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EvanSchenck posted:As for IEDs, a major reason that those weapons killed so many soldiers in Iraq is the insurgents' access to unsecured munitions dumps from the Baathist era. In addition they were probably assisted by organizations with experience in bomb-making, like the Quds force or the famous "foreign fighters"--for example the sudden appearance of EFPs in Iraq implies that somebody from outside taught them to use them and provided them with the necessary components. Compare the casualty record from IEDs in Iraq to Afghanistan, where expertise and materiel is harder to get. American militia types would presumptively be less expert and would definitely have poorer access to materials since explosives are for the most part tightly controlled in the US. I would say that you're both right and wrong in regards to IEDs. 1) The relative fewer casualties suffered from IED strikes in Afghanistan is a result of numerous things. -Adoption of different strategies and better training/equipment by the US/Coaltion from lessons learned in Iraq and earlier years of Afghanistan. -Low US involvement in Afghanistan prior to Jul 2009 and really Jan 2010. -Lack of paved roads in Afghanistan which encourages alternate route selection. Although, this effect is lessened when you consider the channelizing nature of of terrain in much of Afghanistan. Not all of Afghanistan is mountainous but a great deal of the terrain presents serious mobility difficulties. Even in the open desert there are places with few good routes through. Or, the terrain around farmland which is criss-crossed with canals. The parts that I've been to or seen are seem almost designed for the IED fight. -If the Iraqis had not possessed military grade munitions in all likelihood they would have produced their own explosives for use. This is exactly the reason why the Taliban/Anti-Coalition forces in Afghanistan use home made explosives. 2) The access to munitions after the fall of Sadaam's government led to a certain kind of IED being produced. We learned to counter/mitigate that so the bomb makers transitioned to a different type and then we learned to counter/mitigate that etc... 3) The expectation that American militia types would not have expert access to bomb makers is false. Any combat engineer worth anything could construct a variety of explosive devices both with/without military grade munitions. See Timothy McVay(graduate of Army Sapper school, a combat engineer course). The materials and the knowhow exist in America to produce IEDs and, almost certainly, in greater quantities than in Afghanistan.(The US pop is over 100 times larger than Afghanistan's) But, you are right in asserting that the unsecured munitions storage facilities facilitated IEDs in Iraq.
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| # ¿ Sep 15, 2010 04:13 |
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| # ¿ May 19, 2013 12:49 |
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INTJ Mastermind posted:When you resort to making home made bombs and hoping it blows up a truck instead of your house, then you've already lost the war. It's the equivalent of the French Resistance during WW-II. They were a nuisance, blowing up train tracks and ambushing Nazis, but were marginally useful to the overall war effort. But you need a real army with real army toys to take over a country. 2nd question first: I think you're thinking of Operation Phantom Fury in Fallujah. We didn't level it with artillery. The Marine Corps went through and systematically cleared the entire city after encouraging the civilian population to leave. Effectively, after a cordon was set, all civilians left through the entry/exit points of the cordon and we turned the city into a freefire zone. By doing so, we denied the insurgents their main advantage(to be able to blend in with the local populace). Op Phantom Fury happened because certain conditions, namely the influx of insurgents into Fallujah, allowed for it. After this, the Iraqis learned that there is no way they could hope to beat the US in a real fight. It was a loss militarily for them but also a blow to their own information/disinformation campaign. I don't think the Anticoalition Forces in Iraq ever massed on a large scale like Fallujah again. It wouldn't work on a large scale(i.e. against multiple population centers simultaneously or consecutively). For one thing, there just isn't enough US forces to launch an assault on every major civilian population center and maintain some semblance of order in the rest of the country. Besides that, insurgents aren't too interested in getting slaughtered wholesale(see Marjah, Afghanistan). The enemy isn't stupid. If we were to attempt to do so, the insurgent forces would blend in, leave the cities and operate rurally until conditions change. The COIN forces would lose whatever gains they had made in rural areas and gain nothing in the built up population centers. 1st part: The war fought by the Iraqis and the Taliban is not limited to IEDs. I can't say for certain but I doubt that IED production/planting is really even the main thrust of their war effort. It is certainly one of the most visible efforts in their insurgency. Some other things probably include intimidation campaigns, propaganda, corrupting the US message, and recruitment of followers. I'm sure there are others but I don't know specifics and if I did I couldn't mention them anyways. Once again, they don't have to beat us, they just have to demonstrate to the people that they intend to outlast us. You could say that "Who has the fortitude to hold out the longest, wins" but it's not entirely correct. It does lead to a better understanding of insurgency/counterinsurgency. The insurgents couldn't just go completely turtle and expect to remain viable. Some level of military action has to occur or else your risk losing your followers, control of the population, and control of the message. Veins McGee fucked around with this message at Sep 16, 2010 around 04:17 |
