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I can't do it as I'm on my phone, but might someone go through the last history thread and pick out some of the really interesting stuff to be reposted in this one? I for one would enjoy this.
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Nov 14, 2013 00:02
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Godholio posted:Was that a short-lived device or did it carry on? I've never noticed it before. Every Bf-109 after 1941, nearly every Soviet plane, most of the French planes, and of course the P-39 all used cannons that fired through the prop hub. I'd guess that would be around half of the total number of fighters built for the war.
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Nov 16, 2013 16:50
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:That doesn't really seem so kooky to me. On that diagram are two machine guns that are successfully synchronised anyways. There were a handful of examples. The La-5/7 and the late model Yak-3s and -9s usually synched two or three 20mm cannons mounted on top of the engine and firing through the cowling. I personally think that the 3x20mm cowl mounted cannons was probably the most effective air to air armament of the war.
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Nov 16, 2013 18:59
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wdarkk posted:The Two-Ocean Navy Act of 1940 specified the construction of 18 aircraft carriers and 7 battleships, which is a very fortunate ratio. I do not remember where I saw it and I cannot find it now, but a few months ago I read a "historical concept" by a Naval War College student that was a pretty interesting study. It was basically a counter-proposal to the plan from the 1940 Naval Act. Instead of structuring a fleet around the fleet carrier and using their planes as the fleet's primary weapon, he suggested building only light carriers and air groups that were primarily interceptors, then using battleships as the core of the fleet. The advantages were: * Reliance on big gun surface ships would eliminate the need to keep your opponent at range, which would make supporting landings and other range-constrained operations pretty simple. * Carriers were in general extremely vulnerable to both air and surface attacks, enough so that their vulnerability more or less dictated deployment/positioning. * Naval aircraft were really expensive, and good pilots even moreso. Big shells, not so much * By 1943 American battleships and light cruisers were extremely effective anti-air platforms. That coupled with a air group of interceptors could probably protect such a fleet very effectively. The main capability loss was close air support, which the big guns could help to offset but couldn't totally replace. I don't really remember how convincing it was but I did think it was interesting.
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Nov 19, 2013 00:16
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gradenko_2000 posted:What other options were available to RE Lee on the third day of Gettysburg besides Pickett's Charge? Could he have flanked farther to the east? Attacked somewhere else entirely? I really enjoyed Gettysburg: The Last Invasion but it was on audiobook so I'm not entirely clear on the dispositions besides the fact that Pickett's Charge was a really bad idea. Retreating was by far his best choice. GTFO and get back to Virginia; maybe, if your pride absolutely demands it, take up a strong position somewhere southwest of Gettysburg and hope (assume?) Meade has to attack you. He was in a pretty bad spot there on the 3rd day, his best corps was not in great shape, he was facing a much larger army with a huge advantage in terrain, etc etc. Longstreet's idea of rolling around behind the federals and getting between them and Washington was a brilliant one, but it was not possible by the third day.
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Nov 20, 2013 00:49
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I did an effortpost on the Flying Tigers years ago if someone wants to dig that up. That was as mercenary/commercial a wartime expedition as there's ever been.Azran posted:Bewbies, I loved your effort posts about planes. I'd love to hear about all the stuff like self-sealing tanks, ammo counters, sights and the like; how did all those develop through the years? When did fixed landing gear disappear? Did WW1 fighter pilots even get parachutes/straps? Self sealing tanks were a really simple and really elegant solution to a big problem; they just had a layer of rubber that expanded when it touched oil and thus closed off any holes. The main issue was its weight, but everyone figured it was worth the cost except for the Japanese. Eventually the US started "floating" tanks, suspended in the wing/fuselage, which gave them the ability to expand if struck and added another layer of resiliency. The basic idea is still in use today, although now we use stuff like internal structure (ie, a "honeycomb" or something) and counterpressure to make the tanks even tougher. The actual performance of high end tanks is obviously classified but on a 4th gen fighter you can basically shoot the tank with anything short of outright destroying it and not start a fire or cause a significant leak. As far as I'm aware only the Luftwaffe had proper ammo counters, they were just little white bars on the console. The Brits might have had a system in later Spitfires but I'm honestly not sure. Most countries did something like putting a string of tracers on the last 50 rounds of a belt to let the pilot know when he was reaching the end. As for landing gear and whatnot, I'll take the lazy way and offer this for reading: The Boeing 247. It wasn't the first plane to use all of these technologies (retractable gear, cantilever wing, all metal, monocoque construction, et al) but it was the first to combine all of them into one airframe. In that plane you can basically see every aircraft that fought during WWII to one degree or another, particularly the bombers and really particularly the USAAF heavies. If you have any more specific questions about this stuff I'm glad to try and answer! bewbies fucked around with this message at 17:21 on Nov 24, 2013 |
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Nov 24, 2013 17:10
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ArchangeI posted:This was swiftly done away with after everyone realized that letting the enemy know when you are about to run out of ammo is a terrible idea. Yes and no; this is actually kind of complicated. The RAF's 303, the VVS's 7.62mm, the Luftwaffe's 7.92mm, and the USAAF's .30 and .50 belts all started the war with something like a 4:1 ratio. Coincidentally enough all of these air forces had exactly the same problem: the tracers had different ballistics from the non-tracer rounds, so aiming off of the tracers was...misleading at best. The also experienced the same problem you're describing, as the tracers were the same rounds meant for ground troops and thus burned really brightly and in all directions. By 1941 or so everyone had adopted tracers that were really visible only to the rear (in daytime at least) due to color and the size of the fuel; this meant that it wasn't a big deal to go back to putting a "warning" at the end of an ammo belt anymore. It was a standard practice for all USAAF/USN planes to the end of the war; the RAF did it in its .303 belts, and the Russians did it on everything but heavy cannons.
