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HEY GAL posted:Yeah, they wore makeup. Baller armour. Is that indicative of what would be worn on the field at the time (obviously not by the rank and file, but you get what I mean), or was it purely ornamental?
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May 19, 2014 07:34
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Slavvy posted:Baller armour. Is that indicative of what would be worn on the field at the time (obviously not by the rank and file, but you get what I mean), or was it purely ornamental?
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May 19, 2014 09:57
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PittTheElder posted:I doubt they were still in serious use in North American warfare by the natives. They had access to firearms, even if they didn't have the ability to manufacture them. Given the supply concerns, I imagine they world have used horse based archery in place of firearms for hunting though. I can only speak for the Lakota Sioux, who were one of the groups that was somewhat successful in resisting the U.S. Army. They mostly fought with bows, firearms, war clubs. I'm sure knives and axes and other simple close combat weapons were around, but keep in mind they didn't work metal so their options for blades were pretty limited. Mostly they used whatever was available. The Plains Indians were known for mounted archery, but I don't know of anyone who practices it in modern times and I doubt it was ever as advanced as among some of the steppe societies of Asia, I'd guess. Keep in mind that the Native Americans frankly had very primitive technology and no horses prior to European contact (remember they didn't work metal either). They acquired the horse and migrated west across the Missouri to adopt a nomadic horse-centric culture only starting in the late 18th century. They didn't really use saddles, most rode bareback or had a simple rope-stirrup setup. JaucheCharly and others can probably provide more details but I think that would severely limit your ability to shoot while mounted, too? I guess my overall impression is that while they were fantastic horsemen and developed a strong horse-centric culture, firearms were around at the same time they first got horses and they don't seem to have been very attached to archery or have a long tradition of horse archery specifically. I'd chalk their military successes up largely to their use of terrain and ambushes rather than kickass horse archery, though I'm sure it was fairly effective for those conflicts given supply concerns as PittTheElder suggests, terrain, and lack of armor. Edit: and I'm actually not sure how easy maintaining a supply of arrows would be on the High Plains, either. Outside of the Black Hills where the Lakota would winter, there are virtually no trees on the Plains and the selection of species is pretty slim. You've got cottonwood, oak, cedar, pine, ash, elm, maybe some walnut. Mostly cedar and pine in the Black Hills. Pellisworth fucked around with this message at 16:39 on May 19, 2014 |
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May 19, 2014 16:33
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There were no shortage of nomadic tribes that were plenty successful well before stirrups came into use so I don't see how it can be that much of a factor, and in general I think their impact on cavalry tends to get well overstated? I'd be interested to hear what people have to say about that too actually. and I'm glad we're talking about this now (and in general more frequently recently; thank you people who perpetuate bow chat, it is one of my favourite subjects to read about here); JaucheCharly (or like anyone else), do you know any good footage of a composite bow being used in slow motion? or specifically what happens when it's at its most released.
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May 19, 2014 20:00
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http://youtu.be/3T7jMcstxY0 Wherein the gentleman describes the Minard infographic on Napoleon's failed invasion of Russia.
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May 19, 2014 20:12
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Did meteorology and accurate and timely weather forecasts have any role in wars prior to WW2? How did they cope with the limitations posed by the war eg. Germans might have their submarines send weather reports from the Atlantic but that must have been spotty at best. Did Allies have any means of gathering weather data from continental Europe though?
