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Battleships: a ridiculous but awesome idea

205 points by fogus 15y ago

masklinn 15y ago
In the same category, half a century later: aircraft carriers. Although I'm not sure this qualifies as "hacker", let alone "news".
- fraserharris 15y ago
  Aircraft carriers are somewhere in between. The aircraft they carry are part of maneuver warfare.
  - latch 15y ago
    except they are extremely expensive and hard to defend. They are great for projecting power against countries that can't defend against them, but extremely ineffective against a remotely comparable force. They are an obvious high priority. Ever see Independence Day or, more recently, Battle LA? Didn't you find it stupid that once the command ship are destroyed, the enemy essentially dies? This is what aircraft carriers represent. Take the $23 billion dollars it takes to build the first Gerald R. Ford Carrier and invest that into various decentralized, independent, small technologies, and your army is considerably better for it when it comes to any serious threat. It's like our military planners never read Ender's Game.
    - stcredzero 15y ago
      Take the $23 billion dollars it takes to build the first Gerald R. Ford Carrier and invest that into various decentralized, independent, small technologies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stealth_ship http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stealth_ship http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_212_submarine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_212_submarine A fleet of Sea Shadow type vessels and Air Independent Propulsion submarines combined with a good land-based air force would make life very difficult for carrier battle groups.
      - latch 15y ago
        This isn't the scale I'm talking about. You don't need a fleet of $500 million USD submarines. 11 US aircraft carriers? 11 missiles. $100+Billion vs $15 Million. 30000 soldiers vs 0. During the cold war this is the strategy that Russia took - let the US build expensive ships, they build [relatively] cheap missiles. The Chinese are doing the same with the Dong Feng missiles.
        stcredzero 15y ago
        Yes, but if China also built the fleet, then it would be in a position to project power farther from its shores. If all you wanted to do is keep the carrier group away from your own shore, then capable missiles would suffice.
        yxhuvud 15y ago
        China is doing it's best at ramping up their fleet. It is just that they focus on making better ships instead of making many ships, at the moment.
        philwelch 15y ago
        One missile won't get through. You don't encounter a carrier by itself--it has a combat air patrol, one or two Aegis cruisers, and two or three Aegis destroyers. Each Aegis system can track 100 targets at a time and launch countermeasures. However, missiles do scale well. Even 1000 missiles will cost much less than the carrier and will almost certainly take it down.
        latch 15y ago
        A single supersonic or soon-to-exist (india is mass-producing) hypersonic missile might get through. But yes, even if 1 doesn't, 100 easily will.
    - gaius 15y ago
      Hmm, but a carrier can do a lot of different stuff. It's about nuance. Sometimes you just want to float there quietly on the horizon looking like 90,000 tonnes of badassery while the diplomats do their thing. Didn't Sun Tzu say something about avoiding the need to actually fight whenever possible?
    - hugh3 15y ago
      except they are extremely expensive and hard to defend. They are great for projecting power against countries that can't defend against them, but extremely ineffective against a remotely comparable force. They are an obvious high priority There are 190-odd countries in the world. The US Navy's aircraft carriers are extremely effective against at least 185 of 'em. All the countries with a "remotely comparable force" also have nuclear weapons, so if the US ever winds up in a full-on shooting war with one of them then it's all over for both sides anyway. No aircraft carrier has actually been sunk since World War 2. So they can't be that vulnerable.
      - philwelch 15y ago
        1000 anti-ship missiles cost far less than an aircraft carrier with crew and aircraft aboard. There are a number of non-nuclear powers with the ability to launch 1000 anti-ship missiles against an American task force.
        hugh3 15y ago
        How would you launch a thousand anti-ship missiles? And how would you get that launch platform within range of a US aircraft carrier? Bear in mind that anything capable of launching a thouand anti-ship missiles will be one of the things the USAF will destroy within the first few hours of the war.
        masklinn 15y ago
        > How would you launch a thousand anti-ship missiles? With a hundred small boats > And how would you get that launch platform within range of a US aircraft carrier? With civilians on board > Bear in mind that anything capable of launching a thouand anti-ship missiles will be one of the things the USAF will destroy within the first few hours of the war. Yep, nothing better to start a war on the right foot than civilian massacre.
