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I've had an idea knocking around in my head for the last few years that the best way to unsure your armed forces are ready for a big conflict is to constantly be engaged in small ones so you can keep a share of the army as veterans so that they're able to help the raw recruits when they come in. Training from a veteran is good, but not the same as being a veteran. Part of the idea is (And I may be completely mangling the original idea) is from Hey Gal briefly mentioning the Renaissance French army. It takes 3 Veterans to train 7 recruits. The exact numbers aren't important, but you need veterans to help prepare recruits, especially in a major war. This being a more or less universal concept. I ought to check On War to see if anything like this is mentioned. Of course, if war changes completely, IE: Going from Napoleonic Warfare to whatever the gently caress you call the Austro-Prussian War, a lot of this disappears. But the fighting experience of your standard infantry doesn't seem to have changed much since Automatic Weaponry became the norm for everyone, arguably even before that.
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Sep 8, 2017 00:12
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Sep 8, 2017 00:14
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Hazzard posted:I've had an idea knocking around in my head for the last few years that the best way to unsure your armed forces are ready for a big conflict is to constantly be engaged in small ones so you can keep a share of the army as veterans so that they're able to help the raw recruits when they come in. Training from a veteran is good, but not the same as being a veteran. In practice this isn't as awesome as you think. You end up burning out your army really badly. Both Napoleon and our current set of Forever Wars are good examples of this. The US military would arguably be a lot better off if 15+ years of conflict didn't give them an insane ops tempo, insane retention problems, and constant stream of deferred training and maintenance. It also doesn't help that you end up working on the war you're fighting not the one you might have to fight. We're really good at counterinsurgency poo poo right now, but observers in the Ukraine have been browning their shorts at how unprepared we would be for that kind of conflict. We'd be way better off with 15 years of investing in training and equipment rather than patrolling lovely neighborhoods looking for IEDs.
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Sep 8, 2017 00:26
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Disinterested posted:The Israelis outnumbered them though, since the Arab nations attacked one after the other, giving the Israelis numerical superiority in each fight. Cyrano4747 posted:We're really good at counterinsurgency poo poo right now,
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Sep 8, 2017 00:32
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Cyrano4747 posted:It also doesn't help that you end up working on the war you're fighting not the one you might have to fight. We're really good at counterinsurgency poo poo right now, but observers in the Ukraine have been browning their shorts at how unprepared we would be for that kind of conflict. We'd be way better off with 15 years of investing in training and equipment rather than patrolling lovely neighborhoods looking for IEDs. Yeah I was gonna say this, when you look at what the US went into the Iraq war with and what they have now, so much of the really noticeable developments in vehicle technology especially have been explicitly counterinsurgency and occupation. The MRAP as a concept basically didn't exist beforehand as an example, and so much effort has been put into increasing crew and personnel survivability in a war that really isn't a dangerous one for the US, like, on a national level, but is very politically awkward, that the doctrines and equipment involved probably wouldn't be much use in a full scale shooting war with a major power or even somewhere with a more competent, or larger army than Iraq had or what the militias the US are fighting now has available. The goal of the war being fought is to try to win without committing anything major because major military commitments are politically untenable at the moment, that would likely change in the case of a major military conflict between forces with greater equivalence. Arquinsiel posted:I mean... no? Not really? This kind of just reinforces your core point, but the US military is very not good at all at counterinsurgency and at best can just keep a lid on the boiling pot which boils over the second it leaves. Also that, the core mission of trying to minimise the political cost of the war arguably prevents the allocation of resources, and lives, required to actually properly pacify anywhere the US is fighting in at present. See also the marvellous UK strategy of slinging bombs everywhere to allegedly prevent terrorism and bring peace in Syria, which may bear fruit once every square inch of the country is replaced with a crater, but probably not before. A lot of the current military adventurism is not sufficiently invested to produce the stated desired effect, and that lack of investment also makes for a very non-applicable set of skills in the case that a major military investment is required. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 00:39 on Sep 8, 2017 |
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Sep 8, 2017 00:35
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Arquinsiel posted:I'd argue that the lack of co-ordination is exactly the kind of training disparity that we're looking for here. Numerical advantage and technical parity squandered due to poor co-ordination, leadership, communication etc. So then the trick is to never leave, problem solved.
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Sep 8, 2017 00:36
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Ensign Expendable posted:So then the trick is to never leave, problem solved. I mean, kinda? If you invade somewhere and want to effect a permanent change in its disposition you need a shitload of investment of time and resources to actually do that. It generally involves decades of occupation and the integration of the political apparatus of the territory into the ruling polity of the occupying state. And even then it doesn't always take. Nationalism and old ideas about where the line on the map goes and who lives on this side of it, die hard. Personally I'd take it as a suggestion that interventionism is rarely productive but then I've never seen the point in it.
