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There are advisors, in my time in the army we'd have folks from all over, Pakistan, Jordan, South Africa, France, Russia etc.. its just a simple fact there is complete rejection of how to mount conventional war, most of the time its like "whatever get it over with so i can go back to loving about" attitude that most soldiers (and officers) have, the only thing most people cared about was whose who in the pecking order and they followed orders from there.Sergg posted:This is Saudi Arabia we're talking about. I don't know how many Saudis you've met but they are the most pampered, spoiled metrosexuals on earth and while they may have fabulous outfits and intricately manicured nails, their society isn't exactly geared towards the meritocracy required to create effective soldiers, officers, or a chain of command. This really applies to most of the peninsula 
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Sep 27, 2015 12:42
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DarkCrawler posted:I don't get this though, if you have billions and billions to spend on hardware, why wouldn't you spend a million or two and hire someone to show you how to use them effectively, handle the logistics, train the personnel, etc. are they afraid if the army gets too competent they will perform a coup? Because you don't really need much of a competence for that to happen, see Africa or closer by Egypt (which you know is still mostly Africa but you get my drift). Purchases of big-ticket military hardware come with dudes who will teach your guys how to use it.
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Sep 27, 2015 14:35
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Zeroisanumber posted:Purchases of big-ticket military hardware come with dudes who will teach your guys how to use it. You must understand that Western ideals like tactics and strategy are irrelevant and just complicate things. The idea of professionalism is just a Western colonial concept, they don't understand what it's like here. Besides Allah himself has blessed this operation *General al-Bilko drives tanks into a valley with zero support*.
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Sep 27, 2015 14:57
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The British Mercenary Advisers who come with the weapons systems probably give passing marks in exchange for cash/harem bribes. A couple recommended 'Star Trek: Enterprise' episodes for the thread: Season 1: Desert Crossing Season 3: Chosen Realm "Both sides have been decimated. There are no major cities left. Millions... are dead. Your faith was going to bring peace? Here it is." 
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Sep 27, 2015 15:06
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Pimpmust posted:Got any examples? Drawing blanks on "victorious-in-an-actual-war" dictatorships lately. ...(North) Vietnam? Depending on if you class that as a dictatorship or not (South Vietnam, not so good). Iran and its proxies seem to be doing very well with very little in comparison to the resources and hardware their enemies can muster, and they're fighting wars at several fronts. Hezbollah alone could hold back Israel in 2006 too. Iran also held off Saddam's army and beat it back from Iranian soil when the country was in complete chaos too. These days not many dictatorships actually fight wars as opposed to having problems at home though. Zeroisanumber posted:Purchases of big-ticket military hardware come with dudes who will teach your guys how to use it. So how well trained is the average Saudi soldier? Like would it be a capable army if it wasn't led by the King's second cousins or whatever? Is this their elite unit and it is being wasted guarding the al-Sauds? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabian_National_Guard DarkCrawler fucked around with this message at 15:16 on Sep 27, 2015 |
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Sep 27, 2015 15:14
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Miltank solution to Syrian Crisis: partition along sectarian lines with a RF/US DMZ around Alewite territory. Shia Alewite state in the west, a Sunni state in the east continuing into present day Iraq along what are roughly the borders of ISIL and Greater Kurdistan in north Syria and Iraqi Kurdistan.
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Sep 27, 2015 15:26
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Miltank posted:Miltank solution to Syrian Crisis: partition along sectarian lines with a RF/US DMZ around Alewite territory. Shia Alewite state in the west, a Sunni state in the east continuing into present day Iraq along what are roughly the borders of ISIL and Greater Kurdistan in north Syria and Iraqi Kurdistan. Erdogan just had a small aneurysm and he doesn't know why
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Sep 27, 2015 15:28
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So maybe this war is just the Saudi way of thinning out the number of useless princes.
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Sep 27, 2015 15:29
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Yeah Erdogan is the tricky part. Maybe we give him a bunch of bribe money or promise to help fight the PKK.
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Sep 27, 2015 15:31
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Miltank posted:Yeah Erdogan is the tricky part. Maybe we give him a bunch of bribe money or promise to help fight the PKK. Just coup him out and by the time the reaction arrives we can have that configuration of states be a done deal.
