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> 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 c
by 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).
- throwanem 10y agoMREs aren't dehydrated. That's why they're called "ready to eat"; you just open the pouch and chow down.
- beachstartup 10y agoin a forward operating base there are firefights every day. see: restrepo, korengal films.
- Falkon1313 10y agoThat's exactly what they did during the Berlin Airlift (Operation Vittles). Close to 9,000 tons per day of food and supplies by the end.
- 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.