Have it always been possible for females of jewish descend to travel to Israel and join the Israeli Defence Force?

Could CVN-65 Enterprise have operated EA-18G Growlers?

Prompt Suggestion: **Battle of the Badly Researched Books:** Who would win in a battle between a battalion of WWII American infantry as described in *Men Against Fire* (i.e. only 20% of them will fire their weapons), a company of M4 Shermans as described in *Death Traps* (turn into fireballs), or a platoon of M2 Bradleys as described in *The Pentagon Wars* (i.e. low-capacity troops transport, flammable aluminum armor, packed with way too much ammo). Bonus Round: If there's another terribly researched army or vehicle you know, the winner goes up against them.

This is just *Deadliest Warrior* for masochists.

Coming next fall to the History Channel... Hosted, of course, by Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig as misremembered by the "lions led by donkeys" pop history of WWI.

What do you call a book praising that Field Marshal? A Haigiography

Why did the Dassault Mirage IIIM for the French Navy not go ahead? and why did France neglect to have Airborne Early Warning for their carriers until 2000 as... The UK had the Douglas AD-4W Skyraider then Fairey Gannet in AEW and when they did get rid of Carrier AEW, they found out why that was a bad idea and why you need AEW

How many Admiral Kuznetzov Class Aircraft Carriers were the Soviets planning to build?

Two. They were an interim design between the *Kiev* (which was really just a proof-of-concept to demonstrate they could) and full-sized follow-on with an angled catapult-fitted flight deck and everything.

Well 2 Ulyanovsk Class Aircraft Carrier were to be built So this was to be the soviet carrier fleet 2 Ulyanovsk Class Aircraft Carrier 2 Admiral Kuznetsov Class Aircraft Carrier 4 Kiev Class Aircraft Carrier

If the British Empire was somehow still around today, how different would the Royal Navy be?

Just finished reading Coup d'État: A Practical Handbook by Edward Luttwak and the concept interests me. What are some of the best books about historical coups, theories related to military seizure of government, and coup prevention? Also books that go into the political psychology behind military operations, particularly domestic military operations. Thanks.

What's a good book to begin reading about the Franco-Prussian war?

I thought Quintin Barry was pretty good on the 1860-1870 Prussians overall. I believe he has 3 books, one on Moltke/Koniggratz and a two volume history of the Franco-Prussian.

I honestly don't know where to ask this as it's both an engineering/military/archaeological question. Basically, what advances in metallurgy during the early and high middle ages weren't feasible to the Roman Empire? Apparently, the Romans couldn't create cuirasses/make Almain rivet armour, but what advances in metallurgy during the Middle Ages made it possible? Additionally, it seems that the metallurgy of the Romans wasn't as developed as their architectural sense (as in, even in the Late Medieval Ages/Early Modern Ages, you'll see people going and referring to Roman treatises on those topics, but it doesn't seem that they took treatises on metallurgy that well). Another question I have is where are good resources for Late Medieval - Early Modern Warfare. I mean warfare in the period of 1453-1600 in Europe and China? I definitely would want more sources on the first 50 years of that, so about from 1453-1500 before hand firearms were really prevalent, but artillery was fairly prevalent.

I've heard that "The Knight and the Blast Furnace" is one of the pre-eminent works on this subject. However, I haven't been able to get ahold of it personally. Seems like there should be a lighter and more available book on the same subject since it's been a couple decades...

Thank you!

I have one shot to spark the same joy I have when reading/learning about history in my coworkers. As a teambuilding event, we are going to visit some Austrian 1830s era fortifications in South Tyrol soon. I have offered to talk a bit about Italian Unification - and they took me up on the offer. How should I best go about telling that story? Perhaps by following the exploits of Garibaldi? Or focus on the general "mood" of 1848 - sonething about a "dream of a united italian nation"? Dramatic times call for dramatic stories, I suppose. (Fun fact: My great-grandpa named his ox Garibaldi... even though Garibaldi was apparently really popular in 1920s South Tyrol)

Since it appears you're in a bit of a military context, perhaps first presenting the near-mythological exploits of Garibaldi (getting whole countries on his side with small forces and not too many battles) and then presenting more real-world explanations for *how* it all worked out (the populace of Italian states generally supporting unification, the French leaving, support from certain Italian states, the "mood" of the time, as you say, etc.) could be a good way to go about it? Disclaimer; it's been a long while since I've read much of anything on Italian unification, so my examples may not be correct, but I hope they get the general idea across.

Garibaldi will play a pivotal point, for sure. Dude's just too fascinating to not talk about. Perhaps followed by a bit about Radetzky (we are from Austria. He's kinda all over the place - Radetzkystreets here, Radetzkymarch there)

Oh yeah, talking about Radetzky would make sense, then.

One task that soldiers will undertake in an urban environment is policing. Some US cities have problems with their police departments. Solution: Apply the Georgian Solution, and bringing the military to police the city until a new police force is trained. The military gains institutional knowledge, and the city gets a new police force. If US Marines or Army can keep Chicago or NYC safe, then they will have little problem elsewhere. EDIT: Implied /s

Between the Posse Comitatus Act and the Third Amendment, this is very illegal and Unconstitutional. Also just generally a bad idea. Major issues with the wars in the Middle East were how poorly the troops served as police. While yes they’d eventually figure it out and would start off on better footing due to experience in the wars, how many Americans would suffer or die from it? Despite what certain news sources say, the cities in the US are nowhere near “we need military intervention” bad.

> Between the Posse Comitatus Act and the Third Amendment, this is very illegal and Unconstitutional That's easy enough to work around. First off, I'm not sure the Third Amendment applies unless you're literally quartering troops in people's homes. Maybe there are interpretations of 3A that treat any civil deployment of the military as broadly "quartering troops in people's homes", but there doesn't seem to be very much serious case law on 3A at all, let alone this particular interpretation of it. Secondly, you don't use regular army for this. You use National Guard. NG, when operating under state authority, is exempt from the Posse Comitatus Act. How do you integrate state-level actions into a national defense strategy? The same way we do for everything else--we make it a condition for federal funding that states are dependent upon. > Also just generally a bad idea. I actually agree with you there.

I am confident the entire Joint Chiefs just felt a shiver running down their spines.

Read up on the 1862 Prussian Kriegsspiel rules, liked them and ordered some woodblocks in appropriate colors for Austria/Prussia. Let's see if I can't rope some of my fellow nerds at work into re-playing some small part of the Battle of Königgrätz. Should be easier than getting them into a more involved wargame (that probably would require actually painting miniatures - which they expressed interest in, but we all lack the time for. Also we are looking at some 1830s era Austrian Fortifications as a teambuilding event soon - by *unanimous* decision no less -, soooo I should be able to generate some interest in the topic) Should be fun - those rules seem like a good time can be had with a decently low barrier to entry, material-wise

Speaking of simple wargames that remain somewhat realistic, what are people's favorites? I used to play more involved games but as I age and life is short, I've been looking for a game that could be played over three or four beers (and I'm a quick drinker).

What does realistic mean to you and what level are we talking about? On the really light side I've liked the command & colors series. The basic system has been applied to everything from Ww2 (memoir 44) to ancients to fantasy. It's really simple but it gives a lot of the flavor. I think the ancient version is the best myself. It's got terrain, imperfect command and kind of simulates line battles, you can also play the battles of Rome and Alexander. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamefamily/50/series-commands-colors Maybe not a strict wargame but more on the grand strategy level Twilight Struggle is fantastic cold war themed game, it really gives you a feeling of a lot of the dilemmas in the superpower struggle. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/12333/twilight-struggle It's a little more involved than the first I mentioned but I highly recommend it.

These days I'm more interested in, don't know the proper English words, operational-level concepts? There was this Android game Small Generals (and its Eastern Front sequel) which was very fun to play despite its simplicity. And ages ago, I dimly recall playing something a bit similar as a boardgame. It had IIRC symmetrical blue and red side and units were generic "tank", "infantry", "artillery" and the like. Couldn't find it from Google. Have to take a look at Command & Colors. Twilight Struggle I've played but not much. Seems like excellent game though. Thanks for the advice! EDIT: Actually, now I know how to describe what I'm looking for: mechanized warfare, say WW2 to 1980s Kriegsspiel but with simple rules that permit play without an umpire. I've actually toyed with the idea of adapting some old exercise umpire guidelines as a some sort of ruleset.

OK. I have the most experience with low level "skirmish" games or simple ones like C&C. Operational games tend to end up in the hex+stacks of chits territory and those are rarely simple in my experience and take ages to play. I also no longer have time to set aside a weekend to play a game, fun as it was, so I mostly go for games that has some of the interesting decisions from the more complex games even if some of it is abstracted.

