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The Most Effective Weapon on the Modern Battlefield Is Concrete
- vacri 10y ago> weapon ... concrete If we're going to play this semantics game, then the most effective weapon on the modern battlefield is food. Without food, your people can't do any of the other things they're there to do. Take away concrete, and your military can still do plenty of stuff. Take away food and your military ceases to exist.
- motoboi 10y agoWell... The most important weapon in a war are people (for now).
- djsumdog 10y agoNot only for now. Even if we build drones, people need to design then, write the software and fly them. We not have AIs we can control like an RTC game. And that's the problem. Men and women keeping ... fighting .. for causes that aren't there. American soldiers are duped into thinking they're fighting for some noble cause when they're just the strong arm of a corrupt system that continues to blaze on with wars no matter who is elected. Conniving people to fight is the only way to wage war. It's also how we make money. It's also how we make slaves.
- motoboi 10y agoI said "for now" because I believe human race will go extinct when robots take over.
- colanderman 10y agoYou can't exactly strategically deploy food.
- dpc59 10y agoYou can certainly strategically fuck up your enemy's supply lines. War is one of the main causes of famine for this reason.
- RUG3Y 10y agoOne of the ways they did what you describe is by placing these concrete walls around troubled enclaves. They weren't restricting food but munitions had to now be taken through checkpoints.
- JoelBennett 10y agoI dunno... North Korea might say differently.
- SomeStupidPoint 10y agoAren't strategic food supplies what keeps sieges from being a 4-week affair? Then how you allocate and deploy food is a measure of where you could potentially resist a seige.
- vacri 10y agoFood is one of the primary resources that is strategically deployed. On a tactical level, mealie bags and biscuit boxes were famously used to defend a British outpost in the Zulu wars. :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Rorke%27s_Drift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Rorke%27s_Drift
- beachstartup 10y agoyeah you can. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meal,_Ready-to-Eat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meal,_Ready-to-Eat i have no military experience but i'm guessing this is actually one of the easiest things to strategically deploy. a day's worth of ammo for a platoon probably weighs a few hundred pounds. a day's worth of food is probably like 10 pounds.
- fdgdasfadsf 10y agoBut: 1. in most wars the soldiers are actually fighting a very small proportion of the time. They are eating, drinking and creating waste every day. 2. Those dehydrated rations will need to be rehydrated. So you need to supply in the region of 3 litres of clean (soldiers are not as effective if they are sick) water each day (more in hot climates).
- edblarney 10y agoThese very specific kinds of concrete barriers are specific to the issue, and thus I don't think it's 'semantic' at all. It was an informative article, oddly an issue never covered in the mainstream press.
- robotresearcher 10y agoI'm guessing the parent's point was that calling a concrete defence barrier a 'weapon' is a bit weird. In the same way that a steel helmet is not really a weapon, neither is a concrete shield.
- hackuser 10y ago> the most effective weapon on the modern battlefield is food. Experts do say that logistics is one of the most important factors in warfare. An army marches on its stomach, Napoleon reputedly said. Imagine feeding 20,000 people on the march: That's 40-60,000 meals per day, who knows how much water, plus waste - all shipped through war zones. And that ignores other supplies: Fuel, bullets, parts, medicine, etc.
- joshfraser 10y agoSpecifically water. Control the water supply and you can control the people within 3 days.
- chrisseaton 10y agoI don't think I saw any concrete structures when I was in Afghanistan. We used Hesco bastion for everything. I think even the furthest-back hospital was just sheet steel siding construction, surrounded by Hesco. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hesco_bastion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hesco_bastion Hesco is another very interesting material. Cheap, extremely light and easy to deploy, until filled, which can be done by anyone with an entrenching tool (small infantry shovel/spade that everyone carries) if required, and then basically indestructible. How many of those concrete walls can a helicopter carry? One? It's going to take a long time to build any wall or structure. Or do you send an armoured cement mixer and create on-site? That's not realistic in a place like Afghanistan. I'm not an engineer but I would also guess that Hesco survives better - a box of stones can lift up and crash back down with an explosion where if concrete cracks it's permanently broken.
- karyon 10y agoThe article says > Existing structures [abandoned buildings] surrounded by walled compounds of some type were selected because there was little in the environment to use for protection—such as dirt to fill sandbags, earthworks, and existing obstacles. so that might be part of the reason.
