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Cat Wings posted:Weren't there severe materiel issues in WW1 as well? Mainly with artillery shell production? Without modern weapons and PGMs, a war might devolve into static trench warfare again. There were material shortages of all sorts in WW1, on all sides. But yes, with the way trench warfare developed on the western front, production of artillery shells had to be increased dramatically.
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Nov 6, 2019 19:44
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bewbies posted:I think its a pretty questionable assumption that hostilities would cease just because PGM magazines are depleted. Most European countries at the start of WWI were sitting on stockpiles of a few 100k artillery shells, then the war began and they were firing 30k a day. life finds a way
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Nov 6, 2019 19:46
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wiegieman posted:So what happens when somebody man-in-the-middles the drone feeds and starts redirecting artillery on the owner's own troops? Do we switch back to kids with radios who know how to read maps and have hard to fake accents? Presumably the artillery unit has friendly units plotted on its map or at least some semblance of understanding about what the battlespace looks like and decides to not shoot them. Or the fire support coordinators who are approving missions from observers notice that before it even gets to the battery.
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Nov 6, 2019 19:46
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Dance Officer posted:There were material shortages of all sorts in WW1, on all sides. But yes, with the way trench warfare developed on the western front, production of artillery shells had to be increased dramatically. I guess it's also worth pointing out, don't know if that was what the post you quoted was hinting at though, that static trench warfare did not develop as a consequence of material shortages. Mostly it developed because armies did not yet have the motor transport and other elements necessary to sustain an offensive against an enemy operating on working interior lines and because digging in and entrenching massively reduced casualties from the ludicrous levels of the first couple of months of 1914 (which is a thing that somehow many people seem to have misconceptions about).
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Nov 6, 2019 20:13
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FastestGunAlive posted:Presumably the artillery unit has friendly units plotted on its map or at least some semblance of understanding about what the battlespace looks like and decides to not shoot them. Or the fire support coordinators who are approving missions from observers notice that before it even gets to the battery. Yeah, in hindsight it's naive if me to think there's not someone double checking fire missions, but still. I wouldn't trust telemetry from a drone that had an awacs in the same airspace.
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Nov 6, 2019 20:24
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Dance Officer posted:There were material shortages of all sorts in WW1, on all sides. But yes, with the way trench warfare developed on the western front, production of artillery shells had to be increased dramatically. Not just WW1. Pretty much every major war you care to name has some logistics officer pulling his hair out and a bunch of economics ministers making GBS threads their pants. The Germans went through a "rifle crisis" in 1941/2 where they were scraping out every single gun they could find in Europe to arm their military in the face of Barbarossa. Remember: in that case it's not just the front line troops, but the assorted rear area police units, third line reservists and security detachments, etc. Look at pictures of the sort of rear-area guys who did the rounding up for the Holocaust and you see a bewildering array of captured guns and poo poo dating from WW1. See also: the American Civil War. Setting aside the Confederacy's rather unique situation the Union was scrambling to get enough guns to arm people. Rapidly cranking up production everywhere, refurbing obsolete arms, and buying anything that wasn't nailed down in Europe. The Enfield P1853 is most famous as a gun in Confederate hands, but most of them were actually sold to the Union (yes, they were selling to both sides). Hell you even see this with the US in WW2, which is the platonic ideal of a rich country fighting a war with "gives no fucks" levels of cash and equipment. Early on there was a scramble for equipment and you see a lot of old and obsolete stuff in secondary theaters, especially the Pacific. m1903 Springfields, a gun most commonly associated with WW1, saw plenty of combat in the Pacific and N. Africa, for example.
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Nov 6, 2019 20:26
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FastestGunAlive posted:Presumably the artillery unit has friendly units plotted on its map or at least some semblance of understanding about what the battlespace looks like and decides to not shoot them. Or the fire support coordinators who are approving missions from observers notice that before it even gets to the battery. Calling fire directly on or danger close to own positions is a thing that has happened in real wars, though, so the risk still needs to be taken into account. And if they can break into your networks then who says they can't use some clever social engineering to convince everyone that there really is an urgent need to drop a bunch of shells on your troops who are being overrun by the enemy?
