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The US military is still pretty unique in how commonplace shotguns are, as I understand it. The norm in the rest of the world from what I've read is that shotguns are only issued in special situations, like special forces or units actively expected to engage in house to house urban combat, whereas the US makes shotguns available to any soldiers who want one.
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Dec 7, 2018 23:08
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Cythereal posted:The US military is still pretty unique in how commonplace shotguns are, as I understand it. The norm in the rest of the world from what I've read is that shotguns are only issued in special situations, like special forces or units actively expected to engage in house to house urban combat, whereas the US makes shotguns available to any soldiers who want one. There's been a lot of changes to how the US operates based on the kind of operations they've been involved in. Iraq in particular involved a lot of house clearing and interactions with civilians, so there was a lot more use of shotguns and handguns and requests for M4s to replace the 20-inch barrel M16s.
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Dec 7, 2018 23:30
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I'm trying to watch my dang cartoons and for some reason Nine Years War memes start popping up in them??? 
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Dec 8, 2018 00:33
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« Ask/Tell › Milhist Thread Part The IVth: Hot Nine Years War Memes
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Dec 8, 2018 01:01
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I'm reading Leopold Scholtz's "The Lessons of the Border War" on the Angolan Civil War (Scientia Militaria vol 40, no 3, 2012). Is he, like, credible or is he a crank?
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Dec 8, 2018 01:43
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Eej posted:I'm trying to watch my dang cartoons and for some reason Nine Years War memes start popping up in them??? Charge ur phone. 
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Dec 8, 2018 01:48
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brugroffil posted:sorry if this was already posted I'm always pages behind! This is awesome as hell
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Dec 8, 2018 02:33
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Milo and POTUS posted:This is awesome as hell I have a big-rear end book about deception operations (mostly British stuff), but it's mostly about inflatable tanks and Operation Mincemeat and such. Are there any good books about the electronics side of things?
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Dec 8, 2018 05:45
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We should talk less about the thirty years war and more about the seven years war
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Dec 8, 2018 06:47
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wdarkk posted:I have a big-rear end book about deception operations (mostly British stuff), but it's mostly about inflatable tanks and Operation Mincemeat and such. Are there any good books about the electronics side of things? I know you're asking the thread at large because lmao at me knowing but maybe something to do with the battle of the beams?
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Dec 8, 2018 07:15
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All I got are books on things like phone phreakers and early civilian hackers, I don't know anything about the military side of hacking. Although so far as I know, amplifying a radio signal to blend in with German stations and sending propaganda through it is probably about as electronic as misinformation could get in the 40s. There's Enigma, but code-breaking isn't exactly the same thing.
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Dec 8, 2018 07:42
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Schadenboner posted:I'm reading Leopold Scholtz's "The Lessons of the Border War" on the Angolan Civil War (Scientia Militaria vol 40, no 3, 2012). Is he, like, credible or is he a crank? I can't speak to his overall reliability, but reading The Lessons of the Border War there's a couple of things that stand out to me: a) When talking about the air campaign, he notes a number of factors that lost the SADF air supremacy, such as long short loiter times caused by airfields being far away from the battlefield, an unwillingness to use aerial tankers, and FAPLA & Friends having more capable air-to-air fighters (yet, somehow, the MiG-23 is a terrible plane, but that's a discussion for another time) but completely fails to mention that Angola had the best air defence network of Second World country outside of the Warsaw Pact. This is kinda very relevant, because it absolutely hampered SADF capabilities. The average flight level of a Mirage in the latter half of the Border War was 30 meters, and almost all bomb delivery was done by toss-bombing. That's not something that's caused by the airfields being too far away or not having air refueling capability, that's something caused by FAPLA & Friends absolutely murdering anything that didn't crawl on the ground like a snake. It's a very odd omission. b) This passage: The Soviets and Cubans quickly moved to fill the power vacuum, which was viewed with considerable alarm by the West and certain African countries. As these countries were fairly powerless to do something about it, they turned to South Africa to stop the communists taking over Angola. A communist Angola, allowing the Namibian rebel movement Swapo to use its territory to wage an insurgency war in Namibia, was viewed as being very much against the South African interests., which is like... That's a very heroic spin on "White supremacist rogue nation Rhodesia wanted South Africa's help in keeping black people down.", and talking about communist Angola is not technically incorrect, but "taking over Angola" is like... there's a lot of nuances that are being run over with what is essentially regurgitated apartheid propaganda. I guess that last thing doesn't really diminish his military analysis but it's a bit like an analysis of the WWII Eastern Front talking about Nazi Germany "keeping communism at bay". LatwPIAT fucked around with this message at 09:13 on Dec 8, 2018 |
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Dec 8, 2018 09:01
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Has anyone ever done an effortpost on Yugoslavia in the cold war? I know practically nothing about them and given their proximity to the eastern block and aligned countries how they could be some sort of third pole in Europe. I guess the price in men and material wasn't worth it if the reds chose to? Southeastern europe is like a huge question mark to me in general, even today. I don't have much of an ideological bent and even if I did I know so little about them that bias doesn't even enter into the equation.
