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Mojo Threepwood posted:It was fascinating to read about how during Operation Frequent Wind how the Navy dumped millions of dollars of helicopters into the ocean, and it reminded me of seeing photos of B-52s with wings chopped off to comply with the START Treaty. Does that sort of thing happen a lot in history, when a country wrecks tons of perfectly good equipment for an unusual reason? In Sweden after 1991 pretty much everything that it took 50 years of paranoia to stockpile has been just thrown away (not sold as surplus, since it would "ruin the market for commercial actors") because with the collapse of the USSR it suddenly seemed like there would be peace in our time. We're talking about everything from perfectly functional and relatively modern 155mm howitzers (170 thrown away) to plain everyday things like stretchers (780,000 - yes, that's the correct number of zeroes), 20 liter jerry cans (500,000), broachers and spades (about a million each). Complete (but old) equipment for several infantry brigades (all inclusive, so everything from trucks and guns to uniforms and field kitchens) as well as several complete field hospitals was just given away for free to Latvia and Estonia since hey, they're our buffer states now!
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Oct 12, 2013 20:18
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Still, the weirdest thing is that you guys took on some pretty clapped out equipment from the former East German Army 
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Oct 12, 2013 20:20
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Koesj posted:Still, the weirdest thing is that you guys took on some pretty clapped out equipment from the former East German Army It was a confusing time. The army had been complaining for many years about how the indigenous aircraft development programs (Viggen and later Gripen) was eating up the defense budget and leaving them with nothing. Aside from the guys fortunate to be in one of the six armored brigades, every infantryman in Sweden rode to battle in either a tarp-covered truck or a bandvagn 206, which has a fiberglass superstructure. Priority One with capital letters on the army's hit list was to get a new tank, and after that, to mechanize the poo poo out of everything they could afford to mechanize, because the infantry brigades were mostly rolling around with the same poo poo they'd been using since the 60's. And what happens? Not only do they get a new tank, and a really good one at that, but suddenly they can also afford to buy several hundred APC's and IFV's! Sure, not the best ones, but they're better than trucks, and they're loving cheap, unlike the CV90 which they couldn't afford for everyone. Certainly this is the opportunity of the century! Then a few years later the defense budget of 2000 comes along, we're suddenly not going to have very many infantry brigades anymore and the trashing party starts. TheFluff fucked around with this message at 20:32 on Oct 12, 2013 |
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Oct 12, 2013 20:30
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Koesj posted:
I remember the officers and non-coms in our unit telling stories about this, expecially the weekend- and holiday part. Mostly about east guys who heared about it during the Cold War and dismissed it as propaganda, only to be completely floured after coming west and learning how it was all real. Fun fact: During basic I was told by my instructors how we are soldiers even after 5 pm: We may at home with our families and in civilan clothes, but we were still soldiers and supposed to conduct ourselves properly. About the shooting range thing, we actually have (and considering how old they looked to me, most likely had them even back in 1989) computer-simulators as shooting ranges. It's just most Bundeswehr-units prefer training on actual shooting ranges with real weapons. Some of the larger ranges for company- or battalion-sized exercises can be ridiculously complex. The one I experienced myself had a small fake village build in it, for example. (I still fondly remember the exercise where our lieutenant scared our supervisors shitless by letting us run through still burning grass to our positions and employing gunteam-support tactics he had drilled into us beforehand. The supervisors however didn't know we had actually drilled all this stuff and freaked out seeing our Zug (platoon) suddenly dash forward in a live-fire exercise.)
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Oct 12, 2013 20:42
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Koesj posted:Yeah well how about all those excess planes stored in Sweden and all the extra pilots you guys trained hmm? 
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Oct 12, 2013 20:44
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I'm trying envision a million shovels and it's really hurting my head. I don't know why but that's really sticking with me. Like, a million god drat shovels. What is the volume of a million shovels?