      - latch 15y ago
        No aircraft carrier has actually been sunk since World War 2. So they can't be that vulnerable. Isn't that like saying Hoover Dam has never been destroyed, so it can't be that vulnerable? I'm not sure that there have been serious attempts to destroy either (is my point).
    - marcinw 15y ago
      Carriers of today hold 90 aircraft, 2 RAMs, 3 Phalanxs and 2 Sea Sparrow launchers (specs from Wikipedia page on George H.W. Bush aircraft carrier). I'm pretty sure with all this they can defend themselves pretty well.
      - latch 15y ago
        China, Russia India and France have stockpile of supersonic cruise missiles. India is mass producing hypersonic cruise missiles, while Russia and the US are prototyping. In comparison, most of the cruise missiles we hear about (Tomahawk for example) are subsonic (though the US does have a few old supersonic ones). The effectiveness of missile defense systems isn't 100%. It's hard to shoot something travelling at 3600mph. It takes a lot of power, a lot of accuracy, generates a ton of heat, and a requires dash (or two) of lady luck. The defensive system can be overwhelmed for a fraction of the price.
  - johanbev 15y ago
    However, they are extremely expensive to build and keep running, and (perhaps) even more vurnerable than battleships which atleast had armour. And modern silent submarines, for instance those of the Swedish, German, and Norwegian navies reportedly often "sink" modern US and UK carriers in war games.
- Androsynth 15y ago
  This is an intellectually stimulating article, therefore it qualifies as hacker news.
  - kaffiene 15y ago
    It's a bunch of poorly research conjecture and hyperbole. It doesn't even rate as a well argued opinion piece
pragmatic 15y ago
The relevant part (to us hackers) is the use of maneuver warfare vs "phalanx" fighting. Think of Msft, Oracle, IBM, Apple as the phalanx fighters. They lock shields and charge, spending millions (billions) of dollars (instead of soldiers). The problem is their tactics are clumsy. Imagine all the Microsoft VP's circling the wagons around really bad _implementations_ (the ideas aren't bad) - I'm sure you can thing of some. If you are lean agile Mongol (hacker) you can easily run around them and attack them from the back. Your OODA loop is much tighter. You can maneuver and decide much better than a big hierarchical organization. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop See: The Smartphone Wars: Tightening the OODA Loop http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=2975 http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=2975
- zeteo 15y ago
  The phalanx was a really bright idea for its day. The Greeks were able to defeat much larger Persian armies (Marathon, Plataea) with their phalanxes. And the phalanx was a crucial part of Philip II and Alexander's combined arms system and their maneuver warfare. "Phalanx" vs. "maneuver warfare" is, at best, a false dichotomy.
  - hugh3 15y ago
    Indeed, this was my main issue with the article. As technology has developed, the advantage has switched back and forth from attackers to defenders, and from big heavy stuff to rapid manueverable stuff.
- brudgers 15y ago
  >"The relevant part (to us hackers) is the use of maneuver warfare vs "phalanx" fighting." As the author points out, the battleship was the fastest thing afloat which makes it more akin to Stonewall Jackson's foot cavalry and the first principal of maneuver doctrine - "get there fastest with the mostest." It is only in hindsight and perhaps anachronistically that one classifies battleships as the phalanx rather than the mongol horde - or perhaps more appropriately Viking Longship. I will add that the scale and costs of aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines dwarf those of the battleship - there is some evidence that pouring money into holes in the water such as the Alpha and Typhoon classes played a significant role in the collapse of the Soviet Union. [edit] All this to point out, that the distinction between maneuver and phalanx isn't always obvious and neither is the choice as a matter of tactics - when the enemy masses on your front, digging in and calling for aircover is may be the preferred alternative - even for highly mobile force.
arethuza 15y ago
Having a large battleship collection does allow you to line them up nicely for review: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Fleet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Fleet
- Luc 15y ago
  I don't think that postcard picture is giving a wholly realistic view of the Grand Fleet at the time. It seems like there's twice as many capital ships in the picture as there should be according to the text. EDIT: Actually, if you click on the picture, the description does mention it's "likely an artist's vision".