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Dec 8, 2018 10:54
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Milo and POTUS posted:Has anyone ever done an effortpost on Yugoslavia in the cold war? I know practically nothing about them and given their proximity to the eastern block and aligned countries how they could be some sort of third pole in Europe. I guess the price in men and material wasn't worth it if the reds chose to? Southeastern europe is like a huge question mark to me in general, even today. I don't have much of an ideological bent and even if I did I know so little about them that bias doesn't even enter into the equation. The short of it is that Yugoslavia was liberated primarily by partisans who were independent of the Red Army, which meant that in the aftermath of WWII the Soviet Union didn't have have nearly the capability to project power into Yugoslavia they had elsewhere. This allowed Yugoslavia to operated independently of Stalin, which caused Stalin to badmouth Tito, which only caused Tito to double down on his independence from the Soviet sphere of influence. At the same time, the raison d'etere of the eastern block in Soviet defence planning was to serve as a barrier to a repeat of Barbarossa. Yugoslavia wasn't really considered a huge threat in this regard, so there was no pressing need in the Soviet leadership to vassalize Yugoslavia. Being fairly non-threatening, communists, and not aligned with NATO meant that Yugoslavia had access to the Eastern Bloc trade market, which allowed them to flourish economically. But this isn't about Yugoslavian tanks, so I don't really know much.
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Dec 8, 2018 11:27
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SlothfulCobra posted:All I got are books on things like phone phreakers and early civilian hackers There are books on that? Post or PM me a list, I'm into that, even though I was born ten years too late to play with it myself.
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Dec 8, 2018 12:54
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Bad Angus! Bad!
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LatwPIAT posted:I can't speak to his overall reliability, but reading The Lessons of the Border War there's a couple of things that stand out to me: I wouldn’t trust the political analysis of a SADF guy anyways, I was mostly interested in his analysis of the military side. Sounds like for him air cover was simply not there which maybe explains why it’s less nuanced that what you describe?
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Dec 8, 2018 13:58
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LatwPIAT posted:Yugoslavia had access to the Eastern Bloc trade market, which allowed them to flourish economically. lol
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Dec 8, 2018 15:18
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LatwPIAT posted:FAPLA & Friends having more capable air-to-air fighters (yet, somehow, the MiG-23 is a terrible plane, but that's a discussion for another time) Surprise, it's that time! Essentially I think both statements are true although terrible is a little strong. The MiG-23 was not a particularly good plane, especially by the 1980s. It had poor manoeuvrability outside of the rare MLD model, carried relatively few and relatively poor missiles, had ancient avionics and was made difficult to fly and heavy by its swing wing system. On the other hand the Mirage F.1AZ and CZ, the core of the South African fighter fleet, were total crap. I should qualify this by saying that I don't think the Mirage F.1 was total crap, just these ones. The AZ was a semi-unique South African variant that had an inferior radar to the original in exchange for some extra ground attack stuff that's not relevant to Noble Knights Of The Air and Their Aluminium Steeds. The CZ was basically just a Mirage F.1C but racist. The Mirage F.1 was slower than the MiG-23 and had a worse thrust to weight ratio, but it probably turned better (anecdotal, I don't have full charts for either and weirdly the MiG-23 has better wing loading). The radar on the MiG-23 was superior to that on the AZ and probably roughly equal to the one on the CZ, but the South Africans only had 16 CZs and 32 AZs so you're more likely to find an AZ doing the work. This would make the aircraft roughly evenly matched, all things equal, but the South Africans failed to acquire any Super 530 missiles like the French had and thus had no BVR capability or SARH missiles. The R-23s on the MiG-23 certainly weren't brilliant and if you tried to fire them from actual BVR ranges you were probably stuffed, but they were also the only all-aspect missiles on either side thanks to their SARH seeker. Neither the Magic or the Kukri (South African Magic clone) could track aircraft from the front which will mean that in a straight up 2v2 the MiGs will shoot first, force the Mirages defensive and then have all the time in the world to clean them up because they're not taking counterfire. Essentially if you put the FAPLA's fighters up against a modern Western air force at the same time they'd be taken to the cleaners, but the South Africans didn't have a modern air force. Heck, you were lucky if you got a Mirage F.1 turning up, you could be getting a Mirage III or even a Sabre. Milo and POTUS posted:I guess the price in men and material wasn't worth it if the reds chose to?