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Oct 12, 2013 20:50
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Libluini posted:I remember the officers and non-coms in our unit telling stories about this, expecially the weekend- and holiday part. Mostly about east guys who heared about it during the Cold War and dismissed it as propaganda, only to be completely floured after coming west and learning how it was all real. Hah, good to see part one of that story confirmed at least. I think what the guy was getting at wrt computers was mostly the support equipment or possibly even some kind of reference to stuff inside the vehicles (this was a tank range). Hell, he might just have witnessed a HSchKompanie shooting off some old-rear end ammo on a decrepit range  quote:Fun fact: During basic I was told by my instructors how we are soldiers even after 5 pm: We may at home with our families and in civilan clothes, but we were still soldiers and supposed to conduct ourselves properly. Wait is this part of Innere Führung 
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Oct 12, 2013 20:59
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Koesj posted:Hah, good to see part one of that story confirmed at least. I think what the guy was getting at wrt computers was mostly the support equipment or possibly even some kind of reference to stuff inside the vehicles (this was a tank range). Hell, he might just have witnessed a HSchKompanie shooting off some old-rear end ammo on a decrepit range Which raises some interesting questions for me at least. How were the two German armies integrated after the cold war? and how did the various other former eastern bloc armies of Eastern Europe develop?
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Oct 12, 2013 21:11
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Ferrosol posted:How were the two German armies integrated after the cold war? Others may be able to give more detail, but I read something about this: supposedly, the armed forces of the DDR were disbanded wholesale, their equipment scrapped or sold off, with the exception of MiG-29s which were retained in service for some years. Former personel could apply to join the Bundeswehr, and were reviewed on a case-by-case basis. Everyone with the rank of colonel or greater were considered politically tainted by the regime and forced to retire. Lower officers could join if they were determined to not have been to closely involved with the SED, but would have to accept a demotion of one or two ranks. Supposedly many NVA veterans are bitter about the fact that they were considered to have been part of a foreign army and therefore do not get the pensions enjoyed by their Bundeswehr counterparts.
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Oct 12, 2013 21:36
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Libluini posted:That depends. If you look at how there was zero resistance to the complete dismemberment of the Volksarmee after reunification, not so good. (Officially, it was a "merging" of both armies, but the combined forces afterwards were even smaller than the west army from before the merger. Most East German soldiers were let go and the West German Bundeswehr got a lot smaller thanks to the first of several military reforms after the end of the Cold War.) Forgive me for asking, but where you from? I haven't seen your spelling of Soviet before.
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Oct 12, 2013 21:49
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Kopijeger posted:Others may be able to give more detail, but I read something about this: supposedly, the armed forces of the DDR were disbanded wholesale, their equipment scrapped or sold off, with the exception of MiG-29s which were retained in service for some years. Former personel could apply to join the Bundeswehr, and were reviewed on a case-by-case basis. Everyone with the rank of colonel or greater were considered politically tainted by the regime and forced to retire. Lower officers could join if they were determined to not have been to closely involved with the SED, but would have to accept a demotion of one or two ranks. Supposedly many NVA veterans are bitter about the fact that they were considered to have been part of a foreign army and therefore do not get the pensions enjoyed by their Bundeswehr counterparts. That's on the money, total intake of former NVA personnel was somewhere below 2.000 people IIRC. Grand Prize Winner posted:Forgive me for asking, but where you from? I haven't seen your spelling of Soviet before. Wellll they call it Die Sowjetunion in German...
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Oct 12, 2013 21:59
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Forgive me for asking, but where you from? I haven't seen your spelling of Soviet before. Koesj already said it, but yeah. I completely forgot to change gears from German to English there. And yeah, the "integration" of the NVA was a joke. I've seen numbers ranging from 1300 to 3000 myself. The variance is mostly because some might have been integrated first, but scrapped at a later date, after MAD (our military secret service) found something ideologically incompatible in their past. Apropos ideology, the NVA wasn't the only one getting sweet, sweet political indoctrination. The Bundeswehr has the concept of "Innere Führung", which sometimes expands into outright ideological indoctrination. I remember having to sit through about a hour of political education every friday during my five-month basic training. Mostly stuff about current news, how they relate to us soldiers and how fascists are evil and dumb and will always fail. Harmless stuff like that.
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Oct 12, 2013 22:51
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Xiahou Dun posted:I'm trying envision a million shovels and it's really hurting my head. A lot.
