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Ensign Expendable posted:Ferdinand Porsche should get a Hero of Socialist Labour, for sure. Does that mean we should give Wilhelm Keitel an Order of the Red Star or something?
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Jan 14, 2014 06:12
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a travelling HEGEL posted:Say what you will, but he was the man who killed Hitler. I've never in my life killed a Hitler. I am literally worse than Hitler.
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Jan 14, 2014 06:16
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Frostwerks posted:I've never in my life killed a Hitler. I am literally worse than Hitler.
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Jan 14, 2014 06:32
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So that explains why my mustache only grows in all square-like! Stupid broken cloning vats...
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Jan 14, 2014 06:36
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Frostwerks posted:I've never in my life killed a Hitler. I am literally worse than Hitler.
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Jan 14, 2014 06:54
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a travelling HEGEL posted:On the other hand, he also killed the man who killed Hitler.
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Jan 14, 2014 07:03
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Frostwerks posted:I've never in my life killed a Hitler. I am literally worse than Hitler. Indeed, you are a Shitler.
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Jan 14, 2014 08:02
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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Arquinsiel posted:Killing the head of state is usually punishable by death, as it counts as treason. Given that he was there and shot at the exact same time a case can be made for him heroically laying down his life in an attempt to prevent the assassination of said head of state by a deranged lunatic. A deranged lunatic acting in self defence. Wait, I think I'm going to need a flowchart for this one.
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Jan 14, 2014 08:06
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VanSandman posted:Wait, I think I'm going to need a flowchart for this one. I'm drinking. 
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Jan 14, 2014 08:21
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VanSandman posted:Wait, I think I'm going to need a flowchart for this one.
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Jan 14, 2014 09:17
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So I wrote an article about naval battles of the Imjin War and Part 1 of it is in this month's edition of History Is Now (I think it's free but requires an iDevice for now...... I'm not sure, I don't have one.)As it stands I'm editing the final draft for the 11th and final part of my podcast on the war. A few people from the thread have PMed me asking about it so hopefully this isn't too spammy to give an update.
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Jan 14, 2014 09:55
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THE LUMMOX posted:A few people from the thread have PMed me asking about it so hopefully this isn't too spammy to give an update. You disrupted a conversation that was literally Hitler, I think it's alright.
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Jan 14, 2014 10:24
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Could it be broadly said that the cold war came about because Churchill was an rear end in a top hat and charmed the already-distrusting-Stalin-anyway Truman administration into being anti-Commie bros? I can't remember much of the containment/Cominform stuff going on with Roosevelt, but then again he died before Japan surrendered and thus before the war was truly "over."
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Jan 14, 2014 13:04
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Roosevelt definitely trusted Stalin way more than he should have, and his being replaced by Truman was a large contributing factor in escalating the Cold War. But it basically had to happen - not because of Churchill hating on the Reds, but because of what Stalin was doing. As long as there was a common enemy, the western allies could overlook the Soviets doing stuff like shooting people who were technically (or sometimes literally) Allied combatants or refusing to negotiate with minor allied governments (to whom the British had various kinds of commitments), or this whole war crime business. But once Hitler was gone and Stalin started to do literally everything in his power to poo poo on the West, the only non-confrontational way to go would be to just let him do whatever the hell he wanted and simply surrender Europe all the way to the Atlantic. Remember that at this point the Soviets were openly disregarding promises they had made in Yalta and Potsdam, they were starting to tear off East Germany from West Germany and instituting a reign of terror everywhere east of the Elbe. Meanwhile, the Americans were decoding the Venona messages and learning about how the Reds had been infiltrating the US for decades by then. Churchill did push Truman towards confrontation, but nowhere near as hard as Stalin did.
