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new stealth bomber drops this week b-21 raider
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Dec 3, 2022 02:42
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Real hurthling! posted:new stealth bomber drops this week Who needs infrastructure when you can end the world. You know with the persistence of accepting Nazi myths about the war, maybe poo poo like this is a bad idea 
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Dec 3, 2022 06:47
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KomradeX posted:You know with the persistence of accepting Nazi myths about the war, maybe poo poo like this is a bad idea it's only a matter of time before new revisionist history books hit the shelfs arguing that the soviet union can only fight like it's enemy at the gates
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Dec 3, 2022 06:59
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Danann posted:it's only a matter of time before new revisionist history books hit the shelfs arguing that the soviet union can only fight like it's enemy at the gates quote:The German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, began a war that lasted nearly four years and created by far the bloodiest theater in World War II. In the conventional narrative of this war, Hitler was defeated by Stalin because, like Napoleon, he underestimated the size and resources of his enemy. In fact, says historian John Mosier, Hitler came very close to winning and lost only because of the intervention of the western Allies. Stalin’s great triumph was not winning the war, but establishing the prevailing interpretation of the war. The Great Patriotic War, as it is known in Russia, would eventually prove fatal, setting in motion events that would culminate in the collapse of the Soviet Union.
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Dec 3, 2022 07:03
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I would buy t-34 spec slippers. betcha that's what they coulda been. tiger tank slippers would be shaped for like I dunno, the kingpin. those tanks were wacky
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Dec 3, 2022 07:04
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Danann posted:it's only a matter of time before new revisionist history books hit the shelfs arguing that the soviet union can only fight like it's enemy at the gates Do they really need new ones? The movies 20 years old and people still think that was an accurate picture of it and every game set on the Eastern front rips from it. I wonder how far we are from COD doing a level on the Eastern front where your the Germans facing down the genocidal Russians. Christ we already had Battlefield V give you a story mission playing the last Tiger tank and how honorable they were. Which man Garth Ennis is the only person to have donea storyline like that right
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Dec 3, 2022 07:10
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Prof. John Mosier earned his Ph.D. at Tulane University in 1968, where he held a double fellowship in English and Music and wrote a dissertation on the relationship between historiography and epic poetry i will rule the academy with an iron fist. only historians with graduate degrees in history will be allowed to publish pop history Raskolnikov38 has issued a correction as of 07:18 on Dec 3, 2022 |
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Dec 3, 2022 07:13
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KomradeX posted:Who needs infrastructure when you can end the world. to be the slightest bit fair to bovington it’s specially of the tiger tank in their collection which is noteworthy for being the only one still running
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Dec 3, 2022 07:20
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waiting for the turboweeb second generation john ringo fans to make a scifi novel about why they had to use the last tiger tank at that one collection
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Dec 3, 2022 07:55
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I’ve met John Ringo. was not impressed.
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Dec 3, 2022 08:00
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Raskolnikov38 posted:Prof. John Mosier earned his Ph.D. at Tulane University in 1968, where he held a double fellowship in English and Music and wrote a dissertation on the relationship between historiography and epic poetry It's not like historians are any better at analysing history than anyone else. They never tought me the secret phychohistorical methods during my degree anyway. It's just "read these old books then post about it" anyone can do that
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Dec 3, 2022 13:05
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Rutibex posted:It's not like historians are any better at analysing history than anyone else. They never tought me the secret phychohistorical methods during my degree anyway. It's just "read these old books then post about it" anyone can do that I got to say amateur historians without a background in some type of social science degree are usually awful from experience. Ardennes has issued a correction as of 13:27 on Dec 3, 2022 |
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Dec 3, 2022 13:21
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ughhhh posted:There was that video the DoD put out everywhere for a while to show the first ever medal of honor action to be recorded on camera of high speed low drag tier one operators. All I saw was some dudes firing wildly Rambo style while forgetting one of their own and running away. Oh and the caption on the videos says there are dozens of bad guys off camera being bad. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PL1UUCrB6JE Lone Survivor tried to make it look heroic but one of the SEALs pulls a pistol on the aircrew so even in the hagiography they’re psychos lol
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Dec 3, 2022 13:53
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Ardennes posted:I got to say amateur historians without a background in some type of social science degree are usually awful from experience. Hardcore History should be exhibit A on this
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Dec 3, 2022 14:18
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Rutibex posted:It's not like historians are any better at analysing history than anyone else. They never tought me the secret phychohistorical methods during my degree anyway. It's just "read these old books then post about it" anyone can do that hey I don’t come down to where they work and slap the dicks out of their mouths about Dickensian bullshit so stay out of my lane
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Dec 3, 2022 15:03
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Ardennes posted:I got to say amateur historians without a background in some type of social science degree are usually awful from experience. I am a professional historian and there may be nothing I dread more in a casual social situation than someone telling me they're interested in history.