  - astrodust 15y ago
    Photoshopped, I knew it!
FlowerPower 15y ago
"Just as Western Civilization staggered and faded after the fall of Rome, Western Civilization has never really recovered from the shock of the Great War. Cultures which endured and developed over a thousand years were wiped out, never to return again. Western culture, abstract thought and artistic development: nothing important has developed since 1919; we’re still reeling from the shock." What a load of bollocks. The author hasnt heard of the situationism, dada-ism, Zerzan or Sartre but for sure the western civilization has. Further on "The Mongols never had the societal organization the West did, so they could never take advantage of their successes, and their various empires only served to make the Russians and Chinese paranoid, and Eastern European women more exotic looking.". This is also bollocks, the mongols successfully ruled a vast area from China to Europe, the silk road was again revived, you could travel from Poland to Peking and not get robbed. The mongols collected all the taxes from such a vast region, even after Djenghis Khan died, thats some hell of organization right there. On manuvre warfare, Alexander The Graeat (or as persions like to call him Alexander the Gay) certanly knew about this.
- hernan7 15y ago
  Or maybe he heard of situationism, dada, etc., and classifies them under "nothing important".
  - philwelch 15y ago
    Frankly, I would too--but in terms of culture and philosophy there were certainly significant advances post-1919.
- gwern 15y ago
  > This is also bollocks, the mongols successfully ruled a vast area from China to Europe, the silk road was again revived, you could travel from Poland to Peking and not get robbed. The mongols collected all the taxes from such a vast region, even after Djenghis Khan died, thats some hell of organization right there. They successfully ruled.. for a very short period of time even by empire standards, before splitting up into various dynasties and going native and whatnot. Why did Subutai stop in Eastern Europe, after destroying all opponents and units on par with the best Western Europe could offer, and with every prospect of conquering the Holy Roman Empire and extending the Mongolian empire to the Atlantic? Because Ghengis Khan's successor, Ogedei, had died and the succession process was so ill-defined and chaotic that Subutai had to stop everything and travel a continent back to Mongolia. Succession and peaceful transfers of power, among other things, was never something the Mongols managed to deal with competently. We can admire them for their military prowess, we can admire individuals like the sinicized Kublai Khan for being good peace-time rulers, but we can't admire them for ruling competently 'from China to Europe' because they didn't.
_djo_ 15y ago
This is not exactly convincing. Battleships, far from being a ridiculous idea, were a logical and necessary step for any navy wishing to project power at sea. They were so heavily armoured and gunned that for a long time, from the late 19th Century to just before WWII, the only realistic defence against a battleship was another battleship. While the Battle of Jutland may seem silly, the alternative would have been a bunch of smaller ships duking it out (probably for a similar result) or only one side possessing battleships and annihilating the other side. Manoeuvre warfare with a lighter fleet was not an option, as smaller vessels had smaller guns that frequently could not even penetrate a battleship's armour. So a battleship would've been able to pick off opponents at ease while they struggled to cause any damage. It's no good getting inside your opponent's OODA loop if you can't cause any damage. And the technology that would have permitted another nation to bypass the idea of a battleship altogether and attack it from a different angle just did not exist at the time. It was only decades after Jutland that naval aircraft and aircraft carriers became fast and advanced enough to make the aerial bombing and torpedoing of enemy vessels a real possibility. These days missiles are the great equalisers. Manoeuvre warfare is fantastically effective when the circumstances allow for it, but the available conditions, technology and personnel can sometimes make it ineffective. For instance, the German Blitzkrieg was extraordinarily effective against the static French defences in 1940, but the same forces and tactics came unstuck in 1941 when faced with a vicious winter and the Russian scorched earth style of defence. With reference to the hacker context, the lesson is that simply moving quickly isn't enough. You also need to understand what a competitor's real weaknesses are as well as understand which parts of their strengths you're incapable of attacking. If your enemy has battleships and all you have are frigates, then maybe you shouldn't be fighting them at sea.