| # ¿ Sep 16, 2010 04:01 |
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lilljonas posted:But you are pretty much hosed after that, and you need to pick it apart, clean it out, and reassemble it. This is one of the reasons all armies have drills for this. A lot of American soldiers died lying prone trying fix their M-16s. I don't have any books on Vietnam at home so I'll just steal a quote from Wikipedia: Sounds like bullshit. The m16 is far from a great rifle but reports lack that reek of mass/media memories. Same idea as the soldiers getting spit on coming home from Vietnam. As far as anyone can determine that never happened. Veins McGee fucked around with this message at Dec 11, 2010 around 20:27 |
| # ¿ Dec 11, 2010 20:23 |
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HeroOfTheRevolution posted:The M16A1 was pretty notorious as a rifle that jammed a lot. They fixed it with the A2 model though, which was in use the latter half of Vietnam. That report is believable if it came from the early part of the war. The M16A4 of today is as reliable as they come, by all accounts. The m16a2 didn't come out until the 80s. Functionally, the only difference between an A1 and and A2/A4 is the fire control group(auto vs 3 round burst). A1/A2/A3/A4 models all have a direct impingement gas system(gas is vented into the upper receiver and acts against the bolt in order to cycle the action) and a forward assist(a button to force the bolt into battery if it isn't already). All m16 pattern rifles suffer some sort of reliability issues due to the nature of the gas system. This reliability issue is marginalized through proper training regarding maintenance and clearing of stoppages. lilljonas posted:As mentioned before, they did improve the M16, it just took 3 years of bad performance. The thing is, the M-16 was a result of research done on the vast records collected from WW2, which pointed out that a majority of injuries and death was caused at close quarters. This lead to the conclusion that the best way to improve the effect of your soldiers' firepower was not to increase their accuracy, but to increase their raw output of bullets during these hectic, close combats. Except, m16 pattern rifles are fairly accurate as far as rifles in military service go. Your claims regarding battlefield pyschology are correct, if you want to read further: "On Killing" or "On Combat" go into greater detail on this topic and other related topics. The self cleaning claim comes from the type of round Colt tested their weapons with. The US Govt, in a cost saving measure, specified a different type of powder in ammunition which caused more fouling in the chamber. Puukko naamassa posted:I love how, among other things, the US Army published a comic book for the soldiers to battle this problem. Those comic books are still published today. They address a number of problems in each issue dealing with PMCS(Preventative Maintenance, Checks, and Services) on military equipment(Vehicles, Radios, Weapons, Tools, etc etc). You have to consider that not every soldier was trained or trained properly how to use the m16 in bootcamp. It was intended as a supplement Nenonen posted:Rifle magazines are spring-operated. Usually you CAN push in more than the maximum amount, but then it will likely damage the spring. Eg. Finnish RK-62, a Kalashnikov variant, has 30 round banana magazines for 30 cartridges. You could fill in 31 or 32 rounds, but then you risk getting a jam. M16 magazines in Vietnam were 20rd instead of the 30rd like are used today.
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| # ¿ Dec 12, 2010 18:41 |
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Revolvyerom posted:Let's seriously not derail one of the best threads going with one of the most trite and over-done argument ever to surface in TFR. The Russian intervention in Afghanistan comes to mind. The Muj started out with bolt action rifles, in some cases handmade, but I don't think they really met with any real success until the US/Arabs/Pakistanis started funding and supplying them. This kind of technological deficit is common in insurgencies though. In a straight up war; I can't really think of an instance where one side possessed technology that was outright superior to it's opponents and ended up losing. Warfare is less about technology and more about the will of the state to fight and strategy/tactics/logistics. Edit: The discussion was very much verging towards to a discussion of weapons but I don't think it was quite on the AK vs M16 argument. Granted, the whole topic has been beat into the ground in TFR but judging by how poorly informed some of the posts were it is still worthwhile to discuss it here. Not only that, but discussion of armaments is a pretty valid topic in the vein of military history. Personally, I was more interested in whether reports of m16 failure was a mass/media memory inflated by sensationalist media(akin to "Soldiers getting spat on returning home) than anything else. Unquestionably, the m16 was not an outstanding weapon when first introduced but did it retain that distinction throughout the war and if it did, why? Veins McGee fucked around with this message at Dec 12, 2010 around 19:49 |
| # ¿ Dec 12, 2010 19:39 |
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lilljonas posted:Ok then. Battle of Isandlwana? Because when your tech sucks, you better bring ten times as many warriors. Brits were lazy and arrogant. They didn't follow their SOPs and ignored advice from Boer guides.
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| # ¿ Dec 12, 2010 20:28 |
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Revolvyerom posted:Please listen to iv46vi A majority of acronyms can be figured out through wikipedia or google. If not immediately, then with some deductive reasoning.
