38) during the Battle of the Philippine Islands in June of that year 1944. Spruance already had a reputation for being a calm, calculating commander to contrast with Halsey's aggressiveness, and Spruance was the commander on the scene during the Battle of Midway. During the Battle of the Philippine Sea, the USN air strikes sank the carrier Hiyo, while submarine attacks sank the Shokaku and the Taiho. In addition, somewhere between 500 to 600 Japanese planes were shot down by the powerful new Grumman Hellcat fighters, absolutely gutting what was left of Japan's trained aviators. Despite this, Spruance's decision to hang back from pursuing the remaining 2 fleet carriers (Zuikaku and Junyo) and light carriers (Ryuho, Chitose, Chiyoda and Zuiho) was considered to be overly cautious, and it's been said that Halsey that much aggressive at Leyte Gulf because he wanted to make up for it - he wanted to catch the carriers that Spruance had allowed to escape. The irony is that Spruance hung back when he was at the helm because he was keeping in mind the IJN's predilection for decoy and diversionary tactics, and when the IJN did make such a play against Halsey, he took the bait hook, line and sinker. EDIT: On a personal note, it surprised me to find out that it was Spruance who was the "battleship man" and Halsey was the naval aviation advocate. EDIT EDIT: I also want to throw in that MacArthur's dick-waving during the run-up to Leyte Gulf needlessly complicated the communications relay system and played a part in the missed signals that resulted in Taffy 3 having to face down the IJN battlefleet all by themselves. gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 23:08 on Nov 29, 2013 |
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Nov 29, 2013 22:52
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AATREK CURES KIDS posted:Would you like to go into detail about the artillery innovations in the Italian Wars? I was under the impression that early cannons just kinda steadily improved from the 12th-century Chinese fire lances until the development of breach-loading guns, but there must have been some paradigm shifts along the way. I'd love to go into detail about this and give you some hard statistics and pictures or something, but I haven't taken very many of my books with me and the ones I need aren't among them. As for large jumps, people figure out how to make solid cast iron cannon in the mid 1500s; cast iron may or may not be better than cast bronze (I have no idea--I do know cast iron is more likely to shatter when it fails instead of bulging outward, which is frightening), but it is a lot cheaper, and it's also stronger than wrought iron. Corned powder was developed in the first half of the 1400s, so that's earlier than what I'm talking about but it was also a big jump--corned is more powerful than serpentine and the ingredients also won't sift apart while you're transporting it so you no longer have to mix the powder onsite (although everyone still takes serpentine with them for their older guns anyway). Everyone's saltpeter/charcoal/sulfur ratio is different; as far as I know, they'll remain different down into the 19th century.  The French entering Naples, 1495. Behold the early modern's pictures_of_nukes.jpg ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:Constantinople would like a word in your ear. Also Orleans and Calais. And Crecy. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 23:25 on Nov 29, 2013 |
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Nov 29, 2013 23:00
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the JJ posted:I know the Greeks had a similar set up. I think Xenophon goes into detail on how the Ten Thousand rounded out, and his Cyropaedia (basically his response to Plato's Republic, what he thinks an ideal society ought to look like, which is, Xenophon being Xenophon, a virtuous and valorous monarchy supported by loyal aristocrats) has a big chunk on command. Basically his hypothetical great king gives rewards to the generals with the best section, they reward the tier below them, etc. etc. until... I think it's platoons of 8 or 10 or something. The Achaemenid Empire also did the whole training and NCO thing. In the end it didn't save them though since their army was build for a totally different opponent then the Greeks (and Macedonians) proved to be.
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Nov 29, 2013 23:04
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Rabhadh posted:All those things were around before the Romans. The reason "the organisation of modern armies has evolved from the Roman system" is because Maurice of Nassau had such a boner for all things Roman, not because they were inherently better in some way. You made a mistake, Slavvy. Someone who knows more about Romans or the Middle Ages than I do will probably be able to take that apart better, though. Not to mention China, which had excellent, well-drilled, disciplined infantry for thousands of years with no Roman input. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 01:34 on Nov 30, 2013 |
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Nov 29, 2013 23:22
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Davincie posted:The Achaemenid Empire also did the whole training and NCO thing. In the end it didn't save them though since their army was build for a totally different opponent then the Greeks (and Macedonians) proved to be. I think Alexander and his army was more of a perfect storm than an opponent the Achaemenid system couldn't handle. Obviously we know what happened in real life, but the Achaemenids weren't just some speed bump the Greeks had to drive over to achieve the world power they eventually did. They had their own sophisticated military systems that successfully conquered a huge swathe of the world. I guess the real weakness of the Persians was how fragile the regime was at the top.