- eqdw 15y ago
  You've actually got a really good idea. The author touches on it VERY briefly when he says "If the nations of the world had the equivalent cost invested in submarines or destroyers, maybe the same thing would have happened.", but I get the feeling that that is more lip service than him providing (what he thinks is) a legitimate counterpoint. Good insight!
- crikli 15y ago
werpon 15y ago
Big warships could accomodate bigger cannons. Bigger cannons could deliver bigger shells further, enabling your warships to hit the enemy while keeping out of their range. These capital ships aren't being built today because missiles and fighter planes suddenly negated their advantage, not because they weren't a good idea to begin with. IMHO it's an overwhelming act of condescension pretending to be smarter than thousands of admirals and military advisors, many of them with lots of real world experience fighting wars and stuff.
- jhamburger 15y ago
  I don't think it's necessarily condescension to second guess decisions made 100 years ago. I can think of plenty of examples of clearly horrible decisions agreed upon by the consensus of elite thinkers 100, 50, 20, 10, or 5 years ago...
- isleyaardvark 15y ago
  > IMHO it's an overwhelming act of condescension pretending to be smarter than thousands of admirals and military advisors, many of them with lots of real world experience fighting wars and stuff. I thought the same thing, but then I remembered that the military leadership and tactics during The Great War were pretty damn lousy (e.g. trench warfare). For some reason it seems like it's surprisingly common for wide varieties of armies to repeat history.
  - hugh3 15y ago
    then I remembered that the military leadership and tactics during The Great War were pretty damn lousy (e.g. trench warfare) What's so lousy about trench warfare? I mean, yes, it sucks, but it's a Nash equilibrium given the technology at the time (very good machine guns, lousy tanks and aircraft). If your enemy has trenches, you need trenches too. What else would you have done?
    - bdunbar 15y ago
      What else would you have done? I'd do what actually happened: innovate with technology and tactics to break through the trench line.
crikli 15y ago
I've observed a principle that militaries build to win the last total war they fought. This is why guys like Billy Mitchell (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Mitchell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Mitchell) were ignored about the importance of air power leading up to WWII. The status quo was to gear up for another WWI, complete with entrenched and barely mobile front lines. But of course the German Blitzkreig, a brilliant archetype of maneuver warfare, overran these emplacements, the fixed system of defense built by the French being the best example (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maginot_Line http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maginot_Line). The US military has been developed for the last 60 years to re-win World War II; even the Cold War was really just the US and Russia building to re-win WWII until Russia ran out of cash. As one can see given the issues that the US military has had in Iraq and Afghanistan the WWII methods of battle, which have devolved back to phalanx warfare, are struggling (again) to defeat maneuver warfare.
- Symmetry 15y ago
  But it was the Siegfried Line[1] in WWII that let the Germans concentrate their whole army against the Poles and defeat them before turning west, and that let them attack where the French weren't rather than have to defend the current border. So German tactics in WWII were dependant on the same static defenses that the French used, but they took that and added a maneuver component instead of replacing it entirely. Manuever warfare often relies on a static force to pin the enemy in place while the mobile elements do their thing. Saying "Maneuver good, static bad" is just as silly as the reverse, whats needed for success is to understand the advantages and disadvantages of the various tools available and intelligently choose the right tool or combination of tools for the task at hand. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried_Line http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried_Line
  - jcnnghm 15y ago
    I was thinking exactly this. As I recall modern tactics call for suppressing fire to pin the enemy down while friendlies maneuver. It would seem that static and maneuver warfare are intertwined. Additionally, I believe the rule of thumb is that it takes five times as many people to capture a position as it does to defend a position. Like many things, there is probably an element of balance here.