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| # ¿ Jan 27, 2011 00:49 |
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Throatwarbler posted:The theory of infantry combat is that a rifle on the battlefield is a pretty insignificant thing in the whole galaxy of stuff that goes bang - the average rifle has 30 rounds per mag and are usually not squeezed off on full auto. Compared to, say, a squad machine gun, rifles just don't do a lot of the shooting. When I went through the army, the popular quip is that all you guys with rifles are really just there to protect the squad machine guns, your squad is really just there to protect the company machine guns, etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_arms It isn't accurate to say that your riflemen exist to protect your machine guns. In the simplest sense of the idea, machine guns exist to fix your enemy in place and/or suppress his fires so that your riflemen may maneuver on the enemy.
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| # ¿ Jan 28, 2011 22:05 |
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AbleArcher posted:But it's a purely supporting role. Not really...at least not really in the modern sense. Once again, machine guns/mortars/etc suppress enemy fires and fix him in position. Riflemen then maneuver and assault the enemy position. Grenades, rifles, bayonets, shotguns, sharp sticks...whatever. They're just tools used by the assaulting forces. Also, SAWs are physically machine guns but treated as automatic rifles.
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| # ¿ Jan 30, 2011 01:07 |
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Nenonen posted:What does a 'flagship' mean today? Back in the day when it took weeks or months to send a message to your fleet, it was the ship where the fleet's admiral kept his staff. But today the admiral might as well be located in a ground base, or an airplane. Yet some navies still call some of their ships as flagships. Eg. FNS Pohjanmaa is the Finnish flagship, yet I struggle at seeing the situation where the admiral of the Finnish Navy and his entire staff would be stationed onboard a minelayer ship in a real war situation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flagship#Naval_use You're looking at it from too narrow a view. A flagship is the ship that has an admiral or commodore aboard and is used to coordinate the action of the ships under his command. While that might be the ship that the senior naval officer in the Finnish Navy hoists his flag from, there are probably other flagships that more junior admirals use to command the ships placed directly under their charge. Essentially, there is generally more than one admiral and more than one flagship in any reasonably sized navy. For example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_Strike_Group_One The flagship in this case is the carrier.
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| # ¿ Feb 5, 2011 03:34 |
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Zorak of Michigan posted:Historically, to be "the" flagship of the Navy, the admiral in charge of the entire fleet would have to operate from a ship. In WWII, Yamamoto flew his flag in Nagato and then in Yamato, so those ships could plausibly be described as the flagships of the IJN. Operating from a ship was very unwise. In modern warfare, radio direction finding ensures that anyone broadcasting at high power can be located fairly easily, which jeopardizes operational security. Whenever Yamamoto set sail, he had to stop giving orders to any ships not operating directly with the flagship. That rather ruins the point of being commander in chief. In the US, admirals at the level of Nimitz or King remained ashore and could give orders to their fleet commanders as they liked, making their jobs much easier. Maybe I misunderstood his question. I thought he was talking about flagships in general and not "Flagship of the Navy". There was still subordinate admirals who flew a flag from a warship afloat in order to coordinate the actions of their assigned ships. Nimitz was CinC Pacific Fleet. He commanded the US Pacific Fleet in WWII from ashore. He issued orders to his subordinate admirals, for example Halsey or Kinkaid, who controlled their respective fleets from aboard ship(For example, Halsey did so from aboard both the Missouri and the Entreprise and I assume various other ships).
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| # ¿ Feb 5, 2011 18:33 |
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gohuskies posted:But the doctrinal role of "something specialized at setting ambushes for enemy tanks" didn't go away, the platform changed from an AFV to man-carried or a helicopter (or a TOW Humvee, more recently). Having something with that specialization is a good thing. The TD wasn't fatally flawed because it fulfilled its doctrinal role, and its doctrinal role is an important one which still needs to be filled by something. You're kind of stretching it a little. Yes, weapon systems other than tanks engage enemy armor. Yes by the nature of the weapon systems (whether it's a TOW, Javelin, Helicoptor, AT-4), these weapon systems engage enemy armor from an ambush position. However(and I can't speak to helicoptors), ATGMs are not envisaged as the primary anti-tank ground asset on the battlefield. They are a point defense/secondary asset to deal with the threat presented by enemy armor. ATGMs are a tool in the infantry commanders tool bag. The concept of the TD was borne out of pre-WWII thought that the army didn't want to let go of. When the theory was tested on the battlefield, and especially so after the development and fielding of the 76mm Sherman, it was determined that TDs were redundant. The theory of armored combat did not match the facts of battle. Not to beat a dead horse, but while a Javelin teams primary mission may be to engage enemy armor and they may do it from an ambush position, their doctrinal mission is not to be the primary anti-armor weapon. Instead, they engage targets of opportunity or small armor formations that are direct threat to infantry formations. As opposed to a TD, where engaging and destroying enemy armor is it's primary mission. ATGMs are a recognition that resources, both on and off the battlefield, are scarce.
