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Squalid posted:Their cavalry was by far the best in the war, at least until they ate their horses. Amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics.
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Jan 24, 2016 01:05
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In case anyone cares I'm still writing up the first part of my First Crusade effortpost, which is going to be a long, long prelude about the initial Islamic conquests of the seventh century.
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Jan 24, 2016 01:34
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:In case anyone cares I'm still writing up the first part of my First Crusade effortpost, which is going to be a long, long prelude about the initial Islamic conquests of the seventh century. That's a lotta ground to cover. 
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Jan 24, 2016 01:35
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MikeCrotch posted:Amateurs study tactics, professionals study
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Jan 24, 2016 01:47
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Squalid posted:Even if your local patsies are too corrupt, cruel, or out-of-touch to take over from the get-go, you don't have to resort to a lengthy Afghanistan style occupation. Instead consider purchasing a contingent of "peacekeepers" from some small impoverished nations. Somalia is a great example of this tactic, where the utterly useless Federal government is protected by more than 20,000 African Union peacekeepers. These men deserve just about all the credit for driving Al Shabab from Mogadishu through years of bloody urban combat. Putting them there was a bargain too, excluding bonus military aid participating states received for joining, America only spent $81 on the mission in 2007, and Europe probably spent half that much. It's bargain for a deployment of it's size whichever way you slice it. Discount airfare to Somalia?
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Jan 24, 2016 01:58
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MikeCrotch posted:Amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics. Winners study both.
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Jan 24, 2016 04:55
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Rockopolis posted:Million? Billion? Million. There's also additional funding coming from State, the UN, probably the CIA, and maybe from the African Union budget (roughly 66% of which is payed by the US and European states), although I'm not sure what the African Union would spend money on in Somalia when the US already covers all its deployment costs. I don't have these numbers handy, but I believe they amount to some several hundred million a year including the budget of the Somali Federal government. Also the deployment has increased in size since 2007 and with it the price tag, but it's all still very affordable compared to the cost of deploying American troops, especially the political costs. Over the last nine years AMISOM has suffered thousands of casualties including over 1,000 deaths, not including the prior Ethiopian intervention or Kenyan casualties incurred in operations outside the AMISOM umbrella. Participation also incurs the risk of retaliatory terror attacks, Al Shabaab has conducted bombings in Uganda, Burundi and Kenya in revenge for their role in the intervention. Of course the international community pays states well for participating. Not the soldiers themselves though, in fact last year Uganda's peacekeepers weren't payed for nine months. I think the EU eventually picked up that tab.
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Jan 24, 2016 05:20
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We need to get Bewbies or someone in here re: subs because I remember reading that following the end of the cold war the US ASW capabilities have basically withered and died but have nothing at all to back that up.
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Jan 24, 2016 06:11
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Koesj posted:e: I forgot, the big problem for over-the-horizon weapons isn't their range, payload, or even terminal guidance, it's long-range target acquisition. Have a 21st century conflict between large powers and chances are you can't go into space for years because taking out each other's satellites gave us Kessler syndrome. Is there a scenario where modern nations go to war and end up salting low earth orbit without resorting to nukes? Like do they have a plan for when every satellite is rapidly orbiting debris and they can't rely on GPS and such? Is everyone gonna be navigating like it's WW2 (except a computer can do dead reckoning for you)?
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Jan 24, 2016 06:22
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The Lone Badger posted:How many times do you have to torpedo an American carrier to sink it? Those things are ludicrously huge. So are the torpedoes intended to kill them. Even the non nuclear ones.
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Jan 24, 2016 11:23
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Eej posted:Is there a scenario where modern nations go to war and end up salting low earth orbit without resorting to nukes? Like do they have a plan for when every satellite is rapidly orbiting debris and they can't rely on GPS and such? Is everyone gonna be navigating like it's WW2 (except a computer can do dead reckoning for you)? As with most huge but avoidable existential threats the answer is we'll worry about that when we get there!