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Nov 6, 2019 20:28
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wiegieman posted:So what happens when somebody man-in-the-middles the drone feeds and starts redirecting artillery on the owner's own troops? Do we switch back to kids with radios who know how to read maps and have hard to fake accents? Meaconing like that is somewhere between hard and impossible, plus artillery software (US/NATO software at least) has a ton of integrated friendly protect/safety stuff. Spoofing or otherwise fooling the sensor/operator is a lot more plausible and has more or less the same effect.
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Nov 6, 2019 20:39
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Nenonen posted:Calling fire directly on or danger close to own positions is a thing that has happened in real wars, though, so the risk still needs to be taken into account. And if they can break into your networks then who says they can't use some clever social engineering to convince everyone that there really is an urgent need to drop a bunch of shells on your troops who are being overrun by the enemy? Sure it’s not impossible particularly in a troops in contact situation. Danger close calls often require a maneuver commander to personally get on the radio accept the risk verbally. The big thing stopping his from happening is that drones don’t pass missions directly to artillery, there’s at least one human being in between the two. Again, not impossible though. Edit: as an arty guy the community is mostly concerned with how to lessen its chances at detection, rather than getting spoofed. My biggest threat is being detected (by counter radar or electronic means) and getting struck FastestGunAlive fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Nov 6, 2019 |
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Nov 6, 2019 20:53
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chitoryu12 posted:While aerial artillery spotting isn't new, the ease with which it can be done is. The prevalence of cheap drones with live video feed on the commercial market has given even insurgents aerial spotting capability that was once restricted to proper militaries able to spend millions of dollars per platform. While a DJI can't get to the heights of a Predator or AWACS plane, it's also much smaller and harder to spot (they're about the size of a bird on radar, though their propellers make them recognizable if you can read the micro-Doppler signature) and can be deployed from any building or foxhole. They've also used drones for bomb dropping; again, not as powerful as a plane or artillery but you can now rapidly deploy a bomb powerful enough to take out a vehicle with relative accuracy in urban combat from anywhere. one of the recent developments in the ongoing low grade warfare in the Middle East has been the spread of mid-sized drones supplied by foreign sponsors. It's a relatively inexpensive and safe way to boost your proxies a lot, and its definitely helping to fuel wars that might otherwise burn themselves out. Libya in particular has seen extensive deployment drone fired weapons supplied by Turkey and the UAE.  A chinese built Wing Loong II drone. Aircraft like these have been used extensively by forces led by warlord Khalifa Haftar in strikes against Tripoli. In the recent fighting in Libya no combatant has been able to obtain air supremacy.  Turkish made Bayraktar. Similar drones were used by the Tripoli based GNA during their successful offensive towards Gharyan this spring.
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Nov 7, 2019 01:35
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The reviews for Midway are coming in. they seem to universally praise the visuals but the story is stupid and boring, which, fine I definitely won't see it in the theater but I'm kind of excited at the idea of good visuals for a movie like this
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Nov 7, 2019 04:31
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bewbies posted:The reviews for Midway are coming in. they seem to universally praise the visuals but the story is stupid and boring, which, fine Was I hallucinating when I saw a dauntless doing a hammerhead turn in one of the commercials for it, and am I correct in guessing that's Dick Best?
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Nov 7, 2019 08:21
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Very specific, but what were the differences between how Hinds and Apaches were to be used? Like, Hind seems like it's meant more for strafing runs like it's IL-2 again while Apaches are for Also, was the transport capacity of Hind ever a factor in their deployment?
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Nov 7, 2019 09:01
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Cessna posted:I don't know about "most," but the initial assault's troops weren't going to have an easy time of it. Pretty sure that's how a probable Iran war would go despite everyone shouting MILLENNIUM CHALLENGE
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Nov 7, 2019 09:16
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JcDent posted:Pretty sure that's how a probable Iran war would go despite everyone shouting MILLENNIUM CHALLENGE Occupation would be a nightmare and even the attack might be very costly in the sense that Iran's air defenses might just be numerous enough to blow up a trillion dollars worth of aircraft. And if they had even a couple of nukes, forget about it. It seems as if the unstated purpose of any small country wanting a nuke is "to use this to wipe out an American division or carrier group."
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Nov 7, 2019 09:26
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JcDent posted:Very specific, but what were the differences between how Hinds and Apaches were to be used? Yes, in the Soviet-Afghanistan boondoggle soviet Hinds lit up positions and dropped troops on them afterwards. That's the only case I can think of though, all other places they are used as escort for other transports.