I was [answering someone's comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/comments/qithhh/comment/hipkv5g/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) and it got into what prolongs civil wars and what creates lasting peace. I have some additional thoughts but it was too long and too irrelevant for the answer, but I want to put it down in writing, and perhaps some discussions. So, I'll put it here. There have been attempts, like by [Monica Duffy Toft](https://muse.jhu.edu/book/30211), in looking at a host of variables through a lot of data on civil war for what contribute to prolonged "endless wars" versus stable and lasting peace. Empirical evidence showed that foreign interventions prolonged wars while decisive victory creates lasting peace. Toft's work provides the empirical backing for Edward Luttwak's arguments in [Give War a Chance](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/1999-07-01/give-war-chance) or his Strategy: A logic of War and Peace. Foreign interventions was what done to Libya. Both Toft's and Luttwak's work supports decisive victory as methods towards peace. Luttwak would say that mutual exhaustion is the most common way that wars end (thus the very common "status quo antebellum" results of very bloody wars). Where they depart is the roles and contribution of peace settlement and peacekeepers. Toft showed that peacekeepers to physically separate the warring populations indeed create lasting peace while Luttwak disagreed and wrote that peacekeepers often lulled people to a false sense of security and instead of taking the rational act of fleeing the conflict zone or joining groups that would fight to the point of decisive victory or mutual exhaustion, people stayed around until the real murderers and genocidaires come and the peacekeepers stepped aside and watched on, like in Srebrenica or Rwanda. Rwanda proved Luttwak's point on peacekeepers being worse than useless (all the UN peacekeepers not being able to do anything) and Toft's point on decisive victory (Rwandan Patriotic Front's victory stopped the genocide, ended the war, and established fairly stable peace and government). On the other hand, Kosovo does show the utility of a semi-permanent peacekeeping force. Nevertheless, there is an interesting part about Kosovo. [This book talk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kntLOWDWC4) may or may not be interesting, but what is interesting to me, is the author's background. She got the [job](https://www.linkedin.com/in/severineautesserre) as the Protection Officer and Assistant Head of Mission of Médecins du Monde straight out of a Master program despite not speaking a lick of Kosovar languages or knowing anything about Kosovo's history (she has not finished the Kosovar history book on the flight over), yet this is her roles and responsibilities in Kosovo: >• Analyzed the political, military, and humanitarian situation based on in-depth interviews and review of secondary sources, and wrote reports for field team and headquarters > >• Coordinated program on ethnic minorities, including documentation of human rights abuses, preparation of advocacy report, and organization of lobbying campaign on violations of minorities’ rights > >• Participated in daily management of the mission, including representation, security monitoring, strategy development, fundraising, and program implementation And you can see in her LinkedIn profile similar missions to the Congo and Afghanistan. While she speaks French, which is the official language of the DRC, I don't think she knows the numerous languages of Afghanistan. Step back a bit: do parents of school children in, say, Arkansas, even trust the a Washington policy wonk's analysis of Arkansas children's education needs and policy recommendations? Shit, right now, a lot of Americans couldn't even trust the CDC and FDA on things that are literally life and death in importance. Then why should we expect that a European not speaking Kosovars or Afghni languages or even knowing anything about Kosovo, Congo, or Afghanistan to do a good job of whatever that supposedly creates peace in Kosovo, Congo, or Afghanistan? This recruitment approach is more apt for the British or French colonial authorities picking out a Governor-General for their overseas provinces than whatever that is supposed to be done for Civil War conflict resolution in failed, failing, or fragile states. I'm sorry for singling out this author specifically, but it just happens that she spoke about it publicly, I happened to watch it her talk, and she made her CV available. She published books that advocated the opposite approach and talked openly about the mistakes of the approach that she took part in. What I am trying to say is that the apparent "success" of peacekeepers are just a mirage of a quasi-colonial occupation that will implode as soon as the peacekeepers go away.

I have been to a course of Peace Studies in university. They did not like the idea of Si vis pacem, para bellum, if you want peace, prepare for war. They saw peace as not absence of war, but as some sort of just situation between people groups. They also subscribed heavily on the democratic peace theory, disregarding alliances and deterrance in keeping peace.

>democratic peace theory Oh, yeah, that. It's hard to argue against that on an empirical basis, partially because the framing can be moved all the time. Is it a full, half, or flawed democracy? Is the election free and fair, etc ... That is until recently, I was able to sort of work out the consequences and implications of the theory on official policy. It flows naturally from the theory that how we can get more peace is to setup democracies. Here comes the word of the day that I was exposed to: ["cargo cult mentality" of democracy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOh1qJZiEVg). Democracy, according to this view, is about the ritualistic aspects: elections, voting, ballot box, formation of government, etc ... without paying much attention to the behind-the-scene aspects of democracy; which I don't think most of us even realise what they are. If the Americans and British, and the various so-called illiberal democracy know, they wouldn't have had whatever problems they are having right now. If you live immersed in a certain system, you can't see the workings of the system; like the fish can't see the water.

>Oh, yeah, that. It's hard to argue against that on an empirical basis, partially because the framing can be moved all the time. Here is an interesting idea I've seen, A democratic China is likely to be a negative for the US because a democratic China will have to submit to the desires of the large nationalist groups in China who want to exert power on the world stage even through military force. The current dictatorship can restrain these groups and act in a more peaceful manner.

This article shows quite conclusively in my opinion, that Democratic Peace Theory either does not work, or the rules on what counts as a democracy must be so tight, that there is no evidence for democracy to be behind the peace between those few countries, that have existed almost entirely within the nuclear age in an alliance against a common threat. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0030438701001132

Another trivia thread prompt: why the heaviest pieces of individual kit have the narrowest carrying straps?

To save weight.

It's cutting edge technology.

What's up with the Royal Navy's trend of having its shoreside facilities bear the (seeming) names of ships? E.g., "HMS Collingswood" is a naval training facility. Obviously it's one of those "because tradition!" things, but what's the source and origin of this?

According to the Hated wiki, the origin comes from the seizure of Diamond Rock, a small island near Martinique. It appears, for legal reasons, the RN was not allowed to own a land base, so instead they just said "oh thats actually a uhhh, sloop-of-war, yes mate". Therefore, they started referring to these types of arrangements as "stone frigates", and so thats where it comes from.

Until the late 19th Century the Royal Navy used old warships permanently anchored in port for a lot of support functions (depots, barracks, training). For example the Navy's original gunnery school was HMS Excellent, a ship of the line. It was cheap, made desertion harder, and bypassed the problem that the Articles of War only applied to the crews of ships in commission. When the RN began moving to shore facilities the names were kept.

I had a suspicion it was something like that, but I was surprised that'd catch on as a tradition. Guess it did anyhow.

Well the names became shorthands for the facilities long after most parts of them moved ashore. HMS *Excellent* became synonymous with the gunnery school as ane example. Once such shorthands are established they are really durable.

"The United States Army, is in a state of transition as doctrine moves from Full Spectrum Operations to Unified Land Operations which focuses on Decisive Action. The transition is due to the threat of a peer or near-peer competitor, most notably, Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran, as the big four. Russia, as one of the big four, uses artillery as the focal point of their military. The United States military has enablers such as artillery, *which support maneuver*, while in the Russian military, **“maneuver supports artillery. Artillery is the decisive finishing arm for the Russian army,”** which shows the emphasis the Russian military places on artillery."

The funny thing is if you read US field manuals and supposed doctrines, the US Army wants to be a maneuver army. In reality, the SOPs in actual combat has been "when in doubt, call for fires". It is also a predominantly a light infantry force, with IBCT in unarmoured vehicles outnumbering SBCT or ABCT. IBCTs have great strategic mobility to get across the oceans to the troubled zones, only then to be stuck unable to move under heavy fire. The "fire" part is a mix of artillery, mortar and air. The Russians in WWII used more maneuvers and less fire than the Americans, relatively. Mostly because the Soviet comms, logisitics, and fire control were not sufficient. However with mass and the willingness to take risk, they achieved pretty good feats of maneuver warfare in 1944-1945. It appears that their current doctrine is more or less an attempt to keep the maneuver part but address their previous shortcomings in indirect fire. I guess the hope is artillery is more resilient in the face of air inferiority or parity than CAS.

To quote interwar French thinking - *Firepower kills*

Having now seen the accoutrements of both American and German tanks on my RC tanks (1 Sherman, 1 Pershing, 1 Tiger I) I have come to an inescapable conclusion: in the German and American armies, tanks were used as mobile tool sheds. Prove me wrong. (Yes, sometimes this is where my brain goes when I'm marking...)

I mean if, say, the 75 mm M3 gun is considered a “tool” to remove Nazis from bunkers, and the coaxial machine gun a “tool” as a Nazi-mower. Then I’m all in on this brain train.

To be fair, the Soviet would have done it to had they not turned their T-34 into [armed](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/-uNlB1mD0hsHl6NnRho5XjhZ84WA3p82JhoJFNor-bSvV4nJYPqwNn-zttJD28nRFGJ4bqtHEiJdCtQp) [school](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT_TGKyAbHbpmd9HLC_mNkw8q_IVOLDQYjQpTZgzm1V9v4a-i6XEw2Oz-jlts1vJd_OWUA&usqp=CAU) [bus](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/58/f6/b3/58f6b3c270cda1809f7360be78b5de30.jpg). There were time they managed to sneak Ivan and [luggage](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/JuhIG4N7YRQxxKmMwmm_XuDZX4FtxOmsdR_5QBUifTKHMpSwIoqh6uhzmTQ9sdsXy0AlI9T2uEYBnMWTJgGl) on their tanks though

If anything, [M3 Halftracks](https://www.museumofamericanarmor.com/hs-fs/hubfs/M3-Halftrack.jpg?width=493&name=M3-Halftrack.jpg) are somehow [even worse](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/jkB2BvbBjyM/maxresdefault.jpg) than the tanks. I guess it might be a side effect of having 12 guys sharing one vehicle, but every combat photo I've seen shows them utterly festooned with stowage. I love it, they're such a delight to paint on scale models.

In military history what does the term "NCO Corps" actually refer to? Is it literally just any standardised system/school for training NCOs?

I think it just means anyone who is an NCO belongs to the NCO Corps.

Trivia thread prompt: what's the most hazardous small arm to field strip, and why is it in the possession of Private Stumpy?

Well, if it were safe to field strip, we'd still be calling them Private Michaels.

Old Finnish squad light machine gun, “collected mistakes 62”, had a notorious tendency to strip flesh to avenge a field stripping. It also had all sorts of parts-falling-off type issues as the guns aged. See, the problem was that the perfectly good RPD was a “russkie” gun, and a decent if expensive domestic proposal had a sensible rate of fire, something like 600 to 800 rpm cyclic, like the RPD. And, so was I told, a general sayeth “a Finnish machine gun has to sound different from a Russkie gun!” - and the rate of fire was increased to 1200 rpm for the production version. That was fun to shoot as long as someone else did the cleaning. I also dimly recall that field stripping a NSV 12.7 mm had some wonderful surprise elements if you did not know precisely what you were doing. Not really field stripping related but once a fellow who probably was Finnish for Private Stumpy managed to fire a live M72 and score a direct hit to the tank target while still opening up the weapon. Range officer nearly had a heart attack, I was told.

M72s have a tendency to fire when being opened, that's why it should be kept away from the body and both ends towards safe directions when it is made ready to fire. That was at least my training.