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Dec 3, 2022 16:06
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vyelkin posted:I am a professional historian and there may be nothing I dread more in a casual social situation than someone telling me they're interested in history. Same, minus the professional part. Was amateur history ever people translating Bede and pouring over maps of Waterloo in their study or was it always kind of this? I thought autodidacts and dilettantes would be a little more romantic than whatever Wehrmacht apologia has percolated around war games and pop military history.
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Dec 3, 2022 16:18
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X-Posting from Ukraine thread because this applies to the US as well: We’ve talked before about the state of Western Militaries, with the social contract being broken, erosion of benefits, stagnant pay, abuse and harassment and general low morale. The CAF is 10k pers short with no signs of that changing. Well I want to point out that liberalism cannot offer solutions to the problems it creates. An article came out that I spent my entire day in meetings about with more to come: The Canadian Armed Forces are heading for a Titanic collapse Now I want to preface that I agree with nearly all of the problems. The solutions, to turn the military into essentially a private sector corporate job with no tradition and esprit de corps, to me illustrate the alienating nature of liberalism. It’s not about inspiring belief or belonging or giving something soldiers to die for and instead trying to obfuscate that as much as possible and turn the military into a job - the implicit part is that no meaning can be expected from it, no duty or purpose, and in exchange the state will offer nothing more than a paycheque: “Marching in lines, stamping feet on parade grounds and keeping with traditional uniforms – these should also be done away with. These rituals are simply not relevant to the citizens who must make up the force of the future; they reflect the reality that Canada’s military is stuck in the past.” “Nobody wants to work in an old, tired organization that draws its culture and values from a museum; people want to be part of an agile organization that rewards modern values. The Canadian Armed Forces needs to abandon its sternward perspective on legacy force structure and missions – or it won’t be able to bail out the sinking ship.” Without getting into the deep body of literature on the subject, close order drill, marching, uniforms, these all have a social purpose, and my theory here is that because liberalism doesn’t conceive of things socially but individually they see harebrained schemes like this as a solution to endemic problems instead of a further erosion of what soldiering means. Deep, felt, social, meaning is something disappearing from all areas of our society but again going back to the Egyptian Old Kingdom, militaries need these things to function. I’m curious what the feeling is here because people on the left have observed this cultural shift, with the officer corps becoming more like a corporate PMC and enlisted Operator Culture becoming more about individual advancement and a sort of professional athlete ethos. I get why the initial reaction from left leaning people is “who cares?” and “marching is dumb”, but my point is that if liberalisms alienating impulses and disconnection from social meaning have penetrated to something so essential as the functioning of the state - in preference to the basic social contract of improving material conditions: pay, benefits, housing, education, pensions, an end to workplace abuse - this line of thinking permeates all levels of decision making.