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Nov 24, 2013 17:32
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Saint Celestine posted:Id be interested in an effort post about how "Butcher" Haig wasn't all that incompetent. Sure! I'm actually quite tired of the false narrative that all WWI generals were callous foolhardy blunderers so thank you for the opportunity. I think that most criticisms of Haig and his contemporaries (I will include literally every senior commander involved in WWI in this because none of them are really any different from any other in this regard) are twofold: first, that they bore the responsibility for the static nature of the war because they were too stupid to figure out a way to attack anything successfully, and second, that they were responsible for an extraordinary number of casualties that could be traced back to their incompetence. On address the nature of the fighting, particularly on the Western Front: this was a product of the weapons available at the time, not a lack of ingenuity, creativity, or intellect by the commanders. Without getting too wordy, I'll just assert that every major technological advance offered by the industrial revolution to that point favored the defender both tactically and strategically. Modern artillery was incredibly destructive, but was not agile in targeting and thus was best used in conjunction with established reference points (in other words, from a prepared position that you're defending). Fire support was not up to the task of effectively supporting offensive operations effectively until 1917 at the very earliest, and even the it is iffy. Direct fire support was also heavily defensive in nature: the best machine guns of the era were all heavies, and neither the equipment nor the squad-level tactics effectively utilized any sort of direct fire support. From a tactical, operational, and strategic perspective, mobility too favored the defender. Tactical mobility for motor vehicles was nearly nonexistent at the time: trucks required roads, there were no effective tracked vehicles until late in the war, and horses still provided the vast majority of the light land lift mobility that armies required. This meant that it was next to impossible to effectively sustain offensives, as supply mobility was limited to that which soldiers carried with them, and what moved along at the speed of the attack. They were, however, effectively able to support defensive operations: trucks had roads, trains had tracks in the rear, and this mean that moving men and materiel to support a defensive operation was not only possible, but actually quite easy. It wasn't until well after the war that motorized sustainment became practical, and that more than anything (including the development of effective armor) contributed to the re-establishment of offensive mobility. Finally, no one, and I mean NO ONE really understood exactly how difficult it was to reduce an opponent that was a fully mobilized modern industrial power. The ability to reinforce and resupply an industrial army was an order of magnitude greater than it had been a century before, and for some reason no one who watched the American Civil War really understood this. Point being, the attitude that it was simply a lack of competence or intelligence precluding victory was silly: it was ALWAYS going to take a long time and a lot of lives to win an industrial war, trenches or not. WWII eventually made this point abundantly clear to everyone. As to the second issues (casualties), is very easy and simplistic to point to WWI and say "lol", but in reality "Butcher Haig" was responsible for far fewer casualties, proportionally speaking, than some generals who we hold up today as pre-eminent: Zhukov, Giap, and, in particular, Robert E. Lee come to mind immediately, and there are many, many others you could name. These three examples really make Haig look quite reasonable in comparison; Haig never did ANYTHING to his Army like what Lee did at Wilderness/Spotslyvania or Gettysburg. That being said, of course the casualty numbers from WWI are ghastly, and this too was much more of a byproduct of the state of technology (as discussed above) rather than any particular failure on the part of the officers. I'm not trying to argue that Haig or any of his peers were transcendent geniuses, but we should probably remember a few things about them when we're making our historical assessments: no generation of officers in history faced a more different battlefield from the time they were junior officers to senior officers than that cohort, and no one outside of those who watched the ACW very closely had any clue that his was the case. Regarding Haig in particular, he is an interesting case. During the war he was quite highly regarded by his peers (Pershing in particular) as being both a strong leader and a capable strategic thinker. He inherited an army that was badly outdated and completely outclassed (particularly in the realm of sustainment/logistics) and in quite short order molded them into an effective fighting force. He was quick to adopt and try new technologies and tactics (moreso than most of his peers), and as a result the Brits generally speaking enjoyed superior equipment from 1916 on. He was also an effective politician, a necessity for a 5-star commander in an alliance as he was. He was very highly regarded in his day and was buried as a hero; it wasn't until Lloyd George and later the rather obnoxious counter-culture history writers of the mid-century landed on him that the "butcher" mythology began in earnest. bewbies fucked around with this message at 01:01 on Nov 27, 2013 |
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Nov 27, 2013 00:58