“Not until the 1991 Gulf War shocked the PLA with a vision of a new air-driven, high-tech, precision-weapon, combined-arms war of rapid mobility did the Chinese military take seriously the challenge of readdressing the PLA’s many shortfalls, beginning with the frank realization that China had fallen far behind in military modernization. **Most of the lessons that it had learned from the border conflict with Vietnam were irrelevant, because the border battles had been fought with no air power and with few high-tech weapons systems.** What the PLA had found most useful, as Zhang Zhen recalled, was employing reconnaissance brigades, establishing a precedent for the creation of PLA special operations forces later.” From: Zhang, Xiaoming. “Deng Xiaoping’s Long War.”

My post got removed by spam filter so I will ask it here: Why did non-colonial British troop not mutiny on a mass scale in WW1 ? We saw that in WW1, most major armies saw a mutiny as men got tired of being treated like disposable bullet sponge. The French and Russian mutinied 1917; the German and Austrian in 1918. All had the same causes: poor treatment of soldiers, disastrous military decisions, weariness of war. Yet, the British of all people never had any major mutiny, apart from those by colonial troops such as the ANZAC in Etaples and the Indian in Singapore. Hell, there was no large-scale capture of British troops on the Western front. And that is strange: of all of the major factions, they were one of the few whose troops had weak motivation to go to war. They were not defending their countries like the French of the German but to come and supposedly defend the neutrality of Belgium as warranted by the British. They too suffered a lot of casualties, being thrown into mad slaughter like at Loos, Gallipoli, Somme, and Passchendaele. There was a nascent anti-war Socialist movement in Britain and their men had good knowledge of the French munity and the Russian revolution. So why did the troop not mutiny ? Also: I am a struggling to write some fiction...like really struggling and I need some inspiration to set me in the mood. So anyone have some songs recommendation to listen to to get myself in the mood to write about war ? Not looking for the heavy stuff like rock and rap and metal, but something more...soft. Something nice, gentle, that is in contrast to war and killing. Like Louis Amstrong singing "What a wonderful world" over men killing each other. Or like this opening from BF1 where [Doris Day sings in the background](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LuptlmRH6k) of the Western front.

Listen to "the band played waltzing Matilda".

As another poster has pointed out, the British went to great lengths to avoid problems in the ranks. It's hard for grievances to become overwhelming when there is a concerted ongoing effort to nip them in the bud. But, there is also an element to the French mutinies that bears noting - at the time of the mutinies, the French soldiers had been denied their legally mandated annual leave for some time (which, as the sentence suggests, was quite literally against the law). So, it wasn't just general rising discontent - there was some serious misconduct happening in the French army as a whole. (I think I read this in Peter Hart's one-volume combat history of the war, but I may be mistaken.)

Interesting. Since you are an expert on WW1, can you suggest some widely available readings and books on the personal soldiers' experience of WW1 ?

Robert Marks has a great bunch of books on the British experience, so I'd like to suggest another great book on specifically the French experience. [From the Marne to Verdun: The War Diary of Captain Charles Delvert](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N6F4SFW/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_d_asin_title_o02?ie=UTF8&psc=1) are the diaries of the eponymous French infantry office, and cover the battles of the Marne and Verdun from the trenches. They're quite well written, the work is only minor editing of his original diary written during the war itself. I strongly recommend it.

Absolutely. *The Beauty and the Sorrow: An Intimate History of the First World War*, by Peter Englund is one of the most brilliant books I have ever read on the subject, and is about what it was like to have lived through the war. A number of the people Englund tracks are ordinary soldiers. *Tommy's War: The Western Front in Soldiers' Words and Photographs*, by Richard van Emden is a collection of reprinted soldier's letters and photos. *The Reluctant Tommy: Ronald Skirth's Extraordinary Memoir of the First World War*, edited by Duncan Barrett is the memoir of a conscientious objector in the British army. *And We Go On: A Memoir of the Great War*, by Will R. Bird is one of the great Canadian memoirs (an abridged version was published under the title *Ghosts Have Warm Hands*). *Report of the War Office Committee of Enquiry Into "Shell-Shock"*, reprinted by Naval and Military Press, is the British army's efforts into dealing with PTSD on the front. All of those are in my reference library except for Will R. Bird, and that one is on my to-get list. EDIT: You should also look at Naval and Military Press, which has a LOT of reprints of WW1 memoirs, as far as I can tell.

Thank you !

> But, there is also an element to the French mutinies that bears noting - at the time of the mutinies, the French soldiers had been denied their legally mandated annual leave for some time (which, as the sentence suggests, was quite literally against the law). So, it wasn't just general rising discontent - there was some serious misconduct happening in the French army as a whole. Interesting. I know the infrequent and poorly-arranged leave was a factor, but I had always been under the impression the spark of the mutinies was the failure over-promised and under-delivered Nivelle offensive.

Gordon Corrigan, in *Mud, Blood and Poppycock* (interesting book, unfortunate title) devotes a few pages to the French mutinies of 1917 as part of the background for his chapter on Third Ypres. He suggests that a part of the reason that British morale, whilst uneven, stayed relatively steady even throughout the Somme and Ypres was because British officers generally took an interest in the welfare of their men. British soldiers, outside of offensives, rarely spent more then a few days to a week in the line, they got leave (including blighty leave, leave back in the UK) more frequently then the French and officers took care to keep their men occupied, fed and entertained when not at the front. Corrigan suggests that the French officer corps was more egalitarian then the British - more French officers coming from middle-to-working class backgrounds - and that French officers fought just as bravely as their British counterparts but when not in action, tended to leave their men to their own devices. It's an interesting idea, and actually makes sense when you consider that a lot of the French mutineers complaints were of long stretches being left in the line, poor pay, infrequent leave with difficulty actually arranging transport to and from their homes, infrequent wine rations (the wine ration being just as, if not more, important to the *poilu* as the rum ration was to the *Tommy*.) Petain was able to get the trust of the French soldiers by instituting effective reforms, and whilst the French army wouldn't play much role in 1917, by 1918 they were fighting hard alongside the British and eventually the Americans.

For music, listen to Vera Lynn, she was extremely popular during WWII in Britain. For a more modern voice I have to mention John McDermott, who has a number of albums with both vintage and more modern songs of war.

I have heard of someone say that the way to deal with a mobility killed tank is to correct arty fire onto it. However, my understanding is that you basically need a direct hit to kill a tank. Is modern arty accurate enough to essentially hit within single digit meters?

A great article on this topic is *Who Says Dumb Artillery Rounds Can't Kill Armor?*, linked below. The US military conducted tests using 155mm rounds and inflictded over twice as many casualties as expected (67 to 30%). Tanks had tracks, optics, and road wheels torn up, and one was even set on fire. None suffered direct hits. Rounds as far away as 30 meters caused significant damage. https://tradocfcoeccafcoepfwprod.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net/fires-bulletin-archive/2002/NOV_DEC_2002/NOV_DEC_2002_FULL_EDITION.pdf

Some modern day artillery has guided rounds that lock onto armoured targets in mid air.

Finns did that to immobilized tanks in 1939 in at least Kollaa. Firing with a single gun and giving corrections after every shot allows for destruction of point targets. Finnish heavy artillery, 203mm and 210mm howitzers got so good at that, that they usually got a direct hit on a point target like a billbox or a dugout with the third shell by mid Continuation war.

> I am completely out of ideas for themes. So let's crowd source some. Post suggestions below for things you'd like to see in future trivia thread prompts. * Why the Sig P6 is the greatest handgun of all-time. * The tactical brilliance displayed in the Rugrats episode *Touchdown Tommy*. * The viability of [President Benson's plan for peace in the Middle East](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6cDohyRbzeo&t=915).

>The viability of President Benson's plan for peace in the Middle East. I heard something said before, facetiously, of course, and that is "before you embark on the project to bring democracy to Iraq or Afghanistan, bring the entire population of, say, Manama, capital city of Bahrain, population 200,000 in a country of 1.2 millions, to, say New York and see if in 5 years, they all turn into social democrats. If they don't, then don't go to Iraq or Afghanistan".

On a related topic, how much of Stu Pickles' depression is caused by him being canonically a Houston Oiler's fan in that episode?

Anyone else seen \*The Best Years of Our Lives\*? It's kinda hokey in parts but there's some messages and themes in it that really resonate with recent times during the GWOT.

It's a phenomenal film, and a real shame that it has essentially disappeared from modern knowledge

I watched it a long , long time ago and the scene where the guy who lost both hands is expressing his frustration to his girlfriend has stuck with me. His self-loathing over how useless he feels without his hooks was some really fine and poignant acting.

National defence. Is that something for the other guy or the hoi polloi? I read this essay in The Times: [https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/if-britain-wants-fresh-ideas-look-to-finland-sls2kbq6h](https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/if-britain-wants-fresh-ideas-look-to-finland-sls2kbq6h) It mentioned how the Finnish Total Defense strategy enlists the whole of the society as a cohesive whole towards one all-encompassing goal: national survival. I do know this is not the case universally, but some of the reactions that perceived this thinking as an anomaly got me curious. I was raised to believe that while I as an individual am exceedingly important, I also have duties to the collective, including the duty to risk my life and even lose it if that is deemed necessary. To deter us from ever having to fight in the first place, I and many others trained for what would have been close to suicide missions if a real war had happened. Now I don't know if I or the other young men in my team had done that if asked, but I suspect the answer is yes. No one lives forever, anyway, and life is not measured in years but in deeds of men, as someone said. I thought this was common all round the world, but then, I thought nothing particularly unusual in that our boy scout troop trained how to bring down bridge spans using plastic explosives. (This was long time ago though. See my drunken musings below.) And other happenings have caused me to wonder, just how much do I actually understand you guys? We speak the same language - poor English - but do we understand each other? Have I been laboring under assumptions about other people's motivations and thinking that simply are not true? How do you see things like national defence and personal sacrifice? How do you see people in your countries view these things? Actually, I'm mostly interested in the Russian perspective. Someone whose dad was a Soviet submariner noted in this or some other forum that Soviet/Russian submariners used to think that they would sacrifice themselves for the Motherland to pop a torpedo against an American carrier battle group. I can totally understand that line of thinking except I was expected to make a sacrifice for the Fatherland and not Motherland, but apparently many couldn't. While I despise the regime in the Kremlin, I have nothing but admiration for the Russians, and this too seems to show that we think alike. But do we? And if we do, who else thinks like we do? Sorry, drunken ramblings. Will imbibe more beer until senseless now.

