12 ms·

The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

404 points by _Microft 7y ago

HenryKissinger 7y ago
Next up: How Gondor won despite a complete lack of air support (see: winged wraiths) and superior enemy armor (see: Mumakil).
- ghaff 7y ago
  There's a lot of military SF (and, I guess, fantasy that I've never read as much of) that wants to mostly restrict the action to ground forces. The result is that they have to either just ignore the decisive power of air support or just come up with hand-wavy explanations for why air powerisn't effective in the hypothetical scenario.
  - _Microft 7y ago
    Sounds a bit like things rendering Enterprise's transporters inoperative just when beaming up the away-team would have been the easiest solution. Oh, and to make it less obvious, you better announce a few minutes earlier that a plasma storm is forming in the upper atmosphere.
    - jacobush 7y ago
      Or my favorite order never heard on the bridge of Enterprise "nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure". Fine, often it would go against the ethos of what they are trying to do. But sometimes, they could have beamed home the away team and proceeded to rain fiery death from above with photon torpedoes or whatever.
      - krapp 7y ago
        They have phasers with enough power to boil the oceans of a planet, and torpedoes that can travel faster than light. Yet every conflict takes place at extremely close proximity, often on the same plane, as if they were ships in the age of sail. They have force fields with a critical flaw (harmonic resonance means any energy weapon using the same frequency as the shields can just shoot right through them) but whenever this is even mentioned, the shields have to be re-adjusted manually. Unauthorized people can appear on the ship, and crew can vanish from the ship, and the computer either doesn't notice, or does and never alerts anyone or activates any sort of countermeasures. The first officer can be sucked into a pocket universe and have his organs rearranged by non-Euclidean bug monsters and no one will ever know unless they happen to ask the computer where Riker is at the moment. It's been established that transporter buffers can be used to "back up" a person, even long term (in the TNG episode "Relics," Scotty is discovered having stored himself in a transporter buffer for decades with no ill effect.) Replicators can't do latinum and living tissue, but they work by literally converting energy into matter and assembling it into something atom by atom. At that resolution, there's no difference between anything and anything else, so there's no reason why replicators shouldn't be able to replicate anything. The former two items, along with the holodeck (which can create sentient life on request, BTW) should guarantee that no Federation citizen ever truly ages or dies, or even ever has to exist in a physical body. The Federation should be a post-human, post-singularity society. Yet for "plot reasons," none of these glitches (like the transporters being able to clone people simply by refracting the transporter beam) are ever harnessed for their real potential.
        Freak_NL 7y ago
        Star Trek: TNG made a teenage me wonder why starships encountering each other always appeared to have matched their orientations. Was there some kind of prearranged signal? A diplomatic code adhered to even by enemies? Just a general preference on all sides concerned preventing headaches and vague unheimlich feelings of discomfort? So many questions… If I was harassing the federation I would keep my ship at an awkward angle relative to theirs at all times just to keep them on edge. I was totally fine with the other plot holes though.
        russellbeattie 7y ago
        That just needs a few lines of plot glue to fix that problem! Like, "Warp drives need to be oriented parallel to the ecliptic plane of surrounding celestial bodies to best calculate navigation and maximize their space bending effect. Naturally, ships keep this orientation at all times just in case."
        pp19dd 7y ago
        Don't think it was necessarily a plot hole, albeit after the fact. Plenty of sci fi authors have taken similar approaches throughout the years. The idea is that in a spiral galaxy the natural tendency would be to stick with the orientation that matched the galactic plane along the right-handed spin (to determine up vs down) and some authors have even extended naval directional signals into space. This is from The Lost Fleet: "Within a solar system, directional references were always made to the world outside a ship so other ships could understand them. Anything above the plane of the system was up, anything below it down. The direction toward the sun was right, or starboard, (or even 'starward' as some urged), while the direction away from the sun was left, or port."
        mcguire 7y ago
        "The direction toward the sun was right, or starboard, (or even 'starward' as some urged), while the direction away from the sun was left, or port."" Ehh. Ahh. "Port" and "starboard" should be relative to the bow/stern axis of the ship. Otherwise you'll have a hard time finding the head.
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        Given the strength of Trek weaponry, one photon would do. I remember reading somewhere that a standard photon torpedo carried 1.5 kg of antimatter on board, which is yield-equivalent to a Tsar bomba (almost 60 megaton). However, phasers could have been easily used for close air support, even from orbit - AFAIR Enterprise-D used them once as surgical tools for geoengineering. Most episodes seem to script around the need for air support, but I remember one case where it was at least acknowledged on-screen - one DS9 episode had a ground assault at an enemy position to destroy a under-repair gateway in it, and it was said early on that the surrounding building was strong enough that a torpedo strike from orbit would not necessarily destroy the target. Edit: My personal favorite case of missed opportunity is the use of transporters to beam armed torpedoes directly onto enemy ships. It was used once in a Voyager episode. It's an obvious, but sadly plot-killing tactic, that hasn't been sufficiently hand-waved away in the lore, so one has to wonder why nobody uses it. The StarGate series actually took that option seriously (the series was much smarter when it came to combat). In it, to the dismay of the species that provided humans with transporters, human ships often beamed nuclear warheads onto unsuspecting enemy vessels, achieving seemingly impossible victories.
        mcguire 7y ago
        "My personal favorite case of missed opportunity is the use of transporters to beam armed torpedoes directly onto enemy ships. It was used once in a Voyager episode. It's an obvious, but sadly plot-killing tactic, that hasn't been sufficiently hand-waved away in the lore, so one has to wonder why nobody uses it." Akshually... Transporters cannot penetrate shield, usually either incoming or outgoing. Usually.
        krapp 7y ago
        Akshually... it depends on the writer, series and episode. The shields have the fatal flaw that anything operating at the same frequency can go right through them, including a transporter beam. That's come up as a plot point more than once.
        TeMPOraL 7y ago
        > Transporters cannot penetrate shield, usually either incoming or outgoing. Usually. Except when they can, due to frequency matching, "technology generation" mismatch between shields and transporters, and countless of other one-off workarounds that happened. Think of every episode in which the Enterprise/Defiant/Voyager was boarded while in combat. But even when considering the regular case of shields blocking incoming and outgoing transport, there's plenty of opportunities to use transporters offensively. They could be used as surprise first strike weapon to initiate hostilities by immediately taking enemy ship out. They could be used to finish off an enemy in a one-to-one fight. They could be used in coordinated fashion in fleet battles, where whenever an enemy ship loses shields, one ship drops their own shields and transports some photons over while other ships cover the vulnerable friend from immediate fire. Etc. All in all, there are plenty of opportunities for offensive transporter use which were never explored in the series.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - zipwitch 7y ago
        In the good old days, of usenet, James D. Nicoll had a signature that read: "Frankly, Captain, I feel interstellar diplomacy is out of our depth." "Ah, hence the nuclear weapons."
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      One piece that never works, to the point that Starfleet should really ask themselves who designed it so badly - warp core ejection system. There's lots of episodes where their main reactor is about to explode, and the emergency safeguard designed to save them from exactly that problem suddenly malfunctions for one reason or other.