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| # ¿ Feb 5, 2011 20:20 |
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ganglysumbia posted:
Not in my experience. Training has shifted towards counter-insurgency since 2004-5. Civil disobedience is a tactic used in non-violent insurgencies(one mans insurgent is another's revolutionary), and Iraq/Afghanistan are far from non-violent insurgencies. Crowd control is somewhat important but the training doesn't go much further than don't machine gun a crowd of people unless the crowd is armed in my experience. There isn't a switch in doctrine. Units still train for their doctrinal big war mission but being able to conduct counterinsurgency operations in Iraq/Afghanistan takes preeminence. However, with the collapse of the Soviet Union the United States has began to emphasize lighter more deployable units(for example, all the Heavy Brigade Combat Teams that became Stryker Brigade Combat Teams in the last couple of years) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_...ade_combat_team Another example: I'm a vehicle commander in an LAR company. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United..._Reconnaissance We still train to do doctrinal missions(route/bridge/ford recon, armor ID, main gun qualifications on enemy armor silhouettes, principles of reconnaissance etc). But, we also train to conduct counter-insurgency operations in Afghan/Iraq(counter IED, census ops, check points etc). Veins McGee fucked around with this message at Feb 6, 2011 around 17:07 |
| # ¿ Feb 6, 2011 16:57 |
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Admiral Snackbar posted:The problem is that while NATO leaders said they would push the button in the event of being close to defeat, such a threat was not necessarily credible. I mean, who in their right mind would actually doom all of Europe plus a significant portion of the rest of the world to destruction just so they could say "I told you so?" Weren't most first strike nuclear weapons on either side targeted against their opponents command and control, first strike nuclear weapon launch sites, sites of military/industrial importance and lastly population centers? MAD seems pretty poorly understood, in that it's more than just the willy nilly launching of nukes at random American and Russian cities in the hope to vaporize one's opponents completely. I think on both sides of the cold war, that in the event of a nuclear exchange and assuming that one's own country wasn't a nuclear wasteland, to occupy the opponent. The American Civil Defense system strikes me as a rather meaningless halfhearted gesture, a false hope, psychological crutch whatever. It seemed to have existed as a way to make American civilians feel better about the whole thing but also to make leadership feel better about essentially leaving the country out to dry.
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| # ¿ Feb 6, 2011 22:18 |
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gohuskies posted:It would take several WWII tanks, but I think 5-10 WWII tanks, in the right terrain (dense, exceedingly short line of sight), with infantry support, could kill one alone. It would just take a couple hits on the tracks to immobilize the Abrams, and then the infantry sneak up and throw some grenades in the hatch. The issue is one of terrain - anything the Abrams sees is dead within 5 seconds, so you need to spot it with the stealthy infantry, maneuver such that you have as many tanks as possible all getting LOS at the same time at as short of possible range from as many different angles as possible, then you hope somebody gets the hit you want before you're all dead. Really, not too different from what the Russians had to do back in the day to kill Tigers and King Tigers, just much less margin for error. Not to continue a really dumb conversation but this specific instance is one of many reasons that tanks operate in sections. If infantry are crawling all over one tank in the section, then the other can "scratch it's back" and hose it down with coax fire. On topic: Does anyone know anything about the last 2 Chechnyan wars? Or Northern Ireland? Veins McGee fucked around with this message at May 31, 2011 around 17:01 |
| # ¿ May 31, 2011 16:55 |
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:It was 2008, where did you get the impression that air power did all the work? Many of them were destroyed in city fighting and I can find a picture of at least one destroyed by another tank. Post about the Battle of the 73 Easting or Battle of Khafji please. HeroOfTheRevolution posted:Do you have a specific question? "Anything" is pretty broad. Hmm...what, if any, changes to doctrine/organization/material(ex BMP-T or BTR-T) resulted from lessons learned in Chechnya? How did Chechnya influence western thought regarding counter-insurgency? What was Russian civilian reaction to the fighting? Was it analogous to American reactions to Vietnam or OIF/OEF or did the Russians not really give a gently caress or what?