- AcerbicZero 10y agoHesco barriers were pretty wide spread in Iraq as well. Baghdad was the only place I saw where the concrete barriers outnumbered the Hescos.
- dogma1138 10y agoBecause hescos do not need logistical support 2 people can deploy one and fill it with sand and gravel even by hand if needed. Hescos are also better since they don't cause ricochets and they don't shatter on impact creating shrapnel. From my experience when concrete walls are used for fortifications the SOP was to cover them with a sheet of Kevlar like fabric between two layers of metal webbing (concrete bolt/nail gun was used to secure the webbing to the barrier) to protect personnel from secondary impact risks. If that wasn't available then you usually had a layer of either sand bags or a spaced secondary wooden or sheet metal wall with sand filling the gap between it and the concrete. When bullets are flying at you you want to be behind a barrier but not near a bare concrete wall.
- Animats 10y agoAll that military expertise in rapid wall-building is going to be useful. Already, there are concrete barriers around Trump Tower.[1] [1] http://gothamist.com/2016/11/09/nypd_trump_tower_security.php http://gothamist.com/2016/11/09/nypd_trump_tower_security.ph...
- dogma1138 10y agoWell he said he's going to build a wall, maybe trump thinks anything below 42nd street is Mexico... ;)
- fennecfoxen 10y agoDon't be ridiculous. Any New Yorker knows that "Mexico" doesn't start until you get above 96th St on the west side, or past about Lorimer Street on the L (and they've been pushing that back, it might be about Graham Ave by now). I miss Bushwick sometimes. :)
- finid 10y agoSounds like gentrification has killed the old Bushwick, right?
- koenigdavidmj 10y agoSimilar to the HESCO barriers mentioned above, another measure used there was simply a row of dump trucks full of sand: https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/5bugud/sand_blockade_outside_trump_tower_on_5th/ https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/5bugud/sand_blockade_o...
- shin_lao 10y agoThey also used such trucks to prevent a vehicle ramming into the NYC Marathon.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoI was half-expecting to see opponents of Trump putting concrete barriers around the tower as a protest against the Mexico wall.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- smarx007 10y agoNice to see how these links appear on HN front page now as the new POTUS plans to build a concrete wall...
- ryanx435 10y agoThe site linked is a blog/podcast pit on by senior cadets and officers at westpoint, which is just about as apolitical as government institutions come
- visarga 10y agoInteresting. I've been following the war in Iraq but I wasn't aware they were building so many walls.
- trhway 10y ago>I've been following the war in Iraq but I wasn't aware they were building so many walls. couple days of tomahawk cruise missiles barrage followed by 10 years of nation _building_
- icebraining 10y agoI don't criticize them for it, but protecting vehicles from IEDs and walling off sections of the city is still war activities, not nation building. Crucial stuff, no doubt, but I'm sure the people actually trying to build a nation would rather spend those resources on other stuff if there wasn't insurgency activity.
- clock_tower 10y agoI don't know; a town without walls and a citadel always feels incomplete to me. :) (Of course, much depends on who controls the walls and the citadel...)
- coredog64 10y agoUpscale neighborhoods in my neck of the woods clamor for very tall walls near high traffic roads to block out the sound (and the occasional runaway vehicle). They become a nice canvas for tasteful artwork, or if that's too contentious can have vines grown on them.
- jweir 10y agoNRP Science Friday all on concrete http://www.npr.org/2012/02/17/147047553/concretes-role-as-a-building-block-in-history http://www.npr.org/2012/02/17/147047553/concretes-role-as-a-...
- sjm 10y agoAnother interesting podcast on concrete from "Surprisingly Awesome": https://gimletmedia.com/episode/3-concrete/ https://gimletmedia.com/episode/3-concrete/
- pjungwir 10y agoIt is interesting to read that so little has changed since the days of Caesar. Reading his Gallic War you'd think the war was won by digging ditches and building walls. For instance, search for "fortification" on this page: http://classics.mit.edu/Caesar/gallic.5.5.html http://classics.mit.edu/Caesar/gallic.5.5.html Contrast with Galba in the early chapters of http://classics.mit.edu/Caesar/gallic.3.3.html http://classics.mit.edu/Caesar/gallic.3.3.html You would only exaggerate a little to say that in his telling, victory is all about being prepared and not slacking off.