  - KineticLensman 7y ago
    The Nightmare Stacks by Charles Stross includes (spoiler) an assault on the city of Leeds in the UK by a combined arms Elven battle group. The elves have Battle-tested air-land integration doctrine that sees them using their dragons in a close air support role. The elves use other magical means for ISR of the deep battle. Stross’ elves are somewhat more waffen-SS than Tolkien’s
    - pjc50 7y ago
      This results in a dragon vs. RAF Tornado dogfight. He got an ex-RAF chap to consult on the technical detail too.
      - arethuza 7y ago
        I seem to recall it was a pair of Eurofighter Typhoons rather than Tornados? Oh dear, now I'll have to read it all again just to check. Edit: Superb book, horrifying and laugh out loud funny (although not in the same places). Edit2: BBC/HBO please do a version of the Laundry Files once you are finished with HDM!
        C1sc0cat 7y ago
        I think Charlie has said that they have been optioned - and Felicia Day just has to be cast as Cassie "yes yes"
  - _Microft 7y ago
    Fictional battles that are worth to be described in detail might often directly involve the main characters or influential persons and therefore it might be out of question to bombard the battlefield and kill everyone. (wellll... at least as long as you are not G.R.R. Martin and turn everyone and their direwolve into a main character or do not care if a main character dies. When killing main characters, it certainly helps if you have enough of them which brings us back to the first point).
- nephrite 7y ago
  Flying wraiths lack firepower, so they provide no real air support. Just fast transportation/communication.
  - me_me_me 7y ago
    Strafing runs in WW2 were almost completely ineffective but all infantry were reporting huge morale loss when they were happening.
    - saiya-jin 7y ago
      Strafing was quite effective against vehicles, trains, landed aircraft etc. But yes against infantry it didn't make much sense, something about going too fast in shaky airplane trying to hit tiny ants running randomly left and right because they noticed the plane well before plane noticed them
    - lostlogin 7y ago
      saiya-jin notes that this might be true of attacks on infantry but on vehicles and trains the attacks were very very effective. In particular the German army was reduced to moving by night only in Normandy and the railroads were heavily targeted. Things came to a head in the battle of The Falaise Pocket with artillery and the airforces working together and the descriptions of the aftermath are truely horrific.
  - HenryKissinger 7y ago
    The film does show them mowing down soldiers with their claws and inspiring terror in others: https://youtu.be/HX4KKkSKZAY?t=197 https://youtu.be/HX4KKkSKZAY?t=197
    - arethuza 7y ago
      I seem to recall that one of the names for Angmar was "The Captain of Despair" - literally a terror weapon.
      - 7y ago
- hoorayimhelping 7y ago
  They had ghost reinforcements that executed a textbook flank[1]. 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flanking_maneuver https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flanking_maneuver
  - csunbird 7y ago
    In books, the ghost army was used to rout enemy at south and gather (now free to leave the region) soldiers at that region and transport them with (captured) enemy ships to the battlefield. The flanking maneuver is done, but with actual humans, not with ghosts.
- b0rsuk 7y ago
  Actually the author also has a 3 part article about war elephants https://acoup.blog/2019/07/26/collections-war-elephants-part-i-battle-pachyderms/ https://acoup.blog/2019/07/26/collections-war-elephants-part... He is of the opinion that elephants were okay (not great) on battlefield, but awful in terms of logistics, supply usage and breeding. A horse reaches adulthood in 4 years. An elephant needs 15, and pregnancy lasts over 3 years. There are no known examples of breeding elephants. Supply-wise, you could have 1000 cavalrymen or 54 elephants. He says the main reason India widely used elephants - aside from proximity - was to show off status. Also, don't make fun of J.R.R. Tolkien - he fought in trenches of WW1, on top of strong familiarity with medieval warfare because of all his reading.
  - arethuza 7y ago
    Tolkien wrote a lovely letter to a fan about Sam and the soldiers he served alongside on the Western Front: "My ‘Samwise’ is indeed (as you note) largely a reflexion of the English soldier—grafted on the village-boys of early days, the memory of the privates and my batmen that I knew in the 1914 War, and recognized as so far superior to myself." https://johngarth.wordpress.com/2014/02/13/sam-gamgee-and-tolkiens-batmen/ https://johngarth.wordpress.com/2014/02/13/sam-gamgee-and-to...
- mcguire 7y ago
  If you're not familiar with Corey Olsen (https://tolkienprofessor.com/ https://tolkienprofessor.com/), one of his frequent points is that, while the First Age elves had some air support in the form of Manwë's eagles, Morgoth didn't until he invented winged dragons shortly before the final battle. (Balrogs don't fly.)
  - zipwitch 7y ago
    > (Balrogs don't fly.) Them's thar's fightin' words. :) I don't have a copy of the old Usenet FAQ handy, but here's a tiny sample of the debate for any curious readers: http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Balrogs/Wings http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Balrogs/Wings http://www.thetolkienwiki.org/wiki.cgi?FAQ/Do__Balrogs__have__wings http://www.thetolkienwiki.org/wiki.cgi?FAQ/Do__Balrogs__have...
- rossdavidh 7y ago
  Well not at the siege of Minas Tirith, but they did get saved by air cav at the battle after that (giant Eagles).
vector_rotcev 7y ago
Jut in case anyone doesn't do the date-math/scroll down past the comments, all 5 of the following blog posts are finished and linked to half way through the comments (ctrl+f: pingback).
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- gadtfly 7y ago
  Parts II-VI: https://acoup.blog/2019/05/17/collections-the-siege-of-gondor-part-ii-these-beacons-are-liiiiiiit/ https://acoup.blog/2019/05/17/collections-the-siege-of-gondo... https://acoup.blog/2019/05/24/collections-the-siege-of-gondor-part-iii-having-fun-storming-the-city/ https://acoup.blog/2019/05/24/collections-the-siege-of-gondo... https://acoup.blog/2019/05/31/collections-the-siege-of-gondor-part-iv-the-cavalry-arrives/ https://acoup.blog/2019/05/31/collections-the-siege-of-gondo... https://acoup.blog/2019/06/07/collections-the-siege-of-gondor-part-v-just-flailing-about-flails/ https://acoup.blog/2019/06/07/collections-the-siege-of-gondo... https://acoup.blog/2019/06/14/collections-the-siege-of-gondor-part-vi-black-sails-and-gleaming-banners/ https://acoup.blog/2019/06/14/collections-the-siege-of-gondo...
  - hef19898 7y ago
    Highlight of part three for a logistocs geek like myself: Romans and Greeks had standardized ammunition, not just rocks that happened to lay around. That's how you build empires! And roads and aqueducts, of course... EDIT: While the siege of Helm's Deep was perfectly done in the film, the Siege of Minas Tirith feels more like Holywood, very well done Hollywood but the difference between the two is deffinitely there.
dreen 7y ago
It seems the author also missed the fact orcs are perfectly alright with cannibalism, which further alleviates the supply problem, perhaps even to the point of not requiring the supplies at all (a few thousand orcs eaten along the way wont make much difference). I doubt this has much precedent in history.
- fmoronzirfas 7y ago
  I think orcs eating orcs only happens in the movies. In the books orcs don’t do that. What he missed is orcs eating human flesh
  - dreen 7y ago
    Interesting, although the books indeed don't mention it I don't think it's entirely out of the question. from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orc_(Middle-earth) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orc_(Middle-earth) > Tolkien indicates that Orcs are "always hungry".[24] Orcs eat all manner of flesh, including men and horses, and there are frequent hints of cannibalism among Orcs. Grishnákh, leader of the Mordor Orcs, accuses Saruman's Uruks of eating Orc-flesh, which they angrily deny.[22] In Cirith Ungol, Gorbag suggests that Frodo (recently poisoned by Shelob) should "go in the pot"; Shagrat indicates that Gorbag could be "for the pot" for making such a suggestion.[25] Shagrat threatens to eat a disobedient orc, and after killing Gorbag he licks his blood from the blade.[26] The interesting part is Uruks "angrily denying" eating ork flesh which might mean it was an insult to suggest they do. Furthermore, https://middle-earth.xenite.org/what-do-orcs-eat https://middle-earth.xenite.org/what-do-orcs-eat says the books give some descriptions of orcish cooking. However, based on the overall attitude of orcs, I believe they would kill and eat each other to survive. But I think I was wrong to suggest that would be an acceptable solution to problem of long-term military supply logistics.