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Bacarruda posted:Stormtroopers/arditi spearhead the attack, supported by coordinated artillery fire (HE, shrapnel and/or gas). They neutralize strongpoints and break through the weakest portion of the line. Following infantry mop up any remaining pockets of resistance and exploit the breakthrough. Tanks are also handy for punching holes in enemy lines and expanding breakouts. I think you're trying to describe the infiltration tactics (there are a few inaccuracies but I get your point). The issue is, even if you can gain localized superiority over a relatively small battlespace (say, a division-sized area), no army in the world in 1914-18 could successfully sustain such an attack long enough or deep enough to successfully exploit it. As soon as you got more than a few dozen kms away from your main supply trains and fire support, armies simply couldn't move the tonnage necessary quickly enough. Artillery movement was hideously slow and general supplies moved even slower: by the time you were within a few kms of the front most of it had to be literally carried by hand. It was at this point that your opponent, having commenced counter-fire missions and having used trains and trucks on the road to move a couple of reserve divisions up to meet your offensive begins his counterattack, and you're then beaten back with even heavier losses than your opponent. So it went, at least, for the Stosstruppen and their ilk on the Western Front. The Russians did do this quite successfully during the Brusilov offensive but much of that success can be attributed to the horrendous strategic mobility of the A-H army, who lacked the rail and motor networks of the bigger armies. In any case, the single most important thing that enhanced mobility on the battlefield (and let to the even-bloodier mobile warfare of WWII) was cross-country motorized logistical support.
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Nov 27, 2013 09:15
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Coastal artillery is still a thing, it just looks like this now: In semi-related news I would like to note for all history that the goddamn fuckers at Rand Corp for idiots plagiarized me hardcore in this thing: http://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/TR1321.html gently caress you Rand, I'll deal with you on Monday (not really)
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Nov 29, 2013 17:59
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I know it changed quite a bit between revisions but I never really got much of the RAH RAH WAR vibe from the version of Storm of Steel that I read. To me it just seemed like a guy (who, granted, was particularly hard) telling his war experience.
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Dec 3, 2013 16:28
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Alchenar posted:I have some sympathy with the (self-serving) argument Manstein puts out in his memoir: at what point do you actually turn on Hitler? You forgot "when people started being rounded up at random and sent...away".
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Dec 5, 2013 01:05
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Guildencrantz posted:A question mostly for HEGEL: I don't know about the 30YW specifically, but soldiers like what you describe were extremely common throughout the medieval and early modern period. They didn't have much support/help from the governments obviously and I'm sure a lot of them ended up living ugly rootless existences out in the woods somewhere, but there are quite a lot of examples I'm aware of where veterans wound up living relatively well after their service. If you were one of the lucky ones, you might wind up as a guard in castle or a palace (this was probably most common), as a bodyguard or escort for a wealthy merchant or clergy, as a bailiff for a sheriff or as a constable, as a hired blade on a ship (this was also really common, especially in coastal areas), and always, mercenary work was a possibility. The REALLY lucky ones, who managed to endear themselves to their captains, might be given a friendly lease on some land or a position as a schultheiss or sheriff or something. The really REALLY lucky ones might get retained as household troops for their captains, though that tended to be reserved more for the lower nobility rather common men-at-arms. Of course, those who were levied for short periods generally had it somewhat better, they could go back to their villages and just kind of pick up where they left off.
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Dec 6, 2013 14:46
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wdarkk posted:The side isn't going to work, even other Abrams couldn't penetrate the side armor in the Gulf War. I couldn't find info about the rear in a cursory search, but it only has to have 147mm of protection to beat the Sherman. Track hits and then staying the hell away are the Sherman's only hope. Actual performance of the M1's armor (edit: and all modern AP rounds) is classified. I'd add though that the speculations you're looking at are not for the HAP models. Also while I'm at it no WWII tank could even hope to hit a modern MBT except by dumb luck. That whole computer aided shoot on the move thing is pretty significant. bewbies fucked around with this message at 22:27 on Dec 6, 2013 |
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Dec 6, 2013 22:21
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Ensign Expendable posted:And the Abrams isn't moving (unless they can lead perfectly at 4 kilometers). I mean, I appreciate the effort that went into that post (really, it was an interesting read), but this would be the big problem, the Abrams would be moving more or less constantly at 50km/h+ cross country. No manually operated gun would have a prayer of hitting anything at that range and speed.