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Oct 13, 2013 01:09
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Libluini posted:Apropos ideology, the NVA wasn't the only one getting sweet, sweet political indoctrination. The Bundeswehr has the concept of "Innere Führung", which sometimes expands into outright ideological indoctrination. I remember having to sit through about a hour of political education every friday during my five-month basic training. Mostly stuff about current news, how they relate to us soldiers and how fascists are evil and dumb and will always fail. Harmless stuff like that. I prefer soldiers being told fascists are evil and dumb to soldiers being told fascists are the only people who can save the fatherland, myself...
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Oct 13, 2013 08:04
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The Fulda Gap thing boils down to two simplistic things. The first is that any potential breakthrough by either side would most likely trigger a limited tactical nuclear exchange, which was the stepping off point for a wider nuclear war in a lot of simulations. The second is it was convenient for the American government to explain the Fulda Gap as the nuclear Thermopylae for American forces, saying "we're holding this pass from the godless Commies and by God we will not let them through". The average citizen was not going to digest the wider sea, air, and land aspects of the European theater.
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Oct 13, 2013 13:02
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ArchangeI posted:I prefer soldiers being told fascists are evil and dumb to soldiers being told fascists are the only people who can save the fatherland, myself... Not a bad system at all really. I've got no objections to it!
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Oct 13, 2013 14:43
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SeanBeansShako posted:Not a bad system at all really. I've got no objections to it! It was one of the reasons I signed up with a Bundeswehr-volunteer program to expand my draft from 9 to 23 months. (The other reason was money, since I was fresh out of school and unemployed at the time.) After almost two years in the military I decided to just let the program run out, since I felt I had done my duty to protect democracy (please don't laugh).
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Oct 13, 2013 15:01
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Well, I'd look at it like an insurance policy. Even if you're Germany and you have no external enemies, it's still worth keeping a small military force around in case something unpredictable and bad happens in the future. Like Putin's successor is overthrown in a fascist coup in the year 2030, or something. Crazier things in history have happened. It's like a 100-year flood. It's not something you spend a lot of time on, but you do have the municipality handle permits and regulations with it in mind, homeowners pay a small percentage into flood insurance, etc.
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Oct 13, 2013 15:22
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Omi-Polari posted:Well, I'd look at it like an insurance policy. Even if you're Germany and you have no external enemies, it's still worth keeping a small military force around in case something unpredictable and bad happens in the future.
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Oct 13, 2013 16:00
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I'm Crap posted:Sure, they have, but what good is a little cosmetic army going to do in a crazy scenario like that? Having a small professional peacekeeping force isn't going to do much to dissuade or impede a hypothetical Russian dictator with 120 divisions. It seems strange to keep an army around for a situation in which it would be completely useless. I guess the idea is more about having a core of professional, trained soldiers that can serve as a cadre for a massive increase in army size should the security situation demand it.
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Oct 13, 2013 16:43
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I'm Crap posted:Sure, they have, but what good is a little cosmetic army going to do in a crazy scenario like that? Having a small professional peacekeeping force isn't going to do much to dissuade or impede a hypothetical Russian dictator with 120 divisions. It seems strange to keep an army around for a situation in which it would be completely useless. Well, Germany specifically has a few buffer states, and realistically such a situation would not just spring out of nowhere - Future Russian Hitler is not going to take power and immediately go "alright, ENGLISH CHANNEL OR BUST LET'S GET THIS SHOW ON THE ROAD" the next week or something. That "small cosmetic army" will at least ensure that there is a nucleus of training and institutional knowledge around which a bigger defense force could be built. e:gently caress beaten 
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Oct 13, 2013 16:44
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Are any armies trained in insurgency (not counterinsurgency) tactics/strategy? I'd imagine it's sensible for small states without armed forces sufficient to defend themselves to have some preparation for resistance in the event of invasion. Something like the British Home Army in WWII.
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Oct 13, 2013 17:27
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ArchangeI posted:I guess the idea is more about having a core of professional, trained soldiers that can serve as a cadre for a massive increase in army size should the security situation demand it. Case in point; Pre WW2 german forces.
