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>we've all got better things to do Yet you keep replying! You're a solid troll, though -- I especially like the way you're willing to descend into insulting me

>we've all got better things to do Yet you keep replying! You're a solid troll, though -- I especially like the way you're willing to descend into insulting me far before I insulted you, but I'm glad the gloves are off. Could you be the other guy in a sockpuppet account? It's funny -- I'm the one claiming bullshit without evidence or argumentation, but your posts are really really light on what these "correct doctrines" actually are, why the civilian population would have access to any of them, how the resistance would communicate, insisting on the primacy of various rules of war that would have presumably been rescinded if the kind of tyranny that required standing up to was running the military... It's almost like you're just bloviating about American exceptionalism, handwaving about "doctrines" that all good minutemen surely already know. Sorry, but you guys have the biggest, best-equipped military in the world. No matter how Rambo the local shooting club might consider itself, it doesn't seem up to the task. But what do I know?! >If you want to actually pull on your big kid pants and argue why each of my points in the preceding post were wrong, please do Oh, don't worry. I can't do that! You won't accept it. That'd require not having an untenable position you're honour-bound to defend! I think you've already decided that your exceptionalism will protect you. I'm just having a bit of fun! >"Countermeasures to things like mortars and counterbattery fire" is not some special doctrine utterly beyond the reach of American populace; instead, it's the observation that, if you shell an American position, you need to be somewhere else in a minute or two before your position gets blown up. This is something that is quite empirically learnable, and something that has been learned multiple times by untrained insurgents fighting US occupying forces Uh. So you're arguing against the general use of mortars? "Get out of the way" only works if the mortars didn't kill you already. This isn't a doctrine, it's common sense. Yet, something tells me mortar operators still successfully kill people. Presumably it's not so easy to just... dodge. You're the obvious military expert, though -- maybe people do dodge mortars and they're basically useless once the Correct Dodge Doctrine permeates the opfor! >> the assumption that the military loses its entire support system all at once. >Where are you getting that assumption from? I made no such claim Yeah you did. Where? Right here, from this linked post [0]: >>>Underscoring all of this thought experiment is something you're missing: in a supposed US insurgency, the huge non-combat advantage of the armed forces _goes away_. Our adventures abroad are backed by a logistics system and lift capability that boggles the mind, only made possible because we can keep all the ruckus of battle away from our airbases and factories and transportation hubs. _In an insurgency, that massive advantage--one that's nearly taken for granted in the last two decades of warfare by our populous--disappears_ Emphasis mine. Man! Wow! I thought for a brief moment that you were a genuine person and not a troll. This cinches it. Thanks for the game, gg no re [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12963765 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12963765

angersock 10y ago
> This isn't a doctrine, it's common sense You read doctrine too narrowly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_doctrine . Doctrine is basically the philosophy and tactics fighters use in a conflict zone; "common sense" would be one such manifestation of doctrine. > "Get out of the way" only works if the mortars didn't kill you already. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoot-and-scoot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoot-and-scoot See also IRA operations using vans and portable mortars. >Yet, something tells me mortar operators still successfully kill people. Presumably it's not so easy to just... dodge. It isn't required that all of the mortar teams survive, and again the objective for mortars is just as much to demoralize occupation personnel as it is to actually wound them. >Yeah you did. No, I didn't, read carefully: My statement: In an insurgency, that massive advantage--one that's nearly taken for granted in the last two decades of warfare by our populous--disappears Your statement: the assumption that the military loses its entire support system all at once. You editorialized "entire support system" and "all at once", whereas I was talking about the massive advantage going away (over some period of time). Now, I could've been more explicit in what I meant, but you picked the worst possible reading of what I suggested and created a strawman argument of "all the supply lines disappear overnight", which is not even close to what I (or anybody with a reasonable reading) would suggest. It's the difference between the occupation force losing all ammo but what their soldiers are carrying on patrol, losing the ability to resupply units to some degree every few weeks, and units being fully resupplied