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Dec 3, 2022 17:04
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I'm far from a military historian but my impression has been that there are generally three ways to make people fight in a war or more generally serve in the military. 1) Force them through some kind of conscription or, historically, forced labour system like the Janissaries. 2) Pay them enough that professional soldiering is preferable to other options, which can cost a lot or a little depending on the state of your society and economy. 3) Inspire them to want to fight for a cause, like nationalism or religion. All of these have waxed and waned in different societies over time, and often the people in charge try to combine more than one. You might conscript people but then also have to pay them enough that they don't desert or sell their rifles on the black market, and while you're at it you try to inspire them to think that it's good and right to fight and die for their country. But the structures vary from place to place. Look, for instance, at the issues in the Russian military over the course of the Ukraine war and you can see that neither 2 nor 3 was sufficient and so in the end when their manpower needs got too great they went back to just forcing people to fight. I think it is also true that each one of these as a primary cause has different effects on the state of one's military and one's society. The reduction of numbers in Western militaries and aversion to mass casualties has contributed to the desire for technological wonderweapons as force multipliers that keep soldiers safe from harm but are more often than not highly expensive boondoggles. Over-reliance on recruiting people as a job leads to people saying things like "we can't solve poverty because then no one will join the military." Conscription without pay or inspiration can lead to a large but demoralized and ineffective military rife with corruption. And so on. I think the issue you're identifying is that Western militaries are currently built around (2) but have problems like recruiting shortfalls, and the answer the reformers are settling on is to just do more of (2): corporatize the military because the assumption is that (2) is the way to go but the military isn't sufficiently preferable to other options, so it should shift towards the more preferable options to attract more people. It's a business just like any other, competing for employees in a free labour market, so the answer is to increase wages, offer perks, manage work-life balance, do away with parts of the job people dislike and make them want to not join or stay in the military, and so on. It is a liberal response to the problem but I think that's not new or unique. The neoliberal state is all about privatization and corporatization, and that was already true of the military, just look at the rise of PMCs and contract personnel in support roles - the military budget increasingly becomes a clearinghouse for military spending to go to private providers of military services. Corporatizing the remaining military personnel and their work structures is a continuation of existing trends that reflects the prevailing liberal/neoliberal sentiments of our current institutions but also reflects that Western militaries have more or less given up on conscription and increasingly shy away from inspiration (religion is passe and nationalism is gauche) so their only remaining option is to pay people and make military jobs as easy as possible, even if as a side effect that erodes the fighting capacities of the military.
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Dec 3, 2022 17:30
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if soldiering is ‘just a job’ to you then you’re a mercenary at best.
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Dec 3, 2022 17:58
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Those were some really great observations, thanks. I think you're onto something with the 3 motivations for service and how the impulse towards 2 makes sense given where we are as a society, and syncs well with the goals of the MIC. Seeing it as part of a larger process like that, it makes sense why they would go down that route, because stirring up a Canadian Nationalism linked to military service is not really an option for them now, nor is conscription. It might also explain why the military had similar issues in the "Decade of Darkness" in the 90's, the same way the US military did, only for 9/11 to create enough of a current of patriotism in society to kick the can down the road for a decade and a half.
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Dec 3, 2022 18:10
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Remulak posted:if soldiering is ‘just a job’ to you then you’re a mercenary at best. one of the things that really stuck with me from The Prince was Machiavelli's contempt for mercenaries; hiring them is much easier than building an army and (at least for Renaissance era Italian city-states) cheaper but they're never to be trusted to risk their lives if the odds aren't heavily in their favor, to say nothing of trusting them to not leave you with your rear end hanging in the wind if someone offers them a better offer or even a simple bribe
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Dec 3, 2022 18:21
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did any city states who hired mercenaries didn’t take hostages to ensure loyalty? seems like a solvable problem
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Dec 3, 2022 18:38
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Frosted Flake posted:X-Posting from Ukraine thread because this applies to the US as well: To me it sounss like another step on the road of Techno-feudalism. As mass politics needs to die in order that no alternative to neoliberalism can present itself so to must one of the core pilliars of what brought about mass politics must go a sense of unifying force with in the military. Instead even the national soliders themselves must see themselves as little more than Condottieri.
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Dec 3, 2022 18:40
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Frosted Flake posted:“Marching in lines, stamping feet on parade grounds and keeping with traditional uniforms – these should also be done away with. These rituals are simply not relevant to the citizens who must make up the force of the future; they reflect the reality that Canada’s military is stuck in the past.” lmao that’s dire. Jesus Canada. let’s separate the military from its origin myths is some real galaxy brain. and that thesis is stupid. people do want to work for organizations with deep historical ties and connections to meaning and that do service to society. those are huge massively motivating things.
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Dec 4, 2022 02:49
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All the suck now more corporate!