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| # ¿ Jun 1, 2011 16:58 |
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:It's worth mentioning that the T-72s used by the Iraqi forces were not only poorly crewed but were export or indigenous versions, lacking in advanced optics or sighting equipment, and firing steel penetrators rather than missiles and DU. From what I've read elsewhere, Battle of 73 Easting isn't really a testament to the prowess of Abrams. Cav units, equipped with Bradleys, killed most of the enemy armor. That mean's they were doing so from within 3600m or whatever the max effective of a TOW is against T-72s with similar max effective ranges. But, you're other points still stand true. Export T-72s are inferior to Soviet/Russian military T-72s and, not only that, are inferior to T-64s and T-90s which were/are used in their front line tank formations. Regarding Battle of Khafji: Thanks, that piece cleared up a lot of questions I had. Except for some memoirs, there isn't a lot of history available about LAR. Veins McGee fucked around with this message at Jun 1, 2011 around 22:52 |
| # ¿ Jun 1, 2011 21:41 |
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:No problem. It might be worth giving History Division a call or coming in yourself if you can, since it is basically a service for the Corps and the public to use. It's just down in the old SNCO school near the Gray Research Center in Quantico. I've never met Col. Ray but my dad knows him or knows of him and doesn't think too highly of him. I didn't press the issue and he didn't elaborate so it could be any number of things. Probably the most interesting part of the chapter were the portions covering the Iraqi's point of view. Edit: How did you get an internship with them anyways?
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| # ¿ Jun 1, 2011 23:01 |
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Volmarias posted:I just finished reading all of this thread. WWII is an interesting topic to many and is easily research. Pretty much every nation involved kept excellent records, it was one of the first wars to be caught on film, numerous journals/diaries exist and the war itself is hugely significant. WWII polished the lessons learned in WWI and proved to be the genesis of modern thought and theory on warfare. Not only that, but war really set up the subsequent 40 years. Whereas, it's kind of hard to know anything about African history prior to large-scale colonization since most African languages didn't involve a written component. They largely relied on oral history which has very obvious limitations and is of little use without other pieces of evidence to corroborate(Think about trying to write Greek history based on the Oddysey). We simply do not know enough about African history(as distinct from anthropology) to be able to say much. Besides that, the Venn Diagram of historians who are interested in military history and historians who are interested in African history would have very little overlap. It's hard to sperg about the relative efficacy of spears and hide shields.
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| # ¿ Aug 4, 2011 06:02 |
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Alchenar posted:Basing your plan on contempt for your opponent rather than properly conducted information gathering is bad generaling. That was his main failing, not conducting proper reconnaissance (pretty huge failure considering he's a cavalry officer) and his desire to engage the Souix in combat at the earliest possible time. Veins McGee fucked around with this message at Aug 11, 2011 around 16:59 |
| # ¿ Aug 6, 2011 18:47 |
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Burning Beard posted:Actually tactics did develop during WWI on the Western front. The Germans, by 1916 (I Think) were well entrenched with Assault Groups (referred to as Stormtroopers) that were trained to infiltrate in small groups under cover of smoke, gas or whatever. I have some pictures of these guys and they are loaded with knives, grenades, the first SMGs, pistols, you name it. The British and French had something like it but it was not nearly as refined. The concept of Stormtroopers served as the basis for German Tactical Doctrine in WWII with informal battle-groups assembled to undertake a particular task.(Kampfgruppen). What was interesting about Stormtroopers was not the formation of Kampfgruppen(Which I wouldn't attribute to the concept of small-unit infiltration) but the increased dispersion of authority to junior officers/NCOs and the continued development of combined arms. "Instead, soldiers should be trained to consider fire as a means to facilitate movement in progress. Movement would be a call for fire. McMahon advocated using combined arms in the attack, particularly light machine guns (some six light and two heavy MGs per battalion) using a decentralised fire control and tactical command system (known as Auftragstaktik in German). These methods, suggested in 1909, bore a strong resemblance to the Stosstrupptaktik used by the Germans six years later." Cribbed straight from the wiki article on Stroomtrooper but I think it illustrates my point. Burning Beard posted:The Americans...well, we learn then promptly forget. Only since WWII has the military developed an organizational culture that remembers previous successes, and then only with difficulty. The urban combat in Hue City during the Tet offensive, for example, should have been goddamn well learned and remembered before Iraq but I never saw any mention of it. And even in Hue, in 1968, the military had had plenty of Urban experience but it was never exploited. Before WWII the nature of the volunteer and conscript force left the army without an organizational memory of any note. Sure, we learned stuff in the Civil War but by 1898 we had forgotten it. Sure, the Indian Wars would have helped in the Philippines in 1900 but nobody had bothered to discuss or remember it. What was novel or currently applicable about the Battle of Hue City? It appears to be simple building to building clearing operations similar to WWII. The real lessons that should have been learned from Vietnam lie exclusively in the conduct of assymetrical/counter insurgency warfare. Not that I disagree with your assertion that the U.S. military has a short oprational memory and is a poor example of a learning institution.