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May 19, 2014 20:33
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FAUXTON posted:http://youtu.be/3T7jMcstxY0
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May 19, 2014 20:34
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Dilkington posted:Despite the military’s attempt to minimize the centrality of ASB, ASB is still THE principle US response to the strategic threat of the PLA, and the China-US strategic relationship is THE defining strategic relationship of the 21st century. This statement has kind of a narrow aperture. ASB is the US response to the emergence of A2AD strategies and not much else. A2AD is only one possible strategy that US and allied nations might face, particularly from an opponent as robust and capable as the PLA. Some other operational concepts that have been published recently (or are about to be published) are Strategic Landpower, a new IAMD CONOPS, and LandCyber. All of these deal with different but interconnected domains. quote:The military is guilty of all sorts of abuses of language- the substitution of like terms is one. I would argue that AirSea Battle is a joint operations doctrine as surely as AirLand Battle was. You're right that the military abuses language about as badly as it can be, but your definitions of doctrine and operational concepts aren't really the same as what the US and NATO use. To keep it simple: doctrine are general guidelines that have been tested, verified, and are constantly updated. Operational concepts, generally speaking, are written to inform future DOTMLPF initiatives. I think what might be confusing you is the use of "concept of operations", which is a somewhat different thing: it is a portion of an operations order that describes a specific operation in general terms. quote:ASB purpose is to establish sea control. I'd disagree with this. ASB at its core explores how to gain and maintain operational access against a peer or near peer competitor that has decided to limit that operational access. That is much more than just sea control; it involves every domain (to include space) and every battlefield system to one degree or another. quote:The only concrete thing I’ve gleaned about this facet of ASB is that it involves generating a high number of sorties against the Chinese mainland. That is certainly one aspect. More accurately, I'd say that "sortie generation" is kind of a synonym for "operational access", and this involves much more than just manned aircraft doing things. Sea basing, counter-BM/CM and UAS, establishing SPODs and APODs, all sorts of stuff in this realm. Granted, "sortie generation" is an important outcome of this process, but it is far from the only main objective. quote:People think offensive Cyber will be a major component- why do they think this? This is just me soapboxing, but I think that cyber will wind up being just as important a domain as land or sea or air in the event of a peer vs peer conflict over the next century. A lot of what I write professionally goes to this end. I don't want to make this post any longer with a drawn-out discussion of it, but if you disagree I'd be very curious what your position is. As an aside I've found myself as one of the lead authors for the implementation plan for Air Sea Battle so I'm neck-deep in this stuff a lot of days.
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May 19, 2014 21:20
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The wood that you mentioned is ideal. Elm is great, ash is ok for flatbows (works for longbows too, but the wood needs a special % of humidity) and oak is good for different designs too. Pine and cedar makes the best wood for arrows, but you can also use shoots of bushes. I have not much knowledge about native american bows. I know that they made short sinew backed bows, but I don't know if hornbows were so widespread? Possibly sheep horn or something. It is only necessary if you build short and highly reflexed bows of high drawweight. 70 or 80# is already far enough to kill the largest game with ease. Sinew and wood will do fine for that. Or wood alone. I didn't find any real hornbow slo-mos, but this one here of a grozer bow (almost a hornbow, but made with modern glue and slightly overbuilt. The vibration is weird. Something is off. A well built and tillered bow resonates harmonically. You can hold it to your ear and tip it with your finger and it should sound good, like an instrument) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhVGsWEIVOE and this one here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTQakvFA7Cg I don't know of the latter is a real hornbow, but both are "turkish" designs. The originals are really short, like around 104cm ntn. I can't effortpost on designs. No time, and I don't know so much about how this or that design feature works. ---- Dudes who make hornbows ---- This guy here makes hornbows (http://www.medicinebows.com/page/horn-composite-bows): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb3Flt7J6XA9iwCm-LsW8CQ You can see how they behave on the tilleringboard. I'm not exactly a fan of his style, but he makes good bows. This guy's style I do like: http://www.kviljo.no/bue/ And the grandmasters: https://plus.google.com/photos/100344514090479456506/albums?banner=pwa http://www.yumi-bows.com/yumi.html Power Khan fucked around with this message at 21:56 on May 19, 2014 |
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May 19, 2014 21:54
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Spinning off from a derail in the US politics thread but does anyone know if planes such as the Stuka were ever used for 'precision' bombing of factories or what not?
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May 19, 2014 21:59
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Raskolnikov38 posted:Spinning off from a derail in the US politics thread but does anyone know if planes such as the Stuka were ever used for 'precision' bombing of factories or what not? This is a little bit tricky. If by "planes such as the Stuka" you mean single engined dive bombers, then the answer is no, not really. They didn't really have the legs for missions like that, nor did they carry a bombload that'd be useful against a huge building. If you're asking if light bombers conducted "precision bombing" missions, then yes. Operation Carthage is a good example. That said, I'm not sure if any of these ever targeted factories specifically but I kind of doubt that they did.
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May 19, 2014 22:12
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Ah sorry, yeah I was specifically looking for anything by dive bombers since they seem to be the most 'accurate'.
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May 19, 2014 22:15
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Raskolnikov38 posted:Ah sorry, yeah I was specifically looking for anything by dive bombers since they seem to be the most 'accurate'.