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Sep 8, 2017 00:43
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OwlFancier posted:See also the marvellous UK strategy of slinging bombs everywhere to allegedly prevent terrorism and bring peace in Syria, which may bear fruit once every square inch of the country is replaced with a crater, but probably not before. A lot of the current military adventurism is not sufficiently invested to produce the stated desired effect, and that lack of investment also makes for a very non-applicable set of skills in the case that a major military investment is required.
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Sep 8, 2017 01:01
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Arquinsiel posted:I'm pretty sure that this strategy is partially due to not wanting to get sucked into yet another US endless war, but also to look like they're totally up for it should POTUS N ask for one so they can keep the "special relationship" alive. I'm personally not ruling out the people in charge being bloody stupid and actually thinking it's helping given some of the nonsense they said during the debate on it, but yes your suggestion could be a slightly more impressive alternative justification.
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Sep 8, 2017 01:28
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OwlFancier posted:I'm personally not ruling out the people in charge being bloody stupid and actually thinking it's helping given some of the nonsense they said during the debate on it, but yes your suggestion could be a slightly more impressive alternative justification.
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Sep 8, 2017 01:36
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Arquinsiel posted:I'd argue that the lack of co-ordination is exactly the kind of training disparity that we're looking for here. Numerical advantage and technical parity squandered due to poor co-ordination, leadership, communication etc. Except we're not talking about Israel vs one army, but Israel vs many, where the principle reason the allies didn't fight together is they each wanted to scupper the other's political and territorial ambitions in Israel. That's more of a political failure than anything.
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Sep 8, 2017 02:17
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Hazzard posted:I've had an idea knocking around in my head for the last few years that the best way to unsure your armed forces are ready for a big conflict is to constantly be engaged in small ones so you can keep a share of the army as veterans so that they're able to help the raw recruits when they come in. Training from a veteran is good, but not the same as being a veteran. Fighting a war costs an absurd amount of money.
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Sep 8, 2017 02:39
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I can't sleep, so here's a photo of the sort of stuff the 369 was into: http://bandenkampf.blogspot.rs/2017/09/bk0253.html That girl's last words were to call them a pack of dogs who would be brought to justice by the people. She was correct. edit: And for some serious wtf, check this out: http://bandenkampf.blogspot.rs/2017/08/bk0241.html my dad fucked around with this message at 03:28 on Sep 8, 2017 |
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Sep 8, 2017 03:03
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NAZIs are gonna NAZI. Celebrating that kind of poo poo tells everyone exactly what kind of person you are. OwlFancier posted:I mean, kinda? If you invade somewhere and want to effect a permanent change in its disposition you need a shitload of investment of time and resources to actually do that. It generally involves decades of occupation and the integration of the political apparatus of the territory into the ruling polity of the occupying state. And even then it doesn't always take. Nationalism and old ideas about where the line on the map goes and who lives on this side of it, die hard. I think its interesting that before WWII the US occupied almost a dozen Latin American states, occupying some for many years and fighting some really serious insurgencies, in Haiti especially, and almost all of them were completely successful in terms of accomplishing their objectives. Now obviously the world changed a lot after WWII in many ways that probably disadvantaged invaders. Yet American actions in places like Nicaragua differed fundamentally from more recent conflicts. They were enacted with very clear and limited objectives, usually to do with paying back foreign debts. The occupying forces worked within the local political system rather than trying to reinvent them from the bottom up. I wonder how the American experience in the Caribbean influenced American strategy during the occupation of Japan and Germany. I don't think any of the weaknesses of recent American occupations can really be attributed to military failing, except insofar as the American military has failed to deliver the impossible. Rather the United States has failed to develop the political strategy and tactics necessarily to fulfill the goals of the occupation. If we look at Vietnam in the 1960s, North and South Vietnam had roughly equal populations and similar sized economies. Yet South Vietnam was helpless without US support. Winning these wars isn't about kill counts, you have to build systems that can function without foreign support and actually resolve the tensions creating conflict. Today Afghanistan and Somalia are probably the most corrupt governments in the world. Both have been under foreign military occupation for over 10 years and have received many billions in aid for institution building and to support good governance. Yet for example the Somali government remains utterly defenseless without foreign military backing. The UN still releases upbeat progress assessments on a quarterly basis reporting how this time no really guys they're seriously going to crack down on ghost soldiers and phantom police, without any difference ever appearing. Today I don't think there is any real coherent strategy for state building. The current technique of just throwing money at the problem and hoping the problems just go away actively makes these problems worse by encouraging corruption in theoretically independent institutions over which funders have little leverage.