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Oct 13, 2013 17:55
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Are any armies trained in insurgency (not counterinsurgency) tactics/strategy? I'd imagine it's sensible for small states without armed forces sufficient to defend themselves to have some preparation for resistance in the event of invasion. Yes, in fact I'd say most armies do this to some extent - some more, others less. Even if you don't plan on fighting a partisan war or train most of your forces to fight that way, it's worth it to explore the options and write manuals for the hypothetical occasion, and making sure that your neighbours know you have all of this planned for and that your population is indoctrinated to continue fighting even if the central government falls. Any special force types generally are trained to make do with what's available, use hit and run tactics etc. However, instructing a large share of your population on how to wage a guerrilla war is generally not a good idea - it could undermine the government's monopoly to violence and you don't want to end up like Yugoslavia, everyone fighting for themselves. Eg. imagine if the British government was teaching IRA supporters in the 1970's the best techniques in setting up IED's or hiding ammo caches. During peace time you want to limit this knowledge to specialists and officers, and make sure that IF poo poo hits the fan then you have trained cadres who can give your entire nation a crash course in partisan warfare. Assuming that it's worth the price - instructing your women and children going all Werwolf on the occupiers would most likely result in massacres and civilians being put into concentration camps.
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Oct 13, 2013 18:01
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The Soviets had a setup like that. Lots of people were trained in covert operations and demolitions. But then the doctrine changed from letting the enemy gnaw at strongholds while their supply lines were melting away to a swift and decisive counterattack to wage war on enemy territory, and all those specialists became obsolete, and most ended up shot, since Stalin didn't want insurgency masters running around.
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Oct 13, 2013 18:15
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TheFluff posted:Then a few years later the defense budget of 2000 comes along, we're suddenly not going to have very many infantry brigades anymore and the trashing party starts. Thanks to that, a few more hypothetical FDF wartime personnel get to ride into battle in shrapnel-proof boxes rather than confiscated neighbourhood rapists' vans. The circle of life for Warsaw pact hardware, there's always someone desperate enough to buy.
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Oct 13, 2013 18:57
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Are any armies trained in insurgency (not counterinsurgency) tactics/strategy? I'd imagine it's sensible for small states without armed forces sufficient to defend themselves to have some preparation for resistance in the event of invasion. Pretty much any army with counterinsurgency experience can also be considered to know a lot about the other side of the equation and special forces as well as many militia or reservist units at the least can be expected to know about insurgent tactics. As an example for a force deliberately set up for it, see the Iranian Basij militia. Besides being a political stick for the Ayatollah in internal affairs, it is specifically structured to be a pre-positioned insurgency on a scale that'd make the Iraqi one pale*. They're forming a kind of decentralised network under command of the Revolutionary Guard, which provides leadership and support via smaller, higher-quality elements trained to work in close cooperation with the militiamen. *IIRC, most estimates of insurgent casualties in Iraq I've seen go from 25-50k killed between 2003-2011. The Basij has ~90,000-100,000 active members, ~300,000 reservists and can potentially mobilise up to another million men if necessary according to most western estimates; numbers given by iranian sources are much higher, but likely more propaganda than fact.
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Oct 13, 2013 20:04
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Magni posted:Pretty much any army with counterinsurgency experience can also be considered to know a lot about the other side of the equation and special forces as well as many militia or reservist units at the least can be expected to know about insurgent tactics. I'm not sure I agree with that - as far as I know no western military has a 'how to be an insurgent' manual kicking around - and frankly from a logistical standpoint I doubt they are capable of it. Fighting an insurgency doesn't mean you are capable of waging war as one.
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Oct 13, 2013 21:37
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Red7 posted:I'm not sure I agree with that - as far as I know no western military has a 'how to be an insurgent' manual kicking around - and frankly from a logistical standpoint I doubt they are capable of it. Fighting an insurgency doesn't mean you are capable of waging war as one. Weren't the Green Berets originally supposed to train locals to fight in a counter-insurgency? I know they weren't often used in that role, esp in SE Asia and Central America. But wasn't that one of their goals, in theory?