whenever they call it in. ~ You lumped in a bunch of new stuff in your opening paragraph: > Yet you keep replying! You're a solid troll, though -- I especially like the way you're willing to descend into insulting me far before I insulted you, but I'm glad the gloves are off. Could you be the other guy in a sockpuppet account? Ah yes, the sockpuppet argument! One of the better arguments when a position is questioned. > your posts are really really light on what these "correct doctrines" actually are Other than my explanation of why the gear is basically equivalent in efficacy for engagements we'd expect, several examples of disorganized insurgencies that have been successful against the same US forces we'd expect to occupy here, and some observations about the sorts of tactics that we'd expect to see employed (attacks on supply lines and hubs, attacks by insurgents after normal working hours, etc.)? If you're looking for a blow-by-blow handbook of running an insurgency against occupying US forces, I'm not going to provide one--past some level of detail that's just storytelling and masturbation, and I don't write for free. >* why the civilian population would have access to any of them [the doctrines]* These are pretty obvious things to anybody that has ever played videogames, watched the news, or even that will have lived through such circumstances. The learnings of insurgencies are reinvented periodically, and are the result of applying critical thinking in a resource-constrained environment. It's something well within the realm of self-discovery by a populace under occupation--as evidenced by history, as I've pointed out earlier. > how the resistance would communicate This wasn't a topic we'd been talking about, but even so it's something people have solved many times before. It's the question of "how to communicate covertly or in such a way as to delay discovery sufficiently", and that's been solved by numerous people during times of peace much less during times of war. It's not an interesting question. If you want some examples of potential solutions: look at encrypted communication apps, coded phrasings (for in-person use), or simply dispatching messengers on bikes to coordinate movements (used to great effect in a famous wargame). Hell, look how successful teenagers are at communicating with lovers their parents have forbidden--same skill set. > insisting on the primacy of various rules of war that would have presumably been rescinded if the kind of tyranny that required standing up to was running the military Your same argument about the rules of war being rescinded could be taken as far as "well what if the armed forces decides to start nuking cities? what then?". It's a non-argument, because that's not how occupations work. If you would like empirical evidence of this, look at how the British in Ireland, the US in the Civil War, and by counterexample the French in Alegeria and Vietnam. Occupation forces that want to succeed follow rules of war. No large-scale civil war with Western countries has been won by forces that have committed systematic atrocities against their own citizens. Remember, the objective is to reintegrate the civilians, not radicalize them into aiding the insurgency. In short, you presume too much. >.. It's almost like you're just bloviating about American exceptionalism, handwaving about "doctrines" that all good minutemen surely already know. I'm not--I've been pointing out structural deficiencies and handicaps that the US forces would have when dealing with a native insurgency, quite outside whatever native "minutemen" might know. I've been pointing out that even untrained civilians can rapidly work out the basic parts of how to make a sufficiently-effective irregular fighting force. There's no "American exceptionalism" involved, as you would notice if you were paying attention to the different historical examples of other civilian uprisings I've been mentioning. > Sorry, but you guys have the biggest, best-equipped military in the world. We do, and it is not optimized for policing and counter-insurgency work. It's maximum effectiveness is against organized regular armies, as we've seen for decades now. Even the largest hammer is not going to help with the delicate work of unwrapping a boiled egg. > No matter how Rambo the local shooting club might consider itself, it doesn't seem up to the task. I've sketched exactly why the local shooting club doesn't have to be Rambo to go up against the occupation forces, even going so far as to point out that the local shooting club need not be the only combatants (see also, women, children, anybody who can fire a gun and get a shot off). ~ If you want to go and argue the America is full of ignorant fatties that will be defenseless again the US forces and who are too stupid to work out what others have many times from scratch, then just go and be upfront about it instead of acting like you want a good-faith discussion about military science and history. If you want to be taken seriously, try and explain why the historical examples are incorrect, why the handicaps for US forces operating against native citizens don't exist or aren't relevant, or why American citizens with well-maintained modern weapons are somehow by construction less competent than goat farmers with clapped-out AKs.