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Sep 8, 2017 05:36
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369th's wiki is pretty detailed, except for when it comes to this:Wiki posted:During April 1942 four soldiers of the regiment were sentenced to death and shot while many others were sentenced to imprisonment of between 2–10 years. Why did it happen? Shrug.
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Sep 8, 2017 05:52
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StashAugustine posted:I think I've heard this as a joke about Polish accents I first heard this one using Minneapolis/American Central North (aka Swedish-American) accents. You know, the "yaa suuuure" people.
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Sep 8, 2017 07:34
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Disinterested posted:Except we're not talking about Israel vs one army, but Israel vs many, where the principle reason the allies didn't fight together is they each wanted to scupper the other's political and territorial ambitions in Israel. That's more of a political failure than anything.
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Sep 8, 2017 10:09
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This strip from 1941 seemed thread appropriate... 
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Sep 8, 2017 11:35
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Tekopo posted:Did they mud test an owen smg? I'm really interested to see if it's actually as mud resistant as claims suggest. This newsreel shows the Owen being dipped in mud and then fired (mud from 0:38): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23M6H_rec6Y
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Sep 8, 2017 11:37
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my dad, I want to thank you for your well written post on a part of the world that the Americans and Brits in this thread usually don't hear about. And thank you for exploring the heroism of those anti-Ustashe/anti-Nazi Croats. If someone is going to kill or hurt you because of the ethnic group they've decided you belong to, the choice is clear. If someone is going to claim to give you help (they can never truly help you, if the "help" involves seducing you into doing immoral things) based on the ethnic group they've decided you belong to, it's more difficult to reject that. As always, I appreciate your posts.
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Sep 8, 2017 12:01
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Wiki on Chetniks is wild: anti-Axis in the long perspective, but working with Ustache in the short having cooperation agreements with the Nazis, what the gently caress.
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Sep 8, 2017 13:29
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HEY GAIL posted:my dad, I want to thank you for your well written post on a part of the world that the Americans and Brits in this thread usually don't hear about. And thank you for exploring the heroism of those anti-Ustashe/anti-Nazi Croats. If someone is going to kill or hurt you because of the ethnic group they've decided you belong to, the choice is clear. If someone is going to claim to give you help (they can never truly help you, if the "help" involves seducing you into doing immoral things) based on the ethnic group they've decided you belong to, it's more difficult to reject that. Yeah, thanks for the hard work educating us and keep safe!
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Sep 8, 2017 14:16
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Thanks for the post my dad! Does someone have a more detailed account of the Budapest embassy tank thing? I'm not getting good results but I want to believe that they disassembled it into fist-sized chunks and shipped them out as diplomatic luggage. Or is it still there?
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Sep 8, 2017 15:32
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The version of the story I heard had them fly in an engineering team and drive it around the yard a few times while taking lots of notes and photos that they shipped out in diplomatic packages.
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Sep 8, 2017 15:44
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JcDent posted:Wiki on Chetniks is wild: anti-Axis in the long perspective, but working with Ustache in the short having cooperation agreements with the Nazis, what the gently caress. and by own i refer to: human misery
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Sep 8, 2017 15:49
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https://twitter.com/mollycrabapple/status/905898450260197376quote:The new arrivals were not registered but were told that they had to be disinfected before crossing the border into Switzerland. They were taken into the undressing room next to the gas chamber and ordered to undress. Different accounts give different details of what happened next, but what is confirmed is that she fatally wounded the roll call officer Josef Schillinger, using a pistol (many accounts say his own) and fired two shots, wounding him in the stomach. Then she fired a third shot which wounded another SS Sergeant named Emmerich. I GUESS that's pretty cool... I don't mean this in a second-guessing-concentration-camp-victims way, but why didn't this happen all the time (or did it?) Did people think they might survive if they just kept their heads down? If you were a European Jew in this era, at what point did you realize that Jews were being sent to camps and exterminated, as opposed to just segregated or put in labor camps? I know there's a lot of debate of who knew what when with regards to the Holocaust.
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Sep 8, 2017 15:56
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The common logic among those who in the Jewish communities collaborated to some degree, like Judenrats managing the ghettos or police officers in the ghettos was that if they collaborate, someone might survive. Of course, they couldn't be more wrong.
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Sep 8, 2017 16:03
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People are generally optimists and like to prolong their lives. By the time a lot of people realize what's happening there's either a lack of will to do it (the enemy is so strong that it is difficult to resist), or you lack the means.