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Jan 14, 2014 13:45
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[quote="The Entire Universe" post="""]Could it be broadly said that the cold war came about because Churchill was an rear end in a top hat and charmed the already-distrusting-Stalin-anyway Truman administration into being anti-Commie bros?[/quote] I feel very confident in saying no, first because it is an awfully reductionist way of trying to trace the underlying causation behind the beginning of the Cold War, and second because it reeks like an attempt to apply classic 'Great Person History', something which I had hoped has been discounted enough to not rear its ugly head again in these cases (alas). But, please allow me to approach the question from a 'Philosphy of History 101'-perspective, since trying to tie ultimate... blame if you will to single events or people with regards to the 'start' of the Cold War is A. often a tedious exercise in politically motivated point/counterpoint and B. ultimately unsuccessful as a means to bring the discussion to a mutually fulfilling close. So even if accepted as a factually true statement, does Churchill 'being an rear end in a top hat and charming the Truman administration' stand the test of being both a necessity and a sufficiency for kicking off the Cold War? Or, to put it another way, could you honestly not imagine the US and the USSR squaring off pretty much along the lines of what was historically the case without his 'contributions' to the growth of mutual distrust? I'm not trying to be coy with the man's influence, and neither am I raring to spin some kind of massive counterfactual where the "Sinews of Peace"-speech doesn't happen, but I can't for the life of me imagine a valid argument in which Winston loving Churchill takes point as the most important intermediate factor in explaining superpower confrontation.
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Jan 14, 2014 14:02
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/\ hence the qualifier broadly, but this is a good explanation why history is not discussed broadly (sorry  )Tevery Best posted:Roosevelt definitely trusted Stalin way more than he should have, and his being replaced by Truman was a large contributing factor in escalating the Cold War. But it basically had to happen - not because of Churchill hating on the Reds, but because of what Stalin was doing. As long as there was a common enemy, the western allies could overlook the Soviets doing stuff like shooting people who were technically (or sometimes literally) Allied combatants or refusing to negotiate with minor allied governments (to whom the British had various kinds of commitments), or this whole war crime business. But once Hitler was gone and Stalin started to do literally everything in his power to poo poo on the West, the only non-confrontational way to go would be to just let him do whatever the hell he wanted and simply surrender Europe all the way to the Atlantic. Remember that at this point the Soviets were openly disregarding promises they had made in Yalta and Potsdam, they were starting to tear off East Germany from West Germany and instituting a reign of terror everywhere east of the Elbe. Meanwhile, the Americans were decoding the Venona messages and learning about how the Reds had been infiltrating the US for decades by then. So it's Stalin's fault and poo poo like the Greek civil war never really happened?
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Jan 14, 2014 14:40
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Personally, I think that ultimately the Cold War happened because both sides benefited politically from it. Stalin certainly needed external enemies to secure his hold on power and stop people from asking unfortunate questions. Churchill was fighting strong socialist opposition (which ultimately defeated him.) Truman was always close to the anti-Soviets (remember his opinion on Barbarossa was that the US should let the two fight it out and try to prolong the conflict so that both would be destroyed). The existence of the Iron Curtain gave the US justification to strive to maintain super-powerhood, and raised the image of America, solidifying the World Police viewpoint (which was fairly weak before Roosevelt). I think blaming any one side is insufficient. Nations want to be heroes, and it's really addictive to be the 'Leader of the Free World', or 'The Vanguard of Progress', and not just another country like any other. Fangz fucked around with this message at 14:51 on Jan 14, 2014 |
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Jan 14, 2014 14:48
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wdarkk posted:
A Phoenix paper has a good article on the 3100 German POWs who were imprisoned at the Papago Park POW camp, for loose values of "imprisoned." Specifically, the two dozen who tunneled out Great-Escape-style. quote:The housing was only adequate, but living at Papago was like a vacation," sighs former Papago prisoner Hans Lammersdorf, in a phone interview from his home in Seattle. "There was no bitterness about the war on either side. The guards, the people we worked for, were all very nice. I would gladly have signed a life contract to stay in Arizona if I could have. But then the war ended and they made me go back to my homeland." Whole thing's a ridiculous comedy of errors. One of the escapees would routinely break back *into* the camp to get the local camp gossip, and then leave again to report to his comrades outside the wire.
