Danann posted:

https://twitter.com/TaskandPurpose/status/1712587642565542088

it is time for just-in-time maintenance and logistics

gradenko_2000 posted:

we always thought it was going to be the Chinese

LuxuryLarva posted:

I just finished watching the first rambo movie - first blood. Anyway I was refreshingly surprised to discover a meditation on the brutal way police treat homeless people. I'm sure that the sequels won't disappoint me in some way!

gradenko_2000 posted:

What does Lehr mean because that's the same name as a Wehrmacht Panzer Division

Pomeroy posted:

Votskomit posted:

Thank you. This is a good post and matches my limited understanding. I like this explanation way more than "failsons are in charge now."

gradenko_2000 posted:

https://twitter.com/Ned_Donovan/status/1717795116188901852?t=qSf7Unlhv7_AfehfAy8xzw&s=19

Frosted Flake posted:

All fair points. You have to remember than infantry of the line started as numbered regiments. It was through that mathematical equation that they earned their names and fame, often getting mulched in the process, like 28th Foot.

Who earned the battle honour Egypt,



On 21 March, during the Battle of Alexandria, French cavalry broke through the British lines, formed up behind the regiment, and began to charge. With the men still heavily engaged to their front, the order was given for the rear rank to turn about, and standing thus in two ranks back to back, the regiment held the line. To commemorate this action, the regiment began wearing a badge on the back as well as the front of the headdress, a unique distinction in the British Army that was officially sanctioned in 1830.



Various other numbered battalions were mulched in the Peninsula and India, and in one of the (many) Victorian army reforms, they were combined to form the Glosters, who inherited their battle honours, rear badge and a new cap badge that similarly called back to Egypt.



The regiment was then mulched at Talana Hill and Ladysmith, losing the entire 1st Battalion at Ladysmith.

In 1914, 1st Battalion was almost wiped out again at First Ypres, suffered on the Somme, and was badly bloodied in the Kaiser's Battle of 1918. 2nd Battalion was mulched at Second Ypres in 1915, but was assigned to a quiet sector thereafter to the end of the war.

I won't get into all the TA and New Army battalions, but that ties into my point about how regiments can expand rapidly when the time comes.

In the Second World War, the Regular Battalions of the Glosters were all but destroyed early in the war, in the retreats from France and Burma. They then reentered the war at Gold Beach and the Admin Box in 1944, and won more honours.

In Korea, the Glosters fought their last stand at the Imjin River.

So, what's the through line? A numbered regiment, the 28th, became known for a galant stand at the Battle of the Sphinx and earned a name for itself. The battalions that bore the name thereafter, though that connection, made some of the most heroic last stands in British history: Quatre Bras, Ladysmith, Mons, First and Second Ypres, Menin Road, Defence of Escaut, Taukyan, and Imjin.

I would suggest that knowing that they belonged to the Glorious Glosters, rather than just a numbered infantry regiment, inspired these later acts.

If the British Army is going to be reduced to a handful of Battalions, shouldn't they be aspire to live up to something?

Frosted Flake posted:

Check the scoreboard

Frosted Flake posted:

Helicopters were supposed to solve this problem, starting in the 1970's, but when that required either ships to operate dangerously close to shore, or the beachheads could only be so far inland, they developed.... the V-22.

The USMC also does not have enough of a logistical tail afloat to actually supply any of these formations anymore. If you look at the size of the logistics in the MTO/ETO/PTO - whole construction battalions making docks and warehouses around the South Pacific, Tunisia, gigantic depots in Southern England, the huge companies of (segregated) stevedores to unload ships at the beach, the (segregated) transport companies to take it all inland - that's all been eliminated. So there's - this is not an exaggeration - actually a plan to provision this theoretical marine force because V-22s "may" be able to land them there, but they can't possibly meet their daily needs for rations, ammunition and POL.

I have a few really interesting books on amphibious operations, and it's 99.9% logistics, 0.1% beach assault, which is why it's basically been ignored since the 70's.

Remember the plan for the USMC's role in WW3 was to land with the British Royal Marines in Norway to shore up NATO's flank - but all of their equipment and stores were laboriously prepositioned there years in advance.


The process of getting it all there took years too. I don't think the PRC or Iran will be so obliging as to let the US build these in their coastal towns.

Frosted Flake posted:

Well, the plan wouldn’t work if they were so everyone assumed they wouldn’t be

Hopefully you live far enough away from these ones

Frosted Flake posted:

I would like to think that I was taught how to do war the right way, at the Artillery School, where we spent days drafting complex fire plans that required hundreds of rounds per gun, had crews dig gun pits and camouflage their guns etc. The institutional army is very old school, and takes a lot of professional pride in traditions.

Raskolnikov38 posted:

because neoliberalism solved the problem on the cheap

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7l-Wzh78pyg&t=95s

DancingShade posted:

All you need is American brand Zelensky. There is no troublesome law that cannot be re-written, removed, suspended, replaced or outright ignored. Might makes right.