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Sep 8, 2017 16:32
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Think as well of the wider psychological, physiological and emotional context of the gas chambers, and what people had already been through by the time they arrived - you're compounding the utter paralysis of fear, a very natural compulsion to be "well behaved" and maybe you won't be killed, possibly "I have to keep it together for my child" and pure shock with starvation, dehumanisation and exhaustion. Fear is paralysing - so people tend to fear the immediate threat more than they fear the future one, even if the future one is likely (or certainly) to be significantly worse. Especially people in an exceptionally fragile mental state created by years of brutal treatment with months or weeks of exceptionally brutal treatment, whether in camps or on the way to them - and then thrust into a new and exceptionally hostile environment and told something of relative comfort - you are not going to die in the next few minutes, and there aren't even any guns in the shower rooms. It's a wonder some people were mentally strong enough to put up that resistance at the last ditch, not that it didn't happen more often.
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Sep 8, 2017 16:34
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:People are generally optimists and like to prolong their lives. By the time a lot of people realize what's happening there's either a lack of will to do it (the enemy is so strong that it is difficult to resist), or you lack the means. Just quoted this in the hurricane thread
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Sep 8, 2017 16:35
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aphid_licker posted:Thanks for the post my dad! IIRC when the Soviets were reverse-engineering the B-29 to make the Tu-4, they would mail each part back to the USA once they were done measuring and testing it.
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Sep 8, 2017 16:37
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lenoon posted:Think as well of the wider psychological, physiological and emotional context of the gas chambers, and what people had already been through by the time they arrived - you're compounding the utter paralysis of fear, a very natural compulsion to be "well behaved" and maybe you won't be killed, possibly "I have to keep it together for my child" and pure shock with starvation, dehumanisation and exhaustion.
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Sep 8, 2017 17:13
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Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's Vietnam 18-hour Vietnam series starts next weekend on PBS. I've never really bothered to be a Burns/Novick fan nor critic, but saw a 45 minute preview of a bunch of excerpts, and it seems interesting and like something I'll probably watch in full. Also Ken Burns made a hell of a plug for "PBS owns owns owns" when opening up the previewing and Q&A.
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Sep 8, 2017 21:32
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Wait, is Burns' war stuff not well-regarded?
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Sep 8, 2017 21:37
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zoux posted:Wait, is Burns' war stuff not well-regarded? Not that I'm aware of, but virtually any time I've heard of anyone being popular enough to where the average American has heard of him or her, there are grumbling underpaid historians bitching about them in the corner. E: He said for his next project, he's very interested in the Revolutionary War as well as maybe looking at Johnson's presidency outside of Vietnam. He basically said it's a shame that so many people seem to think of the Revolutionary War as the tea party, a massacre, Lincoln/Concorde, something something Potomac and Hessians, swamp foxes maybe, something something Cornwallis surrenders. mlmp08 fucked around with this message at 21:43 on Sep 8, 2017 |
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Sep 8, 2017 21:40
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zoux posted:Wait, is Burns' war stuff not well-regarded? I had a college professor who hated Burns' Civil War series, but he never gave a more specific reason than "Oh they get a whole bunch of stuff wrong"
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Sep 8, 2017 21:41
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mlmp08 posted:Not that I'm aware of, but virtually any time I've heard of anyone being popular to enough to where the average American has heard of him or her, there are grumbling underpaid historians bitching about them in the corner. Oh, sour grapes ok. There are so many military myths and falsehoods out there it's really hard for an non-academician to know if a source is good or not, I really liked Burns' stuff so I'd be disappointed if it wasn't considered at least mostly accurate.
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Sep 8, 2017 21:43
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mlmp08 posted:Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's Vietnam 18-hour Vietnam series starts next weekend on PBS.  Like, tomorrow?
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Sep 8, 2017 21:48
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Siivola posted:
9 days. I was impressed by the 45 minutes of it I saw, but it was very heavy on personal experience and light on policy-makers. Ken and Lynn noted this and promised there's a serious dive into national strategy and perspectives from DC, the Kremlin, South/North Vietnam, etc. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j-3Xi5BcKs
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Sep 8, 2017 21:51
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I do really recommend Burns Civil War and it's up on Netflix to watch (at least in the UK.) I know drat all about the ACW but it didn't seem like he was talking trash. especially compared to the average documentary. It was a really good watch regardless just for someone with a silken voice talking about history, which is about all i need.
Polyakov fucked around with this message at 22:07 on Sep 8, 2017 |
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Sep 8, 2017 22:04
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