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Dec 7, 2013 00:48
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a travelling HEGEL posted:Yeah, this is racist and nobody should take it seriously. Almost every single sentence in that bullet point list deserves to be quoted here and mocked openly. That paper has been discussed in military circles forever; the general consensus nowadays is that it would be much better if it were titles "why incompetent leaders lose wars" because next to none of it has anything to do with anyone being Arabic or Muslim and everything to do with being corrupt and stupid and selfish (which are traits that are not unique to Arabs). It does actually raise some good points about officer professional development and the like but hardly anything revolutionary. BurningStone posted:This is a bit of a different question, but it seems the American Civil War is of great interest to non-Americans. I have to ask, why? As an American it's a very important part of my country's history, and one of my ancestors fought in it, so its attraction for me is obvious. But why the attraction for those who don't have a personal tie? I think there are a ton of reasons for this but I'll take a stab at naming the big ones: - It was the first huge war of the industrial era, arguably the first war ever wherein large portions of economies and so forth were fully mobilized - It is deeply steeped in the neverending debate about federalism and the role and power of government in a democracy - It was the first time (and arguably the last time) a democratic major industrial power seriously fought against itself so it has a lot of implications and whatnot for modern democratic governments - At its heart it addressed the great ethical question of the age and answered it pretty decisively - It was just massive in scope and a ridiculous number of people died - It was (again, arguably) the first war of the industrial/democratic age that was fought with a prominent racial backdrop Anyway I think the overarching reason is that it touched on a lot of issues that are universal (federalism, racism, rebellion, etc), plus the general narrative and the sheer scope of the war are pretty interesting as wars go, at least in my opinion.
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Dec 8, 2013 22:46
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There was absolutely no way the CSA ever had any real chance to take Washington. In a best case scenario, say, they won at Gettysburg, they're still having to attack the most heavily defended city on earth plus the remainder of the Army of the Potomac. This would, at best, require a lengthy siege, which the CSA was absolutely in no way prepared to conduct. As an example, Sherman, with a far better equipped and far better supplied army operating against a vastly inferior force and a much less fortified city only barely managed to take Atlanta (and he needed a lot of help from Hood to do it). Same deal with Grant at Vicksburg and Petersburg.
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Dec 10, 2013 00:35
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Chouffe posted:To give us a sense for what that means, could you maybe elaborate a little on what city defenses around the world were like at that time and how Washington, DC was superior? Or do you just mean in terms of troop numbers? You could probably take the "most heavily defended city" by just about any measure you wanted. Guns, troops, fortifications, etc. There were between 70 and 200 forts around DC by 1864, depending on how you define a fort. The entire city was ringed with them; you can see the plan on a map someone posted earlier. Forts were generally heavy earth dugouts with a battery of guns, a typical arsenal was two gigantic naval rifles (ie, 100 lbs Parrot rifle) and two huge mortars. These would be manned by artillerymen, plus a garrison force of maybe a company in permanent place. The forts were all connected to the inner city by tactical rail lines, and interconnected with each other by pre-dug rifle pits. Had the city been in serious danger, those pits would have been manned by roughly 100k-150k troops that were in and around the city, plus any remnants from the Army of the Potomac, assuming it had been wrecked by some catastrophic battle. The big guns were placed to provide fields of fire down every approach, and they generally ranged 3+ miles across open terrain. Big mortars threw explosive shells for about a mile and were the close-in defense. Once you got up close, you were then attacking dug-in infantry who had the benefit of rail transport for mobility and resupply, plus a zillion smaller artillery pieces that were deployed in a reinforcing role. It was a pretty unbelievable engineering project completed on a very short timeline. Some of the forts are still there today as a "ring" park around the city, its a pretty neat tour. Battles almost never happened in cities (one minor exception is the first day at Gettysburg), but sieges were relatively common. It was so difficult to get a defender out of an urbanized area, and since most of the important cities were fortified, you were usually far better off running a siege instead of an attack, at least if you were the Union.
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Dec 12, 2013 01:34
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Koramei posted:I remember "looking cool" was actually one of the major criteria for the F-35 What? Also the main role of the Zumwalt's is fire support from the littorals; their gun is a pretty remarkable thing that actually has a chance to mitigate a fairly large gap in the current portfolio. It is pretty likely that they wind up more as tech demonstrators than anything else but they do represent a pretty significant advancement in naval fire support.
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Dec 12, 2013 05:23
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Flesnolk posted:So for someone not interested in a bunch of naval technobabble, what's the tall and short on what these things do that other ships/destroyers can't? Reduced observability coupled with a lot of conventional firepower. The idea was that they'd be able to operate closer to contested littoral operations by mitigating the ASCM/ASBM threat through their low-observable characteristics. The irony is they made their fire support ship cost an absolutely obscene amount of money so it isn't likely the USN is going to want to send it near any hostile shores. quote:And while I'm asking ship questions, how is naval warfare even supposed to work now that the age of battleships and firing cannons at other ships/things you can actually see is over? Lots of airplanes and lots and lots of missiles. It isn't terribly likely that we'll ever see combat between capital ships again again as no one is going to want to challenge the USN in blue water and the USN isn't going to want to get very close to hostile shores as smart people have come up with lots of ways to be dangerous to the big ships.