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| # ¿ Aug 13, 2011 07:45 |
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Volmarias posted:
If you flipped to the history channel at any given time you could watch shows about truckers, ghosts, aliens or people going through abandoned storage units.
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| # ¿ Aug 16, 2011 17:16 |
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Acknot posted:Grand Prize Winner, I actually just read an article entitled "Is there a Tank Gap?". http://www.jstor.org/stable/2538895 It was written in 1988 so the data for the Soviets is statistical approximation instead of whatever is available currently. The writers are a bit jingoistic at times so take the article with a grain of salt. The main thesis of the article is that there was no real tank gap between NATO and Warsaw Pact forces. The Warsaw Pact, after identifying units which would be ready quickly and actually in the European theater, possessed a very slight edge in total number of tanks(something like 1.2~1.5 to 1) not counting for quality. Whatever advantage the Warsaw Pact has is whittled away by the number of obsolete tanks(un-upgraded T-55/T-62) counted in their formations and the inherent superiority of western tanks(which the authors go on about at length; see Desert Storm). edit: Unless you're a student you probably can't read JSTOR articles. I can email a pdf of the article for anyone that's interested. Veins McGee fucked around with this message at Aug 19, 2011 around 23:39 |
| # ¿ Aug 19, 2011 18:37 |
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Here's an article written in response to "Is there a tank gap?". It presents the other side of argument. Personally, it does better service to the topic. The authors of the original piece post a response at the end. http://www.jstor.org/pss/2538783
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| # ¿ Aug 22, 2011 04:40 |
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Admiral Snackbar posted:When I was doing research on my capstone paper I kept coming across articles from the 20's and 30's written by Western observers that basically said that there was no way the Soviets could ever build a credible tank force because they just didn't have the knack for such complicated things. In fact, one American military attache was actually transferred to a less prestigious position for suggesting otherwise. It seems like even after the crazy amounts of tanks the Russians built during WWII a lot of Westerners just couldn't bring themselves to give the commies their due credit. Was it that Western observers thought that the Soviets were incapable of creating a technically sound tank or incapable of developing a sound doctrine for employment? quote:I see that that article is written by Steven Zaloga. He's pretty much the final word on Cold War armor capabilities. In "Is there a tank gap?" as soon as the authors started ranting about the technical superiority of western tanks I started skipping entire pages because they just didn't have any real data to support it. In 1988 there were only the Arab/Israeli wars to use as a basis for making claims and the conclusions that can be drawn from these engagements are extremely limited(Export versions/obsolete tanks, training of crews, doctrine) Zaloga's article does much better service to the topic but he has the benefit of 10 years of additional data. Volmarias posted:I know that since the Mao/Stalin split USSR/PRC relations weren't very smooth, was there a concern in the soviet hierarchy that if a war broke out in Europe, China would go after the eastern end?
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| # ¿ Aug 22, 2011 20:20 |
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Morose Man posted:Technological question. The T-72 was approaching obsolescence in 1991. To draw conclusions based on a confrontation where lastest generation tanks slaughtered older technology export model tanks is folly.
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| # ¿ Sep 3, 2011 16:44 |
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Nenonen posted:You're asking a speculative question about future, not history, so the best that you'll get is a SWAG. The Bradley has killed the most enemy armor out of the American ground arsenal. If anything, Desert Storm demonstrated the necessity of a big boy air force or air defense system if you want to gently caress with the United States.
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| # ¿ Sep 3, 2011 18:17 |
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Hob_Gadling posted:An example: the whole "Hearts and Minds" is largely based on limiting the suffering of civilians. Not really. A "Hearts and Minds" campaign is aimed to reduce civilian support for insurgents. It's a recognition of the importance of civilians in conducting a successful counter-insurgency, specifically in marxist type insurgencies. COIN forces are altruistic by necessity, not by nature. Also, Law of Land Warfare, required reading. Every entry level service member in the United States is taught and expected to adhere to this document.
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| # ¿ Sep 5, 2011 22:09 |
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Hob_Gadling posted:You could attempt to solve the same problem with genocide. The point stands that it's a conscious and important decision to limit violence. Not really. If you want to play dumb unrealistic games then sure, killing the entire civilian populace of a country will eliminate an insurgency within the region where mass murder occurred. It's not a realistic proposition. "Hearts and Minds" campaigns are really an amalgamation of methods(infrastructure building, food aid, medical aid, reform of poorly functioning insitutions etc) designed to reach out to the civilian population in order to sway their beliefs towards the legitimate government. It is a recognition that an insurgency draws it's strength(men, material, food, intelligence, etc) from the civilian population and, in order to win the war, COIN forces must win the support of the civilian population. If suffering is reduced through such means it is only because COIN forces believe it will lessen support for insurgent forces and not in a sincere effort to reduce suffering.