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Jan 14, 2014 15:04
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It was official communist policy that all non-communist governments would be, and must be, overthrown in blood soaked revolutions. This is not a rhetorical exaggeration, it was open and official policy both before and after the war. It was funded, it was attempted, and any success was loudly boasted about. The Cold War had nothing to do with personalities. That has to be one of the most willfully stupid claims I've come across. Now somebody will come up with stupider ones, but honestly, look at what the participants were actually saying and doing.
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Jan 14, 2014 15:06
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Here's a question: What is (was?) STAVKA? What does it mean, what does it stand for? I ask because Guns of August was still referring to the Russian high command as STAVKA which kind of stood out because I had always associated it with the Red Army.
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Jan 14, 2014 15:13
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Is there any validity to the notion that MBT (main battle tank) is getting obsolete and less essential to composition of a modern army? If so, what it would be replaced by? Or is there never gonna be a point when you dont need heavy armor on the ground?
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Jan 14, 2014 15:26
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Stavka means 'tent'. So the original meaning was that it's the tent where the big bosses are. This became the idea of a 'headquarters', both the physical building, and the metaphorical organisation.quote:It was official communist policy that all non-communist governments would be, and must be, overthrown in blood soaked revolutions. This is not a rhetorical exaggeration, it was open and official policy both before and after the war. It was funded, it was attempted, and any success was loudly boasted about. Comintern was pretty much suppressed from the late thirties (like, its leaders and activists were literally shot or handed to Nazis to be shot), especially with the Nazi-Soviet pact. Official policy or not, Stalin considered international communism to be just another tool. In 1943, the official position was: quote:The historical role of the Communist International, organized in 1919 as a result of the political collapse of the overwhelming majority of the old pre-war workers' parties, consisted in that it preserved the teachings of Marxism from vulgarisation and distortion by opportunist elements of the labor movement.... But long before the war it became increasingly clear that, to the extent that the internal as well as the international situation of individual countries became more complicated, the solution of the problems of the labor movement of each individual country through the medium of some international centre would meet with insuperable obstacles. Indeed, from the mid 1920s, the USSR adopted the official policy of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_in_one_country After and including Stalin, the USSR has been pretty happy with loving over communist groups or governments to serve Russia's national interests. Some people were true believers, for sure, but the idea of a global confrontation between communism and non-communism as ideologies is mostly a cynical facade.
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Jan 14, 2014 15:35
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I think you're reading back history here. We now know communism is going to fail very badly, but back then it was sincerely believed to be the future. The Cambridge spy ring said they became spies "to be on the winning side." The Red Orchestra spies were also ideology driven. Every western democracy had an active communist party. I agree that Stalin was in it for personal power, but there were a lot of true believers. The Comintern came back after WW II (under a different name, I think). Growing up through a world history of shattering war, Great Depression, shattering war, creates a lot of radicals. It was the peace after that which showed the flaws in the system; I agree that it needed a crisis to sustain itself. Also, the news slowly leaked out that the Soviet Union wasn't a paradise, which had also been honestly believed, particularly during the Great Depression.
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Jan 14, 2014 15:56
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BurningStone posted:It was official communist policy that all non-communist governments would be, and must be, overthrown in blood soaked revolutions. This is not a rhetorical exaggeration, it was open and official policy both before and after the war. It was funded, it was attempted, and any success was loudly boasted about. Participants like RKKA/Soviet soldiers? I wonder how differently the Eastern Europe situation would have gone had the Red Army been (on average) as gentle in occupation as the other allied forces. But in order to have that you would need to remove generations of Russian enmity towards Germany, the ideological rigidity and methods of maintaining it, the hellish fighting that had gone on for the average Soviet soldier, etc etc. It's like a tangled ball of Christmas lights.