    - thaumasiotes 7y ago
      > Grishnákh, leader of the Mordor Orcs, accuses Saruman's Uruks of eating Orc-flesh, which they angrily deny. As you note, this is good evidence that cannibalism is not practiced by the orcs. > In Cirith Ungol, Gorbag suggests that Frodo (recently poisoned by Shelob) should "go in the pot"; Shagrat indicates that Gorbag could be "for the pot" for making such a suggestion. This isn't good evidence; the insult is suggested by the context. > Shagrat threatens to eat a disobedient orc Without some sort of context, this is good evidence that cannibalism is practiced. > and after killing Gorbag he licks his blood from the blade. But this isn't; blood licking is not unknown among humans either. (To be fair, neither is cannibalism, but they read pretty differently.)
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Waterluvian 7y ago
"Let’s be clear on this point: ancient and medieval warfare was mostly about sieges." I also learned years ago that when medieval battles actually happened, the goal was to rout the enemy, not actually fight them and kill each other. I find these points illuminating because it reminds me that people back in the day were not primitive idiots. There was a very sensible logic to how they waged war. Ultimately, everyone back then wanted to live comfortable long lives like we do.
- gherkinnn 7y ago
  Few people enjoy facing a prickly Alexandrian phalanx. You’d have to more than whip me to run at one. To my knowledge, much was just shield bashing, posturing, and manoeuvring. It’s very hard to convince a group to close in on an enemy. Problem is, that would make for a very dull film. Logistics, waiting, posturing, passively starving out a city. No speeches, no charging sword aloft. The notion that we’re only marginally more intelligent than our ancient predecessors is quite a beautiful one I think.
  - nickik 7y ago
    If you read reports of how the Roman beat those armies, its pretty clear that their more dynamic troupes would actually directly engage the phalanx and break their lines. That said, roman were the first in 100s years to achieve that, so its fair to say that most of the time you are right.
- dragontamer 7y ago
  Mass killings of troops certainly happened: Hannibal's famous "Battle of Cannae" actually destroyed an entire Roman Legion (70,000 killed, 10,000 captured out of ~80,000 troops). They were just very rare. Another point: After losing so many troops in a singular battle, the Romans changed their tactics. Instead of grouping their entire army as a massive 80,000-man strong Phalanx, they split up their armies into smaller groups, so that their eggs weren't all in one basket anymore. Hannibal's trick to encircle and kill many roman troops in a single battle was never going to be repeated: the Romans learned of their mistake and made the necessary reforms to protect their troops. ----------- The Battle of Cannae would go down in history as a military example of how to line up all your troops for potential slaughter. Future generals and tacticians would forever know of that battle and how to avoid those conditions. Most generals and soldiers would seek a battle of annihilation: if destroying the entire enemy force is possible they will attempt it. The problem is, its very, very difficult to achieve in practice. As such, simply routing the enemy, is sufficient for most military goals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_annihilation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_annihilation
hef19898 7y ago
just finished the first post. All I can say is well written and to the point! Logistics is totally underrepresented in history (infrastructure and the like) and especially military history. When it comes to the annoying "relaibility" discussions around WW2 tanks on Youtube I just wished some would explain the basic principle of RAMST, Reliability-Availability-maintainability-Supportability-Testability. Yet, nobody seems to get it. Military historians remain historians, and RAMST is more of an engineering discipline and fanboys don't want to. And I guess modern day professionals in that field are just to busy with modern day systems to actually worry about the old stuff. I know that I were during my short stint in that field.
- NickNameNick 7y ago
  Have you watched many of Nicholas Moran (The_Chiftain)'s videos? He likes to comment on the ergonomics of operating and maintaining tanks. But he also discusses why the USA mainly build medium tanks during ww2, and how and why they were more maintainable than their european contemporaries. (An ocean away from their factories, they had to be)
  - hef19898 7y ago
    Sure know his videos! It really shows that he has some operational experience. Something others covering the same subject don't. What I am missing is an detailed view on that aspect from true, modern day experts. But for that you would need more than one person to cover it in a meaningful way.
postsantum 7y ago
I can't recommend enough this book which retells the story from the position of Mordor. It made me always remember how genocide, politics and bootlicking can be turned into heroic stories by victors' propaganda. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer
the_af 7y ago
Whether I agree or disagree with them, I find this kind of analyses of fictional battles very fun to read. And this particular blog seems to be full of fascinating articles (I recommend the one about how a "medieval/fantasy" battlefield ought too look like after a battle -- spoiler: most depictions are inspired by the aftermath of WWI battles; battlefields after medieval battles would look pretty much unspoiled). A few years back there was a humorous review of the Battle of Hoth from "Empire Strikes Back" that was pretty cool: https://www.wired.com/2013/02/battle-of-hoth https://www.wired.com/2013/02/battle-of-hoth
- b0rsuk 7y ago
  Be sure to check the ones about Paganism/Polytheism! The mind-blowing thing about paganism is that unlike the 3 major religions of today, it didn't start with a holy book (orthodoxy), but with rituals. It's like a caricature of scientific method. We did so and so, and the harvest was good. Therefore, the ritual works. There is little point in learning who exactly the gods are or what they think. The important thing is not offending any of them, knowing which is responsible for what, and making deals with them. As long as the (sacrificial) ritual seemed to work, it would be repeated with the slightest detail. If it didn't, they would experiment. They were very open to change in practice, because with no word of god to rely on they knew they could only take imperfect glimpses into nature of gods.
  - zipwitch 7y ago
    Ann Leckie's fantasy novel The Raven Tower is set in a world where such pagan gods are real, and dives right into a description of how human tribes will spend generations training them to respond favorably.
7sigma 7y ago
The posts on sparta are a joy to read as well https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-part-i-spartan-school/ https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-p...
- gerikson 7y ago
  They are how I discovered the blog. Eye-opening.
  - Balgair 7y ago
    Yes, it was a heck of a good dive! The conclusion, extremely briefly, is that Sparta is to be learned from, not emulated. The gist of Sparta is less like a well balanced, yet brutal, place, and more like an extreme version of the Lord's Resistance Army of central Africa, only with more rape and child abuse. If they were around today, we'd 'liberate' them in a heartbeat.
xg15 7y ago
Slightly OT: I'm surprised that more sophisticated management of supply lines never seems to have caught on much in RTS games. The basic practice still seems to be that logistics are handwaved away and your units just spawn wherever you want (or where your factory is) provided you have enough money in the bank. I could imagine a game quite fun where you actively have to transport troops and resources to the front and where building, running (using automation) and defending/attacking supply lines is integral part of the game. I guess the result would be something like a cross between Command & Conquer and Factorio or Transport Tycoon. The handwaving of logistics can also lead to some surreal moments in RTS single-player campaigns when the hero characters somehow manage to bring huge armies with them wherever they go, even if the story establishes that a place is difficult to get to even as a small group. Kudos for Blizzard and the design of the Zerg here, which turns that kind of awkwardness into an actual part of the story.
- koonsolo 7y ago
  That could be quite fun! Especially since you could try to sabotage or destroy enemy supply lines.