nickpinkston 15y ago
Looks like The Battle of Jutland actually had 78 torpedo boats on the German side - didn't they get the maneuver memo? http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jutland http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jutland
zeteo 15y ago
"in their heyday of displacement speed vessels, [battleships] were the fastest things on the high seas" Cruisers and destroyers were always faster than battleships (they had to be), displacement hull and all. It gives no confidence when you start the article with a glaring factual error. "The idea of battleships duking it out in the high seas is pretty ridiculous when you stop to think about it. It never really happened unless you count the Battle of Jutland." If you write such an article, you should do a bit of research and be at least dimly aware of the battles of Tsushima, Heligoland Bight, Moon Sound etc. etc. etc. Battleships were indeed a bit slower, but when they showed up they instantly dominated the field with their range and firepower. Even in WW2, when the carrier greatly reduced their importance, battleships fought a few very important engagements, e.g. Denmark Strait and second battle of Guadalcanal. It's easy to deride things you don't understand as "tumescent penii". But the historical fact is, for about half a century after 1890, battleships were indeed the most effective (and also expensive) naval weapons system in existence.
lionhearted 15y ago
Actually a pretty good article, despite the inaccuracies noted here in other comments. The author uses some hyperbole and makes some errors, but still an interesting discussion regarding phalanx vs. maneuver warfare. While we're picking on individual parts, though - > For missile silos, just target the enemy’s silos with lots of missiles and you can duke it out and win (just like the phalanx). If he puts his missiles on rail cars, you haven’t got a chance of hitting them all. Technically that's true, but I think the reason countries use missile silos and stationary bases is actually for ability to protect key installations and arms during domestic unrest and rioting, which is a statistically much more likely problem for a world power than getting hit with a first strike from another major world power without any warning or preparation time. Still, even with some errors and exaggerations, it was quite an interesting read.
- bluekeybox 15y ago
  > I think the reason countries use missile silos and stationary bases is actually for ability to protect key installations and arms during domestic unrest and rioting, which is a statistically much more likely problem for a world power than getting hit with a first strike from another major world power... You are very mistaken. The only reason domestic unrest is a more likely danger for a world power is because the country we are speaking of already has missile silos and stationary bases in the first place. Ownership of missile silos with nuclear warheads reduces chances of attack by a foreign power by such a huge amount that domestic unrest becomes a more realistic threat.
  - lionhearted 15y ago
    > You are mistaken. The only reason domestic unrest is a more likely danger for a world power is because the country we are speaking of already has missile silos and stationary bases in the first place. Actually, I think you're mistaken, but let's think this through - There's 200 countries in the world, roughly. Call the current world powers America, China, UK, Russia, and maybe a couple other European countries. In any given year, there's a lot more chance of any given country having a riot/unrest than there is an attack by America, China, UK, or Russia. Like, much higher. And usually, there's considerable advance warning before attacks so you could prepare. If you like, you can add in places with a decent mix of either high troop strength or very technologically advanced military - even adding in places like North Korea, Iraq before losing its various recent wars, and Israel doesn't seem to change the numbers that much. The chance of serious unrest in any given country in the world is much higher than the chance of attack by a militarily powerful nation. We could check actual numbers if this isn't convincing, but the number of domestic insurrections every year are much higher than attacks by a major world power. And also, those usually come with more telegraphing beforehand than domestic unrest does.
dolvlo 15y ago
I don't find this article applicable to hacking at all. Maybe running a business, but I don't follow the necessary relationship between hacking and business.
- burke 15y ago
  What to Submit On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
lefstathiou 15y ago
I believe the article misses the point that America, through it's complete dominance of the air and seas, has made naval warfare largely irrelevant for 99% of countries - hence their lack of will or desire to build them. The world saw centuries of naval proliferation up to WW2.
cafard 15y ago
a ridiculous and not especially awesome post....
icarus_drowning 15y ago
He also misrepresents the view of Victor Davis Hanson-- I think he's referring to "Carnage and Culture", which has a much more nuanced (and thus far different) argument.
neutronicus 15y ago
In my admittedly ignorant opinion, he uses the terms "maneuver warfare" and "phalanx warfare" so broadly as to make them almost meaningless.