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Jan 14, 2014 16:08
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Gesadt posted:Is there any validity to the notion that MBT (main battle tank) is getting obsolete and less essential to composition of a modern army? If so, what it would be replaced by? Or is there never gonna be a point when you dont need heavy armor on the ground? This notion of obsolescence has been around for more than 40 years now, so I'd say that the rumors of the death of the MBT have been, up to this day and age, greatly exaggerated. Indeed, is there any reason why you'd not want heavily armored tracked vehicles around as a force multiplier in a substantial number of types of situations? Not only does armor provide shock and exploitation effects in maneuver warfare, but it has (again) proven itself very useful in city combat this last decade as well AFAIK. It doesn't look like the trend of mechanization that's been going on in the Postwar period has been broken yet. Instead, there rather seems to have been a divergence in forces tasked for greater strategic mobility - like the Légère Blindée units of the French, or US Stryker Brigades - and pure mech/armored forces getting kitted out with ever heavier vehicles (with new developments like the Israeli HAPCs, or plain old IFVs being uparmored or built to a better protected spec). Then, if you've got relatively well armored targets on the battlefield, the most reliable and cost efficient way to get rid of them will, at least for the foreseeable future, be a Kinetic Energy Penetrator fired from from a large caliber long gun. You do the math on what a gun armed, sufficiently protected vehicle would look like.
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Jan 14, 2014 16:12
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gradenko_2000 posted:Here's a question: What is (was?) STAVKA? What does it mean, what does it stand for? I ask because Guns of August was still referring to the Russian high command as STAVKA which kind of stood out because I had always associated it with the Red Army. In addition to what Fangz said, Stavka is any headquarters, most commonly in western literature used for the Red/Tsarist Army's high command. But you could just as well refer to any Front or Division HQ as a Stavka.
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Jan 14, 2014 16:22
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BurningStone posted:I think you're reading back history here. We now know communism is going to fail very badly, but back then it was sincerely believed to be the future. The Cambridge spy ring said they became spies "to be on the winning side." The Red Orchestra spies were also ideology driven. Every western democracy had an active communist party. I agree that Stalin was in it for personal power, but there were a lot of true believers. The Comintern came back after WW II (under a different name, I think). Having an active communist party, or the existence of a few radicals, in many countries doesn't not mean the Soviets were committed (and especially, committed officially) to armed revolution in other countries. Official policy was actually that the soviets were to act in opposition to Imperialism. Cominform was not the same as Comintern. Socialism in One Country was what endured, and partially what led to the Sino-Soviet split. (Indeed, the rejection of international permanent revolution is a large part of what the whole split between Stalinism and Trotskyism was about. Stalin murdered the idea of a permanent revolution with an icepick.) Enough of what you have said is totally wrong, by now, that I'd suggest you do some reading on the subject, or start presenting sources for what you are talking about. Fangz fucked around with this message at 16:40 on Jan 14, 2014 |
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Jan 14, 2014 16:31
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Gesadt posted:Is there any validity to the notion that MBT (main battle tank) is getting obsolete and less essential to composition of a modern army? If so, what it would be replaced by? Or is there never gonna be a point when you dont need heavy armor on the ground? Yes, with a but. Tanks are most useful in open terrain versus conventional opponents. Every trend/prediction I'm aware of predicts that both of these things are going to become more and more rare in the future. The vast majority of combat will take place in urban terrain, and the chances of two major land uniformed services facing off against one another in a full scale conflict are pretty remote. Tanks are moderately useful things in some scenarios, but their utility is severely hampered by their lack of strategic mobility and their sustainability. Tanks are huge, and their maintenance footprint is huger. They require a colossal logistical tail. In most scenarios, they even require supplementary ground lift capabilities (ie, super-huge tractor trailer) if we hope to have any sort of a functioning vehicle on the spearhead. Once you get the tank where it is going, what you've got is a sledgehammer: it is really big and powerful and so on, but it is only really good at one thing, which is protecting its crew while it shoots a big gun at things. Tanks are of very limited utility in anything other than major combat operations: they're too destructive, not agile enough, they cannot scale their effects at all, and they're hellaciously difficult and expensive to operate over long periods of time. All