- wjmao88 7y ago
  The scale/scope of most of the RTS games is that of a battle, not that of a war. I remember there was an old game, Napolean 1813, that has some level of supply management in the form of needing to build a chain of supply stations in different cities to support nearby troops. The map of that game stretches from Paris to Eastern Europe. Another game that has supply management is Hearts of Iron, where the map is the entire world. I mostly play other Paradox grand strategy titles, but people have jokingly called Hearts of Iron the "Best supply chain similator game"
  - dragontamer 7y ago
    > The scale/scope of most of the RTS games is that of a battle, not that of a war. Hmm, but even "Civilization" magically aways logistics for the most part. Units require "upkeep gold", but there's no real supply-chain that has to be built for units. -------- The "Rigs" in Advance Wars delivered oil to the frontlines. But its still simplified logistics, because "Rigs" had infinite oil in them. Still, it was a legitimate strategy to destroy enemy Rigs, cut off their supply-chain, and then wait for the enemy tanks to run out of ammunition or oil and starve them to death. Although Advance Wars mostly turned into a game of turtling with cheap mechanized infantry (One of the best units for a given price). But the logistics was at least theoretically possible. -------- I know "war logistics" games exist, but they certainly aren't mainstream. Europa Universalis and "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" are famously "Excel Spreadsheet games", I've never played them but maybe they are more into logistics than other games. https://www.paradoxplaza.com/europa-universalis-iv/EUEU04GSK-MASTER.html https://www.paradoxplaza.com/europa-universalis-iv/EUEU04GSK... https://www.koeitecmoamerica.com/rtk13/system1.html https://www.koeitecmoamerica.com/rtk13/system1.html
mcguire 7y ago
"Ideally, the solution to this problem is to split the army up. By moving in multiple columns and converging on the battlespace, you split one impossibly long column of troops into several more manageable ones. ... The larger problem is terrain – we’ve seen Ithilien in this film and the previous one: it is heavily forested, with few roads. What roads exist are overgrown and difficult to use. Worse yet, the primary route through the area is not an east-west road, but the North-South route up from Near Harad to the Black Gate. The infrastructure here to split the army effectively simply doesn’t exist." Er, hatetobeapedanticfanboi, but... There is a road north-south through Ithilien, and also a road east-west from Minas Morgul to Osgiliath. Where they cross was marked by the headless statue of the king. Frodo and Sam couldn't use the north-south road because of the large number of troops moving on it, including those moving up from the south to attack Minas Tirith. "BOOK NOTE: In the film, Jackson has split the host of Mordor into three groups (the fleet, the Haradrim and the Orcs) each of which moves and arrives as a single unit. As discussed above, this is insufficient to resolve the overwhelming logistics problems of such large armies. However, the books largely resolve this issue." Sigh. Pedanticfanboimode wasted. "Naval supply, by riverboat or by ship, is far more efficient than overland supply (moving supplies by water is roughly twenty times more efficient than moving the same supplies by land in the pre-modern era)." I want the reference for that. From part II: "As Clausewitz says (drink!), “Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is hard.”" Yeah. A Clausewitz drinking game. [Edit] "Book Note: In the books, Denethor is nowhere near this stupid (this will be a theme)." I'm glad somebody else saw this. Jackson really screwed up the plot arcs of the humans in the movies.
- ranger207 7y ago
  >I want the reference for that. Another post [0] says that "The usual estimates for transit costs derive from Diocletian’s Price Edict, a late Roman law setting standard prices for things, including transport." [0] https://acoup.blog/2019/07/19/the-lonely-city-part-ii-real-cities-have-curves/ https://acoup.blog/2019/07/19/the-lonely-city-part-ii-real-c...
boudewijnrempt 7y ago
I'm reminded of Mercedes Lackey's magically dwindling army in the Storm trilogy; where millions of invading soldiers turn into tens of thousands without much casualties. Also, I guess I've gained a bit of appreciation for WWI English officer training; apparently it was good enough to make Tolkien invent proper campaigns. Heck, I'd like to see someone compare 14 day campaigns from WWI that Tolkien could have known about and see which one he reproduced in his books.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Animats 7y ago
Operations is the level of analysis between tactics (how do I fight when I get there?) and strategy (why am I fighting at all?). The USMC calls that "campaigning". See MCDP 1-2 [1]. Campaigning is about which battles to fight and where. Strategy includes economic and diplomatic issues, but campaigning is purely military. Military history can be divided into two parts - before machine guns, and after machine guns. Before machine guns, bunching up was good tactics. After machine guns, it was terrible tactics. Too much of WWI was about learning that the hard way. [1] https://www.marines.mil/Portals/1/Publications/MCDP%201-2%20Campaigning.pdf https://www.marines.mil/Portals/1/Publications/MCDP%201-2%20...
- Balgair 7y ago
  > Military history can be divided into two parts - before machine guns, and after machine guns. Before machine guns, bunching up was good tactics. After machine guns, it was terrible tactics. Too much of WWI was about learning that the hard way. Terribly good point! I want to refute you, but I'm not really coming up with much. Automatic rifles are just devastating. How did you come to this conclusion?
  - a1369209993 7y ago
    > but I'm not really coming up with much. War elephants are a slight exception - the best tactic against them seems to have been spreading out and killing the driver with arrows or javalins - but it's less that bunching up was bad tactics and more that it wasn't enough; phalanxes could repel elephants fairly well, they just weren't good at actually taking them out of the fight.
  - kleton 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanchester%27s_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanchester%27s_laws
gwd 7y ago
Good quote: > One of the real lessons the study of the past has to teach us is – to quote L. P. Hartley, “the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” What I mean by that is that so much of how we assume all societies work and all people think is just how our society works and we think. Properly done, the study of the past can disabuse us of this silly notion and show us that smart people in different times and different places did things all sorts of different ways. But this lesson is ruined if we construct caricatures of the past wherein people living long ago were just big stupid brutes with big stupid weapons.
tobyhede 7y ago
Orc supply logistics is eased somewhat by the ability of the Orc armies to eat the defeated and if required, each other. In the latter case the strong orcs eat the weak, preserving the elite and veteran parts of the army. There is a strong hierarchy within the various Orc subtypes, and an argument could be made that the Orc army marches as its own supply.
- perlgeek 7y ago
  I don't think the book mentions any green, fertile farmland in Mordor, nor do the movies show any. So even if the Orc-eats-Orc or Orc-eats-Man "supply" might work for a short campaign, the biomass must come from somewhere, initially.
  - tobyhede 7y ago
    Book explicitly mentions slave farms in the East. But yes, cannibalism and human forage is not sustainable, but might stretch a 10 day supply to 15.
    - zipwitch 7y ago
      I think it's great slave farms in Southern Mordor, around the inland sea of Nurnen. http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/n/nurn.php http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/n/nurn.php (There may also have been farms in the East that I'm not remembering. The East was definitely under Sauron's thumb, although perhaps not so firmly as he would have liked.)
  - andrewl 7y ago
    In the chapter The Land of Shadow in The Return of the King the narrator says: "Neither he nor Frodo knew anything of the great slave-worked fields away south in this wide realm, beyond the fumes of the Mountain by the dark sad waters of Lake Núrnen; nor of the great roads that ran away east and south to tributary lands, from which the soldiers of the Tower brought long waggon-trains of goods and booty and fresh slaves. Here in the northward regions were the mines and forges, and the musterings of long-planned war; and here the Dark Power, moving its armies like pieces on the board was gathering them together."