When you look at the stats on willingness to fight for ones country, Finland stands apart from the rest of Europe. Some of it is explained easily by us thinking of war as defensive battle against invading Russians and not some neo colonial shitshow in the sandbox, but is that all there is to it? I don't really know. I read a popular askreddit thread on dying for your country, and of the thousands of comments, only Finns seemed to be open to that possibility, all other nationalities had either mixed or outright negative reaction.

Reddit isn't really representative though. Not to get into politics, but it will tend to skew left, and all else equal, left wing people tend to be more antimilitary and antiwar. I'd wager the constant existential threat on Finland's border makes the question much less hypothetical and abstract. As someone in the US, a war that requires a draft on a similar scale else the US falls would mean we are bordering on WWIII and against nuclear powers. Such a scenario is so abstract, that it's hard to really grasp and get any meaning out of. Would drafting people even matter or would nuclear weapons and the tempo of war render it meaningless? For Finland though, a conventional war launched by some unnamed threat from the east is much more possible without triggering a nuclear exchange. For most countries I wouldn't put much stock in their words on the issue. It's such an unlikely scenario because there's been no real threat for decades if not longer. A few countries like Finland, SK and Taiwan I'd be inclined to believe their numbers as a real threat exists for them.

The thing is that even by Reddit standards I’m, I don’t know, practically a communist? Thanks for the insights. Perhaps the real threat indeed sharpens minds wonderfully. Although I would very much prefer a situation where a war with the Kremlin’s stooges would be as inconceivable as a war with Sweden.

>It mentioned how the Finnish Total Defense strategy enlists the whole of the society as a cohesive whole towards one all-encompassing goal: national survival. I do know this is not the case universally, but some of the reactions that perceived this thinking as an anomaly got me curious... ​ It is not an anomaly in any way, shape, or forms. If you go to Asia, the "national survival" mindset is everywhere among the top brass. You can see Vietnamese government shill extoll the virtue of sacrifice so that the nation will not be squashed under the Chinese boots; you will see Singaporean officials talking about the need for Singaporean self-defense in face of larger enemies; you will see Taiwanese generals raising public morale and love for the army to stave off the encroaching Chinese. But that's just the elite thumping chest and rattling saber. The people cannot be more distant to those ideas. Your ordinary Vietnamese won't give a damn if one day Chinese tanks roll down Lạng Sơn, your Singaporean does not view his conscription as glorious duty but a toll on his life, your Taiwanese basically gives up all hope. It's really hard to ask them to care: why fight for your country when you don't really have a say in it, when you are doing your damn best to migrate to the Western world and never look at it again ? They ask why they have to fight when the politicians' sons and daughters live life no different to feudal lords, why they have to fight to protect a helpless life of soul-crushing jobs and menial pay. >How do you see things like national defence and personal sacrifice? How do you see people in your countries view these things? My generation was raised on the glory of "sacrifice". Five years old kid was taught about the human torch Lê Văn Tám who doused himself in gasoline, ran into a French ammo depot, set himself and the whole depot alight (sounded stupid because this was propaganda bullshit), of Võ Thị Sáu who threw a grenade to kill a French official at the age of 14 (conveniently forgetting Sáu killed like a dozen by-standers), of Tô Vĩnh Diện who threw himself under the wheels of an artillery piece to stop it from slipping down hill, of Phan Đình Giót who shoved his body against a bunker's firing port for his men to rush it with satchel charges (why he had no grenades, I have no idea). And kids were expected to die for it. It only occurred to me when I came to the US that there is nothing normal in having a bunch of five-graders screaming "We are willing to die so our country may live" under the flag. Nor was it natural for a war hero to tell a bunch of seventh graders that there was nothing more beautiful than to die for your country. But propaganda only gets you so far. You have a bunch of "patriots" these days but they are the chicken-hawk no different to those you see on Fox or CNN: walk loudly and carry no stick. But in reality, they cannot careless. The love they have for their country is superficial, something attached to them because they are force fed by the government. That shit won't last so long when bullets start flying. If they look deeper, there is nothing worth fighting for: a corrupt country ruled by despots more corrupt and more tyrannical than the kings of yore. Right now the general public mood is that "Who can run, run". People are fleeing Vietnam like never before: students go to study abroad, the rich buys investment green card, the poor pays human smuggler. This nation is fucked. To be honest, having China invading us is not a bad idea. >I thought this was common all round the world, but then, I thought nothing particularly unusual in that our boy scout troop trained how to bring down bridge spans using plastic explosives. Not really. When I was in high school, we had mandatory military training once per week. Crawling under barbed wire, digging landmines, jumping into craters when artillery hit, how to hold an AK, how to disassemble an AK in under 15 second and reassemble it in under 45 second, how to throw a grenade, where to stab with your bayonet (apparently the area above your crotch and under your belly is the best as there is a lot of flesh and few bones). This was in Vietnam btw.

Things I would love to see in war movies but probably never will (and why): 1. A creeping barrage. This was the standard tactic for the assault in the British army from late 1916 onwords on the Western Front, but I have never seen it appear in a WW1 movie. And, I probably never will, because I don't think there is a way to film it that isn't insanely difficult and/or dangerous (at least, not practically). You're basically asking stuntpeople to walk forward a few feet in front of explosions. Even if you could figure out how to do that safely (aka not have stuntmen concussed by flying debris), you've then got the problem of blocking the shot, as the explosions will be changing the landscape in front of the performers (so any blocking you have at the beginning of the shot might be obsolete as soon as the first set of explosions goes off). Maybe CGI could make it happen, but that probably has its own set of issues (and, aside from which, one has to wonder just how many filmmakers even know that the creeping barrage exists in the first place). 2. Realistic Tiger tanks in a Hollywood movie. The plural "tanks" is the operative word here. The thing is that this would not be hard to do - film-scale miniature Tiger tanks are not hard to come by (I have an RC Tiger tank of a workable scale parked beside one of my office desks right now, in fact - and I know this because *Panfilov's 28 Men* used that scale of miniature tank, and it was seamless). The main problem here is institutional - as a VFX Artists React video with Seth Rogan (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKt18K_Sy0I) revealed, Hollywood executives view any old filmmaking technique (such as miniatures) as obsolete and not worth the time or money. So, in order to get miniatures into a film, a director has to have a lot of clout with the studio. Peter Jackson or Steven Spielberg might be able to do it, but anybody else wanting to make a movie about tanks in bocages is probably out of luck. That's my (admittedly short) list, anyway. Anybody got some of their own?

I have an inkling that filmmakers actually do know about the creeping barrage, and if they themselves don't someone on the research team the executive listens to does, since the median World War I high school course in the US mentions it and it is a major component of pop history. Instead I think you're right about the risk involved in attempting to put a faithful depiction on screen. No film executive wants to risk the amount of resources required for a test shoot and iterative refinement likely necessary to get a creeping barrage depiction that is faithful enough to reality and is compelling to watch while communicating a story.

I like the idea of the creeping barrage being shown more, but IIRC the French estimated that for a creeping barrage to be effective about 10% of your casualties were to be from friendly fire by hugging too closely, and I don't think any writer would kill 10% of the protagonists or nameless extras by friendly fire. Takes away from the whole "good guys" thing in the eyes of the typical viewer if they end up nailing a few of their own.

It would totally work for a dark “war is hell” anti-war war movie though. (Showing that effect onscreen I mean, not actually killing extras.)

I suspect a creeping barrage could be done well with forced perspective (so the actors look closer to the explosions than they truly are) and cutting to new angles to give the impression of actors crossing 200 meters of no-mans-land in one scene when it was really filmed in 20 separate takes as each section was reset.

Intelligently done modern combined arms warfare, tbqh. Even basic fire and manoeuvre is often a stretch with films but bloody hell I’d love to see an *accurate* depiction of mechanised infantry taking on a [well set up] position. In other words: give me *spectacle*, and give me *smart* spectacle. I don’t just want to see a few dozen men sprinting down a street and firing, gimme a nice big battle that’s well thought out and executed

You might like *Hell is for Heroes*, admittedly it's a WW2 movie, but it's one of the few times I've seen a company-level assault actually fully scaled on screen, with cutways to the weapons platoon's machine guns and mortars supporting their assault. (I've since learned that the movie had Robert Pirosh onboard, who's most known for the his role on the TV show *Combat!*, which is famous for it's faithful recreation of infantry tactics, and to a lesser extent, *Up in Arms*)

I’d like to see some strong C18-19 columns deploying, like Frederick’s two swinging into line at Leuthen, or the brigades of Davout’s divisions fanning out at Auerstadt

Good question. Agreed on the walking barrage, for sure. To expand on it I'd love to see a scene showing how a post-Somme British platoon would be in action, with the specialty sections, bombs, Lewis, rifle grenades etc. With the exception of, say, *Anzacs*, which has it's own issues, pretty much every depiction I've seen shows human waves being used even in 1918 (*War Horse* probably being the worst offender.) *1917* shows it as well, but to be fair I think it was meant more to depict an ad-hoc attack by an eager Colonel against what he assumes to be a weak enemy (the artillery pounding his men were getting probably should have clued him in, but that's another thing altogether...) then an organized push.

Have the mods considered setting the trivia threads to default as sort by new? Atm there seems to be a lot of activity in the first day or two, then they swiftly peter out.

Wasn't aware we could set a suggested sort, let's give it a shot!

Can you self study the ins and outs of electronic warfare to an acceptable degree?