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Dec 12, 2013 05:38
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I dunno, if you count the Centurion as a WWII tank I would say the Brits figured out tanks pretty goddamn well.
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Dec 14, 2013 22:33
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A friend asked me about an online/distance MA in history. Are there any programs that are regarded well enough to get him a look at a decent PhD program with an eye to a professorship down the line? I honestly have no idea and Google isn't much help.
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Dec 19, 2013 16:50
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:Are there any good single volume narrative accounts of the Vietnam War? Ideally covering all the way from the French-IndoChina War to the Fall of Saigon? Think A World Undone - Vietnam Edition. I think Karnow's book is about as good as war books get.
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Dec 22, 2013 04:53
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I just spent an hour reading those Christmas truce letters. I am almost in tears and I am usually not someone who gives two shits about the holidays.
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Dec 25, 2013 02:05
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cheerfullydrab posted:I find that summary of German submarine warfare to be automatically bullshit, because you barely mention the role of Q-ships. These were disguised merchant ships that would blow the gently caress out of German submarines that had surfaced and allowed vessels time to discharge their crew into lifeboats in accordance with the laws of war. They are a great example of how the British refused to play good cricket in the North Atlantic when the drat Germans were doing their best to follow the laws of war. Not mentioning them in a history of sub warfare during WWI is like not mentioning the Laconia Incident in a history of sub warfare during WWII. It's an automatic indication that you are approaching the subject from one single point of view, a completely bullshit one. What the hell? Everything he said was absolutely correct and there wasn't a hint of bias. Why are you throwing an e-tantrum? In related news I absolutely cannot imagine how awful and frustrating and horrifying it would have been to repeatedly fire dud torpedoes. You're in a steel tube with a couple dozen other dudes with no showers and bad food for weeks at a time, you do well enough to crawl your tube into an attack position against something, you do all the calculations right to deliver your ordnance, you think you're about to strike a blow for Uncle Sam, and then THUNK. You didn't sink anything, any escorts in the area are now hunting for you, and you just lost confidence in the primary weapon that your military profession is designed to employ. Gross.
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Jan 2, 2014 02:50
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Robotics and such are in every conceptual discussion past 2020 or so. Very little discussion of autonomous things, but basically replacing human-in-the-seat kind of stuff for things like resupplying/reloading guns, hauling stuff, etc. The "wingman" or "parasite" thing is getting a lot of traction too, ie, a single manned AFV controls 3 unmanned, stuff like that. To be honest, it isn't all that revolutionary, although it is nice from a manning perspective to reduce a howitzer crew to 2 dudes. If you want the opinion of bewbies, the Thing That We All gently caress Up in the next great war will be the cyber domain; I personally feel that is just as different and revolutionary as taking the fight into the 3rd dimension was a century ago. I argue this with people who really, really want to build more aircraft carriers (edit: and let's not forget F-35s) on a daily basis and I lose so go America. In a completely unrelated matter, does anyone have a recommendation for a site that sells ready-to-display models of stuff like planes and ships? I used to build models but a) I'm terrible at it and b) I have more money than time these days, so I'd like to just buy stuff that's already been made. Alternatively, if any of you milgoons is interested in building stuff... bewbies fucked around with this message at 16:45 on Jan 3, 2014 |
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Jan 3, 2014 16:42
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Another obnoxious what-if: Say the Germans effectively rush the Type XXI boats armed with acoustic torpedoes into combat, say, in substantial numbers by 1943. How successful would they have been against the Allies ASW efforts?
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Jan 3, 2014 19:04
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gradenko_2000 posted:To put this in some perspective, the US built 2 710 Liberty Ships between 1941 and 1945. At 14 474 tons per ship, that's 39.2 million tons of shipping, or approximately 933 000 tons per month for the 42 months of the war that the US was in. I guess I was wondering more about the tactical side of that fight, not so much "would the Type XXI have won the war for the Nazis" kind of question. I don't know a whole lot about ASW in general and like every other bit of the Wehrmacht the Type XXI seems to have its own violent cult following so I've always found accurate assessments to be hard to come by. That being said, it seems like the XXI was a pretty incredible achievement and, based at least on my limited knowledge of such things, it would have been extremely hard to deal with, especially with effective guided torpedoes. Like, to the point where a Type XXI (or its immediate successors) could still somewhat effectively operate against merchant shipping today. bewbies fucked around with this message at 22:33 on Jan 3, 2014 |
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Jan 3, 2014 22:29
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gradenko_2000 posted:In both cases, you're advancing through bad terrain and away from railheads, while the enemy is retreating into prepared positions and good infrastructure, which means you're never going to advance fast enough to prevent him from throwing up reserves in front of whatever half-breakthrough you might have created. This is a great explanation of the heart of the issue of WWI's static lines. There was just no good way to sustain troops that were even a few miles away from supply trains, and those troops were nearly always facing fresh reserves who were counterattacking from a well supported position. There just wasn't a good answer to that problem until better mechanization came along.