404 points by _Microft 7y ago

Next up: How Gondor won despite a complete lack of air support (see: winged wraiths) and superior enemy armor (see: Mumakil).

ghaff 7y ago
There's a lot of military SF (and, I guess, fantasy that I've never read as much of) that wants to mostly restrict the action to ground forces. The result is that they have to either just ignore the decisive power of air support or just come up with hand-wavy explanations for why air powerisn't effective in the hypothetical scenario.
- _Microft 7y ago
  Sounds a bit like things rendering Enterprise's transporters inoperative just when beaming up the away-team would have been the easiest solution. Oh, and to make it less obvious, you better announce a few minutes earlier that a plasma storm is forming in the upper atmosphere.
  - jacobush 7y ago
    Or my favorite order never heard on the bridge of Enterprise "nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure". Fine, often it would go against the ethos of what they are trying to do. But sometimes, they could have beamed home the away team and proceeded to rain fiery death from above with photon torpedoes or whatever.
    - krapp 7y ago
      They have phasers with enough power to boil the oceans of a planet, and torpedoes that can travel faster than light. Yet every conflict takes place at extremely close proximity, often on the same plane, as if they were ships in the age of sail. They have force fields with a critical flaw (harmonic resonance means any energy weapon using the same frequency as the shields can just shoot right through them) but whenever this is even mentioned, the shields have to be re-adjusted manually. Unauthorized people can appear on the ship, and crew can vanish from the ship, and the computer either doesn't notice, or does and never alerts anyone or activates any sort of countermeasures. The first officer can be sucked into a pocket universe and have his organs rearranged by non-Euclidean bug monsters and no one will ever know unless they happen to ask the computer where Riker is at the moment. It's been established that transporter buffers can be used to "back up" a person, even long term (in the TNG episode "Relics," Scotty is discovered having stored himself in a transporter buffer for decades with no ill effect.) Replicators can't do latinum and living tissue, but they work by literally converting energy into matter and assembling it into something atom by atom. At that resolution, there's no difference between anything and anything else, so there's no reason why replicators shouldn't be able to replicate anything. The former two items, along with the holodeck (which can create sentient life on request, BTW) should guarantee that no Federation citizen ever truly ages or dies, or even ever has to exist in a physical body. The Federation should be a post-human, post-singularity society. Yet for "plot reasons," none of these glitches (like the transporters being able to clone people simply by refracting the transporter beam) are ever harnessed for their real potential.
      - Freak_NL 7y ago
        Star Trek: TNG made a teenage me wonder why starships encountering each other always appeared to have matched their orientations. Was there some kind of prearranged signal? A diplomatic code adhered to even by enemies? Just a general preference on all sides concerned preventing headaches and vague unheimlich feelings of discomfort? So many questions… If I was harassing the federation I would keep my ship at an awkward angle relative to theirs at all times just to keep them on edge. I was totally fine with the other plot holes though.
        russellbeattie 7y ago
        That just needs a few lines of plot glue to fix that problem! Like, "Warp drives need to be oriented parallel to the ecliptic plane of surrounding celestial bodies to best calculate navigation and maximize their space bending effect. Naturally, ships keep this orientation at all times just in case."
        pp19dd 7y ago
        Don't think it was necessarily a plot hole, albeit after the fact. Plenty of sci fi authors have taken similar approaches throughout the years. The idea is that in a spiral galaxy the natural tendency would be to stick with the orientation that matched the galactic plane along the right-handed spin (to determine up vs down) and some authors have even extended naval directional signals into space. This is from The Lost Fleet: "Within a solar system, directional references were always made to the world outside a ship so other ships could understand them. Anything above the plane of the system was up, anything below it down. The direction toward the sun was right, or starboard, (or even 'starward' as some urged), while the direction away from the sun was left, or port."
        mcguire 7y ago
        "The direction toward the sun was right, or starboard, (or even 'starward' as some urged), while the direction away from the sun was left, or port."" Ehh. Ahh. "Port" and "starboard" should be relative to the bow/stern axis of the ship. Otherwise you'll have a hard time finding the head.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      Given the strength of Trek weaponry, one photon would do. I remember reading somewhere that a standard photon torpedo carried 1.5 kg of antimatter on board, which is yield-equivalent to a Tsar bomba (almost 60 megaton). However, phasers could have been easily used for close air support, even from orbit - AFAIR Enterprise-D used them once as surgical tools for geoengineering. Most episodes seem to script around the need for air support, but I remember one case where it was at least acknowledged on-screen - one DS9 episode had a ground assault at an enemy position to destroy a under-repair gateway in it, and it was said early on that the surrounding building was strong enough that a torpedo strike from orbit would not necessarily destroy the target. Edit: My personal favorite case of missed opportunity is the use of transporters to beam armed torpedoes directly onto enemy ships. It was used once in a Voyager episode. It's an obvious, but sadly plot-killing tactic, that hasn't been sufficiently hand-waved away in the lore, so one has to wonder why nobody uses it. The StarGate series actually took that option seriously (the series was much smarter when it came to combat). In it, to the dismay of the species that provided humans with transporters, human ships often beamed nuclear warheads onto unsuspecting enemy vessels, achieving seemingly impossible victories.
      - mcguire 7y ago
        "My personal favorite case of missed opportunity is the use of transporters to beam armed torpedoes directly onto enemy ships. It was used once in a Voyager episode. It's an obvious, but sadly plot-killing tactic, that hasn't been sufficiently hand-waved away in the lore, so one has to wonder why nobody uses it." Akshually... Transporters cannot penetrate shield, usually either incoming or outgoing. Usually.
        krapp 7y ago
        Akshually... it depends on the writer, series and episode. The shields have the fatal flaw that anything operating at the same frequency can go right through them, including a transporter beam. That's come up as a plot point more than once.
        TeMPOraL 7y ago
        > Transporters cannot penetrate shield, usually either incoming or outgoing. Usually. Except when they can, due to frequency matching, "technology generation" mismatch between shields and transporters, and countless of other one-off workarounds that happened. Think of every episode in which the Enterprise/Defiant/Voyager was boarded while in combat. But even when considering the regular case of shields blocking incoming and outgoing transport, there's plenty of opportunities to use transporters offensively. They could be used as surprise first strike weapon to initiate hostilities by immediately taking enemy ship out. They could be used to finish off an enemy in a one-to-one fight. They could be used in coordinated fashion in fleet battles, where whenever an enemy ship loses shields, one ship drops their own shields and transports some photons over while other ships cover the vulnerable friend from immediate fire. Etc. All in all, there are plenty of opportunities for offensive transporter use which were never explored in the series.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - zipwitch 7y ago
      In the good old days, of usenet, James D. Nicoll had a signature that read: "Frankly, Captain, I feel interstellar diplomacy is out of our depth." "Ah, hence the nuclear weapons."
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    One piece that never works, to the point that Starfleet should really ask themselves who designed it so badly - warp core ejection system. There's lots of episodes where their main reactor is about to explode, and the emergency safeguard designed to save them from exactly that problem suddenly malfunctions for one reason or other.
- KineticLensman 7y ago
  The Nightmare Stacks by Charles Stross includes (spoiler) an assault on the city of Leeds in the UK by a combined arms Elven battle group. The elves have Battle-tested air-land integration doctrine that sees them using their dragons in a close air support role. The elves use other magical means for ISR of the deep battle. Stross’ elves are somewhat more waffen-SS than Tolkien’s
  - pjc50 7y ago
    This results in a dragon vs. RAF Tornado dogfight. He got an ex-RAF chap to consult on the technical detail too.
    - arethuza 7y ago
      I seem to recall it was a pair of Eurofighter Typhoons rather than Tornados? Oh dear, now I'll have to read it all again just to check. Edit: Superb book, horrifying and laugh out loud funny (although not in the same places). Edit2: BBC/HBO please do a version of the Laundry Files once you are finished with HDM!
      - C1sc0cat 7y ago
        I think Charlie has said that they have been optioned - and Felicia Day just has to be cast as Cassie "yes yes"
- _Microft 7y ago
  Fictional battles that are worth to be described in detail might often directly involve the main characters or influential persons and therefore it might be out of question to bombard the battlefield and kill everyone. (wellll... at least as long as you are not G.R.R. Martin and turn everyone and their direwolve into a main character or do not care if a main character dies. When killing main characters, it certainly helps if you have enough of them which brings us back to the first point).
nephrite 7y ago
Flying wraiths lack firepower, so they provide no real air support. Just fast transportation/communication.
- me_me_me 7y ago
  Strafing runs in WW2 were almost completely ineffective but all infantry were reporting huge morale loss when they were happening.
  - saiya-jin 7y ago
    Strafing was quite effective against vehicles, trains, landed aircraft etc. But yes against infantry it didn't make much sense, something about going too fast in shaky airplane trying to hit tiny ants running randomly left and right because they noticed the plane well before plane noticed them
  - lostlogin 7y ago
    saiya-jin notes that this might be true of attacks on infantry but on vehicles and trains the attacks were very very effective. In particular the German army was reduced to moving by night only in Normandy and the railroads were heavily targeted. Things came to a head in the battle of The Falaise Pocket with artillery and the airforces working together and the descriptions of the aftermath are truely horrific.
- HenryKissinger 7y ago
  The film does show them mowing down soldiers with their claws and inspiring terror in others: https://youtu.be/HX4KKkSKZAY?t=197 https://youtu.be/HX4KKkSKZAY?t=197
  - arethuza 7y ago
    I seem to recall that one of the names for Angmar was "The Captain of Despair" - literally a terror weapon.
    - 7y ago
hoorayimhelping 7y ago
They had ghost reinforcements that executed a textbook flank[1]. 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flanking_maneuver https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flanking_maneuver
- csunbird 7y ago
  In books, the ghost army was used to rout enemy at south and gather (now free to leave the region) soldiers at that region and transport them with (captured) enemy ships to the battlefield. The flanking maneuver is done, but with actual humans, not with ghosts.
b0rsuk 7y ago
Actually the author also has a 3 part article about war elephants https://acoup.blog/2019/07/26/collections-war-elephants-part-i-battle-pachyderms/ https://acoup.blog/2019/07/26/collections-war-elephants-part... He is of the opinion that elephants were okay (not great) on battlefield, but awful in terms of logistics, supply usage and breeding. A horse reaches adulthood in 4 years. An elephant needs 15, and pregnancy lasts over 3 years. There are no known examples of breeding elephants. Supply-wise, you could have 1000 cavalrymen or 54 elephants. He says the main reason India widely used elephants - aside from proximity - was to show off status. Also, don't make fun of J.R.R. Tolkien - he fought in trenches of WW1, on top of strong familiarity with medieval warfare because of all his reading.
- arethuza 7y ago
  Tolkien wrote a lovely letter to a fan about Sam and the soldiers he served alongside on the Western Front: "My ‘Samwise’ is indeed (as you note) largely a reflexion of the English soldier—grafted on the village-boys of early days, the memory of the privates and my batmen that I knew in the 1914 War, and recognized as so far superior to myself." https://johngarth.wordpress.com/2014/02/13/sam-gamgee-and-tolkiens-batmen/ https://johngarth.wordpress.com/2014/02/13/sam-gamgee-and-to...
mcguire 7y ago
If you're not familiar with Corey Olsen (https://tolkienprofessor.com/ https://tolkienprofessor.com/), one of his frequent points is that, while the First Age elves had some air support in the form of Manwë's eagles, Morgoth didn't until he invented winged dragons shortly before the final battle. (Balrogs don't fly.)
- zipwitch 7y ago
  > (Balrogs don't fly.) Them's thar's fightin' words. :) I don't have a copy of the old Usenet FAQ handy, but here's a tiny sample of the debate for any curious readers: http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Balrogs/Wings http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Balrogs/Wings http://www.thetolkienwiki.org/wiki.cgi?FAQ/Do__Balrogs__have__wings http://www.thetolkienwiki.org/wiki.cgi?FAQ/Do__Balrogs__have...
rossdavidh 7y ago
Well not at the siege of Minas Tirith, but they did get saved by air cav at the battle after that (giant Eagles).