StuffMaster 15y ago
The Mongols could defeat regular armies because they had many thousands of men who lived their lives on horseback, with bow in hand. It's not that they were smarter, it's that they had the option.
- troutwine 15y ago
  It's also worth noting that the Mongols were turned back by the Germanic tribes because, well, compound bows simply don't work in damp European forests whereas francesca _do_. Phallanx tactics versus maneuver, as the author has it, is meaningless in the face of the inability or unwillingness to adapt to your environment.
  - nl 15y ago
    Reference? The Mongols easily won the Battle of Legnica in Poland: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Legnica http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Legnica That's really the most Western of their major battles, and they were turned back by choice, not by losses in battle. Were there any cases where they had anything other than skirmishes with Germanic tribes?
  - sedachv 15y ago
    Mongols? Germanic tribes? Damp forests? You have a very interesting view of that period of history.
StuffMaster 15y ago
>nobody wanted to risk their big expensive battleships in such an engagement again This is his only proof that they're useless? Sorry, I need a lot more than that. Anybody who's played Civilization will know that you keep your battleships safe due to their cost, but they're supremely powerful nonetheless.
akdubya 15y ago
Any battle tech that's an order-of-magnitude cheaper to kill than to produce is destined for obsolescence. You can see this happening now with main battle tanks, which are easily knocked out by IEDs and increasingly sophisticated man-portable missiles. It will be interesting to see what happens to the manned air superiority fighter over the next couple of decades now that unmanned drones are being deployed on a wide scale.
- gaius 15y ago
  Probably nothing. Remember that unmanned drones were used in combat in Vietnam. They were quite short ranged of course, and could only be used for one mission: Sidewinders.
- smallblacksun 15y ago
  Few M1s have been destroyed or badly damaged by insurgents in Iraq. Their use has declined since the invasion not because they are too vulnerable, but because they are less useful without enemy tanks to engage and using them against infantry in urban environments risks heavy civilian casualties.
  - philwelch 15y ago
    Also, they're harder to fit on the streets.
    - hollerith 15y ago
      And they ruin streets.
  - akdubya 15y ago
    I was thinking less about the conflict in Iraq than the conflict in and around Israel, where small groups of insurgents have over the past decade mounted increasingly sophisticated attacks on Israeli armor in the open. The deterrent factor here is just as important as the ability to blow stuff up.
pizza_ 15y ago
Hindsight is 20/20. Current missile and nuclear weapons technology obsolete monolithic armored weapons, just like gunpowder and cannons obsoleted medieval castles. No doubt the same argument will be trumpeted across the interplanetary neural net in a few generations against nuclear submarines, ICBMs and capitalistic culture. The answer is: they aren't perfect, but they get the job done.
joeburke 15y ago
Interesting article but the grammar and the typos... ouch. Especially when he's trying to use some uncommon words.
Jd 15y ago
I don't think anyone has pointed this out in a comment yet... What is better with very expensive but obsolete machinery than to people use their machinery to duke it out. Will things explode and sink "at great cost" ? Well yes, that's sort of the point. It is even more costly to keep them afloat and maintained. To those who think this is cruel, European powers periodically fought wars with each other for thousands of years before 1914, they just never were quite as catastrophic (enter chemical weapons and, later, nukes). Hell, the Catholic church tried to ban jousting many times since... you guessed it, people frequently died trying to poke each other with sticks for the sake of scarves from pretty ladies. Hooah!
bitwize 15y ago
If he puts his missiles on rail cars, you haven’t got a chance of hitting them all. So it was, metaphorically, with the actual battlewagon; when it was at the peak of its capabilities, it was overcome by the manoeuvre warfare tactics of the aircraft carrier (which is itself probably made obsolete in real modern warfare by the cruise missile, the internet and the satellite). Don't forget robots! Man, you think the guided missiles in the first Gulf War were cool? Now we can kill people entirely by electromechanical proxy, staying out of the line of fire and incurring little to no risk ourselves! Man, we're living in the future! What a bunch of pussies we are. Like Bill Hicks said, why can't we use this technology to shoot food into the mouths of hungry people instead?
rubergly 15y ago
I had a very hard time taking the article seriously after reading "penii". I hate when people try to sound smart by incorrectly pluralizing this word.