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Jan 24, 2016 13:10
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Squalid posted:In my opinion western nations have adapted largely by changing political and economic tactics. Neoliberalism has obviated the need for governments to take and hold territory, and Capital has freed itself from dependence on any particular state to defend its interests. Nationalism makes acquiring new land and people a headache even for the conqueror, who really wants more minorities in their country anyway? Asymmetrical warfare is as much an opportunity for the modern nation as it is a threat, see for example how America used the Contras against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, or how Iran helped make the American occupation of Iraq unsustainable. How does Russia's attempt at so called "blended warfare" in the Crimean/Ukrainian Crisis fit in with this?
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Jan 24, 2016 14:43
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A loving disaster. They've diplomatically isolated themselves, burnt blood and treasure, and have little to show for it.
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Jan 24, 2016 14:51
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Phobophilia posted:A loving disaster. They've diplomatically isolated themselves, burnt blood and treasure, and have little to show for it. Other than a pretty spiffy naval base, anyway.
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Jan 24, 2016 15:07
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they always had a naval base, they could have just played nice with the new regime instead of hitting the panic button and sending in the little green men
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Jan 24, 2016 15:17
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Phobophilia posted:they always had a naval base, they could have just played nice with the new regime instead of hitting the panic button and sending in the little green men They did play nice for ages, there was no reason to believe that the Assad regime wouldn't be so utterly incompetent they couldn't squash the protests like every other Arab state that didn't have a revolution.
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Jan 24, 2016 15:20
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The spiffy naval base is Sevastopol 
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Jan 24, 2016 15:27
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I think current events should work their way into this thread as juxtapositions, not in isolation.
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Jan 24, 2016 15:41
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Xerxes17 posted:The spiffy naval base is Sevastopol IIRC the naval base they have in Syria is decidedly non-spiffy.
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Jan 24, 2016 16:09
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The Lone Badger posted:How many times do you have to torpedo an American carrier to sink it? Those things are ludicrously huge. Modern torps are designed to explode under ships, directing most of the force upward into the bottom of a ship, they can lift smaller ships out of the water and break them in half. It wouldn't be out of the question for a single one to cause more than enough damage to sink a carrier.
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Jan 24, 2016 16:18
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Phobophilia posted:they always had a naval base, they could have just played nice with the new regime instead of hitting the panic button and sending in the little green men The lease on the base was expiring and was not going to be renewed. A new base has been under construction in Novorossiysk for ages in anticipation. I wonder what they're going to do with it now.
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Jan 24, 2016 16:18
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Eej posted:Is there a scenario where modern nations go to war and end up salting low earth orbit without resorting to nukes? Like do they have a plan for when every satellite is rapidly orbiting debris and they can't rely on GPS and such? Is everyone gonna be navigating like it's WW2 (except a computer can do dead reckoning for you)? There are no known weapons that can shoot down GPS satellites; they're in geostationary orbit and getting there is a huge pain in the rear end. All current anti-sat weapons are for shooting at imaging satellites in LEO. You jam GPS, you don't shoot the sats down.
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Jan 24, 2016 17:08
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TheFluff posted:There are no known weapons that can shoot down GPS satellites; they're in geostationary orbit and getting there is a huge pain in the rear end. All current anti-sat weapons are for shooting at imaging satellites in LEO. You jam GPS, you don't shoot the sats down. and not much incentive to develop one, either, since any debris created at that orbital altitude will be up there for thousands of millennia, as opposed to LEO where atmospheric drag will eventually clear it out (still on a significant timescale. however).
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Jan 24, 2016 17:30
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TheFluff posted:There are no known weapons that can shoot down GPS satellites; they're in geostationary orbit and getting there is a huge pain in the rear end. All current anti-sat weapons are for shooting at imaging satellites in LEO. You jam GPS, you don't shoot the sats down. GPS satellites are not in geostationary orbit. Here's an explanation: http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast162/Unit5/gps.html They are indeed a huge pain in the rear end to shoot down, but not impossible by any means. The best protection against that is not going to war against nations capable of shooting satellites.