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Dec 8, 2018 15:27
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Relatively speaking.
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Dec 8, 2018 15:50
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I had to see this tweet this morning, so now you bastards all have to see it too. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1071387078901030913
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Dec 8, 2018 17:57
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I don't want to look at that so much that I'm going to say something controversial to start an argument and bump the thread a few pages along. uhh... Soviet armour design was consistently superior to Western armour design in the period 1950-1991.
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Dec 8, 2018 18:31
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Trump getting most of NATO to actually follow through on the 2014 spending pledges is actually his one foreign policy win. For almost entirely the wrong reasons, but he's not wrong to call out Europe for freeloading on defence.
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Dec 8, 2018 18:42
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Suppose you have superpowers of the "fairly durable vs bullets, can punch people real good" level. How would you go about fighting an aircraft carrier?
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Dec 8, 2018 18:46
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Alchenar posted:Trump getting most of NATO to actually follow through on the 2014 spending pledges is actually his one foreign policy win. For almost entirely the wrong reasons, but he's not wrong to call out Europe for freeloading on defence.  we get more out of it back in soft power and he's ruining it for us
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Dec 8, 2018 18:46
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Alchenar posted:Trump getting most of NATO to actually follow through on the 2014 spending pledges is actually his one foreign policy win. For almost entirely the wrong reasons, but he's not wrong to call out Europe for freeloading on defence. HEY GUNS posted:
Also "European militaries bad!" followed immediately by "Spend more on your European military!" is a completely nonsensical take. Not to mention that a number of the Central European nations in NATO probably would much rather pick up the slack of German under-contribution than have them actually field larger armed forces.
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Dec 8, 2018 18:50
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Fangz posted:Suppose you have superpowers of the "fairly durable vs bullets, can punch people real good" level. How would you go about fighting an aircraft carrier? Sell my services to the Chinese Secret Service in exchange for them dropping a whole bunch of ballistic missiles on it. If you want me to kill a Chinese carrier then I'll do whatever the Russians want me to do in exchange for a metric fuckload of Backfires. Alchenar posted:Trump getting most of NATO to actually follow through on the 2014 spending pledges is actually his one foreign policy win. For almost entirely the wrong reasons, but he's not wrong to call out Europe for freeloading on defence. This is something that I've always wondered about and never bothered to follow up on, but what proportion of the US' 4.3% defence spending is on things that don't defend NATO members? Home Defence spending would be in the pot, US Forces in Europe are in, Atlantic Fleet, NORAD. The obvious. Pacific Region is out entirely, troop training in South America and Africa and Asia is out, bombing the Middle East is out because it sure as hell isn't making Europe safer. Does that, and the usual pension fund fudges that make up most of EuroNATO's 2%, add up to 2% commitment to NATO for the US?
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Dec 8, 2018 19:05
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FrangibleCover posted:I don't want to look at that so much that I'm going to say something controversial to start an argument and bump the thread a few pages along. Agreed, despite obvious sabotage by Kharkovites with their overpriced tractor.
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Dec 8, 2018 19:13
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FrangibleCover posted:I don't want to look at that so much that I'm going to say something controversial to start an argument and bump the thread a few pages along. Maybe because Team Yankee is skewed towards 1980's warfare but how exactly are we determining this between American, British, German, and French armoured forces? My vague understanding is Soviet armor was consistently good which means that their doctrine could consistently rely on armoured formations being able to do their jobs; but what exactly is bad or not up to par in regards to NATO? The big thing that comes to my mind is maybe just having some very different designs between some of those weirder French designs and the rest of NATO?