of this flies pretty directly in the face of what we're going to require from our armed forces over the next few decades: extremely rapid deployability, low sustainability requirements, flexibility, agility, and cost-effectiveness. A Stryker can do 95% of the things that an M1 can do, with approximately a fifth of the manpower and a tenth of the supply chain. Moreover, it can do things that an M1 can't do, like deliver infantry or roll through neighborhoods without crushing curbs or rupturing underground sewer/water/gas lines. When you're facing an opponent who has no intention of taking you on head-to-head on land, but rather, attacking your infrastructure via cyber while denying your sea and air entry and/or resupply, the idea of an armor brigade rolling into a hostile port off of a big ship a month and a half after things get started is pretty ridiculous. The other big thing trending the tank toward obsolesence is its survivability. Right now, tanks are still largely impervious to all but the very best or very biggest anti-tank weapons, but they are going to become a lot more vulnerable over the next few decades. All of the US's peer and near-peer competitiors now have access to outstanding land sensor suites, particularly via UAS. Tanks are essentially the most observable thing on the ground nowadays; a tank's signature is huge in every medium and there is little that can be done to lessen it. What you're looking at in the very near future is an opponent that can deliver anti-tank munitions with extreme precision at standoff ranges (again, likely via UAS), and in that scenario, any tank that actually does make it off the boat (45 days after the order is given) isn't much more than a big target. All that being said, in a scenario where 1) tactical air supremacy is assured, 2) terrain is relatively open, 3) the conflict is high-intensity, 4) sea and air access are uncontested and 5) the opponent is traditional and not terribly well equipped, tanks are still useful. I think this is roughly analogous to the battleship in WWII; big guns on an armored thing were useful, but only in a very limited scenario (ie, naval gunfire support), and in a way that far outweighed their acquisition and sustainment costs.
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Jan 14, 2014 17:49
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Fangz posted:Having an active communist party, or the existence of a few radicals, in many countries doesn't not mean the Soviets were committed (and especially, committed officially) to armed revolution in other countries. Official policy was actually that the soviets were to act in opposition to Imperialism. Cominform was not the same as Comintern. Socialism in One Country was what endured, and partially what led to the Sino-Soviet split. (Indeed, the rejection of international permanent revolution is a large part of what the whole split between Stalinism and Trotskyism was about. Stalin murdered the idea of a permanent revolution with an icepick.) All I'm arguing is that there were real, committed communists which drove the movement back in the day. It wasn't all a pack of cynical lies, many people really thought it could work. I don't think that's at all a controversial position. I agree that a lot of the leaders in general, and Stalin in particular, didn't feel that way, but you can make that argument about the leaders of almost any political system. Edit: And on tanks, what bewbies said above. It depends on what type of war you expect to fight. During WW2, tanks were very important in Europe, but not so much in the Pacific. BurningStone fucked around with this message at 17:59 on Jan 14, 2014 |
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Jan 14, 2014 17:52
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BurningStone posted:All I'm arguing is that there were real, committed communists which drove the movement back in the day. It wasn't all a pack of cynical lies, many people really thought it could work. I don't think that's at all a controversial position. I agree that a lot of the leaders in general, and Stalin in particular, didn't feel that way, but you can make that argument about the leaders of almost any political system. Er, you said quote:It was official communist policy that all non-communist governments would be, and must be, overthrown in blood soaked revolutions. This is not a rhetorical exaggeration, it was open and official policy both before and after the war. It was funded, it was attempted, and any success was loudly boasted about. It wasn't. It wasn't official policy, it wasn't unofficial policy. Stalin absolutely hated the idea and would murder you if you were too public about it. Maybe a few footsoldiers believed in it, but they weren't generally calling the shots. I'd halfway argue that the only post-Lenin Soviet leader who actually believed in making communism work was Gorbachev, and we all know how that turned out. Fangz fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Jan 14, 2014 |
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Jan 14, 2014 17:57
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Then how would you describe the Comintern? The question of which Soviet leaders were real believers, that's an interesting one. Lenin, certainly. Trotsky, though I guess he was never more than one of the top guys, instead of the top guy. Gorbachev, also certainly. But in between them? I dunno. They all had to at least talk the talk, but it's harder to find policies.