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Nov 7, 2019 10:22
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Nessus posted:I had always vaguely thought the issue with an Iran war is that Iran has a lot more land and human resources than Iraq, so an invasion would be much harder and more costly if probably vaguely achievable... though you would also need to get Russia on your side, which would have, probably, costs. Iraq's population is centered around Tigris and Eufrates, whereas Iran has twice the population which is spread over several times larger area. Which, apart from the Khuzestan plain on the Iraqi border, is also way more mountainous than Iraq and more comparable to Afghanistan. There are also more large cities (Iraq has 2-3 cities with million people or more, Iran has 9), so unless technology allows for fully automatic killbot patrols by then the occupying force would have to be much larger than the 200k coalition troops in Iraq - just the logistic chain itself would be much heavier, and would then need to be guarded from ambushes, etc. 
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Nov 7, 2019 11:34
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JcDent posted:Pretty sure that's how a probable Iran war would go despite everyone shouting MILLENNIUM CHALLENGE It kind of depends in my view. If we are talking at sea and air then yes probably, S-300's are going to make the prospect rather unpleasant but there hasnt really been an IADS that has been created that has been able to keep a determined enough and large enough airforce out. If its on the ground in another country then maybe, though i would put money on the Iranians sticking around in the cities, they can find people idealogically committed enough to stay behind to die fairly easily and they know what they need to do in this situation. If its in the ground in Iran then its gonna be a bloody mess for a few reasons. The first is there is no obvious ground base from which an invasion can reasonably be launched. Turkey and Russia are right out. As is Azerbaijan. Iraq is shot through with Iranian influence enough to make the prospect deeply unnatractive if not impossible, Pakistan is a distinct maybe, the Sauds can lean on them pretty hard but theres an awful lot of Shia there who would potentially cause trouble. The other alternative is an amphibious invasion which is really difficult and likely to result in large casualties, then you are trying to supply a massive army off a beach-head, this is verging on impossible undertaking with scale it needs to be done, theres half a million Iranians under active arms that need to be dealt with followed by the call up of huge amounts of light infantry that are going to come for you and you can bet that the Iranians are going to thoroughly wreck any port that they think they might lose. The reason that Desert Storm was as (for want of a better word) clean as it was for the coalition is that all the fighting took place on the wide open desert and roads. Iraq abandoned Kuwait city before the coalition got there, if they had decided to make a fight of it then suddenly we are doing city clearance, which Iraq will eventually lose but theres going to be an unavoidably large number of dead and wounded. If you are invading Iran you are taking it city by city because the only other alternative is to sit there and starve them out which isnt going to fly for fairly self evident reasons. Relevant to that point is that the Iraqi soldiers were not particularly inclined to fight and die for Kuwait, a place that a huge quantity of them felt they had no place being. If you are invading Iran then you are discarding the notion for your enemy that they dont have any need to fight, these are people who are very willing to undergo incredible hardship and likelihood of death for their country as shown previously and they are not going to make it easy. Once you get off the beach you have to go through the Zagos mountains which is going to be distinctly unpleasent to achieve before having to spread out into Iran proper and suddenly you are needing millions of soldiers to actually physically occupy all this area, if you dont have enough then you are going to start taking a lot of irregular attacks in the rear. I just cannot imagine any professional soldier coming up with a plan they can reccomend. I have a strong feeling that all the Iran hawks who want this imagine that The People Will Rise Up, which they really wont, they never do, there havent been any people of sufficient influence of that mind in Iran since the early 80's. All this requires a call up of military force probably not seen since Vietnam, you need to call up every national guardsman you can and they will be out there for years which makes it even more politically untenable. I think the only realistic way to prosecute a war against Iran is to basically siege the country. Cut off the ports, bomb their infrastructure. This opens you up to diplomatic efforts because you are going to start killing civillians both directly and by cutting off essential imports. You arent going to break the Iranian will that way though because the people in charge will starve last. You are also going to be taking large amounts of terrorist attacks anywhere they can reach and missile attacks in every nation that supports you. Probably enough in Israel that they feel obliged to get involved in some way which really fucks up the diplomatic side of things in the middle east. At that point you are almost definitely better off just doing what you are doing now and just get out the really big sanctions stick and maybe have the Israelis deniably bomb their nuclear facilities. Its just a pretty much unmanageable mess. Polyakov fucked around with this message at 11:55 on Nov 7, 2019 |
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Nov 7, 2019 11:48
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Don't forget that unlike Iraq, Iran does have a navy, including some fairly decent submarines. This might not let them go directly take on a carrier battlegroup, but it could let them do significant economic damage and maybe hit at logistics.