Jd 15y ago
I had an interesting conversation with Martin van Creveld not long ago about fighter jets. Since he is one of the more famous military historians out there, he often gets asked for advice by senior defense personnel. Lots of European governments asked him if they should purchase F22s, etc. from the US. His advice, get UAVs, fighters don't matter any more (He just wrote the definitive book on the history of Air Power, btw). Anyways, no one actually takes his advice. Acquisitions are always busy buying supplies for the last war. Surprise, surprise.
gonzo 15y ago
He seems to have forgotten about the Bismarck http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_battleship_Bismarck http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_battleship_Bismarck true fact: my wife's great uncle, Tuck Smith, is the US pilot who spotted the Bismarck, back when the US (supposedly) wasn't involved in WWII. http://www.navytimes.com/legacy/new/0-NAVYPAPER-1642064.php http://www.navytimes.com/legacy/new/0-NAVYPAPER-1642064.php (Interesting fact, he was flying over Wake island on 12/7/41)
nl 15y ago
Some guy called Napoleon seemed to know a little bit about maneuver warfare, and he was around before battleships. There was this little thing called the Battle of Austerlitz[1] that the author may be interested to read about. Napoleon kind of knew what he was doing. His use of position and movement is actually mentioned in the Wikipeda's article on maneuver warfare [2]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Austerlitz http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Austerlitz [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneuver_warfare#Napoleon.27s_use_of_manoeuvre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneuver_warfare#Napoleon.27s_u...
JabavuAdams 15y ago
> Western culture, abstract thought and artistic development: nothing important has developed since 1919; we’re still reeling from the shock. Information theory? Software? Modern quantum mechanics? Yeah, I know there's been no important stuff except that important stuff.

205 points by fogus 15y ago

In the same category, half a century later: aircraft carriers. Although I'm not sure this qualifies as "hacker", let alone "news".

fraserharris 15y ago
Aircraft carriers are somewhere in between. The aircraft they carry are part of maneuver warfare.
- latch 15y ago
  except they are extremely expensive and hard to defend. They are great for projecting power against countries that can't defend against them, but extremely ineffective against a remotely comparable force. They are an obvious high priority. Ever see Independence Day or, more recently, Battle LA? Didn't you find it stupid that once the command ship are destroyed, the enemy essentially dies? This is what aircraft carriers represent. Take the $23 billion dollars it takes to build the first Gerald R. Ford Carrier and invest that into various decentralized, independent, small technologies, and your army is considerably better for it when it comes to any serious threat. It's like our military planners never read Ender's Game.
  - stcredzero 15y ago
    Take the $23 billion dollars it takes to build the first Gerald R. Ford Carrier and invest that into various decentralized, independent, small technologies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stealth_ship http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stealth_ship http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_212_submarine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_212_submarine A fleet of Sea Shadow type vessels and Air Independent Propulsion submarines combined with a good land-based air force would make life very difficult for carrier battle groups.
    - latch 15y ago
      This isn't the scale I'm talking about. You don't need a fleet of $500 million USD submarines. 11 US aircraft carriers? 11 missiles. $100+Billion vs $15 Million. 30000 soldiers vs 0. During the cold war this is the strategy that Russia took - let the US build expensive ships, they build [relatively] cheap missiles. The Chinese are doing the same with the Dong Feng missiles.
      - stcredzero 15y ago
        Yes, but if China also built the fleet, then it would be in a position to project power farther from its shores. If all you wanted to do is keep the carrier group away from your own shore, then capable missiles would suffice.
        yxhuvud 15y ago
        China is doing it's best at ramping up their fleet. It is just that they focus on making better ships instead of making many ships, at the moment.