vector_rotcev 7y ago

Jut in case anyone doesn't do the date-math/scroll down past the comments, all 5 of the following blog posts are finished and linked to half way through the comments (ctrl+f: pingback).

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
gadtfly 7y ago
Parts II-VI: https://acoup.blog/2019/05/17/collections-the-siege-of-gondor-part-ii-these-beacons-are-liiiiiiit/ https://acoup.blog/2019/05/17/collections-the-siege-of-gondo... https://acoup.blog/2019/05/24/collections-the-siege-of-gondor-part-iii-having-fun-storming-the-city/ https://acoup.blog/2019/05/24/collections-the-siege-of-gondo... https://acoup.blog/2019/05/31/collections-the-siege-of-gondor-part-iv-the-cavalry-arrives/ https://acoup.blog/2019/05/31/collections-the-siege-of-gondo... https://acoup.blog/2019/06/07/collections-the-siege-of-gondor-part-v-just-flailing-about-flails/ https://acoup.blog/2019/06/07/collections-the-siege-of-gondo... https://acoup.blog/2019/06/14/collections-the-siege-of-gondor-part-vi-black-sails-and-gleaming-banners/ https://acoup.blog/2019/06/14/collections-the-siege-of-gondo...
- hef19898 7y ago
  Highlight of part three for a logistocs geek like myself: Romans and Greeks had standardized ammunition, not just rocks that happened to lay around. That's how you build empires! And roads and aqueducts, of course... EDIT: While the siege of Helm's Deep was perfectly done in the film, the Siege of Minas Tirith feels more like Holywood, very well done Hollywood but the difference between the two is deffinitely there.

dreen 7y ago

It seems the author also missed the fact orcs are perfectly alright with cannibalism, which further alleviates the supply problem, perhaps even to the point of not requiring the supplies at all (a few thousand orcs eaten along the way wont make much difference). I doubt this has much precedent in history.