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Dec 8, 2018 19:30
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FrangibleCover posted:I don't want to look at that so much that I'm going to say something controversial to start an argument and bump the thread a few pages along. I’m not sure I agree with the end date completely but pretty much yes to everything pre ~1985. For me it really comes down to the ammo storage differences, once you hit blowout panels in the western stuff vs wrapping your crew in ammo I think closed the gap considerably. Ammo/gun/mobility performance was very comparable and K5, while good, wasn’t magical. The really late soviet designs were very interesting but they didn’t produce any so it’s hard to quantify that.
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Dec 8, 2018 19:44
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Dec 8, 2018 21:16
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SlothfulCobra posted:All I got are books on things like phone phreakers and early civilian hackers, I don't know anything about the military side of hacking. The cuckoo's egg is about russian hackers into early us military networks
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Dec 8, 2018 21:28
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Nashorn/Hornisse Queue: Medium Tank M4A2E8, P.1000 and other work by Grotte, KV-100 and KV-122, Cruiser Tank Mk.I, Cruiser Tank Mk.II, Valentine III and V, Valentine IX, Valentine X and XI, 7TP and Vickers Mk.E trials in the USSR, Modern Polish tank projects, SD-100 (Czech SU-100 clone), TACAM R-2, kpúv vz. 34, kpúv vz. 37, kpúv vz. 38, IS-1 (IS-85), IS-2 (object 240), Production of the IS-2, IS-2 modernization projects, GMC M8, First Soviet assault rifles, Stahlhelm in WWI, Stahlhelm in WWII, SU-76 with big guns, Panther trials in the USSR, Western spherical tanks, S35 in German service, SU-152 combat debut, 57 mm gun M1, T-34 applique armour projects, Challenger I Available for request:  Schmeisser's work in the USSR Object 237 (IS-1 prototype) SU-85 T-29-5 KV-85 Tank sleds T-80 (the light tank) Proposed Soviet heavy tank destroyers DS-39 tank machinegun MS-1/T-18 Kalashnikov's debut works MS-1 production Kalashnikov-Petrov self-loading carbine SU-76M (SU-15M) production S-51 SU-76I T-26 with mine detection equipment IS-2 mod. 1944  Archer  Medium Tank M3 use in the USSR HMC T82 Medium Tank M4A4 Hellcat  Jagdpanzer IV Grosstraktor Gebirgskanone M 15 Maus development in 1943-44 German anti-tank rifles Panzer IV/70 Czech anti-tank rifles in German service Hotchkiss H 39/Pz.Kpfw.38H(f) in German service  Hotchkiss H 35 and H 39  FIAT 3000 FIAT L6-40 M13/40, M14/41, M15/42 Carro Armato P40 and prospective Italian heavy tanks  Experimental Polish tanks of the 1930s  Trials of the LT vz. 35 in the USSR
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Dec 8, 2018 21:36
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Chillbro Baggins posted:There are books on that? Post or PM me a list, I'm into that, even though I was born ten years too late to play with it myself. There's Kingpin by Kevin Poulsen that focuses on his journey through the hacking world back in the day, and from the other angle there's The Cuckoo's Egg by Cliff Stroll, that focuses on tracking down and catching hackers from the other end, as law enforcement. There's also Ghost in the Wires and The Art of Intrusion by former hacker Kevin Mitnick. It's an interesting world, since it's a true crime story but with mostly nonviolent offenders, so after the criminals get caught and sent through the justice system, they're more likely to tell the tale later, or even get a job thwarting their former cohorts.
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Dec 8, 2018 22:25
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Comrade Gorbash posted:Also "European militaries bad!" followed immediately by "Spend more on your European military!" is a completely nonsensical take. Not to mention that a number of the Central European nations in NATO probably would much rather pick up the slack of German under-contribution than have them actually field larger armed forces. Right, because if WWII teaches us anything, it's that we should encourage Germany to spend more on their military,.
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Dec 8, 2018 23:04
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Ensign Expendable posted:Agreed, despite obvious sabotage by Kharkovites with their overpriced tractor. Kharkovtractor was the best tank in the world when it came out, let's not take that away from them. Furthermore the T-80UD is the best T-80 variant and the BM Oplot is a competent tank that can be produced within a reasonable timeframe. Ahahahahahahaaa. Yeah. I meant the first bit though.