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Nov 7, 2019 12:44
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Keeping up last months theme old military history related finds from last month, they found Charles-Etienne Gudin.
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Nov 7, 2019 12:50
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Last time there was a successful invasion of Iran, they got hit from both the north and south and the army folded like a house of cards, probably because they didn't want to die for some idiot Shah. I assume that war hawks figure that will happen again, without taking into consideration all the political changes since 1942.
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Nov 7, 2019 14:16
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sullat posted:Last time there was a successful invasion of Iran, they got hit from both the north and south and the army folded like a house of cards, probably because they didn't want to die for some idiot Shah. It's fascinating how many times the neocons just decided they didn't like the numbers the US military was giving them prior to the 2003 invasion and told them to "do more with less" like they were some mid level manager in an IT firm.
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Nov 7, 2019 15:00
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bewbies posted:The reviews for Midway are coming in. they seem to universally praise the visuals but the story is stupid and boring, which, fine So basically WWII by Michael Bay. But is actually as visually impressive as Bayhem, or just a cheap imitation of Bayhem?
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Nov 7, 2019 15:09
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sullat posted:Last time there was a successful invasion of Iran, they got hit from both the north and south and the army folded like a house of cards, probably because they didn't want to die for some idiot Shah. honestly the only way i see it even remotely happening is if there's another european war and we do the same thing to Iran the Allies did in WW2. and even then that's basically a WW3 scenario so it's all a little bit academic
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Nov 7, 2019 15:20
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Cat Army 
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Iran has taken the deterrence-by-punishment thing to its logical conclusion, and they've done a pretty solid job of it. I do think a lot of westerners tend to miss just how many politically marginalized, liberal minded young folk there are there though.
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Nov 7, 2019 15:33
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bewbies posted:Iran has taken the deterrence-by-punishment thing to its logical conclusion, and they've done a pretty solid job of it. I don't think they're forgotten, the neocons assure us they will greet our liberation armies with open arms. I think the last few decades have taught those of us capable of learning that invading or bombing or punishing a country is the easiest way to push potential allies away.
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Nov 7, 2019 17:09
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According to my dad, my nazi grandpa's number one criticism of his son marrying a franco-yankee jewess was the bombings of Germany. (He immigrated to Chicago and had very strong opinions about the poles and jews there so let me clarify that grandpa was a horrible unrepentant nazi. Somehow though, being jewish but western was ok to him, but tommy and yankee bombs were unforgivable.) But I'm sure this time bombing all the cities will make everyone love the invaders. Edgar Allen Ho fucked around with this message at 17:35 on Nov 7, 2019 |
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Nov 7, 2019 17:20
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MikeCrotch posted:It's fascinating how many times the neocons just decided they didn't like the numbers the US military was giving them prior to the 2003 invasion and told them to "do more with less" like they were some mid level manager in an IT firm. Most of those same neocons started out as underlings of Bob McNamara, who pretty much single-handedly invented the more with less management style when he was at Ford.
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Nov 7, 2019 17:28
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Terrifying Effigies posted:Most of those same neocons started out as underlings of Bob McNamara, who pretty much single-handedly invented the more with less management style when he was at Ford. You are mistaken. Most of them got their start in the Nixon and Reagan administration which succeeded the Johnson Administration in which McNamara was the SecDef. The Neocon gang (Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Cheney) notably so, largely speaking the major ones all started as political operatives rather than in the private sector. They were largely all too young to work for McNamara as they were exiting university about the same time as McNamara was leaving office. There is an awful lot to blame McNamara for, but this isnt really one of those things.
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Nov 7, 2019 17:54
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Was the reason for rumsfeld’s more with less a combination of 1. wanting to continue (from the gulf war) proving that just being technologically superior and having lots of SOF was all the military needed. and 2. grossly misreading what the post-war phase would look like with a unified, liberated Iraq ?