fmoronzirfas 7y ago
I think orcs eating orcs only happens in the movies. In the books orcs don’t do that. What he missed is orcs eating human flesh
- dreen 7y ago
  Interesting, although the books indeed don't mention it I don't think it's entirely out of the question. from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orc_(Middle-earth) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orc_(Middle-earth) > Tolkien indicates that Orcs are "always hungry".[24] Orcs eat all manner of flesh, including men and horses, and there are frequent hints of cannibalism among Orcs. Grishnákh, leader of the Mordor Orcs, accuses Saruman's Uruks of eating Orc-flesh, which they angrily deny.[22] In Cirith Ungol, Gorbag suggests that Frodo (recently poisoned by Shelob) should "go in the pot"; Shagrat indicates that Gorbag could be "for the pot" for making such a suggestion.[25] Shagrat threatens to eat a disobedient orc, and after killing Gorbag he licks his blood from the blade.[26] The interesting part is Uruks "angrily denying" eating ork flesh which might mean it was an insult to suggest they do. Furthermore, https://middle-earth.xenite.org/what-do-orcs-eat https://middle-earth.xenite.org/what-do-orcs-eat says the books give some descriptions of orcish cooking. However, based on the overall attitude of orcs, I believe they would kill and eat each other to survive. But I think I was wrong to suggest that would be an acceptable solution to problem of long-term military supply logistics.
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
    > Grishnákh, leader of the Mordor Orcs, accuses Saruman's Uruks of eating Orc-flesh, which they angrily deny. As you note, this is good evidence that cannibalism is not practiced by the orcs. > In Cirith Ungol, Gorbag suggests that Frodo (recently poisoned by Shelob) should "go in the pot"; Shagrat indicates that Gorbag could be "for the pot" for making such a suggestion. This isn't good evidence; the insult is suggested by the context. > Shagrat threatens to eat a disobedient orc Without some sort of context, this is good evidence that cannibalism is practiced. > and after killing Gorbag he licks his blood from the blade. But this isn't; blood licking is not unknown among humans either. (To be fair, neither is cannibalism, but they read pretty differently.)

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Waterluvian 7y ago

"Let’s be clear on this point: ancient and medieval warfare was mostly about sieges." I also learned years ago that when medieval battles actually happened, the goal was to rout the enemy, not actually fight them and kill each other. I find these points illuminating because it reminds me that people back in the day were not primitive idiots. There was a very sensible logic to how they waged war. Ultimately, everyone back then wanted to live comfortable long lives like we do.

gherkinnn 7y ago
Few people enjoy facing a prickly Alexandrian phalanx. You’d have to more than whip me to run at one. To my knowledge, much was just shield bashing, posturing, and manoeuvring. It’s very hard to convince a group to close in on an enemy. Problem is, that would make for a very dull film. Logistics, waiting, posturing, passively starving out a city. No speeches, no charging sword aloft. The notion that we’re only marginally more intelligent than our ancient predecessors is quite a beautiful one I think.
- nickik 7y ago
  If you read reports of how the Roman beat those armies, its pretty clear that their more dynamic troupes would actually directly engage the phalanx and break their lines. That said, roman were the first in 100s years to achieve that, so its fair to say that most of the time you are right.
dragontamer 7y ago
Mass killings of troops certainly happened: Hannibal's famous "Battle of Cannae" actually destroyed an entire Roman Legion (70,000 killed, 10,000 captured out of ~80,000 troops). They were just very rare. Another point: After losing so many troops in a singular battle, the Romans changed their tactics. Instead of grouping their entire army as a massive 80,000-man strong Phalanx, they split up their armies into smaller groups, so that their eggs weren't all in one basket anymore. Hannibal's trick to encircle and kill many roman troops in a single battle was never going to be repeated: the Romans learned of their mistake and made the necessary reforms to protect their troops. ----------- The Battle of Cannae would go down in history as a military example of how to line up all your troops for potential slaughter. Future generals and tacticians would forever know of that battle and how to avoid those conditions. Most generals and soldiers would seek a battle of annihilation: if destroying the entire enemy force is possible they will attempt it. The problem is, its very, very difficult to achieve in practice. As such, simply routing the enemy, is sufficient for most military goals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_annihilation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_annihilation

hef19898 7y ago

just finished the first post. All I can say is well written and to the point! Logistics is totally underrepresented in history (infrastructure and the like) and especially military history. When it comes to the annoying "relaibility" discussions around WW2 tanks on Youtube I just wished some would explain the basic principle of RAMST, Reliability-Availability-maintainability-Supportability-Testability. Yet, nobody seems to get it. Military historians remain historians, and RAMST is more of an engineering discipline and fanboys don't want to. And I guess modern day professionals in that field are just to busy with modern day systems to actually worry about the old stuff. I know that I were during my short stint in that field.

NickNameNick 7y ago
Have you watched many of Nicholas Moran (The_Chiftain)'s videos? He likes to comment on the ergonomics of operating and maintaining tanks. But he also discusses why the USA mainly build medium tanks during ww2, and how and why they were more maintainable than their european contemporaries. (An ocean away from their factories, they had to be)
- hef19898 7y ago
  Sure know his videos! It really shows that he has some operational experience. Something others covering the same subject don't. What I am missing is an detailed view on that aspect from true, modern day experts. But for that you would need more than one person to cover it in a meaningful way.

postsantum 7y ago

I can't recommend enough this book which retells the story from the position of Mordor. It made me always remember how genocide, politics and bootlicking can be turned into heroic stories by victors' propaganda. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer

the_af 7y ago

Whether I agree or disagree with them, I find this kind of analyses of fictional battles very fun to read. And this particular blog seems to be full of fascinating articles (I recommend the one about how a "medieval/fantasy" battlefield ought too look like after a battle -- spoiler: most depictions are inspired by the aftermath of WWI battles; battlefields after medieval battles would look pretty much unspoiled). A few years back there was a humorous review of the Battle of Hoth from "Empire Strikes Back" that was pretty cool: https://www.wired.com/2013/02/battle-of-hoth https://www.wired.com/2013/02/battle-of-hoth

b0rsuk 7y ago
Be sure to check the ones about Paganism/Polytheism! The mind-blowing thing about paganism is that unlike the 3 major religions of today, it didn't start with a holy book (orthodoxy), but with rituals. It's like a caricature of scientific method. We did so and so, and the harvest was good. Therefore, the ritual works. There is little point in learning who exactly the gods are or what they think. The important thing is not offending any of them, knowing which is responsible for what, and making deals with them. As long as the (sacrificial) ritual seemed to work, it would be repeated with the slightest detail. If it didn't, they would experiment. They were very open to change in practice, because with no word of god to rely on they knew they could only take imperfect glimpses into nature of gods.
- zipwitch 7y ago
  Ann Leckie's fantasy novel The Raven Tower is set in a world where such pagan gods are real, and dives right into a description of how human tribes will spend generations training them to respond favorably.

7sigma 7y ago

The posts on sparta are a joy to read as well https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-part-i-spartan-school/ https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-p...

gerikson 7y ago
They are how I discovered the blog. Eye-opening.
- Balgair 7y ago
  Yes, it was a heck of a good dive! The conclusion, extremely briefly, is that Sparta is to be learned from, not emulated. The gist of Sparta is less like a well balanced, yet brutal, place, and more like an extreme version of the Lord's Resistance Army of central Africa, only with more rape and child abuse. If they were around today, we'd 'liberate' them in a heartbeat.

xg15 7y ago

Slightly OT: I'm surprised that more sophisticated management of supply lines never seems to have caught on much in RTS games. The basic practice still seems to be that logistics are handwaved away and your units just spawn wherever you want (or where your factory is) provided you have enough money in the bank. I could imagine a game quite fun where you actively have to transport troops and resources to the front and where building, running (using automation) and defending/attacking supply lines is integral part of the game. I guess the result would be something like a cross between Command & Conquer and Factorio or Transport Tycoon. The handwaving of logistics can also lead to some surreal moments in RTS single-player campaigns when the hero characters somehow manage to bring huge armies with them wherever they go, even if the story establishes that a place is difficult to get to even as a small group. Kudos for Blizzard and the design of the Zerg here, which turns that kind of awkwardness into an actual part of the story.