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Jan 24, 2016 17:57
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VanSandman posted:GPS satellites are not in geostationary orbit. Here's an explanation: My bad. Still, what I'm saying is not that it's impossible to shoot them down, just that there aren't any current weapons capable of doing it (as opposed to shooting down sats in LEO - systems capable of doing that are operational in both China and the US, I believe). Such weapons are of course possible to develop, but it'd be horrifically expensive (you're looking at a full scale multistage lets-go-to-space rocket) and I don't see it happening. TheFluff fucked around with this message at 18:20 on Jan 24, 2016 |
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Jan 24, 2016 18:14
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The best part about the current problems is how the Ukrainians were pressed into giving up their nuclear weapons in the early '90's because Russia is totally not gonna ever attack them. Oh and also in return they thought they got an ironclad guarantee of their borders that would be backed up by the international community. Whoops!
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Jan 24, 2016 18:34
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I don't think the current situation would have been any better if the Ukrainians had nuclear weapons. But really I think this derail has gone on a bit long at this point.
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Jan 24, 2016 18:36
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Fangz posted:I don't think the current situation would have been any better if the Ukrainians had nuclear weapons. Even Russia would balk at annexing the territory of a nuclear power.
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Jan 24, 2016 19:42
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Retarded Pimp posted:Modern torps are designed to explode under ships, directing most of the force upward into the bottom of a ship, they can lift smaller ships out of the water and break them in half. It wouldn't be out of the question for a single one to cause more than enough damage to sink a carrier. Like so. One of those would https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RV8MF-440xg
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Jan 24, 2016 20:27
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mllaneza posted:Like so. One of those would You really can't compare torpedoing an unmanned 1960s light frigate with a modern supercarrier. The carrier weighs 50 times what the frigate does, for example. The passive torpedo protection on a Nimitz is very, very good, It is also very, very classified. That being said, you can probably glean some idea of their capabilties just by context: the primary threat those ships had to worry about during their design phase were Soviet attack subs, which means heavyweight wake homing torpedoes. After they built the first two, they went back and significantly upgraded the active ASW suite; there isn't a greater concentration of undersea sensors and shooters on any other platform. That being said, the USN kind of lost interest in ASW stuff after the Cold War ended, but the proliferation of really effective D-E subs has made ASW a major priority again. It was a centerpiece of the "air sea battle" concept, for instance, and they're even putting money towards crazy new technologies like kinetic kill anti-torpedoes. I know it is fun to think of a lone wolf hunter sneaking up on a strike group and delivering a solitary killer torp that breaks the carrier in half but that really isn't terribly realistic. There's a reason why most competitors who want to counter carriers are investing much more heavily inanti ship ballistic and cruise missiles: it is a whole lot easier (and plausible) to mission kill a carrier by damaging its deck, air wings, or aviation facilities than it is to sink it with torpedoes. The big D-E fleets that are sprouting up everywhere are really intended more as means to strike at merchant marine and transport ships than they are meant to directly contest carrier strike groups.
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Jan 24, 2016 21:09
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Nebakenezzer posted:Somebody correct me if I'm wrong here, but in the 1960s some people in the West thought tanks were on their way out, simply because conventional armor was increasingly ineffective. (Composite armor reversed this trend, but as a rule it is easier to use science to break poo poo rather than it is to use science to protect yourself against the science of breaking poo poo.) This was the guiding principle behind the Leopard tank. The designers figured that HEAT had advanced to the point where conventional armor would never be able to reliably protect against it, so they went for a fast, low tank with a powerful gun that would just try to not get hit because anything above a 30mm autocannon would penetrate it. A somewhat similar design led to the Swedish S-Tank, which had the weird turretless design to make a low vehicle with a severely angled front that would more reliably deflect rounds, while also shoving all the ammo in the back where they were least likely to be shot in a fight. In the end, it was the wrong thinking. As you said, composite armor allowed the Soviets' T-64 to have a reasonable size and weight while having equal or superior protection to the NATO tanks at the time. As with many other theories, an unexpected technological development ended up reversing the trend. The Leopard 2 is a much tougher conventional MBT on par with the Abrams and Challenger.