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Jan 10, 2014 17:01
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Slavvy posted:So if attack was basically futile and defence was far more efficient in a men and materiel, and everyone in command pretty much knew this already, what was the point of making any kind of attack at all? Why not just constantly defend and let the other side wear themselves out? Was it really just because they thought Germany was right on the edge of collapsing and throwing more men at them would hasten that? Well, they didn't have some sort of intuitive knowledge that there was almost no way a strategic-level offensive could have succeeded during that era. They did try ton of different things, some very creative, to try and restore some strategic mobility. I think you can say it was Falkenhayn who, at least at the national level, understood the true nature of the war (attrition) and what was needed to win it (casualties). That was the design behind Verdun, and it nearly worked despite being horribly run at the operational level. In any case, it was a very difficult position for everybody. The "spirit of the attack" kind of thinking refused to die (it still isn't dead), plus you had a TON of public pressure (especially on the Allies) to do..."something"....to get the dirty Germans out of Belgium and France. A negotiated peace was the only real sane way out but that wasn't going to happen with Germany in a position of strength on the Western Front, so over the top we went. I suppose if some particularly transcendent military mind (Longstreet comes to mind) had been present on either side that the meat-grinder nature of things might have been turned up a bit and the conflict hastened, but from a strategic perspective at least I don't really find a whole lot of fault with how either side conducted the war, humanitarian concerns aside of course. This puts me at serious odds with a lot of people, needless to say.
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Jan 11, 2014 01:05
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:I thought the whole Verdun "bleed the French white" thing was just the general trying to save face after it failed. I don't know about the origin or date of that specific phrase, but the general strategy of the offensive was exactly that. In short, to draw as many French troops into an area that was covered with as much artillery as possible, and blow them up, with the goal of destroying /attriting the French strategic reserve and a maybe even the British if you got really lucky. After the reserves were sufficiently reduced, a major offensive would be launched in the north roughly following the 1914 egress. Basically, Falkenhayn and crew had figured out that no major offensive could be effective while major reserves were still available, so their plan was to destroy the reserves and then just grind it out to Paris.
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Jan 11, 2014 04:06
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:But then they lost nearly as many troops as the French. So what happened? Well, there were a ton of reasons, but to keep it brief: - They lost sight of their objective. Initially, the idea was that the actual physical terrain was irrelevant except for the advantages it provided to the artillery. Verdun gradually changed into the strategically meaningless but politically/culturally important thing that they'd hoped it would be for the French. - They seriously underestimated their opponents. The Allied resistance was far stiffer than they'd anticipated, particularly their counter-fire. They'd anticipated being in their optimal defensive position within days, instead it took months, and they lost far more men and guns than they'd anticipated. They eventually committed a huge percentage of the reserves that they'd been holding in place for attack elsewhere, which pretty much undid the whole strategy.
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Jan 11, 2014 18:25
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Tevery Best posted:This is one of the points where the "meatgrinder" hypothesis seems weak to me. If you wanted to butcher the French, why not pick a place where there are already some defenders? Why pick a place you can easily take with little casualties to either side? The whole point was to attack a relatively weak area, take up a position that was extremely strong, then await and push back the counter-attack. In order to do this, you needed: 1. A place that had advantageous terrain 2. A place that was not well defended initially 3. A place that, if lost, had to be retaken There might have been other options, but Verdun was one objective that clearly met all three of those criteria.