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Nov 29, 2013 23:23
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Slavvy posted:The romans invented this so yeah it's been around for a couple of thousand years. The romans had an entirely professional volunteer army pretty much like any first-world modern state today. Even the organisation of modern armies has evolved from the roman system where a small group is commanded by one man, then another man commands several of those men, and another man commands several of those, and up and up until the commanding general. Perhaps I worded it wrong. I was asking more about how the soldiers were trained. Did they do a more one-on-one approach or were there a series of drills and motions that the troops would go through. Part of modern combat training is to drill basic actions into the soldiers so that they don't have to think about performing various actions and thus remain effective during more stressful moments.
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Nov 29, 2013 23:36
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Taerkar posted:Perhaps I worded it wrong. I was asking more about how the soldiers were trained. Did they do a more one-on-one approach or were there a series of drills and motions that the troops would go through. One of the reasons the feudal system developed the way it did was to produced a dedicated "warrior class" who were supported economically by a group of people who were never expected to take the field. Obviously this changed as populations expanded and technologies developed, but its fair to assume those guys were trained on a one-to-one basis by either family members or close political allies. I think its only recently that warrior nobility has stopped being a thing.
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Nov 30, 2013 00:01
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Slavvy posted:The romans invented this so yeah it's been around for a couple of thousand years. The romans had an entirely professional volunteer army pretty much like any first-world modern state today. Even the organisation of modern armies has evolved from the roman system where a small group is commanded by one man, then another man commands several of those men, and another man commands several of those, and up and up until the commanding general. Such a command structure existed long before Rome, and continued in use after. It's pretty much the only way to control an army. And the term "dark ages," which isn't used anymore, was a way to separate much of the Middle Ages from the light of Roman Europe and the Renaissance. It's a pretty lovely term and isn't accurate, hence the hostility toward it. Taerkar posted:Perhaps I worded it wrong. I was asking more about how the soldiers were trained. Did they do a more one-on-one approach or were there a series of drills and motions that the troops would go through. The Romans used drills. Marching in step, etc. Formation maneuvers. The countermarch used for early European firearms drills (shooting and reloading) was influenced by the Roman model.
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Nov 30, 2013 03:25
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I was under the impression that the roman idea of having soldiering as a profession was instituted by them. If you look at ancient greece AFAIK the major reason warfare was seasonal was that the hoplites had to go home and deal with farming. Sparta had an advantage here because they had a dedicated warrior class who didn't have to work because their economy functioned on their helots. I thought rome were the first to make soldiering a career and have a formal, government-controlled organisation for it. Guess I'm wrong.
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Nov 30, 2013 03:47
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Taerkar posted:Perhaps I worded it wrong. I was asking more about how the soldiers were trained. Did they do a more one-on-one approach or were there a series of drills and motions that the troops would go through.  In the noble Sparta the sons of citizens were sent to training camps at age seven and their training got harder the older they grew. They also honed their skills by waging war against their serfs. Their training ended when they were 30. But Spartans were really just a land owning warrior class like medieval European knights, and not normal soldiers the like later Roman legionaries. When Athenian citizens' sons turned 18 they were sent to training camps for a year, and after that they served in the army for two years. Slavvy posted:Sparta had an advantage here because they had a dedicated warrior class who didn't have to work because their economy functioned on their helots. Sparta's problem with the helots was that they couldn't take their army away from Sparta for long periods or the helots would riot. And I don't blame the helots, they were hunted like animals by training Spartan troops. Hogge Wild fucked around with this message at 04:01 on Nov 30, 2013 |
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Nov 30, 2013 03:57
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quote:Sparta's problem with the helots was that they couldn't take their army away from Sparta for long periods or the helots would riot. And I don't blame the helots, they were hunted like animals by training Spartan troops. Or, even worse, their wives would sleep with the helots. Probably apocryphal, I know.
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Nov 30, 2013 06:43
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sullat posted:Or, even worse, their wives would sleep with the helots. Lol like Spartan men are interested in women.
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Nov 30, 2013 09:05
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How costly was a professional army compared to a landowning warrior class or a citizen army? Economically that is.
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Nov 30, 2013 09:25
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veekie posted:How costly was a professional army compared to a landowning warrior class or a citizen army? Economically that is. I mean, in a macro term it's a man off the farms sucking up surplus however you slice it. For a ruler/government/state (where such terms apply) you can parcel out your land, let the fucker's deal with taxes and poo poo, and get fighty dudes from them. Overall a good deal, because extracting wealth off that land yourself would probably involve setting up some sort of overseer bullshit anyway. The downside is, you've got much less control. If they own the land, they're going to want to put a fort on it, if they put a fort on it, they can tell you to gently caress off. Roughly. A professional army mean you've got to get a bureaucracy/the taxes you need from some civilian administration. But you get more control over them since you're running that layer between taxes and paying that army. (Or you can turn that responsibility over to the generals and welp you just made the Roman Republic.)