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May 19, 2014 22:30
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In the final stages of the war, USN carrier groups ranged more or less at will up and down the Japanese coast. Mostly they hunted down the last few Japanese surface combatants holed up in various harbors, but occasionally they'd do limited strikes against infrastructure. That was a pretty unique situation, though, and relied upon the decimation of the Japanese air defenses and crippling of their fleet which allowed the American dive bombers to get into range of shore targets.
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May 19, 2014 22:42
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Rent-A-Cop posted:Precision bombing against infrastructure targets was a seriously risky proposition. If we are talking about 'infrastructure' in broader sense than just factories and powerplants and such, there's bridges which require very precise bombing. I'm immediately reminded of the Luftwaffe detachment Kuhlmey's time in Finland in 1944, specifically the bombings of the bridges at Tali. Germans would bomb the bridges at day, Soviet engineers would rebuild them at night. If we're strictly speaking of industrial infrastructure, then Dam Busters come to mind. Okay, no dive bombers there - but what's more precision bombing than inventing special bombs and tactics just for one type of target?
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May 19, 2014 23:14
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Raskolnikov38 posted:Ah sorry, yeah I was specifically looking for anything by dive bombers since they seem to be the most 'accurate'. Let's say you're designing a WW-II dive bomber. To meet mission requirements, it must withstand the immense structural loads from pulling out a high-speed dive, and be armored against ground fire. A strong air-frame and armor for the pilot and engines means a lot of weight. Your engines aren't going to be the best (limitations of that era's piston technology, plus the best engines are being diverted for high performance fighter production), which means with all that extra weight, you have to compromise on either range or payload. Since it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to fly 1500 miles to drop a single tiny bomb, the reasonable compromise is a heavier payload in exchange for decreased range, speed, and maneuverability. So there you have it, a heavily armored dive-bomber with respectable payload, but limited to operating in the tactical and operational depth of battle. Hence why Stukas were terrifyingly effective on the battlefield, but failed utterly when Hitler tried to blitz London with them. Naval dive bombers generally sacrificed some of the armor and payload capacity for increased range, necessary for carrier operations. Because of that though, you really needed to have several fleet carrier's worth of bombers to do a decent amount of damage against a land target (islands don't sink). See the attacks on Midway and Pearl Harbor for example. INTJ Mastermind fucked around with this message at 23:38 on May 19, 2014 |
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May 19, 2014 23:29
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The Japanese were also fond of using their torpedo bombers as level bombers to help out when attacking land targets, so factor that in to the estimate. If I remember right that strike on Midway was half the wing of four carriers. That's not a small number of planes. Weird question. Aircraft carriers are a lot of airpower. Would they be able to temporarily wrest local air supremacy away from an enemy which hasn't totally collapsed?
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May 19, 2014 23:58
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That pretty much is what happened in the early stages of Midway before the American carriers got involved. It happened a few times in some of the island campaigns as well, especially in the early days of Guadalcanal. So yeah, in small local battles with limited reserves available. On a broader scale? Hard to say. Late war Japan pretty much fits the "totally collapsed" model, and then you've got things like Okinawa where the ground based air forces are mostly just kamikazes who aren't even trying to contest regular air superiority away from the carriers, per say, so much as converting themselves into guided missiles.
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May 20, 2014 00:07
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Yeah, isolated islands were doable even early war. I'm more wondering what might've happened if Japan folded and Germany was still a credible threat or a very early cold war scenario, and what carriers might've been doing and how successfully.
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May 20, 2014 00:12
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Isn't there nothing in the USSR worth hitting in range of the coast at that point?