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Jan 11, 2014 18:29
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Gesadt posted:Is there any validity to the notion that MBT (main battle tank) is getting obsolete and less essential to composition of a modern army? If so, what it would be replaced by? Or is there never gonna be a point when you dont need heavy armor on the ground? Yes, with a but. Tanks are most useful in open terrain versus conventional opponents. Every trend/prediction I'm aware of predicts that both of these things are going to become more and more rare in the future. The vast majority of combat will take place in urban terrain, and the chances of two major land uniformed services facing off against one another in a full scale conflict are pretty remote. Tanks are moderately useful things in some scenarios, but their utility is severely hampered by their lack of strategic mobility and their sustainability. Tanks are huge, and their maintenance footprint is huger. They require a colossal logistical tail. In most scenarios, they even require supplementary ground lift capabilities (ie, super-huge tractor trailer) if we hope to have any sort of a functioning vehicle on the spearhead. Once you get the tank where it is going, what you've got is a sledgehammer: it is really big and powerful and so on, but it is only really good at one thing, which is protecting its crew while it shoots a big gun at things. Tanks are of very limited utility in anything other than major combat operations: they're too destructive, not agile enough, they cannot scale their effects at all, and they're hellaciously difficult and expensive to operate over long periods of time. All of this flies pretty directly in the face of what we're going to require from our armed forces over the next few decades: extremely rapid deployability, low sustainability requirements, flexibility, agility, and cost-effectiveness. A Stryker can do 95% of the things that an M1 can do, with approximately a fifth of the manpower and a tenth of the supply chain. Moreover, it can do things that an M1 can't do, like deliver infantry or roll through neighborhoods without crushing curbs or rupturing underground sewer/water/gas lines. When you're facing an opponent who has no intention of taking you on head-to-head on land, but rather, attacking your infrastructure via cyber while denying your sea and air entry and/or resupply, the idea of an armor brigade rolling into a hostile port off of a big ship a month and a half after things get started is pretty ridiculous. The other big thing trending the tank toward obsolesence is its survivability. Right now, tanks are still largely impervious to all but the very best or very biggest anti-tank weapons, but they are going to become a lot more vulnerable over the next few decades. All of the US's peer and near-peer competitiors now have access to outstanding land sensor suites, particularly via UAS. Tanks are essentially the most observable thing on the ground nowadays; a tank's signature is huge in every medium and there is little that can be done to lessen it. What you're looking at in the very near future is an opponent that can deliver anti-tank munitions with extreme precision at standoff ranges (again, likely via UAS), and in that scenario, any tank that actually does make it off the boat (45 days after the order is given) isn't much more than a big target. All that being said, in a scenario where 1) tactical air supremacy is assured, 2) terrain is relatively open, 3) the conflict is high-intensity, 4) sea and air access are uncontested and 5) the opponent is traditional and not terribly well equipped, tanks are still useful. I think this is roughly analogous to the battleship in WWII; big guns on an armored thing were useful, but only in a very limited scenario (ie, naval gunfire support), and in a way that far outweighed their acquisition and sustainment costs.
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Jan 14, 2014 17:49
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I'll preface this with this:quote:Okay I have to ask, what's with the US-centric view? Discussing/arguing/writing on stuff like this (future warfare concepts) is what I do for a living, and I'm an American, so that's the perspective everything I say is coming from. I should also add that I'm generally talking about periods 2020+, if that changes anything. I also spend a LOT of time arguing this stuff with my maneuver brethren so the tank debate is one I’ve engaged in pretty regularly. Koesj posted:When looking back at certain situations in Iraq, or how the Syrian Army operates in places like Jobar right now (well documented by ANNA News), would you go as far as saying tanks aren't efficient at all in a closer or more urban battlefield, against non-uniformed opponents? It depends what you mean by "effective". If it is acceptable for your force to wreck streets and infrastructure, blow all kinds of things up unnecessarily, kill lots of noncombatants (if they're in the area), and eventually hold terrain that is a smoking hole, then yes, MBT's have utility. If you want to apply discrete, scalable effects, minimize collateral damage, minimize impact to infrastructure, etc, not to mention saving thousands of tons in supply movement, then lighter options are preferable. Note: this wasn’t meant to be glib, there certainly are times when wrecking everything with your steel beast is just fine. That being said, that those situations are going to be fairly rare moving forward, especially if you’re not a 3rd world dictator. quote:As Hob_Gadling alluded to, strategic mobility and even sustainability isn't the be all and end all of military requirements. Outside of primary mission effectiveness they are the most important considerations, and that is absolutely undebatable in my opinion. The US has had a bad tendency to hand-wave deployability and sustainability over the last half century and that thinking has left us with a force that is far too heavy, inflexible, and difficult to sustain. Smart people around the world have figured that out, by the way, and it is a pretty significant driver in strategies to counter American military power. quote:So they're growing in vulnerability compared to what... exactly? Everything, from light AFVs to unarmored infantry. Over the next several decades, low observability will become the new “armor”, so to speak. Sensors and shooters both are simply too good nowadays to be able to rely on out-armoring your threats. Active defense is one major enabler, but the most significant thing is being able to deny ISR through low observability. That doesn’t even get into effects that simply route around physical armor, like electronic and cyber attack. Essentially, it comes down to the fact that uparmoring your stuff to defend against kinetic rounds is no longer the most effective way to protect yourself. Historically, the world’s navies went through this transition twice, first with aircraft (it was no longer adequate to just bolt more steel on your