- dogma1138 10y agoThat isn't very surprising you win a war by controlling territory which is why boots on the ground are always needed to win an actual war, to control a territory you need fortifications. A properly fortified base can take pretty much any conventional artillery fire for weeks without taking any real damage and unless there is an all out assault you can hold out as long as you have food and water, ammo might not even be that important as long as the enemy doesn't know that and or is incapable of scaling the fortifications. Even when we'll be fighting on Mars and the jovian moons you'll still will have grunts digging trenches unless for some reason the war is going to transform to purely strategic weapons in which case it's usually the side that either has more or strikes first who would win.
- SEJeff 10y agoBut it can't take missiles, especially not the newer (last 10-15 year old) "Bunker Buster" style bombs.
- maxander 10y agoIt sounds like concrete is a useful counterinsurgency tool in the same way that placing blocks is against mobs in Minecraft.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoIt's also a good combat tool in the same way placing blocks cleverly will make you a nice mob/animal farm.
- alaskamiller 10y agoOne mission in my service was going to Korea and blowing up concrete walls. Back in 2008 the Korean government acquired new concrete barrier designs meant to re-enforce strategic locations. Wanting to see real life usage of these barriers, a contingency of Marine combat engineers working with the ROK Marines got tasked to breaching them. From that I learned two interesting things of note. Concrete serves two means: it's actual use as a barrier and the other being a manifestation. In combat zones, Hesco containers prevail. Rapid deployment and durability makes them a much better fit. But imposing concrete blocks represent the continuity of the state. Heavier and harder, with more logistics required, building out concrete walls is meant as a way for the state to declare they are here to stay, not retreat. So actually it's wielding a supply chain effectively that is the most effective weapon on the battlefield. That said though, we made short work of the concrete.
- tajen 10y agoI reckon concrete is necessary, but how much does it harm the economy? I can't recall a barrier in history that didn't prevent food from reaching to the right people and triggering bribes. But the main driver in peace is to get paid/production jobs for everyone, and the main specificity of a city is that it's good for tertiary jobs, but it requires constant provisioning from agriculture and industry, which both happen outside towns and require intensive movement of goods. In a nutshell: Don't concrete walls prevent recovery? Don't they split the population, creating even more groups with differences? Should we plan for them to be "reconfigured" in the following years, when the conflict improves? Side question: Sorry I didn't follow, why was USA in Irak again? Did it start with the famous WMD accusation at the UN conference then the intervention got bogged into a long unpeaceful situation, am I recollecting events in the correct order?
- jacobush 10y agoNot quite. It began with a teary eyed son claiming vengeance for his father: "he tried to kill my papa!"
- pault 10y agoIt started with the Project for the New American Century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century#Calls_for_regime_change_in_Iraq https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_C... "Of the twenty-five people who signed the PNAC's founding statement of principles, ten went on to serve in the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz." They were planning this for a long time.
- revelation 10y agoI don't think any war was ever won by endlessly placing concrete. This has the hallmarks of WW1 trench warfare.
- fennecfoxen 10y agoSo if I'm reading this right, the occupation in Iraq is a tower defense game. I really wouldn't have guessed...
- joshfraser 10y agoSounds like 12ft ladders would have also been pretty effective, depending on which side you were on.
- Cogito 10y agoThe discussion of Hesco vs concrete barriers is an interesting one, and I think a lot of the other comments handle it well. The thing I was wondering while reading the article is what will they do after the fighting is done? Will the barriers and walls be left in place or dismantled? Is it easier to take down or move concrete vs Hesco? I suspect lots of them will remain until they fall apart, especially in situations like lining highways. I bet that the walls in the city, and the enclaves formed by them, will be affecting the culture off the city years after the conflict is done.
- angersock 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadrian%27s_Wall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadrian%27s_Wall One can imagine some Roman boots bitching about lugging the stones up for some temporary cover.
- woodman 10y ago> Will the barriers and walls be left in place or dismantled? I was looking at satellite images of the area my FOB was at in Fallujah - no sign of our presence. We had double stacked hesco all over the place, as well as Texas and Jersey barriers on the road. > Is it easier to take down or move concrete vs Hesco? Easier to take down hesco (boltcutter and a knife), impossible to move. Concrete is easy to move with common construction equipment, I'm sure the people of Fallujah found a new use for the barriers pretty quickly.
- AlexCoventry 10y agoIs this submarine PR for Trump's wall?