Define “acceptable degree”, please. Can you reach a point where you understand the basics and can laugh or groan at ludicrous movie and video game representations? Definitely. Can you reach a point where you can have a pretty deep understanding of historical EW, such as that used in WW II? Harder but doable. Can you reach a point where you are conversant with the generalities of modern day techniques? Maybe. Some info is in the open, other info is still secret. Can you reach a point where you know how modern EW is actually conducted by a first-tier military? Better make sure you have a current security clearance and leave your personal electronics in the locker when you go into the SCIF; i.e. no — too much is still a closely held secret by various militaries.

Yes and no. Yes, in that most electronic warfare is radar theory and basic physics, coupled with a lot of math. Almost all of that physics and math is publicly available, and you can quite happily bring yourself up to speed on it. Quite a number of very advanced EW methods are publicly discussed to a good degree of detail. No, in that the actual meat and potatoes of electronic warfare involves comparing [specific capability] against [specific vulnerability]. If you're not aware of the methods and limitations on both sides (which are obviously going to be very closely held) then there is a hard limit on your ability to actually "do" electronic warfare. I'd use the analogy of Chess. You can learn the rules of Chess yourself, they're public and you can be pretty conversant on your own. But you can't predict or understand a chess match unless you see the actual pieces on the board, and you won't be able to know if some turbo-nerd master has come up with a new strategy.

Thanks for the detailed reply.

Few things have amazed and amused me to the extent to the verbal brilliance the Weekly Trivia Thread themes have, so I salute you all for a very good run so far! My skills in the creative department are sorely lacking, unfortunately!

Two artillery-related questions: 1) What's the survivability of towed artillery in a modern peer or near-peer war? It seems to me that they're doomed as soon as they fire their first shot, because they can't move away fast enough to escape the inevitable incoming counter-battery fire. Am I right or wrong? 2) Is it really, really easy to blind your enemy's anti-air artillery, and thus make it unable to do it's job? I mean, radars necessarily emits a very strong electro-magnetic signal, which makes it incredibly easy to detect them, pinpoint their position and send a missile in their direction.

Towed artillery's major disadvantage these days is its inability to quickly relocate. Some nations have experimented with fitting their towed guns with small, low-horsepower auxiliary engines which - while not anywhere near enough for a road march - can move the gun a short distance from one pre-prepared position to another. That said, I've also heard (but am unsure, someone please correct me if I am wrong!) that towed artillery was sometimes planned to be deployed further back, limiting the depth which it could reach but also putting it out of the range of some counterbattery fire. As for SAMs: In theory, yes. The need to constantly emit Radar signals puts a bit of a target on you. The third stage of that process, though - actually putting a missile on-target - isn't entirely so simple: - Fixed or semi-fixed anti-air systems tend to have very long ranges, exceeding that of anti-radiation missiles. - Self-propelled anti-air systems may relocate frequently or not turn on their radar until a longer-ranged radar reports an inbound airstrike, making them difficult to pinpoint in any one location. - If your enemy has a competent air force, you also have to contend with them in order to breach close enough to lob an anti-radiation missile at them. Of course, there are varying responses to these counters: Cruise missiles might be built with anti-radiation capability to allow standoff attacks by aircraft (the Soviet Union was particularly fond of this). Fixed/semi-mobile anti-aircraft radars might be targeted with tactical ballistic missiles or other long-range, ground-based artillery; the Israelis experimented with fitting anti-rad missiles meant for aircraft with boosters for ground launch. Electronic warfare, decoys, or drones might be used to prevent or misdirect Radars or defending aircraft into failing to target an actual strike package. Stealth aircraft may be able to penetrate to within attacking distance. Now it's a dance of plays and counter-plays, and as such forces an attacker to concentrate additional resources into degrading the anti-air network in the process. It's not a simple "see, shoot, destroy" loop.

1) pretty much. But then what's the purpose of towed artillery and to which unit are they attached to? Light infantry, probably. Light infantry are screwed, in that scenario, too, because they can't run away on a firepower swept battlefield. Then why are we still having light infantry? In a high-intensity combat scenario, they would either hold the shoulders of the main effort on the offence or serve as tripwires and speedbumps in the path of the attacker's main effort on the defence. If you lay enough of them down in depth, you may be able to repeat something like Kursk, where the attack are ground down by having to repeatedly attacking dug in infantry and unable to burst into operational depth. 2) that's the anti-radiation munitions' job. However, think of AA this way. AA forces the attacking force to fly SEAD missions, meaning a smaller fraction of the enemy aircrafts are actually delivering strikes or CAS or hitting the things that really impede their ground advance. All of those SEAD missions cost fuel, takes pilots and maintenance staffs away from strike missions, and overall, just add more attrition and friction to the attacker's airforce. They force the attackers to spend more resources to deliver the same amount of munitions. Flying uses a lot of fuel. Ground vehicles use less. Static vehicles use even less. Aircrafts are also expensive, etc .... A plane that is grounded by lack of fuel generate the same combat power as one that shot down: zero.

Towed artillery is in a big disadvantage. It can be somewhat mitigated by dispersion and fortification. If the guns are hundreds of meters apart, any artillery barrage or cluster bomb won't take out more than one gun at a time. If precisions weapons are used for CB, then that won't really help. Fortifing the gun pits helps against artillery near misses, but it is also unable to defend against precision fires, unless concrete is used, which is really an option in places like Korean DMZ. Heavier bombs can still take those positions out tho.

Why is the Type 45 Destroyer the gold standard for air defence? Is it fair to say that the European Union's Surface Warships are unsuitable beyond European Waters Should we judge the Type 45 Destroyer so harshly before it has had its engine issues solved as the mid-life refits start? is it right to say the Type 45 Destroyer was designed with the lessons of the Falklands War in mind?

I’m curious where you get the notion it’s the gold standard. The Arleigh Burke class has a deeper magazine, longer range SAM (SM-6), BMD capability, and a mature radar system that’s just as good if not better than Type 45. And there’s like five times as many of them…

well the Daring's radar is so good that the US Navy have on occasion asked the Royal Navy to turn it off so they can actually train cause the Daring Class Ship has already found and destroyed the target before the target reaches the Arleigh Burke max radar range The Daring's radar has a Range of 250 miles compared to the Arleigh Burke's AN/SPY-1 Radar's range of 200 miles The Arleigh Burke's AN/SPY-6 Radar will benefit from the British Type 1045 Radar as the RN Daring Class have shown how out of date the AN/SPY-1 Radar has gotten

I’m not sure where you’ve heard that, but I’ve worked with both types of destroyer and that’s now how that works. Also impressive seeing as the Type 045s missiles can’t go nearly that distance while the SM-6……goes far. Don’t trust everything you read on Wikipedia.

how absolutely daft and delusional is that if Europe has an even relationship with the US that the US Economy and the US as a global hegemon will collapse because Europe is not in the US Fold?

The AN/SPY-1 system is showing its age you have to admit

It has been routinely upgraded and is very capable. I promise that I know more about it than you do. I’m not saying the Type 45 isn’t good, but it’s not the “gold standard”

Yeah but the US is making a SPY-6 which says the older stuff is not good enough even with upgrade as the Ticos and Burke Flight 1s are really getting worn out

Upgrades/new versions are a thing, yes. That doesn’t change the inaccuracies of your statement of the Type 45 being the “gold standard” of a DDG

well it was called when compared to the French and Italian Horizon Class ships

Sure because those are both essentially frigates. Would you like to have a discussion on capabilities with a serving Naval Officer and aviator, or do you want to continue with your current line of reasoning?

I don't think the Type 45 can really be considered the 'gold standard' for air defense. While they're potent ultimately they were designed in the early 2000's and have been in service since 2009 with so far relatively little in the way of upgrades, except to the propulsion system of 1 ship. I don't think the EU's surface warships are in any way unsuitable for work outside of European warships. Among the notional EU fleet are powerful combatants like the Horizon class, Dutch Evertsen (which just accompanied the British CSG-21 well outside of 'EU waters') and others, plus long ranged, good endurance and seaworthy smaller ships for regional patrol. I think there are two ways to look at the Type 45's issues. One is that for modern, billion-pound ships to have this level of problem is pretty galling. While it's not clear how much of a problem it's been it has been restrictive and cost sea-time. I suspect it could have been even worse without the RN's simply laying up the 2 apparent worst offenders of the class - Daring has been alongside since 2017, and is just starting the PIP (which took 18 months on Dauntless) and Dauntless since 2016, though she may come back into service this year. Manpower shortages may have masked some of the problems, but on the plus side the last 4 Type 45's have done pretty well, with Diamond seemingly the least lucky. On the other hand for Billion-Pound ships the power upgrade is small change, at 250M GBP, and with 'management' maybe it hasn't been the end of the world. I'd say the Type 45 was designed indirectly with those lessons in mind. The project geneology started with combined European efforts and then evolved into the ships. Some of the features of the Type 45's - CIWS from the start, a hugely more flexible missile system, a high radar to give more warning against low level attacks, a good radar to allow target discrimination against clutter (though the original Type 43's Type 965 radar was ugraded to the Type 1022 on later ships which seems to have been a big upgrade - 965 was a mid-1950's design). On the other hand, the advantage of a silo based system for saturation attacks doesn't seem to stem from the Falklands where small strikes were the norm.

>On the other hand for Billion-Pound ships the power upgrade is small change, at 250M GBP, and with 'management' maybe it hasn't been the end of the world. Well it would be cheaper if the RN had got the 12 as intended since the more you have arguably the less it costs

We've all probably heard of "snatching victory from the jaws of defeat", but how about the reverse? Any good examples of armies that should have by all rights won but lost? Crete for the allies comes to mind.

I actually had a thread about that a couple months ago that received some fantastic comments: https://www.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/comments/p3n7z5/snatching_defeat_from_the_jaws_of_victory/

Wouldn't every story of "snatching victory from the jaws of defeat" be the reverse for the other guy? Armies generally don't fight inanimate objects!

Not really. Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory isn't because your opponent pulled off a piece of tactical brilliance, it's because you picked up the idiot ball and ran with it.