ship, you had to shoot down aircraft trying to sink your ships) and then with missiles (you could no longer defend the fleet locally, you had to patrol out far enough to defeat standoff ASCMs). Air forces went through it with missiles as well; they figured out that you could no longer fly fast enough or high enough to be protected from SAM attack; lower observability was the only way increase survivability. quote:Plus, if we're talking about stuff being observable, how is something a drone/UAS/RPG/-whatever the name du jour is- going to survive in that environment anyway? This is a huge question, one that isn’t really answered yet and one that will play a huge role in future conflicts. Right now, my opinion is pretty simple: tactical airspace is going to turn into a dogfight between UAS just like WWI, and the winner will have a decisive advantage in the ground fight. As such, that’s the decisive point, at least on the physical battlefield. quote:When tactical air supremacy isn't assured, wouldn't a tank, or a different kind of heavy AFVs be an even better option in providing much needed mobile, protected firepower? Possibly, but you’ve got to weigh the tank’s issues as discussed above with the capabilities it brings. Right now, there are very few situations in which a 1970s-style MBT like the Abrams or Leopard 2 is optimal, and those situations are decreasing every year. quote:But will both players in a more evenly matched situation be forgoing on tanks, or heavy AFVs for that matter, based on some kind of mutual agreement? Maybe, I don’t know. What I can say pretty decisively is that if a force rolls out old school MBTs against an American or NATO task force in 2020+ (or even today, really) the tanks will little more than very easily acquired and easily destroyed targets. There are really good reasons why my maneuver brothers and sisters are worried sick about UAS, cyber, electronic and indirect fire and not at all concerned gas guzzling steel boxes armed with a LOS-only cannon. quote:Why are forces around the world not massively reducing their tank and/or heavy AFV numbers at the moment? Some did after the end of the Cold War, but for example real (rather than nominal) HBCT strength in the US Army is holding steady even over the 2013 cuts IIRC. Actually, the US Army is drawing down its heavy forces substantially. The 2019 Force Development Update was literally released this morning; it is FOUO so I can’t post it in detail here but the projected cut is down to 420k on active duty; the vast majority of these cuts are going to be on the heavy maneuver forces and the artillery. As for other nations, I don’t really know much about their acquisition strategies, but I’d say if they are investing heavily in equipment designed to support land warfare strategy that dates from the 1940s then they are not investing effectively. Also if you want to slap your forehead a little bit about our defense budgeting process, , there’s this gem from last year. NO NEW TANKS PLS quote:Why have, over the very recent past, numerous nations jumped into domestic tank development where they had none previously? I would offer it is because they are not sufficiently forward thinking. They, along with the F-35 fleet and maybe 7 of our 11 carriers stand ready to fight the Cold War. Every military is ready to fight the last war, the MBT is a fine example of this.
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Jan 14, 2014 21:20
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Arquinsiel posted:Apparently there's some pretty effective anti-mortar laser based weapon systems mounted on the HMMWV platform at the moment. I don't know much about them other than "they exist" and they make wargaming modern stuff a bit boring. Any sort of counter-rocket/artillery/mortar solution that involves directed energy is still a long, long way off, if ever. They're only in the earliest test phases right now and there are some big hurdles to overcome (primarily heat dissipation and power generation). Right now, the test vehicle isn't a Humvee, it is a HEMMT and a big trailer, to give you an idea of the space involved. The LPWS is the current C-RAM system; it does the job in a very limited area and isn't mobile at all. A missile interceptor will be the follow-on solution to the gun, it should be relatively effective but the cost-per-shot issue is problematic for obvious reasons.
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Jan 14, 2014 22:30
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I'm a pretty big fan of "George, Nicholas, and Wilhelm" as a study in WWI politics. It does a really good job of going over the high level machinations in each country and it is also a pretty entertaining look at the monarchs as people.
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Jan 20, 2014 20:27
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Ferrosol posted:Ironically a war on the continent was the best thing that could happen to the United Kingdom. In the absence of World War I there was a good chance that Britain may have descended into civil war before 1914 was over. Home rule for Ireland was such a contentious issue that there were plots to mutiny in both the army and navy with the regiments in Ireland planning defect to the protestant unionists and certain elements of the navy willing to do he same. Add in the wave of socialist inspired strikes that were building throughout the year cumulating in a Dockers strike that shut down the port of London in the summer of 1914 and the increasingly radicalised suffragette movement that had already began sending letter bombs and it was feared that they were plotting to assassinate government ministers and you have a country on the edge of chaos. Really the crisis and subsequent invasion of "Brave little Belgium" buried any animosity for the duration of the war and bought time for the British establishment to survive. This is...a touch overboard. They certainly would have continued to see significant uprisings in Ireland and maybe Wales, but a strong suffrage movement and labor unrest doesn't really imply that a "civil war" is imminent.
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Jan 21, 2014 00:29
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Mojo Threepwood posted:I wanted to get the thread's opinion on a recent BBC column trying to debunk myths about WWI, by the historian Dan Snow: http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25776836 That article is a bit simplistic but it is hardly outlandish to note there were a lot of soldiers who enjoyed the experience. There's always been a pretty large contingent of people who enjoy combat/soldiering and so on in every era and in every war.
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Jan 24, 2014 00:13
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I just read like 50 posts in this thread and I am completely lost. Are we talking about a novel?
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Jan 25, 2014 02:54
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