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Nov 30, 2013 09:46
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Comstar posted:Stand off weapons with laser or GPS guiding make large scale static fortifications pretty useless, if you know where they are. Of course. On the other hand, every possible enemy has limited air assets and limited stocks of precision weapons. And the thing is that what with the Archipelago sea being what it is, i.e. shitloads of tinyass islands, relatively shallow, not too many shipping lanes leading to the mainland, even the cheapass "take a tank turret and put into on a rock" forts have some value.
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Nov 30, 2013 12:41
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Kemper Boyd posted:Of course. On the other hand, every possible enemy has limited air assets and limited stocks of precision weapons. And the thing is that what with the Archipelago sea being what it is, i.e. shitloads of tinyass islands, relatively shallow, not too many shipping lanes leading to the mainland, even the cheapass "take a tank turret and put into on a rock" forts have some value. Precision weapons have been around for a while, where 'around' means costing tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars each and in very limited supply. The JDAM which made it realistic to convert most of your bombs to a precision format only came out in 1997.
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Nov 30, 2013 12:51
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veekie posted:How costly was a professional army compared to a landowning warrior class or a citizen army? Economically that is. About 70 to 90 percent of an early modern head of state's budget goes toward war. The entire state apparatus of taxation and tracking poo poo--a bureaucracy like Louis XIV's or Phillip II's--is for going to war. Everything else is kind of an afterthought, a little tail on a very big animal. Early modern state-building, which produced the absolutist monarchies of the ancien regime, is a byproduct of war making. Versailles may be covered with mirrors, ivory, marble, and gold, but almost every room in the complex is filled with quiet paper shufflers, and Louis XIV spends at least six hours a day, every day, with them. That is what it is for. Edit: This is also why everyone is in debt, constantly. Except for Spain, their financial crises/bankruptcies are because they're an extraction economy and using a commodity as a currency is, when you think about it, actually a terrible idea. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 14:37 on Nov 30, 2013 |
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Nov 30, 2013 14:22
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Frostwerks posted:Lol like Spartan men are interested in women. Plutarch says this about Spartan marrages: "The custom was to capture women for marriage(...) The so-called 'bridesmaid' took charge of the captured girl. She first shaved her head to the scalp, then dressed her in a man's cloak and sandals, and laid her down alone on a mattress in the dark. The bridegroom who was not drunk and thus not impotent, but was sober as always first had dinner in the messes, then would slip in, undo her belt, lift her and carry her to the bed." wow so man
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Nov 30, 2013 14:58
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Slavvy posted:I was under the impression that the roman idea of having soldiering as a profession was instituted by them. If you look at ancient greece AFAIK the major reason warfare was seasonal was that the hoplites had to go home and deal with farming. Sparta had an advantage here because they had a dedicated warrior class who didn't have to work because their economy functioned on their helots. I'm taking the Achaemenid Empire as an example again but they had at the very least a corps of 10.000 Immortal soldiers who served as full time soldiers/royal guards.
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Nov 30, 2013 18:19
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Isn't it speculated that Sargon (2200 BCE) had the first standing army? There's a text saying some number of men ate with him every day, which is ambiguous, but there was some reason his guys kicked around everybody else.
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Nov 30, 2013 23:52
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BurningStone posted:Isn't it speculated that Sargon (2200 BCE) had the first standing army? There's a text saying some number of men ate with him every day, which is ambiguous, but there was some reason his guys kicked around everybody else. The texts say that he had 5400 men eat at his table, which could mean army, it could mean bureaucrats, or could just mean household size. Hard to say. Certainly there were smallish contingents of professional soldiers before him, since that was how he started his career.
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Dec 1, 2013 00:39
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What civilization had the world's first standing professional tank destroyer?
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Dec 1, 2013 02:05
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:What civilization had the world's first standing professional tank destroyer? Well you see, it all depends on the definition of a tank destroyer. If you define a tank destroyer as any armoured vehicle armed with a dedicated anti-tank gun then the first such vehicle would be god drat it that's not a real question, is it?
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Dec 1, 2013 02:28
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Ensign Expendable posted:Well you see, it all depends on the definition of a tank destroyer. If you define a tank destroyer as any armoured vehicle armed with a dedicated anti-tank gun then the first such vehicle would be god drat it that's not a real question, is it? I think actually that question depends on how you define the word 'standing' 
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Dec 1, 2013 03:03
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One thing that confuses me about the whole standing army thing is I've been to a couple bases and there are still a lot of chairs.
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Dec 1, 2013 03:22
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Must have been an airforce base.
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Dec 1, 2013 03:27
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:What civilization had the world's first standing professional tank destroyer? Imperial Germany. Because they were the only ones who needed such a thing in 1916. It was a guy with a special bullet for his Mauser. He was replaced by a guy with a big rifle. Vincent Van Goatse fucked around with this message at 08:38 on Dec 1, 2013 |
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Dec 1, 2013 08:35
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