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Jan 24, 2016 21:35
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bewbies posted:You really can't compare torpedoing an unmanned 1960s light frigate with a modern supercarrier. The carrier weighs 50 times what the frigate does, for example. Additionally, carriers are never deployed alone. Any submarine intent on bagging a carrier has to get through the carrier's escorts, and in any scenario where a submarine is going to be hunting a US carrier there are going to be more than a few tin cans on guard duty in addition to any ASW assets from the carrier itself.
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Jan 24, 2016 21:48
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Communist Zombie posted:How does Russia's attempt at so called "blended warfare" in the Crimean/Ukrainian Crisis fit in with this? I wouldn't want to speculate too much on the tactics used in this case as I haven't read very much about that conflict, but there are many historical cases comparable to what's happened in Novorussia. Today states may have a hard time annexing new territory, but creating new states is much easier. See the secession of Transnistria, made possible through the intercession of a newly ex-Soviet Army, South Ossetia, and the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus. If you're not familiar with the conflict in Cyprus it started when a coup put a government in power favoring union or enosis with the right-wing junta of mainland Greece, pushing Turkey into an intervention to protect the interests of ethnic Turks/to gently caress the Greeks. The intervention ended with an ethnically Turkish state carved from the northern third of the island. Although Northern Cyprus is recognized by absolutely nobody, the international community doesn't give a poo poo anymore and Turkey seems to have achieved all of their strategic goals even if the conflict remains legally unresolved. I think recent history has made it clear combatants can make up for limited conventional capabilities or international support by having strong relationships with local forces, although reliance on those groups is likely to limit the extent of what can be achieved. See for example how analysts of the Syrian conflict often caution against overly optimistic expectations of advances against ISIS by American backed forces like the YPG or peshmerga, which have little incentive to occupy Arab populated territory.
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Jan 24, 2016 22:11
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So I just learned that Japan had more than just one anti-air missile during World War 2. Don't worry though, none of them are rocket-powered ! And yes, they are quite strange indeed.
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Jan 25, 2016 00:03
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Jobbo_Fett posted:So I just learned that Japan had more than just one anti-air missile during World War 2. Don't worry though, none of them are rocket-powered Oh lord. I'm picturing compressed air rockets with 100,000 psi powering them and doubtful metallurgy
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Jan 25, 2016 00:21
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Nebakenezzer posted:Oh lord. I'm picturing compressed air rockets with 100,000 psi powering them and doubtful metallurgy Somehow, King Georges the IV's skeleton got some weird undead erection the moment this was typed out on the internet. That crazy German loved rockets.
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Jan 25, 2016 00:22
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Nebakenezzer posted:Oh lord. I'm picturing compressed air rockets with 100,000 psi powering them and doubtful metallurgy Oh its better than that! One type was designed to not explode on contact (with the nose), so if they just uhh... "missed", they became anti-personnel mines.
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Jan 25, 2016 00:23
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Jobbo_Fett posted:So I just learned that Japan had more than just one anti-air missile during World War 2. Don't worry though, none of them are rocket-powered Meanwhile the US looked around the workshop floor, saw a 100 pound bomb, proximity fuzes and JATO rockets and went "perfect!". One set of wings and radio command setup later, the KAN was born.
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Jan 25, 2016 00:48
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100 Years Ago An important Schutztruppe camp is attacked; the Military Service Bill is about to pass (the rumble you can't hear is one of stolen thunder thanks to an actual expert); a look at the fallout from Gallipoli, far from the least of which is Mustafa Kemal's gang of new mates.
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Jan 25, 2016 00:52
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Hey, Trin! I don't respond to your WWI posts too frequently but I do read the blog. Thanks for writing it.xthetenth posted:Meanwhile the US looked around the workshop floor, saw a 100 pound bomb, proximity fuzes and JATO rockets and went "perfect!". One set of wings and radio command setup later, the KAN was born. the what now?
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Jan 25, 2016 01:31
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