angersock 10y ago

> This isn't a doctrine, it's common sense You read doctrine too narrowly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_doctrine . Doctrine is basically the philosophy and tactics fighters use in a conflict zone; "common sense" would be one such manifestation of doctrine. > "Get out of the way" only works if the mortars didn't kill you already. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoot-and-scoot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoot-and-scoot See also IRA operations using vans and portable mortars. >Yet, something tells me mortar operators still successfully kill people. Presumably it's not so easy to just... dodge. It isn't required that all of the mortar teams survive, and again the objective for mortars is just as much to demoralize occupation personnel as it is to actually wound them. >Yeah you did. No, I didn't, read carefully: My statement: In an insurgency, that massive advantage--one that's nearly taken for granted in the last two decades of warfare by our populous--disappears Your statement: the assumption that the military loses its entire support system all at once. You editorialized "entire support system" and "all at once", whereas I was talking about the massive advantage going away (over some period of time). Now, I could've been more explicit in what I meant, but you picked the worst possible reading of what I suggested and created a strawman argument of "all the supply lines disappear overnight", which is not even close to what I (or anybody with a reasonable reading) would suggest. It's the difference between the occupation force losing all ammo but what their soldiers are carrying on patrol, losing the ability to resupply units to some degree every few weeks, and units being fully resupplied whenever they call it in. ~ You lumped in a bunch of new stuff in your opening paragraph: > Yet you keep replying! You're a solid troll, though -- I especially like the way you're willing to descend into insulting me far before I insulted you, but I'm glad the gloves are off. Could you be the other guy in a sockpuppet account? Ah yes, the sockpuppet argument! One of the better arguments when a position is questioned. > your posts are really really light on what these "correct doctrines" actually are Other than my explanation of why the gear is basically equivalent in efficacy for engagements we'd expect, several examples of disorganized insurgencies that have been successful against the same US forces we'd expect to occupy here, and some observations about the sorts of tactics that we'd expect to see employed (attacks on supply lines and hubs, attacks by insurgents after normal working hours, etc.)? If you're looking for a blow-by-blow handbook of running an insurgency against occupying US forces, I'm not going to provide one--past some level of detail that's just storytelling and masturbation, and I don't write for free. >* why the civilian population would have access to any of them [the doctrines]* These are pretty obvious things to anybody that has ever played videogames, watched the news, or even that will have lived through such circumstances. The learnings of insurgencies are reinvented periodically, and are the result of applying critical thinking in a resource-constrained environment. It's something well within the realm of self-discovery by a populace under occupation--as evidenced by history, as I've pointed out earlier. > how the resistance would communicate This wasn't a topic we'd been talking about, but even so it's something people have solved many times before. It's the question of "how to communicate covertly or in such a way as to delay discovery sufficiently", and that's been solved by numerous people during times of peace much less during times of war. It's not an interesting question. If you want some examples of potential solutions: look at encrypted communication apps, coded phrasings (for in-person use), or simply dispatching messengers on bikes to coordinate movements (used to great effect in a famous wargame). Hell, look how successful teenagers are at communicating with lovers their parents have forbidden--same skill set. > insisting on the primacy of various rules of war that would have presumably been rescinded if the kind of tyranny that required standing up to was running the military Your same argument about the rules of war being rescinded could be taken as far as "well what if the armed forces decides to start nuking cities? what then?". It's a non-argument, because that's not how occupations work. If you would like empirical evidence of this, look at how the British in Ireland, the US in the Civil War, and by counterexample the French in Alegeria and Vietnam. Occupation forces that want to succeed follow rules of war. No large-scale civil war with Western countries has been won by forces that have committed systematic atrocities against their own citizens. Remember, the objective is to reintegrate the civilians, not radicalize them into aiding the insurgency. In short, you presume too much. >.. It's almost like you're just bloviating about American exceptionalism, handwaving about "doctrines" that all good minutemen surely already know. I'm not--I've been pointing out structural deficiencies and handicaps that the US forces would have when dealing with a native insurgency, quite outside whatever native "minutemen" might know. I've been pointing out that even untrained civilians can rapidly work out the basic parts of how to make a sufficiently-effective irregular fighting force. There's no "American exceptionalism" involved, as you would notice if you were paying attention to the different historical examples of other civilian uprisings I've been mentioning. > Sorry, but you guys have the biggest, best-equipped military in the world. We do, and it is not optimized for policing and counter-insurgency work. It's maximum effectiveness is against organized regular armies, as we've seen for decades now. Even the largest hammer is not going to help with the delicate work of unwrapping a boiled egg. > No matter how Rambo the local shooting club might consider itself, it doesn't seem up to the task. I've sketched exactly why the local shooting club doesn't have to be Rambo to go up against the occupation forces, even going so far as to point out that the local shooting club need not be the only combatants (see also, women, children, anybody who can fire a gun and get a shot off). ~ If you want to go and argue the America is full of ignorant fatties that will be defenseless again the US forces and who are too stupid to work out what others have many times from scratch, then just go and be upfront about it instead of acting like you want a good-faith discussion about military science and history. If you want to be taken seriously, try and explain why the historical examples are incorrect, why the handicaps for US forces operating against native citizens don't exist or aren't relevant, or why American citizens with well-maintained modern weapons are somehow by construction less competent than goat farmers with clapped-out AKs.