koonsolo 7y ago
That could be quite fun! Especially since you could try to sabotage or destroy enemy supply lines.
wjmao88 7y ago
The scale/scope of most of the RTS games is that of a battle, not that of a war. I remember there was an old game, Napolean 1813, that has some level of supply management in the form of needing to build a chain of supply stations in different cities to support nearby troops. The map of that game stretches from Paris to Eastern Europe. Another game that has supply management is Hearts of Iron, where the map is the entire world. I mostly play other Paradox grand strategy titles, but people have jokingly called Hearts of Iron the "Best supply chain similator game"
- dragontamer 7y ago
  > The scale/scope of most of the RTS games is that of a battle, not that of a war. Hmm, but even "Civilization" magically aways logistics for the most part. Units require "upkeep gold", but there's no real supply-chain that has to be built for units. -------- The "Rigs" in Advance Wars delivered oil to the frontlines. But its still simplified logistics, because "Rigs" had infinite oil in them. Still, it was a legitimate strategy to destroy enemy Rigs, cut off their supply-chain, and then wait for the enemy tanks to run out of ammunition or oil and starve them to death. Although Advance Wars mostly turned into a game of turtling with cheap mechanized infantry (One of the best units for a given price). But the logistics was at least theoretically possible. -------- I know "war logistics" games exist, but they certainly aren't mainstream. Europa Universalis and "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" are famously "Excel Spreadsheet games", I've never played them but maybe they are more into logistics than other games. https://www.paradoxplaza.com/europa-universalis-iv/EUEU04GSK-MASTER.html https://www.paradoxplaza.com/europa-universalis-iv/EUEU04GSK... https://www.koeitecmoamerica.com/rtk13/system1.html https://www.koeitecmoamerica.com/rtk13/system1.html

mcguire 7y ago

"Ideally, the solution to this problem is to split the army up. By moving in multiple columns and converging on the battlespace, you split one impossibly long column of troops into several more manageable ones. ... The larger problem is terrain – we’ve seen Ithilien in this film and the previous one: it is heavily forested, with few roads. What roads exist are overgrown and difficult to use. Worse yet, the primary route through the area is not an east-west road, but the North-South route up from Near Harad to the Black Gate. The infrastructure here to split the army effectively simply doesn’t exist." Er, hatetobeapedanticfanboi, but... There is a road north-south through Ithilien, and also a road east-west from Minas Morgul to Osgiliath. Where they cross was marked by the headless statue of the king. Frodo and Sam couldn't use the north-south road because of the large number of troops moving on it, including those moving up from the south to attack Minas Tirith. "BOOK NOTE: In the film, Jackson has split the host of Mordor into three groups (the fleet, the Haradrim and the Orcs) each of which moves and arrives as a single unit. As discussed above, this is insufficient to resolve the overwhelming logistics problems of such large armies. However, the books largely resolve this issue." Sigh. Pedanticfanboimode wasted. "Naval supply, by riverboat or by ship, is far more efficient than overland supply (moving supplies by water is roughly twenty times more efficient than moving the same supplies by land in the pre-modern era)." I want the reference for that. From part II: "As Clausewitz says (drink!), “Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is hard.”" Yeah. A Clausewitz drinking game. [Edit] "Book Note: In the books, Denethor is nowhere near this stupid (this will be a theme)." I'm glad somebody else saw this. Jackson really screwed up the plot arcs of the humans in the movies.

ranger207 7y ago
>I want the reference for that. Another post [0] says that "The usual estimates for transit costs derive from Diocletian’s Price Edict, a late Roman law setting standard prices for things, including transport." [0] https://acoup.blog/2019/07/19/the-lonely-city-part-ii-real-cities-have-curves/ https://acoup.blog/2019/07/19/the-lonely-city-part-ii-real-c...

boudewijnrempt 7y ago

I'm reminded of Mercedes Lackey's magically dwindling army in the Storm trilogy; where millions of invading soldiers turn into tens of thousands without much casualties. Also, I guess I've gained a bit of appreciation for WWI English officer training; apparently it was good enough to make Tolkien invent proper campaigns. Heck, I'd like to see someone compare 14 day campaigns from WWI that Tolkien could have known about and see which one he reproduced in his books.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Animats 7y ago

Operations is the level of analysis between tactics (how do I fight when I get there?) and strategy (why am I fighting at all?). The USMC calls that "campaigning". See MCDP 1-2 [1]. Campaigning is about which battles to fight and where. Strategy includes economic and diplomatic issues, but campaigning is purely military. Military history can be divided into two parts - before machine guns, and after machine guns. Before machine guns, bunching up was good tactics. After machine guns, it was terrible tactics. Too much of WWI was about learning that the hard way. [1] https://www.marines.mil/Portals/1/Publications/MCDP%201-2%20Campaigning.pdf https://www.marines.mil/Portals/1/Publications/MCDP%201-2%20...

Balgair 7y ago
> Military history can be divided into two parts - before machine guns, and after machine guns. Before machine guns, bunching up was good tactics. After machine guns, it was terrible tactics. Too much of WWI was about learning that the hard way. Terribly good point! I want to refute you, but I'm not really coming up with much. Automatic rifles are just devastating. How did you come to this conclusion?
- a1369209993 7y ago
  > but I'm not really coming up with much. War elephants are a slight exception - the best tactic against them seems to have been spreading out and killing the driver with arrows or javalins - but it's less that bunching up was bad tactics and more that it wasn't enough; phalanxes could repel elephants fairly well, they just weren't good at actually taking them out of the fight.
- kleton 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanchester%27s_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanchester%27s_laws

gwd 7y ago

Good quote: > One of the real lessons the study of the past has to teach us is – to quote L. P. Hartley, “the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” What I mean by that is that so much of how we assume all societies work and all people think is just how our society works and we think. Properly done, the study of the past can disabuse us of this silly notion and show us that smart people in different times and different places did things all sorts of different ways. But this lesson is ruined if we construct caricatures of the past wherein people living long ago were just big stupid brutes with big stupid weapons.

tobyhede 7y ago

Orc supply logistics is eased somewhat by the ability of the Orc armies to eat the defeated and if required, each other. In the latter case the strong orcs eat the weak, preserving the elite and veteran parts of the army. There is a strong hierarchy within the various Orc subtypes, and an argument could be made that the Orc army marches as its own supply.

perlgeek 7y ago
I don't think the book mentions any green, fertile farmland in Mordor, nor do the movies show any. So even if the Orc-eats-Orc or Orc-eats-Man "supply" might work for a short campaign, the biomass must come from somewhere, initially.
- tobyhede 7y ago
  Book explicitly mentions slave farms in the East. But yes, cannibalism and human forage is not sustainable, but might stretch a 10 day supply to 15.
  - zipwitch 7y ago
    I think it's great slave farms in Southern Mordor, around the inland sea of Nurnen. http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/n/nurn.php http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/n/nurn.php (There may also have been farms in the East that I'm not remembering. The East was definitely under Sauron's thumb, although perhaps not so firmly as he would have liked.)
- andrewl 7y ago
  In the chapter The Land of Shadow in The Return of the King the narrator says: "Neither he nor Frodo knew anything of the great slave-worked fields away south in this wide realm, beyond the fumes of the Mountain by the dark sad waters of Lake Núrnen; nor of the great roads that ran away east and south to tributary lands, from which the soldiers of the Tower brought long waggon-trains of goods and booty and fresh slaves. Here in the northward regions were the mines and forges, and the musterings of long-planned war; and here the Dark Power, moving its armies like pieces on the board was gathering them together."