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May 20, 2014 00:14
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JaucheCharly posted:The wood that you mentioned is ideal. Elm is great, ash is ok for flatbows (works for longbows too, but the wood needs a special % of humidity) and oak is good for different designs too. Pine and cedar makes the best wood for arrows, but you can also use shoots of bushes. I don't know much about Native American archery, just Lakota history generally. As I said, I'm not aware of a strong archery tradition that's been maintained, so there aren't any modern master craftsmen or archers for reference. If one was interested I know who to ask about such things, but I don't have time personally to pursue a little research project like that right now. Edit: worth pointing out, too, that we're talking about tens of thousands of Plains Indians over a period of no more than ~150 years. It's a much smaller historical sample than Eurasian horse archery. They made everything and anything out of bison (buffalo). Tipis (portable, conical tent-like dwellings) were made of pine poles and bison hide. They used the bones for tools and various things, bladders for carrying water, etc. I imagine they'd have used bison parts, possibly antelope. There are bighorn sheep in the mountains of the Black Hills, but to my knowledge they didn't really hunt them, they tend to hang out in very rough terrain. Horses were considered sacred, their name sunkawakan translates literally as "sacred/holy/powerful dog." Prior to the introduction of the horse they used sled dogs to haul their belongings, and I guess it follows that horses were kinda like giant, awesome dogs. They wouldn't have used horse materials other than hair, to this day there are traditional Lakota families who jokingly run "horse retirement homes" that happily take almost any/all local horses that are beyond working age and just let them roam free until they die of old age. Horses often live well into their twenties but are usually considered past their prime after their teens and sent off to the glue factory. Killing or butchering a horse is pretty culturally taboo. Edit2: actually here is a REALLY detailed description of some of the Lakota bows in the St. Francis mission collection. Note that the Lakota sources are early 20th century. There are a ton of links to photos of the bows, but unfortunately they all seem to be broken or that might be some good bow porn for you  http://www.sfmissionmuseum.org/exhibits/bowsandarrows/signatures.htmlLooks like you can still find some of the images here, the thumbnails are broken but hit "Enlarge Image" and those do work http://www.sfmissionmuseum.org/exhibits/bowsandarrows/inventory.html Sounds like they mostly made selfbows of local wood and bison sinew. Composite bows are recorded but were rare because of the effort and craftsmanship required. There are a lot of details on construction that might interest you that I can't really say much about. quote:White Hawk (Ćetaη’ska), a Lakota man from the Standing Rock Reservation who worked with the anthropologist Frances Densmore in the early decades of the twentieth century put that sentiment into words: a good bow would see the arrow point embedded in the flesh of the buffalo; an excellent bow would see the arrow shaft driven in almost up to the fletches; a fine bow would send the same arrow clear through the animal. Pellisworth fucked around with this message at 00:42 on May 20, 2014 |
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May 20, 2014 00:18
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xthetenth posted:The Japanese were also fond of using their torpedo bombers as level bombers to help out when attacking land targets, so factor that in to the estimate. If I remember right that strike on Midway was half the wing of four carriers. That's not a small number of planes. That's really mainly a question about if the defenders can bring more air units in from elsewhere or not. A carrier has a very finite number of airframes on it, though you can obviously increase that by bringing more carriers. Once they start having losses though it's not too easy to resupply them with new ones as you'd need more carriers (light or escorts are okay for this) to ferry the planes (and crew if needed). Ultimately it becomes a question of attrition and who runs out first, the CVs or the land bases. Local air superiority would favor the carriers simply because they go in with everything, but as the fight carries on, it'll start to favor the defender more. And of course there's the whole Battle of Britain effect. Shot down crew that bails out over friendly territory can be recovered, but in hostile territory they're probably lost. And even if a pilot/crew does bail out over water, there's definitely no guarantee that they'll be rescued.
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May 20, 2014 00:23
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wdarkk posted:Isn't there nothing in the USSR worth hitting in range of the coast at that point? Assuming that you could operate out of the Baltic without getting your teeth kicked in by ground based planes you've got Leningrad right there, plus whatever other assets in the Baltics and E. Prussia you might give a poo poo about. Assuming you can get the Turks to play nice you've also got everything that's bordering the Black Sea, which is fairly substantial. Out east you've got Vladivostok at the very least.
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May 20, 2014 00:39
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HEY GAL posted:Well, everyone looks a little round in their pictures, but that's because they wore many more layers of clothing than we do. (Little Ice Age.) Not exactly military history, but she nearly destroyed the Carmelite Nuns when she decided to become one.