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Dec 8, 2018 23:12
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Fury would have been a hell of a lot better if it ended like this?
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Dec 8, 2018 23:38
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Ensign Expendable posted:Nashorn/Hornisse How about that  guy who modified all the french tanks into assault guns that got used in The East?
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Dec 8, 2018 23:39
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I swear to God I'm gonna start posting lovely right wing milhist op eds if you keep posting this garbage. Mutually Assured Shitposting.
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Dec 9, 2018 01:03
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To be fair, that is a good one for once.
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Dec 9, 2018 01:05
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Tunicate posted:The cuckoo's egg is about russian hackers into early us military networks West German hackers employed by the Soviet Union. Raenir Salazar posted:Maybe because Team Yankee is skewed towards 1980's warfare but how exactly are we determining this between American, British, German, and French armoured forces? My vague understanding is Soviet armor was consistently good which means that their doctrine could consistently rely on armoured formations being able to do their jobs; but what exactly is bad or not up to par in regards to NATO? The big thing that comes to my mind is maybe just having some very different designs between some of those weirder French designs and the rest of NATO? Mazz posted:I'm not sure I agree with the end date completely but pretty much yes to everything pre ~1985. For me it really comes down to the ammo storage differences, once you hit blowout panels in the western stuff vs wrapping your crew in ammo I think closed the gap considerably. Ammo/gun/mobility performance was very comparable and K5, while good, wasn't magical. The really late soviet designs were very interesting but they didn't produce any so it's hard to quantify that. The stand-out capabilities of the Soviet Union are a competitive parity in terms of fire-control, parity-to-superiority in guns and ammunition, superiority in armour protection for most of the period (until at least 1979), and some technological advantages like barrel-fired ATGMs, autoloaders, and ERA, which gives their tanks generally superior profiles and long-range firepower. What they're really sorely lacking are thermal vision devices, which as far as I know were only fitted on the T-80UK. NATO, because it's not one nation, also ends up in a situation of often having a lead over the Soviet Union in multiple technological fields, yet never managing to put those technologies into one tank. In the end it's going to come down to how you weight each advantage, though. Overall, I'd probably give the advantage to the Soviet Union for most of the 50s, 60s, and 70s, with the period from 1979 onwards being where NATO might be achieving parity-to-superiority in its designs. That's when the Leopard 2 rolls out, which is... almost on par with the T-80B, I'd say? At this point the differences are very slight and harder to compare: in terms of gun, ammunition, and fire control they're very similar, exact armour protection figures for the Leopard 2 are hard to come by but it seems similar-to-maybe-a-bit-better than the T-80B. The blowout panels are nice, but also necessary because the Leopard 2 stores ammo in the turret where it's likely to be hit, whereas the T-80B has ammunition in the floor, offsetting the need a lot. The T-80B also has a gun-launched ATGM, which gives it a superior ability to engage at range, and an autoloader, which gives the T-80B a better profile and a higher rate of fire, (but also means there's one less crewmember to help change tracks and stuff. Happy now, Cessna?  )In 1980 there's the M1 Abrams, which is a very similar story (the gun and ammo is worse than the Leopard 2, but it comes with the Tank Thermal Sight standard, which is a major advantage), in 1982 the West Germans put thermal sights on their Leopard 2s, in 1983 the Challenger (which I'll leave to Frangible to describe) rolls out, in 1984 the US upgrades the armour on their M1 Abrams with the M1IP version, and then we get to 1985 which is when fun things start happening: The M1A1 Abrams, which finally gives the US a 120 mm gun on their tank; The Leopard 2A4, which makes small upgrades to the Leopard 2's fire control system; The T-80U, which gives the T-80B a new turret, a more convenient fire-control system, and covers it in Kontakt-5 It's getting very hard to compare them, especially because they have advantages in different directions: the T-80U has numerous technological advantages (autoloader, Kontakt-5, GLATGM, profile, weight) over the M1A1 and Leopard 2A4 but lacks critical components like a thermal sight and is less survivable once penetrated. Basically, the 1980s are one big "eeeeeeeeeeeh *shrug*". LatwPIAT fucked around with this message at 01:15 on Dec 9, 2018 |
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Dec 9, 2018 01:12
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