- clock_tower 10y agoI don't think a concrete submarine would work very well. :) More seriously, I have no idea. Submarines normally involve an advertisement for the advertising company somewhere in the latter part of the article; no company = no giveaway ad. But knowing Trump and his way with memes, I wouldn't be surprised if the author just had walls on the brain, without having to be paid for it...
- cnnsucks 10y agoWhy? Is building the wall going to mess up the "it's not possible" and "it won't work" narratives you've been been trained with?
- pimlottc 10y agoI seriously hope no one thinks we're going to go to war against Mexico...
- gozur88 10y agoIt's not really surprising. The Roman armies made surprisingly extensive fortifications when they stopped for the night and won battles they might have lost as a result. "The more you sweat today, the less you bleed tomorrow."
- mercer 10y agoSo I've been wondering: was it usually the soldiers themselves who did all the fortification work, or did the Roman armies have 'grunt workers' and engineers that they took with them on their conquests?
- gozur88 10y agoI'm not sure if they had help from the camp followers, but the soldiers definitely worked on the fortifications.
- kevin_thibedeau 10y ago> Each type was named for a state, denoting their relative sizes and weights. There were small barriers like the Jersey... The Jersey barrier isn't so named because of its size. It was developed as a barrier by the NJ highway dept [1]. The newer barriers used for the military are just given other state names to follow along with the original. It just happens to be smaller because of its original civilian purpose. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jersey_barrier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jersey_barrier
- joshuarcher 10y agobuild the walll
- ryanmarsh 10y agoIn Iraq I was really surprised by how quickly these barriers showed up and how easy it was to build fortifications. I always wondered where they were made, the quality of the concrete and the cost. It seemed there was an endless supply. On the night before the first election alone we basically put jersey barriers up on every major street in the city. Nuts. I always imagined some factory in the desert near an aggregate source where they just poured these things as fast as possible.
- icanhackit 10y agoMany in the military are thinking about future warfare in complex urban terrain, to include operations in megacities with populations over 10 million. For what plausible reason would you invade and occupy a city with a population of over 10 million? Here is a list of cities with a population of 10 million or more, please tell me for what good reason any one of them should they be invaded: Tokyo, Shanghai, Jakarta, Karachi, Seoul, New York City, Mumbai, Manila, Mexico City, Delhi, Beijing, São Paulo, Lagos, Wuhan, Kyoto-Osaka-Kobe, Guangzhou, Chongqing, Cairo, Los Angeles, Chengdu, Dhaka, Moscow, Tianjin, Bangkok, Istanbul, Kolkata, Rio de Janeiro, London, Buenos Aires, Tehran, Kinshasa, Paris, Shenzhen, Harbin, Rhine-Ruhr, Lahore Maybe invest as much time and money thinking about peace as you do on war and you might not need to bankrupt your country to fight another one. The US's military industrial complex is the ultimate case of when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
- nostrademons 10y agoWe haven't had a great-power conflict in the last 70 years. That doesn't mean we will never again have one. Historically, wars have happened because the balance of powers of nations becomes ambiguous. Thanks to natural human over-confidence, each believes they could win it, and so they go to war even though in reality everyone loses. The U.S. has been the undisputed global power since WW2, but there's a ticking demographics time-bomb that's pretty apparent in your list of cities.
- clock_tower 10y agoThe US obviously isn't going to be fighting in Japan (past experiences notwithstanding), Russia (ditto), China, or South Korea; but what about the Islamic megacities, especially the Pakistani ones? And, for that matter, what about NYC and LA? Another round of civil war in the US is unlikely but not impossible, and the military wouldn't want to be caught on the hop.
- icanhackit 10y ago> what about the Islamic megacities, especially the Pakistani ones? Pakistan has nukes. Please don't invade countries with nukes. And if there's one thing that Syria has taught us, or at least should have: urban fighting ultimately destroys cities leaving a near-empty ruinous shell and creates huge numbers of refugees which are both an economic burden and political dynamite that sees ultra right-wing leaders and policies voted in. A city is a city because it's where a vast amount of people live. You're bringing deadly conflict to people's doorsteps and creating tomorrow's terrorist. This is fundamental, not something that can be solved with technology or hip new ways of thinking.
- mikoyan 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Alesia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Alesia
- mberning 10y agoAmazing that we can send our soldiers, equipment, and supplies half way around the world to build structures but it takes an act of congress to fix our dilapidated infrastructure at home.