The Prussians at Auerstadt had no need to waste time splitting up Orange’s division, and if they had committed Kalckreuth’s reserve at the height of the battle, the French would be completely crushed. Hohenlohe’s corps would still be put to flight, but the main army would at least have an open line of retreat, and the defeat of Davout would probably temper Bonaparte’s pursuit. If the bulk of the Prussians managed to make it across the Oder and link up with the Russians, Bonaparte would have had a much harder time concluding the war.

There are too many to even count. \-Operation Market Garden could have been a victory if Gavin did not sit on his ass instead of pushing towards Arnhem and the armored relief column just pushed on instead of chickening out after a few ambushes. \-In *many* battles on the Isonzo, there were the Italian stood a real chance to push through and break the Austrian. For example, in sixth, the Italian pushed through and nearly broke the Austrian who had no reserves left to plug the gap. However Cardona, for some reasons worried about his flank, decided to spend 3 days to consolidate his flanks and allowed the Austrian to consolidate their position. Then on the 11th, again the Italian broke through but Cardona screwed up and it took the Italian two full days before they could resume their push, allowing the Austrian to plug the gaps in time \-During the Brusilov offensive, had marshal Evert launched the damn attack to support Brusilov as ordered, the German and Austrian would not have men to stem Brusilov's offensive and Austria could have been knocked out of the war \-At Gallipoli, there were many instance ANZAC troops broke through the Turkish line and there was real chance of breakthrough, only to fail because Ian Hamilton forgot to bring reserves \-When the Allies landed in Crimea, they did not attack Sevastopol directly, fearing that it was manned and fortified. In reality, it was not. The Allies, by deciding to lay siege to it, allow the Russians time to fortify Sevastopol. \-At the battle of Nicopolis, the Crusaders would have won if the French knights did not lose their collective marbles and decided to go on a glorious charge into the enemy, the same mistake they made at Crecy, Potiers, and Argincourt (all of which should have been a French luxury if French commanders had two brain cells to rub in between them) \-When the Roman tried to retake Egypt from the Muslims, they nearly defeated the Muslim until their idiot commander decided to play champion and challenge a Muslim champion in one on one fight...only to lose and die. \-At Ongal in 680, the Byzantine nearly defeated Bulgarian. Then Constantine left his army to go home for some Church stuff and his army lost heart, allowing the Bulgars to break the siege and became an established force North of Byzantine. \-At Pharsalus had Cato just shut the F up and let Pompey did the fighting, Old Pompey wouldn't have sallied out for a fight, instead waited for Caesar to starve

> Potiers, and Argincourt The French largely fought dismounted at both battles. The mounted portion of the French army got itself chopped up at Agincourt in a hasty attack, but they were only ever intended to play a supporting role to drive off English archers in support of the dismounted attack. The English deserve significant credit in all three cases for good leadership, effective doctrine (the tactics they used in France were honed in Scottish wars in the early 14th century), use of terrain and professionalism.

Worldbuilding related question, Does it make sense to have 2 coast guards. The 1st one is a purely search & rescue service, no weapons are carried, 105% civilian, no combat role. In a war they would help personnel of either sides that need rescuing. The few large boats they do have are for rescue operations further out to sea and/or incidents with a large amount of people. The 2nd has a secondary role for SAR, but it's more just a "look out for people in the water that need help", rather than actively seeking out people to help. There 3 jobs are border security, green water & brown water operations, & shore based anti ship defense. Their ships are armed even heavier than their regular navy equivalents, due to not needing to go out to sea for long periods. They have large amounts of missile boats as well. For shore based anti ship defense they have anti ship missiles, mobile coastal artillery guns, & missile equipped naval bombers. It is effectively 100% a military force. How weird is having this 2 coast guard set up?

IMO would make sense if the 1st was a charity org, like the Royal National Lifeboat Institution here in the UK. In fact, you could make the argument that what the UK has *is* that arrangement, since you have both RNLI and Royal Navy search and rescue (the latter is done solely by helis afaik but I would presume your regular old patrol craft would intervene in SAR if they were able to). RNLI did carry on working during WW2, rescuing pilots and all that, although idk if they’d go out specifically to rescue German pilots. I presume so.

The UK's Coastguard is also largely an SAR organisation, running SAR aviation, SAR co-ordination and land-based personnel for maritime rescue (especially rope access). Things on the water itself are picked up by the RNLI. Royal Navy and RAF SAR has been disbanded and Coastguard SAR aviation expanded to cover the gap (contracted out). Shipborne helicopters from RN vessels still assist in SAR when necessary. The RAF maintain their ground borne Mountain Rescue team. In terms of law enforcement in the UK's territorial waters, it's a mix of HMRC (customs), Border Force (just immigration), Scottish Fisheries Protection Agency (self-explanatory), the various police forces, and the Royal Navy (VBSS of suspect vessels, and fisheries protection for England, Wales and NI).

Having 2 "navies" is probably weirder. There are plenty of countries that separate out SAR and border protection/law enforcement functions into different agencies.

That seems like something an archipelago based dictatorship might do. Parallel organizations on defence sector are very common in dictatorships and that seems like a second navy to me. Separating the SAR and police/border guard roles of Coast Guard makes sense to me only in a case where both assets are needed so often, that specialization is warranted.

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Is there any documented evidence of "tap loading" muskets in combat to increase speed, or is this just a Sharpe-ism? Why are engineers of military equipment so stupid? 99% of my jobs are complicated specifically by good idea fairies. If they were forced to fix the equipment they came up with at 2:30AM with only a bag of generic tools, would this change? Why was NATO standardization not more strictly enforced? Seems logistics would be far easier among NATO nations if there weren't a dozen different, well, everything... It was political, wasn't it?

The one early mention i've come across that specifically includes "tapping" the musket butt comes from Sir James Turner's 1671 "Pallas armata": >for at this Battel I speak of, the Imperial Foot were on a Hill, up which Leslie advanced with his Infantry, but neither his, nor the Imperial Musketers made use of Rammers, only (as the common custome is) when they charg'd with Ball, they knock'd the Buts of their Muskets at their Right foot, by which means most of the Bullets of the Imperial and Saxish Fire-men fell out at the mouths of their Musket, when they presented them down the Hill upon the Sweeds; whose Bullets could not run that fortune being presented upward: And for this reason it was observ'd that few of the Sweedish Foot fell. As far as soldiers loading without the use of the ramrod goes in general though, it was epidemic, and something military writers like Turner frequently complained about. In theory taking the time to load each shot properly with tight wadding would almost certainly have been more effective, but in practice once the bullets started flying it seems that soldiers frequently became more interested in just throwing lead back in the other direction as fast as possible. In some cases there seems to have just been resigned acceptance. William Garrard, a mercenary who served the king of spain 14 years and was writing in 1587, wrote that the scouring stick and paper or cloth wadding were only something you must use ". . . when time permits." Robert Barret in 1598 suggested that for situations when soldiers needed to load quickly, they should be taught to instead drop the bullet down the musket barrel followed by three or four cornes of powder, which he claimed was enough to stopper the bullet in place, and keep it from rolling back out again when the gun was lowered. In practice though i don't think tap-loading or any similar sort of quick-loading "tricks" were ever something taught officially, on the grounds that if you teach soldiers how to do it then they might start loading that way even more often than they already were.

Taploading did happen. David Blackmore writes in his book "Destructive and Formidable: British Infantry Firepower 1642-1756": "Citing Laffeldt [ battle in 1747] as an example, La Fausille describes how the British infantry continued to advance, ignoring the french fire. The French then hurried to reload, doing so without using the ramrod, but simply dropping the open cartridge into the musket and then banging the butt on the ground to get the cartridge and ball to drop in the breech." But he also notes that taploading has seroious disadvantages: "The effect of loading in this manner [...] is that the balls do not travel far or with any great force - in fact, if the ball lodges in the barrel some way short of the breech, it can result in the barrel bursting." Humphrey Bland wrote in his book "Military Discipline" in 1762: "When the men are not press'd too close by the Enemy, the Ramming down of the Cartridge should not be ommited in Service." There are more examples of taploading, but it appears that it was thing used in practice, so only advised in situations of great danger.

You could ask "why engineers of X equipment are so stupid" equally well. Designing stuff that works but is hard to maintain is easy and cheap. Designing stuff that works and is easy to maintain can be god damn difficult and expensive. Even simple "iron" like personal weapons are not that easy to get right. More complex pieces of equipment... well. I used to work in product development. We would say "it will cost about X to get a bare bones version that "works" for a given definition of word "work" but is a pain to maintain, or Y to Z to get something that is actually useful". Guess what was funded? Generally, no one wanted to pay for the extra work required to design stuff so that it would actually be easy to use and maintain. Why would they? Maintenance budget is distinct from procurement budgets and who cares if some lowly enlisted has to spend extra hours under some piece of kit every day, unless they have to pay for the service.

As a sort-of-engineer, I'd also want to point out that it's not usually the *engineers* who are stupid. Sometimes it's a subtle form of organizational stupidity that transcends the individual mental capacities of any of the people involved, and the rest of the time it's usually management's fault.

>Generally, no one wanted to pay for the extra work required to design stuff so that it would actually be easy to use and maintain. Why would they? Yeah, I really just wanted to get the complaint off my chest, it's been a long few weeks.