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May 20, 2014 00:51
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xthetenth posted:Weird question. Aircraft carriers are a lot of airpower. Would they be able to temporarily wrest local air supremacy away from an enemy which hasn't totally collapsed? Not a bad question at all. The answer, at least in early to mid WW-II, is definitely not. The legendary full strength Kido Butai with 6 fully operational fleet carriers, was only able to conduct two air raids against Pearl Harbor. They simply did not have the stamina and firepower to stand off and take down an island air base in a battle of attrition. Simple fact is ISLANDS. DO. NOT. SINK. A carrier is ten thousand sailers sitting on several thousand tons of fuel and tightly packed planes and munitions, all just waiting to blow up to a lucky strike. Islands have the benefit of having more, and better dispersed, fuel and ordinance stores, and bunkers and fortifications for its critical infrastructure. This makes them very hard to even totally disable. Hit a fuel storage tank on an airbase, the airbase looses some fuel stores, hit the fuel bunker on a carrier, and that's curtains for the carrier. Plus by nature and design, the carrier is an offensive weapon, and the air base is a defensive one. If both sides shoot down each other's air wings, then the battle goes to the island by default. And even during the end of WW-II against a strategically collapsed Japan, the US didn't exactly have an easy time taking fortified islands even if it did have local air supremacy. INTJ Mastermind fucked around with this message at 01:14 on May 20, 2014 |
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May 20, 2014 01:00
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They could have launched a third strike against Pearl, Nagumo was just a lovely admiral.
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May 20, 2014 01:45
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Resposting from the Nazi Germany thread Question: Say you were a member of the OrPo or Kripo under Nazi Germany; How much would you have spent with "Normal crimes" (murder, rape,arson,etc) versus political crimes (hiding Jews, anti-regime agitation, the White Rose)?
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May 20, 2014 03:05
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Commiting these crimes or clearing them up? Nice stuff Pellisworth. Are all of these arrows flintstone or obsidian? Power Khan fucked around with this message at 09:50 on May 20, 2014 |
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May 20, 2014 07:48
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HEY GAL posted:I had to learn Degrees Reaumur my freshman year of undergraduate, since Lavoisier used it. Pain in the rear end. Are you American? The Celsius to Reaumur conversion is very simple, but converting from Fahrenheit to anything is much less intuitive. INTJ Mastermind posted:Simple fact is ISLANDS. DO. NOT. SINK. This reminds me of a story about the pirate Baptiste; he deliberately beached his ship during a battle with an English ship that had been sent to capture or kill him. Because the Bonne was aground, it sustained heavy damage but managed to sink the English ship. He then repaired his flagship and got it back to a safe port. Baptiste later tried the same plan against an English warship, and its cannon were tearing apart the Bonne so badly that he had to abandon ship and walk back to Acadia.
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May 20, 2014 09:05
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AATREK CURES KIDS posted:Are you American? The Celsius to Reaumur conversion is very simple, but converting from Fahrenheit to anything is much less intuitive.  Edit: Worthleast posted:Not exactly military history, but she nearly destroyed the Carmelite Nuns when she decided to become one. Well, the Koch brothers' dad did make them duel one another with swords as boys because he believed in Social Darwinism, that was pretty great. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 10:29 on May 20, 2014 |
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May 20, 2014 09:53
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JaucheCharly posted:Commiting these crimes or clearing them up? I've only ever seen flintstone, I think their major sources for obsidian would have to have been the southern US and Mexico? I don't see any obsidian on that museum website. I inherited a collection of several hundred arrow heads found mostly during the Dust Bowl when the local fields were torn up and a lot of artifacts revealed, none of them are obsidian. That's anecdotal and I'm sure they might have used some but it would have been a more distant source than flint.
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May 20, 2014 15:39
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I imagine obsidian would be closer to volcanically active areas like coastal Alaska, the Cascades, and (maybe) Yellowstone. That said, I don't think I've ever seen utilitarian usage of obsidian (in exhibits of various plains peoples items) at either the Durham or the Joslyn museums in Omaha. Maybe art but not arrow/spearpoints.