- _nedR 10y agoapropos of this, Al-Jazeera has an interesting documentary on this topic: http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/rebelarchitecture/2014/06/architecture-violence-2014629113556647744.html http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/rebelarchitecture/2014/0...
- employee8000 10y agoThis is an extremely interesting, non-silicon valley related article, and the comments and really informative as well. One of the best examples of why Hacker News is so great!
- noodles23 10y agoPerhaps we can recycle the concrete to build Donald Trump's Great Wall
- EugeneOZ 10y agoFuck popup windows
- Twisell 10y agoIn France most of the people have always seen the Israeli concrete barrier as pretty outrageous. The least I can say after reading this article is that I'll need to carefully reconsider the facts with this new lighting in mind.
- bobmoretti 10y agoThe reason that the barrier is outrageous is not that it's made out of concrete; it's because of its location. It criss-crosses into the West Bank [1]. [1] http://www.btselem.org/download/separation_barrier_map_eng.pdf http://www.btselem.org/download/separation_barrier_map_eng.p...
- Twisell 10y agoThanks a lot for the resource, I'll have a close look at the whole http://www.btselem.org/ http://www.btselem.org/ site.
- bobmoretti 10y agoNp. That was just the first thing I found on Google; b'tselem does not have a neutral point of view. But the fact is that the wall is being built mostly on the West Bank side of the pre-1967 borders. You might also be interested in this talk, which if memory serves discusses the wall's impact on the community: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSkevV-CoO4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSkevV-CoO4
- 24gttghh 10y agoHere is a more up-to-date map from 2014[0]: [0]http://www.btselem.org/download/201411_btselem_map_of_wb_eng.pdf http://www.btselem.org/download/201411_btselem_map_of_wb_eng...
- scotty79 10y agoFunny how he mentions other wars and successful application of this strategy but forgets to mention walling of Jewish population in occupied Polish cities during WWII. Very successful in limiting activity of terrorists and insurgents from what I've heard.
- SamUK96 10y agoBad article written badly. Firstly, concrete isn't a weapon, it is a defensive utility, not an offensive one (weapon). Correcting that, the best defense is people. More specifically, "civilians". You can now easily defend yourself if you surround yourself with civilians like ISIS has done. Without civilians, no-doubt the US will "precision bomb" your entire stronghold to dust. That's the whole reason the US spend trillions of $ on precision weaponry and surveillance now. The US is trying to develop weapon systems that, even when defending oneself with civilians, when you walk outside your civilian-filled afghan hut alone to go to the outhouse, a tiny precision bullet from the sky assassinates you in an instant. They are getting there, and it's ever closer to fruition, regardless of how disturbing it all is. EDIT: I mean, why do you think they are pouring money into drones that can stay in the air for ages, path-changing (steerable) "smart" bullets, face recog AI, flight stablisation, etc.. It's ALL an effort to create the aforementioned precision assassination system.
- Lordarminius 10y ago> You can now easily defend yourself if you surround yourself with civilians like ISIS has done That is a very dubious assertion. If the stakes are high enough, a sufficiently equipped aggressor will attack a city despite the civilian population within. Stalingrad, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Falluja,
- rahrahrah 10y agoForced Americanization.
- jlebrech 10y agowhy don't we drop a grid (across the whole of syria) of concrete covered sniper turrets they'll only have to be small and can just be remotely operated.
- tim333 10y agoOr something like T-800s. I'm sure someone could hack the Atlas a bit https://youtu.be/rVlhMGQgDkY?t=29s https://youtu.be/rVlhMGQgDkY?t=29s
- jlebrech 10y agomy concept is a pyramid shape with the top hat being able to raise so that measuring equipment can have a scan of the horizon, if something is a target then a large cannon comes out of the top too. and if someone tries to blow it up then it's covered by meters of concrete to absorb all damage. and if enemies come to attack it then HQ is notified. it can also send drones to inspect papers and personnel.
- squozzer 10y agoAre we witnessing the ascendancy of the castle?
- foxhop 10y agoFor some reason I've become obsessed with our nations decision to elect Donald Trump as president. For that reason my mind drew a connection with US Iraq concrete walls and barriers and all the historic walls humankind has built, and plans to build. Walls and barriers can offer protection from the "others" but I feel more often then not, they are used to separate territory and control movement. That separation and control comes at a cost. One such cost, is freedom of place.
- bryanrasmussen 10y agoMy many years of reading comics made me hope this was because The Hulk kept picking up large concrete structures and swatting tanks like flies with them.