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Nov 7, 2019 18:10
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Speaking of McNamara, this talk really re-contextualizes Forrest Gump. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_J2VwFDV4-g
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Nov 7, 2019 18:40
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JcDent posted:Very specific, but what were the differences between how Hinds and Apaches were to be used? My general impression of how this was supposed to work from looking at organizational structures and what people are saying about their deployment is that the Apache was designed and used primarily as a rapid-reaction mobile reserve: its purpose is to rush in to reinforce or counterattack against an attempted Soviet breakthrough. The Mi-24, meanwhile, is designed to fit the Soviet view of what a gunship is, which makes it an almost strategic asset for a large-scale assault. It's also worth keeping in mind that the Apache and Mi-24 are built to face their respective armies. The Apache was designed for pop-up attacks in part because when it comes to killing helicopters, the Warsaw Pact was a very hostile hedgehog, with dedicated AAA weapons as far down as the platoon level. This is the kind of environment that encourages minimizing exposure through pop-up attacks. NATO, meanwhile, didn't have quite the same level of AAA saturation, which gives the Mi-24 a relatively freer reign. Though it's worth keeping in mind that the Soviet and American views of what gunships are comprise a combination of multiple needs: the primary purpose of the Apache is as a divisional asset for Tank/Mechanized/Infantry divisions, but it was also the strike arm of Airborne and Air Assault divisions, and the USMC had their own helicopter needs. Likewise, the Soviet Army organized helicopter units at the army and front level for large-scale maneuvers and, to a lesser degree, seconding/attaching to Tank/Motor-Rifle divisions, while the VDV would need them to serve as their airborne IFVs for assault-landing troops, and the Navy would need them to support large-scale landings and land airborne shock troops.) EDIT: Professional Cold War Soviet military consultant acquaintance of mine says that the Soviet Union really only used the Mi-24 as a troop transport in recce brigades. In Afghanistan it was used early in the war to land recce patrols, or as an ad-hoc transport if some people needed a lift to a base, but it wasn't really used much as a troop transport for regular troops. This matches with my own understanding that is was primarily the Mi-8 that was used as an assault transport. LatwPIAT fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Nov 7, 2019 |
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Nov 7, 2019 18:46
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SimonCat posted:Speaking of McNamara, this talk really re-contextualizes Forrest Gump. Yeah the book version of that is incredibly depressing. It also re-contextualizes Private Pyle. "McNamara's Folly: The Use of Low-IQ Troops in the Vietnam War" https://www.amazon.com/McNamaras-Fo...k/dp/B0108H60MG EDIT: this project was literally evil and McNamara would be in hell for it right now if he wasn't already there from the Vietnam War overall. ulmont fucked around with this message at 19:24 on Nov 7, 2019 |
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Nov 7, 2019 19:12
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McNamara's major flaw was that he was obsessed with quantifying everything, and refused to accept evidence that couldn't be put in the form of data. While this wasn't a bad strategy for planning & analysis of strategic bombing campaigns, it was for some reason not so great when trying to win a war that relied on convincing the population you were on their side.
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Nov 7, 2019 19:27
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FastestGunAlive posted:Was the reason for rumsfeld’s more with less a combination of 1. wanting to continue (from the gulf war) proving that just being technologically superior and having lots of SOF was all the military needed. and 2. grossly misreading what the post-war phase would look like with a unified, liberated Iraq ? The reason is, more or less, that he didn't give a poo poo. Attacking Iraq had been on the republican hawks wish list since Bush sr. and they didn't really care what happened afterwards - Of course, misreading the entire situation was also a heavy factor, one exarcabated by the fact that Rumsfeld refused to listen to any member of the CIA or State Dept. who knew what the situation on the ground was like.
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Nov 7, 2019 19:27
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ulmont posted:Yeah the book version of that is incredibly depressing. It also re-contextualizes Private Pyle. On the other hand, I'm sympathetic to McNamara for actually seeming to have realized his errors; while Rumsfeld remains a dick.
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Nov 7, 2019 21:14
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I am not convinced that Robert McNamara's Contrition was just covering his legacy.
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Nov 7, 2019 21:19
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Raenir Salazar posted:On the other hand, I'm sympathetic to McNamara for actually seeming to have realized his errors; while Rumsfeld remains a dick. Plus McNamara introduced the seat belt into cars at Ford as well as other safety features so at least you can say he saved millions of lives in between strategic bomber analysis and Project 100,000
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Nov 7, 2019 21:20
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You drive to work with the car you've got, not the car you want.
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Nov 7, 2019 22:03
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SimonCat posted:I am not convinced that Robert McNamara's Contrition was just covering his legacy. 
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Nov 7, 2019 22:03
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