"Oh but that could never happen here"

Frosted Flake posted:

I would only that that the other part of this, which connects to nearly every other post ITT, is that they can't imagine "just use longer lanyards" or "use better PPE", which are relatively easy to implement health and safety improvements. I don't mean they couldn't do it. They can't imagine doing it.

A longer lanyard, which heavy artillery used in the world wars (or fired by remote with the crews behind berms, in trenches etc.) or better ear protection are relatively inexpensive solutions. Even more obvious an inexpensive are procedural changes like more crew rest, rotating crews etc.



All of their proposed solutions emerge from the same neoliberal consensus The Oldest Man described, which are incredibly capital intensive.

They would rather buy "BrainScope" whatever the gently caress that is, than use a longer lanyard and have the crews shelter during firing.

stephenthinkpad posted:

They don't need to use a rope, just use a bluetooth button or something. Use your fingerprint login to add security.

Frosted Flake posted:

Frosted Flake posted:

The problem, imo, is that it feels "pointless" in training, when nobody has encountered counter battery fire in their lives, so without the visceral feel of shell splinters tearing them to pieces, stripping to the waist and digging all day with picks and shovels sucks. Which is true, obviously. It does suck. It just sucks less than getting ripped apart by splinters, or in this case, getting TBIs. But TBIs are invisible, so, it's really hard to reinforce.

Frosted Flake posted:

Imagine the opposite of this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSG8d_e7A9g

Frosted Flake posted:

Finally, as soon as someone arrives in battalion their calendar if filled with dinners, sports tournaments and ceremonies that reinforce all of these identities.

Cerebral Bore posted:

i don't know much about boats, but i do know that taking a functioning weapon and slapping all sorts of dumb poo poo onto it is a time-honored american pastime

skooma512 posted:

Agreed. Useless and needlessly escalatory.

Which is a nice segue into tactical nukes.

The thing is, nobody has fired a nuke of any kind in anger since 1945. For the same reason you mentioned nobody used chems in combat in WW2, it starts an escalation spiral. If you use one in a first strike, you broke the seal, and now nukes are on the table for the return shot. This doesn't automatically trigger "launch everything and go home to die" mode, but it's the first step to that, since you'll end up in a tit for tat exchange while the international community tries to get you to back down or defeat you, that will probably end up with your cities (countervalue strategy) eventually being destroyed. Or maybe you get away with it and you just trade low yielders a couple times on military targets (counterforce) until someone sues for peace, but nobody wants to deal with that when a low yield nuke is effectively the same thing as a bunch of conventional bombs that no will fault you for using.

cock hero flux posted:

to be fair some of them involve the president being insane or the US just loving up and launching all the nukes accidentally

Frosted Flake posted:

All of the anecdotes from his own class and cohort make that pretty clear. He was fondly remembered by people that didn't know him.

That middle class boomers adore him is mostly a product of the 1960's. The man left office in disgrace and widely hated, for chrissakes.

FuzzySlippers posted:

I can see why the MIC has no enthusiasm for artillery. Why go through all the tedious effort to setup artillery and blast away with $500 artillery shells when you can bury your opponents in money via easy peasy $2 million dollar cruise missiles?

Zeppelin Insanity posted:

As of 2022, they did not make Leopards. Greece still makes them, but Germany does not.

They do *sell* them, though. Delivery date is vibes-based. If you buy a Leopard 2A8, it doesn't get made new, they get an old Leopard, and refurbish it and put the new bits on it. But that's dependent on them getting their hand on the old Leopard. Which will probably be a lot harder today than it was recently.

As of 2022, there were reports that Rheinmetall were asking some museums to give them back Leopards so they can refurbish them and sell them as new.

It's possible that they started production again since then and I just missed it, but I definitely didn't see any articles about it happening.

They don't. It's pure sales material\expo bait, like a lot of stuff is. They're not going to be producing it until someone buys it. They're not going to finish development until someone buys it. It's basically a pitch, at this point.

It's extremely unlikely that anyone will buy it, because the Bundeswehr has decided on a list of requirements for future tanks, and the Panther does not fulfill them.

The Budeswehr plan is amazing in itself. They decided that a tank has to weigh around 50 tons, but have a lot more capabilities than current tanks do. They also concluded this is impossible, but they won't budge on any aspect of this. So they came up with the best (for profit motive) solution possible: every tank will be replaced by a platoon of 4 tanks, that have different elements of the capabilities they want. So, some will have a big gun, some will have a small gun, some will have missiles, and so on. Also, they'll be partially AI, because you need fewer crew people, you can't just quadruple manpower requirements.

At no point did anyone seem to think about where the gently caress will you put them, in physical terrain. If your single tank is now a platoon of 4, I guess your platoon is now 20. Where do they go?. What if you face an enemy platoon? What if you face an enemy division? It's such a perfect example of thinking by powerpoint.