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May 20, 2014 15:55
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FAUXTON posted:I imagine obsidian would be closer to volcanically active areas like coastal Alaska, the Cascades, and (maybe) Yellowstone. The Black Hills of South Dakota, the wintering grounds and most sacred area for the Lakota, are largely of igneous rocks and there was a lot of volcanic activity during the formation of the northern Hills. Not to derail too much into geologychat, but when magma cools it forms various types of rocks depending on the composition of the magma and how quickly it cools. The slower the cooling, the larger crystals are allowed to form and the various components segregate. Granite is an example of this, it characteristically has four different mineral crystals visible to the eye: pink feldspar, whitish quartz, black hornblende, and iridescent mica. Obsidian is also called volcanic glass and is formed from very rapid cooling of high-silica magma where the component minerals do not have time to crystallize, so obsidian is homogenous and mostly silicon dioxide (SiO2, same as glass or quartz). The igneous core of the Hills is mostly pegmatite, which is granite with really huge crystals that formed very slowly. This makes for awesome scenery and the richest gold mine on the continent (Homestake). There is obsidian to be found in the area, but it's not common. Flint, on the other hand, is a metamorphic rock formed from compression and chemical transformation of sedimentary rocks. Since sedimentary rocks are removed more easily both by natural erosion and quarrying than igneous rocks, flint is going to tend to be easier to access and exploit in large amounts. Obsidian you're relying on surface deposits or you're stuck quarrying it out of granite with pre-Columbian tools. Pellisworth fucked around with this message at 17:45 on May 20, 2014 |
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May 20, 2014 17:43
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Just taking a wild guess. I'm not good at north american geography. The natives in California liked obsidian arrowheads
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May 20, 2014 19:15
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bewbies posted:This statement has kind of a narrow aperture. ASB is the US response to the emergence of A2AD strategies and not much else. A2AD is only one possible strategy that US and allied nations might face, particularly from an opponent as robust and capable as the PLA. Some other operational concepts that have been published recently (or are about to be published) are Strategic Landpower, a new IAMD CONOPS, and LandCyber. All of these deal with different but interconnected domains. Thanks for taking the time out to respond. You’re the closest to ASB I’ve been. I’m disappointed at how wrong I was regarding the concept, but I appreciate someone with your expertise setting things right. Now, let’s see if I can salvage anything from what I wrote. I stand by my first statement. I take for granted that the PLA’s A2AD capability is the preeminent military challenge to US primacy in the Pacific, since it potentially deprives the US of freedom of navigation within the first island chain. The ability of the US to project power within the first island chain is the foundation for the US’s commitments to her allies and consequently, the foundation of the US led Pacific order. AirSea Battle is aimed countering the PLA’s A2AD capabilities, and restoring the US’s ability to operate within the first island chain. I base this on how CNO Greenert and former CSAF Schwartz sold ASB: http://www.the-american-interest.com/articles/2012/2/20/air-sea-battle/ Proponents of AirSea Battle have invited comparisons between it and AirLand Battle. I don’t think they’re mistaken in doing that. During the cold war, American military commitment to NATO was the foundation for a US-led European order- and that remains the case. AirLand Battle only applied to a fraction of that commitment, but tanks in the Fulda Gap were then, and remains the salient image of the American military presence. ASB has a much larger political footprint than AirLand Battle ever did. The language of President Obama’s Canberra speech, the best public formulation of US Pacific policy to date, reflects ASB’s relevance: “Our posture will be more flexible -- with new capabilities to ensure that our forces can operate freely.” http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/11/17/remarks-president-obama-australian-parliament The final thing makes evident the centrality of ASB is the importance Australia, Japan, and China attribute to it. ASB is used almost as a synonym for “US commitment to the region.” It’s a nexus at which political and military concerns meet. That isn’t a fancy-dan way of saying it is “strategic.” The Japanese want to know: “will the Seventh Fleet sail to the Senkaku’s?” The Philipinos wants to know: “will the Seventh Fleet sail to the Scarborough Shoal? ASB is a very large part of the US’s answer. http://www.pdfemm.org/pdfonline/18750.pdf bewbies posted:You're right that the military abuses language about as badly as it can be, but your definitions of doctrine and operational concepts aren't really the same as what the US and NATO use. To keep it simple: doctrine are general guidelines that have been tested, verified, and are constantly updated. Operational concepts, generally speaking, are written to inform future DOTMLPF initiatives. I was wrong here. I actually was aware of the distinction between operational concepts and CONOPS. My mistake was that when I tried to induce the meaning of these terms, I didn’t distinguish between colloquial usage and official, bureaucratic usage- which of course matters a whole lot. bewbies posted:[Dilkington posted: “ASB purpose is to establish sea control”] I'd disagree with this. ASB at its core explores how to gain and maintain operational access against a peer or near peer competitor that has decided to limit that operational access. That is much more than just sea control; it involves every domain (to include space) and every battlefield system to one degree or another. At best I was being reductive. “Can you sail your ships here?” is an important issue vis a vis ASB, but like you said, it's hardly the only one. bewbies posted:That is certainly one aspect. More accurately, I'd say that "sortie generation" is kind of a synonym for "operational access", and this involves much more than just manned aircraft doing things. Sea basing, counter-BM/CM and UAS, establishing SPODs and APODs, all sorts of stuff in this realm. Granted, "sortie generation" is an important outcome of this process, but it is far from the only main objective. Definitely a nuance I should have picked up on. “Sanctuary” is a word I hear a lot. I stressed manned sorties against the PRC mainland because that’s been singled out as particularly “escalatory.” No doubt cyber-attacks would also target the mainland. bewbies posted:This is just me soapboxing, but I think that cyber will wind up being just as important a domain as land or sea or air in the event of a peer vs peer conflict over the next century. A lot of what I write professionally goes to this end. I don't want to make this post any longer with a drawn-out discussion of it, but if you disagree I'd be very curious what your position is. I didn’t mean to underestimate the importance of cyber, or imply it doesn’t really have a large role to play in ASB. My problem was with how cyber capabilities are assessed, particularly by US allies in the Pacific. Out of all the things the defense community has to untangle, cyber capabilities are the trickiest- certainly the hardest to quantify. Cyber capabilities are amorphous and employed over a different sort of geography then most people are used to theorizing about. Personally, I definitely don't know enough to disagree with you. I do wonder though, if cyber becomes a increasingly important domain, how will that drive the development of civilian networks? Remember how Eisenhower's DOD helped get the Interstate Highway System built. I'll submit some trailing questions: Is the current structure of USCYBERCOM a good home for US cyber operations? Do you see any one service branch getting out in front on cyber? e: proofreading Dilkington fucked around with this message at 00:59 on May 21, 2014 |
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May 20, 2014 19:19
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bewbies posted:This is just me soapboxing, but I think that cyber will wind up being just as important a domain as land or sea or air in the event of a peer vs peer conflict over the next century. A lot of what I write professionally goes to this end. I don't want to make this post any longer with a drawn-out discussion of it, but if you disagree I'd be very curious what your position is. As an aside I've found myself as one of the lead authors for the implementation plan for Air Sea Battle so I'm neck-deep in this stuff a lot of days. I actually think that while the capabilities of cyber warfare remain unknown and unproven, it is not particularly promising for a Tier 1 conflict. Certainly the sci-fi nerd in me would love to see some Neuromancer/Ghost in the Shell-type hacking, but it's more difficult to foresee that sort of thing actually working on the battlefield. Sure it's possible that critical civilian infrastructure could be disrupted a la Stuxnet (power-grids often come to mind here) but military-grade hardware is a different story. I see parallels between cyberwarfare and EMP attacks - or even gas warfare in some ways. It's devastating against an unprepared target, but it's also something that a military can readily and broadly prepare for. Isolated system design (i.e. physically separating communications from flight controls), secure-access networks (i.e. SIPRNet), and software failsafes (i.e. preventing inputs that would cause an engine to overheat) can prevent most catastrophic damage, and have already been largely embraced by the military. Also, military cyber warfare is adversely impacted by the unceasing competition between corporate IT security and black hat hackers - everyone is constantly playing catch-up with each other, which impairs the ability of military hackers to store up an arsenal of viruses to unleash in the future. And in reacting and preparing for those every-day attacks, it also significantly hardens society against potential military cyber-warfare. The kind of serious SQL injection attacks and fundamental OS vulnerabilities that cyberwarfare would rely on are also routinely targeted by black hats and upgraded by IT security. Hypothetically there could be some kind of devastating zero day attack a la Battlestar Galactica (say against bespoke military or industrial hardware with unique characteristics), but realistically that kind of attack would still be readily identified and patched - at which point the hackers would be back to square one. This is not to say that cyber warfare is unimportant. I think that the Air Force was wise in standing up US Cyber Command. But I think that the importance of it rests in the everyday battle against hackers attempting to gain military information and access, and not on a specific battlefield. They will surely develop viruses to use against enemies, and perhaps even incorporate them into the extant ECM/ECCM platforms, but I don't think that it will prove to be a deciding factor in a shooting war. Perhaps you mean a peer versus peer conflict like the Cold War, an elongated conflict where the two sides strive against each other despite a