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Jan 14, 2014 18:10
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BurningStone posted:Then how would you describe the Comintern? Comintern and Trotsky was butchered long before the Cold War broke out. It is simply not relevant. Soviet leaders did not talk the talk. They talked the anti talk. They busied themselves with pretending permanent revolution had never been policy, because the new branding of anti-imperialism was a much more effective angle. Edit: Unlike nasty mean America, the USSR stood, they claimed, for peace and minding your own business! Hence the secret nature of Soviet support in Korea and Vietnam. Fangz fucked around with this message at 18:45 on Jan 14, 2014 |
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Jan 14, 2014 18:28
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bewbies posted:Every trend/prediction I'm aware of predicts that both of these things are going to become more and more rare in the future. It is likely we'll be seeing more civil wars in the future. Arguably tanks are a huge force multiplier in Syria; having one in position prevents offensive action against whatever it is protecting unless the attacker has modern anti-tank missiles or can sneak up close without being detected. On the offensive they are impervious to small arms fires and while RPGs can take out a tank, it requires a bunch of things to go correctly. Even a partially disabled tank can be very useful if it stands in a good spot. Urban terrain limits their usefulness, but all cities need to be supplied from outside and tanks are excellent tools for surrounding and cutting off cities. Supply is only an issue if you need to cover vast tracts of land and maintaining the tank long-term is cheaper than buying a new one. In several civil wars missiles are harder to come by than old tanks; and weapons can be essentially "free" as they come from a third party that wishes to support a faction for political, ideological etc. reasons. Economics of these conflicts are often impossible to evaluate even when guns have stopped firing. This isn't quite the modern army the question was about, but I think these sorts of conflicts are where most tanks will be used up. We'll see armor for a long time to come.
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Jan 14, 2014 18:40
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bewbies posted:The other big thing trending the tank toward obsolesence is its survivability. Right now, tanks are still largely impervious to all but the very best or very biggest anti-tank weapons, but they are going to become a lot more vulnerable over the next few decades. All of the US's peer and near-peer competitiors now have access to outstanding land sensor suites, particularly via UAS. Tanks are essentially the most observable thing on the ground nowadays; a tank's signature is huge in every medium and there is little that can be done to lessen it. What you're looking at in the very near future is an opponent that can deliver anti-tank munitions with extreme precision at standoff ranges (again, likely via UAS), and in that scenario, any tank that actually does make it off the boat (45 days after the order is given) isn't much more than a big target. Battleships suck for fire support of ground units and were only used that way because we'd already built them so why not. A full-bore war in the mid-21st century seems likely to resemble the beginning of The Terminator, minus the piles of skulls. Since anything that can be identified can be killed, everyone will focus on destroying enemy surveillance and C3I capabilities. You don't know for sure whether you've degraded them enough to actually take ground until you try, so after the UAVs finish their work, you'll need some ground drones to probe their defences. Infantry stay buttoned up until the last possible minute, move forward, establish new defenses, and repeat.