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| # ¿ Sep 7, 2011 21:12 |
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Herv posted:On the Abrams friendly fire thing, I would have figured the whole targeting system could paint friendlies all green and bad guys red, how fast can a Bradley get in the line of fire? I know really oversimplified but still. No, the IFF is the gunner's/commander's knowledge of armor ID and their situational awareness. Such a system is even less realistic now because our allies use combloc vehicles. In either case, it would have to be some robust software to look at an object in thermal sights, filter out the noise in the image, and tell you what you're looking at while the target vehicle is hulldown or maneuvering or otherwise obscured. There was a system developed in response to the friendly fire incidents of the Gulf War where all friendly units receive a GPS transponder and a computer screen that plots their location and the location of all other friendly units in the AO. You can also plot/transmit useful information(such as bridges, mine fields, enemy units etc), navigate or send pseudo-emails to other vehicle commanders. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBCB2
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| # ¿ Sep 12, 2011 23:18 |
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Rapey Joe Stalin posted:This is just really quite offensively ignorant. It's just a little more complex than that. For one thing, Afghanistan is not ethnically homogenous and doesn't have a very strong history of central rule. They don't have any sort of democratic tradition and Karzai's government is a corrupt nepotistic mess. The police and army do not reflect the ethnic makeup of Afghanistan very well so you end up having Tajiks/Uzbekis enforcing laws, made by a central government that isn't viable, on Pashtuns in the south. Besides that, there isn't much poppy-eradication going on. You can walk up to a guard tower on many FOBs and look out at a sea of poppy fields. American forces are hesitant to act against poppy field for precisely the reasons you noted. I'm not saying it doesn't happen but poppy eradication is low on the list of things to do because it pisses them off. edit: Besides, all it takes is some economic analysis to realize that opium eradication is a failure from the get-go. Opium products are probably pretty loving price inelastic. Unless you can destroy a significant portion of the opium/heroin being grown, produced or stored in Afghanistan the Taliban is going to make as much or more money than if you just left it alone. Now, the flipside of this is the corrosive effect of openly flaunting the authority of the central government. Allowing farmers to grow something that the central government doesn't like and supports the operation of Taliban forces is bad for Kabul. The central government should give farmers 2 seasons to switch crops and then commence with sweeps through the Helmand River valley destroying all poppy farms. That is more of a question for people who have really researched the issue. The reasons people in remote mountain valleys fight are largely distinct from the reasons that Pashtuns in Helmand and Khandahar fight. Commanders have realized this and that's why you see US troops pulling out of some of the more remote mountain COPs. The guys that live in those valleys would fight us regardless so long as we're in those valleys. Their fight draws Pashtuns and foreign fighters into the area who ratchet up the attacks until you see COPs being overrun and so on. News flash: Afghanistan isn't solely composed of mountains. Rapey Joe Stalin posted:They have in the past, and as I understand it they try to limit how much the farmers can sell. I don't think, but don't honestly know, that they try and limit the amount of opium a farmer can sell. There are some guys in GIP who do know but I haven't seen them post in a while. I do know that the government has deemed it illegal to be in possession of opium>x, heroin>y and marijuana>z quantities. I would assume that this is an effort to curb the transport of drugs or to allow US/IROA forces to easily arrest drug traffickers. These drug traffickers tend to be low level dudes who don't know poo poo and aren't worth arresting. edit3: If any of you really want to get more than an inch-deep mile-wide assessment I would suggest you start reading on your own. http://www.cnas.org/blogs/abumuqawama http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/recent http://www.lineofdeparture.com/ Veins McGee fucked around with this message at Sep 13, 2011 around 00:39 |
| # ¿ Sep 13, 2011 00:19 |
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bewbies posted:Even if an AP shell goes through a APC's armor without much spall, there would still be a ton of shrapnel from the round itself that would spray all over. Plus, the overpressure from the impact would still be absolutely massive, if the round hit anywhere near the crew compartment everyone would be dead or incapacitated by it. Yeah, I forgot about those. They're part of some upgrade that I forgot the name of and have only seen when I was doing some armor id program. The primary means is knowing armor ID and the commanders situational awareness.
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| # ¿ Sep 13, 2011 03:14 |
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Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:I have absolutely no idea if that was a metaphor at the end, but were the French able to actively recruit/conscript men & train them for their military while in England? I wouldn't think so but was curious after your response. He's talking about WWI.
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| # ¿ Sep 14, 2011 03:18 |
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Nenonen posted:This is a little bit misleading, as even today armies don't use anything smaller than a battalion if they want to accomplish anything. Battalions (and to a lesser decree companies) have their own supply and support units so they can operate relatively independently. Platoons and below can be used for patrolling and other low intensity missions on their own, but if you are going to assault an enemy held position, you will need more than 30 men just to be able to smoothly retreat if things don't go your way. This is kind of a weird way to describe tactics because every modern military action involves platoons(and squads and fireteams and individual men) doing something(attacking, defending, moving etc).