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Sep 27, 2015 15:32
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Panzeh posted:Just coup him out and by the time the reaction arrives we can have that configuration of states be a done deal. I actually read that as a drone deal. Though like everything else in the Middle East, it would probably involve drones eventually.
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Sep 27, 2015 16:27
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We could probably just give them relative intel that the NSA picks up. If it gets to the point that we would need to actively drone strike the PKK then we've already lost. Plus we would definitely need Greater Kurdistan as an ally and anything that overt would be a problem for them.
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Sep 27, 2015 16:36
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J33uk posted:You must understand that Western ideals like tactics and strategy are irrelevant and just complicate things. The idea of professionalism is just a Western colonial concept, they don't understand what it's like here. Besides Allah himself has blessed this operation *General al-Bilko drives tanks into a valley with zero support*. Basically this. We had Saudi students at the Army flight school at FT Rucker, AL. They didn't want to learn and spent their time in the states drinking and screwing around. They were always passed though because their government paid for them to go and our relationship the Saudis meant we had to treat them with kid gloves.
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Sep 27, 2015 16:37
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euclidian88 posted:So maybe this war is just the Saudi way of thinning out the number of useless princes. The irl version of making your worst vassals in CK2 army commanders and sending them on suicide missions.
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Sep 27, 2015 16:54
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At this point, I am imagining the Saudi tactics to be exactly like the enemies in Metal Gear Solid. I fully expect the next general to be fultoned out.
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Sep 27, 2015 17:46
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Miltank posted:Yeah Erdogan is the tricky part. Maybe we give him a bunch of bribe money or promise to help fight the PKK. Give him a suit of armor.
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Sep 27, 2015 18:05
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Apoffys posted:On the topic of Arabs and war, I read this opinion piece recently: A page or so in and it's mostly bog standard Clash of Civilizations "The white man thinks like this and the Arab like this" horseshit icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 20:40 on Sep 27, 2015 |
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Sep 27, 2015 18:45
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Ultimately a lot of Western Armies aren't actually that far removed in quality from the Saudi's. The huge push towards reliance on superior technology instead of focusing on superior training AND technology has been slowly degrading the quality of our military forces for a while now. You can thank right wing dipshits who care about nothing more than throwing a trillion dollars at some defense contractor to put a whole lot of middle class white jobs in their district. Cuts to training and personal have been severe lately and a lot of the U.S.'s officer training programs are just falling apart. It doesn't matter if your a dictatorship or a Republic, if you don't balance training personal AND developing better technology your army will be worthless.
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Sep 27, 2015 19:09
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Venom Snake posted:Ultimately a lot of Western Armies aren't actually that far removed in quality from the Saudi's. The huge push towards reliance on superior technology instead of focusing on superior training AND technology has been slowly degrading the quality of our military forces for a while now. You can thank right wing dipshits who care about nothing more than throwing a trillion dollars at some defense contractor to put a whole lot of middle class white jobs in their district. Cuts to training and personal have been severe lately and a lot of the U.S.'s officer training programs are just falling apart. [citation needed]
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Sep 27, 2015 19:27
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enraged_camel posted:[citation needed] Source: My entire family works in the MiC and if you want me to I can link you about 15 or more articles on the insane amount of money we are burning making Jets that burn their entire fuel store just taking off. Many of the budget cuts in recent years to the military have been to personal/staff and training because nobody in the GOP wants to tell Military Developers to gently caress off and actually come back with a good product. We spend a fuckload of money on the equipment for our military, we don't spend nearly as much trying to actually train or attract good people TO the military. The only real service right now that doesn't have it's head 7 feet up it's own rear end is the Navy, with the Army maybe coming in close second and Air Force/Marines coming in dead last.
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Sep 27, 2015 19:36
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Venom Snake posted:Source: My entire family works in the MiC and if you want me to I can link you about 15 or more articles on the insane amount of money we are burning making Jets that burn their entire fuel store just taking off. Many of the budget cuts in recent years to the military have been to personal/staff and training because nobody in the GOP wants to tell Military Developers to gently caress off and actually come back with a good product. We spend a fuckload of money on the equipment for our military, we don't spend nearly as much trying to actually train or attract good people TO the military. So the actual important services are fine. Good to know.