tacit peace, and certainly there I can see a larger role for cyber warfare in terms of information gathering and causing destruction with plausible-deniability. But the efficacy of cyber warfare remains limited - Stuxnet may have gained USA/Israel more time to deal with their conflict with Iran, but the context of their conflict remains materially unchanged. China is often accused of using hackers to gain military and commercial leverage against the West, but it hasn't really resulted in noticeable gains. Much as gas masks and faraday cages have blunted the role of chemical/biological warfare and EMP attacks, so too is cyber warfare blunted by its own agents. As long as defending against a viral attack means smart design and installing a patch, I think that cyber warfare will struggle to expand far beyond the realm of military intelligence - important in a supporting role, but lacking the decisiveness of brute force. I am very curious to hear your opinions on that matter though, and do not by all means think that I have a monopoly on insight here. Kaal fucked around with this message at 07:34 on May 21, 2014 |
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May 20, 2014 21:35
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Kaal posted:As long as defending against a viral attack means smart design and installing a patch, I think that cyber warfare will struggle to expand far beyond the realm of military intelligence - important in a supporting role, but lacking the decisiveness of brute force. NSA was patching the BIOS of dell servers and internet core routers (juniper, iirc). If you can patch the BIOS you can also overwrite it with zeros, bricking the device. If on hour +1 your internet and cell phone infrastructure is bricked, requiring motherboard replacement, or in any case physical maintenance on the device (JTAG reflashing, chip replacement), your cyber attack has gone somewhat beyond "access windows update to repel attack". In any case I would expect full-on war software-only cyber attacks to be somewhat more difficult to repair than "install patch", you need something to install a patch onto, I hope you have backups. You also seem extremely optimistic about the average software quality. Software is usually big and complex, and full of bugs.
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May 20, 2014 22:01
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karoshi posted:NSA was patching the BIOS of dell servers and internet core routers (juniper, iirc). If you can patch the BIOS you can also overwrite it with zeros, bricking the device. If on hour +1 your internet and cell phone infrastructure is bricked, requiring motherboard replacement, or in any case physical maintenance on the device (JTAG reflashing, chip replacement), your cyber attack has gone somewhat beyond "access windows update to repel attack". In any case I would expect full-on war software-only cyber attacks to be somewhat more difficult to repair than "install patch", you need something to install a patch onto, I hope you have backups. Preventing a BIOS firmware update from going bad is pretty easy though. Either prevent the normal OS from doing the update so it has to be done manually (the classic way of doing it), or implement a BIOS recovery program (the modern way of doing it). Or both, for that matter. At that point, the hacker has to personally update the machine and destroy the backups, and they may as well have just taken a hammer to it. And the same could be said for other forms of attack - there's really not that much out there that can be done against an isolated computer system that can't be undone. It's one thing to attack a personal civilian PC that is rarely updated, unprotected, not backed up, and loaded with insecure software - it's fairly possible to do all sorts of destructive things. It's another thing to attack a computer that is intentionally rights restricted, software limited, protected both physically and in the network, and automatically flashes itself - like so many are in the corporate world. That's why hackers target the former and not the latter. edit: For example, take the breakthrough Spiegel article about Juniper: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-nsa-uses-powerful-toolbox-in-effort-to-spy-on-global-networks-a-940969-3.html It details all sorts of ways that the NSA can access computers, and it is some pretty heavy stuff, but you'll notice that almost all of them are related to quiet information gathering of civilian devices. This is because as soon as an intrusion is noticed, it can be quickly repaired. It's certainly effective in it's own way, but there's very little that would be applicable in a battle, unless the enemy decided to start emailing its tactical strategies or carrying around their personal GPS-enabled mobile phones. And that is particularly true of the "remote-access" capabilities that would be most worrisome for a war-fighter. Sure there's a possibility that an important industrial SCADA could be attacked, but that requires an enemy hacker to have physical access to the equipment - something that is rather less likely during an actual war. Kaal fucked around with this message at 23:09 on May 20, 2014 |
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May 20, 2014 22:24
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American battleships were able to sail up to the Japanese coast and shell shore targets with impunity. Their air power had collapsed totally, not partially.
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May 21, 2014 05:55
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Weren't they hoarding planes then to use for kamikaze attacks on the invasion force?
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May 21, 2014 06:59
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