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| # ¿ Oct 2, 2011 18:45 |
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Nenonen posted:Actually I meant that for just capturing a single city block (or even one building complex depending on situation) you would need a whole company. To support that company you would need another one or two nearby, so that will bring it up to a battalion, and anyways a lone company wouldn't be able to keep up their effort for long. Really, the situation always dictates. But yes, since the infantry platoon lacks any organic supply element they're dependent on the company support functions to do anything. Not only that, independent infantry platoons don't exist so it struck me as a strange thing to say.
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| # ¿ Oct 2, 2011 21:00 |
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Mr. Sunshine posted:A horse has no advantage over a humvee or similar light vehicle, and you can't mount a heavy machine gun or automatic grenade launcher on a horse back. Horses can traverse more difficult terrain than any wheeled or tracked vehicle but that's about it.
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| # ¿ Oct 3, 2011 11:29 |
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lilljonas posted:I also heard that the German army was doing just swell in WW1 and was only betrayed by cowardly politicians back home. Like a dagger in the back, if you may. This is a pretty bad comparison. The 'stab in the back theory' was a fiction created by the German Army following the war rather than admit defeat. By 1918, even ignoring domestic support or lack thereof, the German army was nearly incapable of continuing to make war. They were calling up draft classes composed of old men and teenagers to meet manpower requirements. Meanwhile, the United States was sending thousands of men to Europe. Had the war dragged on for one more campaign season the German Army would have been destroyed. The United States faced none of those issues in Vietnam. There were no manpower/materiel shortages facing US troops. Ihe NVA couldn't stand up to US forces and the VC was devastated by Tet. It was the steady erosion of popular support for the war that was, in no small way, responsible for Nixon's election and the decision to withdraw. I don't mean to imply that the United States could have actually won the war. Unless the S. Vietnamese government self-initiated internal reforms then they would never gain support of the rural people of Vietnam.
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| # ¿ Oct 4, 2011 12:51 |
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lilljonas posted:It was not meant as a comparison of exact war conditions, but rather as an example of how intrinsic it is for armed forces to create myths of political and civilian weakness to explain their failure to win wars that they lack the basic tools to win. Vietnam is a good example of an army having local superiority but not grasping why that didn't translate into overall victory. Blaming pacifist students is a good way to dissassociate your own inabilities, which is why myths like these are so powerful and can survive for a long time. "We would have won if we just were allowed to..." is a powerful thought. Oh, my bad. I thought you were just being a dick. It's a pretty intricate topic and the one sentence response was a bit flippant. I see your point now though. Mr. Sunshine posted:The problem with both Afghanistan (Soviet and NATO invasions) and Vietnam was that the long-term objectives set out by Soviets and the Americans meant that the war was un-winnable. The USSR went into Afghanistan to protect the nation from capitalist takeover. The US went into South Vietnam to protect it from communist takeover. When you're the counter-insurgent you can really just set your own goalposts. But, no the realistic goal of a counter-insurgency generally isn't to kill every insurgent but bring anti-government activity(violence, support functions, cashflow activities, intimidation campagns, shadow govts etc) to within an amount that is manageable by the host government. Also, I don't think the Soviets went into Afghanistan for fear of a capitalist takeover. Some hardline communists got power, intiated some reforms that pissed off non-urbanites who then went into open revolt. The hardline commies in Kabul begged the Soviets to intervene once they realized how badly they had hosed up.
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| # ¿ Oct 4, 2011 14:17 |
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Rapey Joe Stalin posted:Very definitely still used. The British infantry get an awful lot of use out of their L9A1 51mm man-portable mortars, to the point where instead of phasing them out to be replaced by 40mm under-slung grenade launchers, they bought a load of M6-895 60mm man-portable mortars.
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| # ¿ Oct 9, 2011 22:49 |
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| # ¿ May 19, 2013 12:49 |
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Mans posted:
The Portuguese did pay lip service to the idea that Angola and Mozambique were as Portuguese as Portugal itself was. There was a process where an African could gain the full rights of a Portuguese citizen similar to what the Belgians did in the Congo and the French did in North and West Africa. Essentially, you had to remove all aspects of yourself that made you African and totally embrace a European identity(Perfect Portuguese, Catholic, adopt European customs and dress). Very few Africans, relative to the total colonial populations, ever achieved the status of Assimilado(or Evolue in French colonies. I think Belgians used the same term). Africa from 1945 to present day is one of the most illogical, senseless and depressing but interesting places/times in my opinion.
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| # ¿ Nov 6, 2011 23:42 |
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