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Sep 27, 2015 19:42
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Charliegrs posted:Yes we deliberately target those weddings its exactly the same as Assad deliberately targeting bread lines and hospitals... Honestly, are the Syrians directly targeting... anything... with their barrel bombs? Bearing in mind that barrels are by their nature un-aerodynamic, and are being manually chucked out of helicopters FAAAR far above any city they are bombing. (Note, obviously area bombing of civilian targets like 'a town/city' is a war crime, I'm not denying that.) mediadave fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Sep 27, 2015 |
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Sep 27, 2015 19:42
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Apoffys posted:On the topic of Arabs and war, I read this opinion piece recently: I'm not a sociologist or anthropologist, but I don't recommend the work of Norvell B. De Atkine, or the scholarship published in Pipe's MEQ. That's all I'll say on that. Alternatively, I recommend: Arabs at War: Military Effectiveness, 1948-1991 and the monograph it's adapted from: Armies of Snow and Armies of Sand: The Impact of Soviet Military Doctrine on Arab Militaries. They are more up to date and include less Jungian bullshit. Edit: I will upload the paper to Scribd when I get a spare moment. 2nd edit: removed Dilkington fucked around with this message at 01:55 on Nov 19, 2015 |
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Sep 27, 2015 19:54
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Venom Snake posted:Ultimately a lot of Western Armies aren't actually that far removed in quality from the Saudi's. The huge push towards reliance on superior technology instead of focusing on superior training AND technology has been slowly degrading the quality of our military forces for a while now. You can thank right wing dipshits who care about nothing more than throwing a trillion dollars at some defense contractor to put a whole lot of middle class white jobs in their district. Cuts to training and personal have been severe lately and a lot of the U.S.'s officer training programs are just falling apart. Yeah, you are pretty stupid. Don't care if your daddy works as a security guard at a boeing plant.
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Sep 27, 2015 19:59
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mediadave posted:Honestly, are the Syrians directly targeting... anything... with their barrel bombs? Bearing in mind that barrels are by their nature un-aerodynamic, and are being manually chucked out of helicopters FAAAR far above any city they are bombing. In other news, the YPG in Sheikh Maqsood have taken part of the rebel-controlled Castello Road/highway:   This is of course related to Al-Nusra being loving assholes and shelling Sheikh Maqsood with mortars and artillery with about the same accuracy as Assad's Barrel Bombs (read: none). The rebels may start freaking out about this in the next few days, because without that highway, the only notable road left into the rest of rebel-controlled Aleppo is this one:  This road is much smaller, much more precarious, and much more vulnerable to attack, especially since Nusra are being a bunch of loving morons and making it more likely for the YPG to turn a blind eye if Assad does something, rather than the current situation of turning a blind eye when the rebels do stuff. Oh, and the Euphrates Volcano may have taken territory in east Jarabulus, nothing confirmed yet: https://twitter.com/cahitstorm/status/648158201033158656 
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Sep 27, 2015 20:01
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As deplorable as the practice of barrel bombing is, it's not really any different from the night-time raids the British RAF made against Germany during WW2, which were an example of a western power targeting enemy civilians indiscriminately. Furthermore, in a conflict like this which is even more along religious and ethnic lines that political ones, there is a perverse sort of logic to barrel bombing. The Syrian Army isn't exactly wrong to assume that any areas inhabited entirely by Sunnis and under rebel control are going to be hostile to them no matter what they do, so they might as well just try and bomb the entire town or whatever mercilessly until all the civilians flee the country and it becomes depopulated. This has become a total war, and rightly or wrongly, the Assad regime sees the civilians gathered in marketplaces inside enemy territory as the logistical tail of the armed rebels trying to push them out of the capital.
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Sep 27, 2015 20:41
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Liberal_L33t posted:As deplorable as the practice of barrel bombing is, it's not really any different from the night-time raids the British RAF made against Germany during WW2, which were an example of a western power targeting enemy civilians indiscriminately. Uh this is just a tu quoque because strategic bombing was an atrocity.