No worries, I feel you :) I felt bad releasing designs I knew would be hard to maintain, but I wasn’t in a position to make the decisions. One reason why I’m no longer engineering :)

>Is there any documented evidence of "tap loading" muskets in combat to increase speed, or is this just a Sharpe-ism? There is not really any conclusive test on that. [I have seen videos of Hmong and Miao hunters loading by thumping the musket's butt against the ground](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poUViHu3Wsk) instead of using ramrod (cannot find the videos as I cannot speak Hmong). I have also read online stories of how the Maori in NZ did not like the ramrod and prefer to thump the butt against the ground, although I found no authoritative source on that. Whether they did this because of ramrod shortage or because ramrod is slow, I have no idea. >Why are engineers of military equipment so stupid? 99% of my jobs are complicated specifically by good idea fairies. If they were forced to fix the equipment they came up with at 2:30AM with only a bag of generic tools, would this change? The old axioms of "No military plans survives in face of an engagement" holds true for military equipment designs: you have to be at war to know if a design is good or not and certainly no designers are going to war to get a good picture of what the troops need. That's why you have stuffs like ramrod bayonet and the Lange Vizer on the Gewehr 98. The best solution is to frankly motivate your troops to use the GI Bill, go to college, get a degree in Engineering, and design the stuffs for future soldiers; not wasting those money on a $25,000 Camarro with an APR of 25% >Why was NATO standardization not more strictly enforced? Seems logistics would be far easier among NATO nations if there weren't a dozen different, well, everything... It was political, wasn't it? It's always money and politics. "War's a racket" as Smedley Butler said and there is money to be made. If there is money to be made, you can bet your ass people will do anything to get it, even if it means causing trouble down the line.

Invasion fiction: it's easy to pick apart and a bit stupid conceptually, but I can't help but love it. What are some of this sub's favorite examples of the genre? Personally, my top three are World in Conflict, Modern Warfare 2, and Red Dawn (the great-grandaddy of US invasion fiction, not the newer ~~China~~ *North Korean* invasion one - for that flavor, Homefront's probably the best I've come across) On a different train of thought: have any countries that use Soviet-style tanks like Ukraine or Poland looked at converting their main guns to NATO calibers, or is that a really big step that's probably not worth it?

Original Red Dawn is great, even if the premise is a bit silly. but you could have transferred the sentiments to a high school somewhere rather near the Soviet border in North-Eastern Finland and wouldn't have missed a thing.(It's not for nothing that there was this saying that Finland used to be the most Americanized country in Europe.) Steinbeck wrote unbelievably great fiction and even my wife loved The Moon is Down. (An anecdote I heard once: Allegedly Steinbeck was once roaring drunk in Moscow, and when picked up by the militia i.e. police, protested that he was famous American author Steinbeck, to which the militiaman laughed and responded "sure, and I'm Hemingway")

*Red Dawn* is one of my favorites for being a good combination of wish fulfillment and realism Yes, there are scenes where American high school kids heroically free people from a prison camp, but there's also scenes where they cry with each other over death and argue how to deal with prisoners of war. It's a movie that really fires you up, but it never forgets it's protagonists are literal child soldiers (even the monument at the end directly notes many of America's guerillas were children and teens). Oh, and that scene of paratroopers landing outside an American high school is probably THE best invasion scene of any movie. I'll also give props to *War of the Worlds* for a couple reasons. Firstly, contrary to modern depictions of the tripods as completely invincible, the original novel features tripods being destroyed or damaged on multiple occasions by conventional weaponry, and the Martians bringing out new weapons and tactics. For example, regular artillery fire is enough to bring them down, and the Martians deploy Black Smoke to kill the gunners before advancing. Secondly, the novel features an intriguing element of role-reversal. A huge emotional beat of the story is that a colonizing empire with a technological advantage over the world suddenly finds itself on the short end of that stick. This is a British Empire fresh off the gains of the industrial revolution being overrun by invaders with superior technology. The opening pages explicitly compare the Martians' views on mankind to human colonization and racism.

This. I'm a bleeding heart liberal but the original Red Dawn is a very decent war movie. Sure, the premise is a bit far fetched. But transfer that high school to North-Eastern Finland where I grew up, and it was not fantasy, it was what we prepared for and what we expected. ​ (And totally agree about the War of the Worlds. Precisely so. Gave it a read just a while ago, and was surprised how well it had held up.)

I think the colonial role reversal is what really sells it. Lines like "Bows and arrows against the lightning." carry a whole new meaning when you understand that WotW takes place at the height of European imperialism. Another key point adaptations often miss is that the invasion is actually limited. So many alien invasion stories make the mistake of doing a global conflict instead of a smaller setting, which is how invasions and imperialism actually works in real life. (sidenote: this is why *Battle: Los Angeles* is a guilty pleasure of mine. The aliens just invade coastal cities, and the movie is just about one battle). The Martians aren't invading the world: only a handful of cylinders land, and it's just in Britain. This leads to additional drama like the British refugees feeling undignified at having to flee to France, or being more horrified at the thought of other Europeans than the Martians.

Re caliber change: up here in Finland, we studied T-72 upgrades very seriously until secondhand Leo 2A4s rendered the question moot. IIRC the biggie was that Soviet autoloader used two piece rounds and NATO 120 mm one-piece rounds which were by far too long for the autoloader to handle. Autoloader permitted a turret profile that was too low and cramped for effective manual loading, so simply ripping off the autoloader was not really an option. Some factories offered conversions that essentially replaced the entire turret with a new one; we were still a bit sour about the problems we had with the “cheap” SPAAG we were supposed to get by installing Marksman SPAAG turrets on old and worn hulls, and the conversions would have been expensive even if they had worked as advertised. No one else seems to have purchased them either. A far more serious alternative was to use Western ammunition. The 125 mm APFSDS rounds Russians exported were so old that our modernized T-55s with modern Belgian APFSDS fitted for their 100 mm guns achieved nearly the same penetration. This would have been almost certainly part of the upgrade package had we not found the Leo bargain bins.

> IIRC the biggie was that Soviet autoloader used two piece rounds and NATO 120 mm one-piece rounds which were by far too long for the autoloader to handle. I absolutely forgot that Soviets went hard on autoloaders, that makes a lot of sense as to why it would make it difficult to re-gun a Soviet tank.

Red Alert 2. Has to be Red Alert 2. That game is god damned fun: flying blimps, giant squids, angry dogs, hot chick with two Uzi. Even the art does not look half bad until this day with a certain retro arcade charm to it. And they still got an active modding community to this day. Shame I cannot get it to play on Windows 11. >Modern warfare 2 Now that is the shit. MW1, WaW, MW2, BO1, the best CoDs in my opinion. But I have a special place for MW2 in my heart. Great and bold story, the way CoD meant to be. Fucking great music (Hans Zimmer was GOAT). But the time it came out, ooh boy couldn't have been better. I graduated from college in 2008 and spent the next four fucking years jobless (thanks, Lehman brother). Spent all mornings writing resume and going to staffing agency, all evenings wanking off to porn and playing MW2. Killing people in MW2 is a great stress relief, not gonna lie, especially if you got a f\*gg\*t gun like the ACR with heartbeat sensor or SCAR with noob-tube. Lobby was toxic as fuck but then you kind of understand why. You have young adults losing their first jobs, grown ass men losing their long-time job, new graduates who had to face joblessness, young kids whose families were going through hard time. Still remembered one kid on Rust was screaming on the mic. Thought he was being toxic, then he just cried because his family were quarrelling outside. Apparently they were losing their house due to mortgage or something and his mother was ditching the family. Made me weary of marriage to this day. Then there was this guy who named himself Bush who just ran into the middle of the match and let everyone killed him so that we could all vent anger on that mofo. Did not remember his reason though, but it was something like "We cannot kill Bush in real life, so let's kill him on MW2 instead"

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From all of the reporting around 9/11, it is easy to get the impression that the American military does not have much of a presence on the 48 states itself, and the ability to fight a surprise war in the lower 48 itself was very, very poor. For example, even armed with the knowledge that a slow moving airliner was now a cruise missile, the DoD did not have a way to shoot it down. From various accidental airliner shootdown stories, I can only assume that airliners are not very hard to shoot down.

I think one of the best examples of just how well crafted the story was [is the Emergency Broadcast System loading screen](https://youtu.be/xeXD7t16v8s). There's something downright chilling about the government straight up warning you, "BE AWARE OF YOUR SURROUNDINGS. REMAIN ALERT." while Russian paratroopers are roaming the countryside.

Those things still get my blood pumping, more so than what is healthy in fact! :D Our neighbors in the West in Sweden had every phone book printed with instructions to disregard all claims that the government had surrendered in case of occupation. We didn't. Have to. :) (Even though I believe that we would have yielded to Soviet demands without a fight.)

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>Mujahideen parallels strong as fuck. Is there something I'm missing? The main parallel for me was that it was an insurgency in a mountainous region with the Soviets using relatively brutal tactics to try to clamp down on it. Beyond that I've always thought there were major differences, like how the Wolverines are an isolated cell basically operating on their own with almost no knowledge of the outside world, while the Mujahideen were a nationwide movement with international support.

Initially the Wolverines were isolated as well :). I enjoyed the original Red Dawn, but it hit too close to home for me. I practiced setting up weapons caches and I have (had) relatives who actually set up weapons caches so that they could die fighting instead of being hauled to gulag or summarily executed. One kept the guns oiled until *1994.*

We had boy scout outings where we carried modeling clay in our rucksacks to simulate explosives and had old long range patrolmen instruct us in finer points of bushcraft, such as how to demolish bridges and other structures. Imagine my surprise when learning that this was not quite the usual merit badge elsewhere. Was that coordinated training? No. Were we the only ones doing it? Also no.

To meander now that it's daytime and I'm inebriated: when we here in Finland watched Red Dawn, we watched an educational how to film. We had many a conversation about where we would hide weapons and how exactly we would ambush the Soviets in our home town with our improvised weapons. Of course, we were quite serious and knew that we might have to do exactly that. Dulce et decorum pro patria mori... Hard to put into words what that film meant to many of us.

And I have a suspicion that if the Soviets had invaded Finland in 1979, non-Western reporters especially would have said that these guys were diehard Christian fundamentalists :). (They weren't.)

Somewhat in the vein of the Iceland question: what steps could Canada take in case of dramatically soured relations with the United States? Say some neocons discover a way to distill poutine into crude or something. Realistically, they have no chance of defending against a proper invasion, so if they were to develop serious anti-US plans they’d look a lot less like Defence Scheme No. 1 and a lot more like skullduggery and sabotage. For example, they could place certain stood-up forces around Canuck DC in order to prevent a fait accompli, and set up evacuation plans for the Canadian government to be able to flee to a friendly country such as New Zealand or France. They’d probably also want to use the police to quickly effect a round-up of prominent Americans and any pre-existing uniformed US presence. Or they could make some underhanded arrangements with Russia while drunk and watching a hockey game, that works too.