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Dec 4, 2022 02:54
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Bar Ran Dun posted:lmao that’s dire. Jesus Canada.  I can understand why people hoped that doing away these particular values, or at least the forms they were expressed as, would make society better. The problem is that no real replacement was offered, no clearly articulated beliefs took their place.  It kills me that we inherited all of the “WASP set of values” designed to protect class structures but none of the rest. It makes sense, I can understand the how and why, but it’s inconceivable to imagine the RCMP - or any government institution - giving people farms at the end of their terms of service but very easy to imagine them cracking down on indigenous people, which of course they have continued to do.  This was written in 1987, and at times it feels like it came from a different planet. There’s no way to get to an idealized RCMP that continuously raises standards, provides paid education, and considers civil rights something essential to drill into recruits if it has nothing to offer anyone who cares about those things. Frosted Flake has issued a correction as of 03:09 on Dec 4, 2022 |
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Dec 4, 2022 03:02
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again why does a resource-extraction american colony needs an army besides murdering brown people as a sidekick
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Dec 4, 2022 03:32
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Palladium posted:again why does a resource-extraction american colony needs an army besides murdering brown people as a sidekick To be more than a resource extraction American colony.
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Dec 4, 2022 03:35
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Frosted Flake posted:To be more than a resource extraction American colony. good luck when your economy is that and neoliberal landlordism
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Dec 4, 2022 04:04
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Frosted Flake posted:To be more than a resource extraction American colony. You'd neee a national arms industry for that Canada chose its colonial yoke a long time ago, I guess you cN just use mining corporations to pass the pain alonf to Africa
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Dec 4, 2022 04:21
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https://redsails.org/losurdo-on-the-secret-report/How to Cast a God into Hell: The Khrushchev Report (2008) posted:To discredit Stalin, Khrushchev stresses the spectacular initial victories of the invading armies, but leaves out the predictions made at the time by the West. After the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia and the entrance of the Wehrmacht into Prague, Lord Halifax continued to reject the idea of a rapprochement between England and the USSR, resorting to the following argument: it didn’t make sense to ally with a country whose armed forces were “insignificant.” [40] On the eve of Operation Barbarossa, or at the moment when it’s unleashed, the British secret services operated on “unanimous” reports: “If a German-Soviet war should come the Soviet Union will be liquidated within eight to ten weeks”; [41] the advisor of U.S. Secretary of State (Henry L. Stimson) had predicted on 23 June that it would all be over within one to three months. [42] Moreover, the Wehrmacht’s lightning-fast breakthrough — as observed in our days by an illustrious scholar of military history — is easily explained by geography: man people were bad at this prediction thing in the 1940s flash forward 80 years later: 
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Dec 4, 2022 08:45
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Marching on a parade ground and singing songs does seem a bit superfluous but perhaps it is essential even in the 21st century.
palindrome has issued a correction as of 10:27 on Dec 4, 2022 |
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Dec 4, 2022 10:15
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palindrome posted:Marching on a parade ground and singing songs does seem a bit superfluous but perhaps it is essential even in the 21st century. 20 years later and I still fondly remember the times I spent as a kid working in the village fields with the whole village while people sang in unison. That wasn't even anything related to political organization or military discipline. It was just fun and built relations with a very large family.
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Dec 4, 2022 10:54
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yeah it loving owns, doing poo poo together with people you even slightly relate to rules, humans love it, it's why watching sports with a crowd is so much more fulfilling than doing the same thing alone in your living room. there's really no substitute for working together to accomplish a goal even if it's something superficial like marching good in a parade
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Dec 4, 2022 20:37
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https://twitter.com/AnnQuann/status/1597900360303382529 duel-wield grenade launchers 
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Dec 4, 2022 22:18
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https://twitter.com/zhao_dashuai/status/1599295712512344065 tfw us marines are becoming a glorified artillery battery just as china rolls out the killer robot tanks
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Dec 5, 2022 06:27
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that looks like it was made in minecraft. the wheels aren't even round!
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Dec 5, 2022 06:35
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lol the chinese are getting closer to creating Dr. Claws transforming super car
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Dec 5, 2022 09:51
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china winning the war for boondoggles lately
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Dec 6, 2022 13:04
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