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Sep 27, 2015 21:06
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British night bombing was less accurate than barrel bombing, end stop. No need to resort to that level of foolish hyperbole. Something like half of the bombs missed by 2 miles from the aim point, and that is assuming the aim point was correct.
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Sep 27, 2015 21:12
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War is atrocious
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Sep 27, 2015 21:13
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McDowell posted:War is atrocious Sure, but it can be less or more atrocious, and we've laid out some fairly explicit rules that military commanders and policymakers are morally obligated to follow.
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Sep 27, 2015 21:18
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oh cool, after the WW2 nuking thread ended there was no place to discuss how human rights and international law and are limp-wristed liberal frivolities, now we can do it here
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Sep 27, 2015 21:20
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Kill em all and let god sort em out
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Sep 27, 2015 21:22
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KaptainKrunk posted:Sure, but it can be less or more atrocious, and we've laid out some fairly explicit rules that military commanders and policymakers are morally obligated to follow. That method is...unsound
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Sep 27, 2015 21:34
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I'm bracing for a Syrian bloodbath in a week or so when Assad and Putin begin bombing all rebel positions (daesh and otherwise) without particular regard for collateral damage. Is that pretty much it? I don't feel like I'm up to speed, here.
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Sep 27, 2015 22:03
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So in Libya on Friday a man who was believed to be the leader of the largest refugee smuggling operation in Libya was assassinated along with 8 of his body guards. This coincided with Italy's announcement of "tactical operations" in response to the Mediterranean refugee crisis and now some members of the Tripoli government are stating that they believe that Italian special forces killed him, though imo it's probably more likely that a rival criminal group killed him.
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Sep 27, 2015 22:20
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Dilkington posted:I'm not a sociologist or anthropologist, but I don't recommend the work of Norvell B. De Atkine, or the scholarship published in Pipe's MEQ. That's all I'll say on that. There's lots of analysis available on the performance of modern Arab militaries, however almost all of it suffers from a shallow understanding of anthropology, although Arabs at War is better in this regard than most. At least it doesn't cite loving John Keegan, unlike Why Arabs Lose Wars. Both articles generally agree and offer the same conclusion; Arab armies fail because Arab culture is incompatible with a professional military. Both pieces offer a dire prediction for military planners: If Arab culture does not change at a fundamental level, Arab militaries will never succeed on the modern battlefield. While I can understand why American army trainers frustrated by spoiled princes might fall into this defeatist logic, none of the scholarship I've read addressed those Arab armies that SUCCEEDED, and how they did so. In particular, I would like to hear more about the forces in the Algerian Civil War, Hezbollah, and ISIS and how they fit into this theory of Arab military failure. Since we're on the subject anyway, can anyone suggest some good sources for the history of Hezbollah? Or maybe a broader history of the Lebanese Civil War? Since I'm reading about the Houthi's now I might as well pivot to another Shia para-state actor.
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Sep 27, 2015 22:25
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fade5 posted:In other news, the YPG in Sheikh Maqsood have taken part of the rebel-controlled Castello Road/highway: One would think that Al-Nusra would either cut that poo poo out or go full out when they get this dumb idea in their heads. How many times has it been that they have picked this fight just to get smacked in the nose till the YPG thinks they've had enough?
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Sep 28, 2015 00:26
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Ikasuhito posted:One would think that Al-Nusra would either cut that poo poo out or go full out when they get this dumb idea in their heads. How many times has it been that they have picked this fight just to get smacked in the nose till the YPG thinks they've had enough? DarkCrawler posted:Erdogan just had a small aneurysm and he doesn't know why
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Sep 28, 2015 01:38
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Jagchosis posted:So in Libya on Friday a man who was believed to be the leader of the largest refugee smuggling operation in Libya was assassinated along with 8 of his body guards. This coincided with Italy's announcement of "tactical operations" in response to the Mediterranean refugee crisis and now some members of the Tripoli government are stating that they believe that Italian special forces killed him, though imo it's probably more likely that a rival criminal group killed him. Well knowing the Italians they quite possibly subcontracted the job out to the rival criminal gang.
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Sep 28, 2015 02:23
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Xerxes17 posted:Well knowing the Italians they quite possibly subcontracted the job out to the rival criminal gang. And/or are the rival criminal gang.
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