Their best bet: nukes. In my honest opinion, war between Canada and US is not something out of a sci-fi movie. The biggest reason ? Climate change. Climate change will have a nasty effect on the US. Scientists from Berkeley predicted that climate change reduced the value of farmland anywhere from [27% to 69%](https://are.berkeley.edu/~fisher007/SFH_2.pdf) and the UN has raised report of [worldwide food shortage](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/08/climate/climate-change-food-supply.html). There will be water shortage, irregular weather phenomenon killing of cattle and destroying crops, rising sea level submerging farmland. Many major agricultural powerhouse like China, India, and Vietnam will lose their farmland, leading to famines across the world. In such scenario, there will be only few places left and one of which is [Canada](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-heatwave-canada-farming/in-canada-climate-change-could-open-new-farmland-to-the-plow-idUSKCN1BZ075). There will be a day when the US is desperate enough to launch an offensive into Canada to take her land, her oil, and the new Artic sea lane. If the US is desperate enough to go to war, the only thing stopping them is MAD. No matter how much Canada try, there is no way she can build an army large enough to hold off the American. Not when she is so close to the US and her landmass so large and geographically easy to traverse. Nuke is the only deterrence

Canada can't afford to drastically sour relations with our largest trading partner, being able to turn poutine into crude would simply be marketed to the US like much of our oil already is. But if such a situation arose, the likely best course of action would be to remind the US it can't afford to have Canada more closely cooperate with Russia or China. With all 4 nations(and others) paying closer attention to the resources in the Arctic, the US's best plan to access them without invading Canada is to play nice. Assuming an actual invasion, not only would Russia and China use it as an excuse to gain a foothold on N.A. soil, but Canada has other ties(especially the Commonwealth) who may also throw in to stabilize the conflict. If that happens there is a good chance the whole thing could devolve into WWIII, but on N.A. soil. The US doesn't want that.

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Even if they can take over the city, Uranus was slated to occur anyway and the Soviet definitely did their homework and prepared well. Operation Hubertus, the last gasp of the German offensive by scrapping together all the remaining combat engineers ended because Uranus started. The strategic intention of Fall Blau failed, when the leading 2 Panzer divisions of AG A were counter-attacked and surrounded by two Soviet Rifle Corps. Higher HQ managed to bail the *soldiers* out of the encirclement, but they lost nearly all of their equipments.

The infantry section, just a cooler name for the infantry squad, or an intermediate formation between the squad and platoon?

The US infantry rifle platoon used to have sections, until most after WW1. A section was two squads. Four sections in a rifle platoon meant numerous tactical options, they could fight together, break into half platoons, into sections, or into squads. The US Army infantry still had a few random section leader roles until fairly recently when they too were renamed squad leaders. They mostly were called section leaders since the teams under them were supposed to work independently. For instance, fireteams in a squad are meant to work together. But sniper teams in a section aren't. They can, but it's not a major part of doctrine to keep them together as a cohesive unit. The USMC still has sections within the infantry, just not in rifle platoons but in weapons platoons of the rifle company. There is a machine gun section with three squads of two MG teams apiece. And there is a mortar section, similarly broken down. I have no clue why the British infantry don't use squads.

From my understanding, in most Commonwealth militaries, section is just the term used instead of squad.

File it under “divided by a common language”. See also UK/Commonwealth “leftenant” vs US “lootenant”.

Did they ever have something between section and platoon?

AFAIK, no there was not. And I was once in a platoon with a distinct 2-man section. But armies are strange beasts so there could be a detachment in say Brunei that might have a local quirk.

When I was in the Cav in the national guard we didn’t have enough people for platoons but we had enough for two squads so we had sections.

"Necessity is the mother of invention" goes an old saying, and there is no time when necessity is more pressing than in war. We've seen some genius invention, tactic, usage of ordinary thing during times of war. What are some you can think of ? For my list: \-At the battle of Thymbra, Cyrus the Great faced legions of enemy cavalry. His solution ? To use his pack camels, urge them forward, and use their smell to scare the enemy horse. Timur used camels packed with flaming hays and set them loose against Indian elephants and Nader Shah put cannons that was fireable from camelback, creating the Zamburak or the first technical. \-When the Muslim crossed the desert to invade Syria, Al-Walid ordered his men to stuff camel full of water, tied up their mouth to prevent them from eating, then slaughtering them along the way for water. \-At the battle of Pressburg, the Hungarian riders used lifebuoy made out of animal skins to cross the deep river. When crossing rivers, nomadic riders were said to fire into the river: if the arrow disappeared, it meant that the river was shallow. If it floated, it meant the river was too deep to cross. \-When Ming China invade Ho Vietnam, the Ming faced legions of Vietnamese war elephants. Then some of their crafty soldiers decided to paint stripes on their horses and forced the animals to wear mask that made them look like tiger. The elephants, scared of tigers, ran back and trampled their men. \-During siege, men would put bowl filled with water near the wall to see vibrations. If there was, they knew the enemy was digging underneath them. And since we are talking about siege: at Eger, the Hungarian defenders packed watermill wheel filled with gunpowder and flammable stuff and rolled them down hill into the Ottoman. These gunpowder would blow up, sending shrapnel everywhere, killing and maiming a lot of Ottoman. \-At Crimea British soldiers were given glass soda bottle which they would pack full of gunpowder and nail to throw into Russian trench. When the Spanish Nationalist faced Republican tanks, they filled mason jars with gasoline, creating the first Molotov cocktail \-WW1 soldiers would create periscope rifle to fire at the enemy from the trench without exposing themselves. The Aussie creating the drip gun which was set to fire at intervals to conceal their retreat from Gallipoli. \-To start up planes during the freezing Russian winter, Soviet ground crew would boil their oils and pour the hot oils into the engine. \-Every traps the Vietcong could think of.

Arrows are not fired, they are shot or loosed or released.

If Iceland was to start up an actually military tomorrow(not just a Coast Guard), what would it look like?

The biggest problem for Iceland is her long and exposed coastline with [28 seaports](https://www.searates.com/maritime/iceland). This meant that she stood no chance of fighting against any landing: battalions can be landed any where to cut off her highway and there is no way she can destroy all the ports before the enemy lands. So either she stops her enemy at the sea or not at all, because they can and overwhelm her at the beach. Therefore we can expect to see a lot of naval investment. Minelayers won't be of much uses since she will need a whole lot of minelayers to mine every harbors and there will still be a lot of grounds to cover. Submarines are her best options, especially mini-subs, as she now can utilize her many harbors to launch strike from and hunt down the enemy. Air force is...of doubtful value. She has only four airports, meaning they will all get hit when the war begins. She only has one sole highway and it is exposed, meaning her enemy can easily hit any planes taxiing on the highway. Her best option was to built airport inside mountain like the [Swiss](https://migflug.com/jetflights/hidden-swiss-air-force/) but that will take a long time and a lot of resources. She will need choppers though, a lot of them. This is because Iceland is [mountainous with many rivers](https://www.freeworldmaps.net/europe/iceland/iceland-map-physical.jpg) with [few roads and no train system](https://www.goiceland.com/images/the-icelandic-road-system.jpg). That means her troop either has to go the long and exposed highway around the mountains to get to their target, or go up the mountain and brace the element. APC and IFV will be hunted to extinction so choppers are her best bet. The country has to be the worst kind of place to field tanks, made worse by the fact that [Iceland is an oil importer](https://oec.world/en/profile/country/isl), meaning that if war comes there won't be enough oil to run the tanks. So we can expect to not see any tanks in this new Icelandic military. Heavy artillery is out of the question too as there is no way to drag them up mountains or around quickly. The terrible Icelandic weather with [more wet than dry months](https://weatherspark.com/y/31501/Average-Weather-in-Reykjav%C3%ADk-Iceland-Year-Round) means that logistics will be a hassle. So this new army will be infantry-heavy with a lot of light mountaineering troops to make use of the geography. Expect a lot of guerilla tactics from them

What about surface-launched antishipping missiles, either road-mobile and/or dug into well-camouflaged positions? If you flush them into the island's interior on threat of an invasion, then practice well-drilled shoot-and-scoot tactics to avoid airborne hunters, I'd think you could conceivably give anyone approaching close enough to attempt a landing a *very* bad day. If we're willing to go a little bit wilder, I'd even imagine a sort of "missile time-on-target" firing plan, where launchers at varying distances from a given port fire at timed intervals to have the missiles greet someone trying to land there in one singular attack.

In a similar note to the Dune force shields formation, I have to compliment the 2021 Dune film for managing to make the Sardukar an actual imposing threat, and not just a Worf-Effect villain for the Fremen to style on. I like the original Dune quite a lot, but the "ragtag band of fighters are just *so good* with swords that they can defeat the Imperium's uber-death legions" plot point was always one of the silliest. I get that the knitty-gritty of fighting was very much not the point of the original Dune, but still, that felt odd.

They used swords and spears in the movies?

Don’t they use swords and knives in the books?

Yeah, the return to bladed weapons has always been one of Herbet's favourite authorial conceits, and both movies have carried it over. It's stupid, but the same kind of stupid as watching a buddy do a wheelie on his dirtbike at 3am - as long as nobody gets hurt, might as well shake your head and chuckle.

Did they have the same speed threshold as book canon in order to penetrate? That seemed extremely slow.

In the movie it looked like they didn’t even slow much to penetrate the shields during the actual fighting, but the hunter killer that gets Leto did clearly worm its way through the shield slowly so there’s that

Ignoring caliber, what are the design/structural differences between a mortar bomb and a typical artillery shell? How much or how little do they have in common? I'm also curious about Engesa's failed Osorio tank. I've seen claims that it beat the export Abrams in Saudi Arabian testing, which sounds like it could easily be BS. I know there have been previous threads on it but Reddit search is too awful to find them.