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Oct 13, 2013 21:44
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Oxford Comma posted:Weren't the Green Berets originally supposed to train locals to fight in a counter-insurgency? I know they weren't often used in that role, esp in SE Asia and Central America. But wasn't that one of their goals, in theory? Oh yeah i accept there are a few exceptions - US Special Forces being a notable one. What I mean is taking a conventional army and turning them into an insurgency seems unlikely at best - the mindsets alone are radically different.
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Oct 13, 2013 22:21
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Red7 posted:Oh yeah i accept there are a few exceptions - US Special Forces being a notable one. What I mean is taking a conventional army and turning them into an insurgency seems unlikely at best - the mindsets alone are radically different. Also assuming that your country has been occupied the first thing that happens is the invaders intern your armed forces until a political solution is reached. e: assuming you aren't US Iraq-era dumb and send everyone home with no money and no job. Hint for anyone planning on invading a country anytime soon: when the armed forces surrender because the regime has collapsed and are so amenable that they actually ask you to keep paying them then your answer is yes. Alchenar fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Oct 13, 2013 |
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Oct 13, 2013 23:06
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Weren't the Soviets supposed to have people in Western Europe trained to carry out sabotage if war broke out? Or was that Cold War paranoia?
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Oct 13, 2013 23:11
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BurningStone posted:Weren't the Soviets supposed to have people in Western Europe trained to carry out sabotage if war broke out? Or was that Cold War paranoia? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio Mafia, Nazis and facists, Oh my
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Oct 13, 2013 23:55
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... yeah, there was a suprising amount of interaction between local criminal syndicates and western intelligence agencies under the guise of "anti-communism", from the various Italian crime syndicates through the Yakuza. Gladio was just the tip of the iceberg.
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Oct 14, 2013 04:31
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Better dead than red.
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Oct 14, 2013 06:30
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TheFluff posted:Incredible waste of ressources. Wow. What happened to give these stuff to africa? Im sure the beds and shovels etc would be a great boon to many african countries and charity organizations.
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Oct 14, 2013 14:27
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GyverMac posted:Wow. What happened to give these stuff to africa? Im sure the beds and shovels etc would be a great boon to many african countries and charity organizations. Beds and shovels aren't a problem in Africa. But they are the kinds of things you'd want to give to anywhere hit by a storm or earthquake or tsunami or other natural disaster.
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Oct 14, 2013 14:38
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Actually at least some of the stuff was put to charity use; I believe a large number of surplus tents were sent to Turkey in the wake of the 1999 earthquake that left half a million people homeless. Still, most was just thrown away, and that's a drat shame. Edit: looked it up, it was 5000 twenty-man tents sent to Turkey. Seems like some complete field hospitals were given away to the UN as well. Edit edit: among the more bizarre things thrown away or sold were a machine from 1929 for manufacturing barbed wire and 150 old locomotives (of which 100 were steam locomotives). TheFluff fucked around with this message at 16:02 on Oct 14, 2013 |
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Oct 14, 2013 15:38
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Thought the readers of this thread might be interested in Frances Grose's satirical "Advice to the Officers of the British Army" from 1782. It's available online for free at http://regimentalrogue.com/srsub/advice1782.htm He basically sets out satirical pieces of advice for every rank in the army. I'll share a couple of my favourite pieces of advice below. For the private soldier: quote:As a private soldier, you should consider all your officers as your natural enemies, with whom you are in a perpetual state of warfare: you should reflect that they are constantly endeavouring to withhold from you all your just dues, and to impose on you every unnecessary hardship; and this for the mere satisfaction of doing you an injury. In your turn, therefore, make it a point to deceive and defraud them, every possible opportunity; and more particularly the officers of the company to which you belong. For the drummer: quote:Whenever you fall in with a horseman on the road, you may try the rider's skill, and the horse's mettle, by beating the grenadier's march just under his nose. Should the rider be dismounted, and get his arm broken, or his skull fractured, it is no more than he deserves for not paying a due respect to your cloth, in taking himself out of the road; and, after all, it is not your fault, but the horse's.
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Oct 14, 2013 16:47
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