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Jan 14, 2014 19:31
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bewbies posted:Yes, with a but. While you certainly make some valid arguments, I don't agree with a number of things you're saying. I'll have to address them point by point to keep myself from ranting incoherently though so please bear with me  quote:Tanks are most useful in open terrain versus conventional opponents. Every trend/prediction I'm aware of predicts that both of these things are going to become more and more rare in the future. The vast majority of combat will take place in urban terrain, and the chances of two major land uniformed services facing off against one another in a full scale conflict are pretty remote. When looking back at certain situations in Iraq, or how the Syrian Army operates in places like Jobar right now (well documented by ANNA News), would you go as far as saying tanks aren't efficient at all in a closer or more urban battlefield, against non-uniformed opponents? I recall a number of talking heads clamoring for more Armored Engineer-like vehicles to put a whole load of HE on a line-of-sight targets (this has been done by SP Artillery in Syria), and several reports coming out with regards to the ineffectiveness of autocannon fire against things like reinforced concrete structures. While clearly not *the* ideal vehicle for the job, an MBT can still perform a number of, for example, urban combat tasks to relatively good (or even great) effect, whereas other vehicles would prove either too limited in their versatility or plainly too vulnerable. I'll address your last point below since it seems to combine with an unfortunate tendency towards anatopism in your argument. quote:Tanks are moderately useful things in some scenarios, but their utility is severely hampered by their lack of strategic mobility and their sustainability [...] As Hob_Gadling alluded to, strategic mobility and even sustainability isn't the be all and end all of military requirements. Tanks can have great operational and especially tactical mobility in a number of scenario's compared to wheeled mechanized forces. Furthermore, I'd pose that in a lot of cases you wouldn't want to be paying for a smaller log train with the (at the very least!) corresponding reduction of protection and firepower. quote:All of this flies pretty directly in the face of what we're going to require from our armed forces over the next few decades: [...] Okay I have to ask, what's with the US-centric view? I don't discount the notion that 'conventional conflict' isn't very likely these days (urgh we're closing in on the awful D&D thread), but there are plenty uniformed forces around who don't need to put an armored brigade on a ship to get it within striking distance of a potentially hostile force wielding the same kind of capability. The intentions might not be there, but still. quote:The other big thing trending the tank toward obsolesence is its survivability [...] So they're growing in vulnerability compared to what... exactly? If we take this argument to its logical conclusion, nothing is particularly survivable in a future 'competitive' engagement. However, the intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance environment for true... let's say tactical 'over the horizon' shooting will have to be fully in play to make heavy forces really obsolete, while any degradation of these capabilities will only be an ever expanding invitation to gently caress poo poo up with armor. Plus, if we're talking about stuff being observable, how is something like a drone/UAS/RPV/-whatever the name du jour is- going to survive in that environment anyway? quote:All that being said, in a scenario where 1) tactical air supremacy is assured, 2) terrain is relatively open, 3) the conflict is high-intensity, 4) sea and air access are uncontested and 5) the opponent is traditional and not terribly well equipped, tanks are still useful. I think this is roughly analogous to the battleship in WWII; big guns on an armored thing were useful, but only in a very limited scenario (ie, naval gunfire support), and in a way that far outweighed their acquisition and sustainment costs.
Also,
Lists, I like lists. I kinda rushed this post so please point out any stupidity. e: typos... Koesj fucked around with this message at 20:36 on Jan 14, 2014 |
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Jan 14, 2014 20:09
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Koesj posted:[*]Why are forces around the world not massively reducing their tank and/or heavy AFV numbers at the moment? Some did after the end of the Cold War, but for example real (rather than nominal) HBCT strength in the US Army is holding steady even over the 2013 cuts IIRC.
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Jan 14, 2014 20:17
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Maybe it's simple like "drones need airfields and radar."
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Jan 14, 2014 20:24
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Arquinsiel posted:You make good points except for this one, and oddly even Fox seems to think the current situation is silly: jobs in my backyard. What I meant is that the number of Heavy Brigade Combat Teams - wait I looked it up and they're called Armored again  - is being reduced, but that their component combined arms battalions will remain intact and parceled out to the surviving ABCTs. Which AFAIK means that on a very broad teeth to tail ratio, there'll actually be more Abrams and Bradleys for everyone and -thing supporting them.
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Jan 14, 2014 20:34
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Aren't tanks are only useful against poor opponents that can't afford to get modern anti-tank weapons? I've thought that anti-tank missiles can poo poo any tank.
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Jan 14, 2014 21:00
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Hogge Wild posted:Aren't tanks are only useful against poor opponents that can't afford to get modern anti-tank weapons? I've thought that anti-tank missiles can poo poo any tank. That's when fancy tech comes into play. Active defenses like Drozd/Arena/Trophy against rockets, Shtora against laser designators, reactive armour, etc.
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Jan 14, 2014 21:11
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