      - philwelch 15y ago
        One missile won't get through. You don't encounter a carrier by itself--it has a combat air patrol, one or two Aegis cruisers, and two or three Aegis destroyers. Each Aegis system can track 100 targets at a time and launch countermeasures. However, missiles do scale well. Even 1000 missiles will cost much less than the carrier and will almost certainly take it down.
        latch 15y ago
        A single supersonic or soon-to-exist (india is mass-producing) hypersonic missile might get through. But yes, even if 1 doesn't, 100 easily will.
  - gaius 15y ago
    Hmm, but a carrier can do a lot of different stuff. It's about nuance. Sometimes you just want to float there quietly on the horizon looking like 90,000 tonnes of badassery while the diplomats do their thing. Didn't Sun Tzu say something about avoiding the need to actually fight whenever possible?
  - hugh3 15y ago
    except they are extremely expensive and hard to defend. They are great for projecting power against countries that can't defend against them, but extremely ineffective against a remotely comparable force. They are an obvious high priority There are 190-odd countries in the world. The US Navy's aircraft carriers are extremely effective against at least 185 of 'em. All the countries with a "remotely comparable force" also have nuclear weapons, so if the US ever winds up in a full-on shooting war with one of them then it's all over for both sides anyway. No aircraft carrier has actually been sunk since World War 2. So they can't be that vulnerable.
    - philwelch 15y ago
      1000 anti-ship missiles cost far less than an aircraft carrier with crew and aircraft aboard. There are a number of non-nuclear powers with the ability to launch 1000 anti-ship missiles against an American task force.
      - hugh3 15y ago
        How would you launch a thousand anti-ship missiles? And how would you get that launch platform within range of a US aircraft carrier? Bear in mind that anything capable of launching a thouand anti-ship missiles will be one of the things the USAF will destroy within the first few hours of the war.
        masklinn 15y ago
        > How would you launch a thousand anti-ship missiles? With a hundred small boats > And how would you get that launch platform within range of a US aircraft carrier? With civilians on board > Bear in mind that anything capable of launching a thouand anti-ship missiles will be one of the things the USAF will destroy within the first few hours of the war. Yep, nothing better to start a war on the right foot than civilian massacre.
    - latch 15y ago
      No aircraft carrier has actually been sunk since World War 2. So they can't be that vulnerable. Isn't that like saying Hoover Dam has never been destroyed, so it can't be that vulnerable? I'm not sure that there have been serious attempts to destroy either (is my point).
  - marcinw 15y ago
    Carriers of today hold 90 aircraft, 2 RAMs, 3 Phalanxs and 2 Sea Sparrow launchers (specs from Wikipedia page on George H.W. Bush aircraft carrier). I'm pretty sure with all this they can defend themselves pretty well.
    - latch 15y ago
      China, Russia India and France have stockpile of supersonic cruise missiles. India is mass producing hypersonic cruise missiles, while Russia and the US are prototyping. In comparison, most of the cruise missiles we hear about (Tomahawk for example) are subsonic (though the US does have a few old supersonic ones). The effectiveness of missile defense systems isn't 100%. It's hard to shoot something travelling at 3600mph. It takes a lot of power, a lot of accuracy, generates a ton of heat, and a requires dash (or two) of lady luck. The defensive system can be overwhelmed for a fraction of the price.
- johanbev 15y ago
  However, they are extremely expensive to build and keep running, and (perhaps) even more vurnerable than battleships which atleast had armour. And modern silent submarines, for instance those of the Swedish, German, and Norwegian navies reportedly often "sink" modern US and UK carriers in war games.
Androsynth 15y ago
This is an intellectually stimulating article, therefore it qualifies as hacker news.
- kaffiene 15y ago
  It's a bunch of poorly research conjecture and hyperbole. It doesn't even rate as a well argued opinion piece

pragmatic 15y ago

The relevant part (to us hackers) is the use of maneuver warfare vs "phalanx" fighting. Think of Msft, Oracle, IBM, Apple as the phalanx fighters. They lock shields and charge, spending millions (billions) of dollars (instead of soldiers). The problem is their tactics are clumsy. Imagine all the Microsoft VP's circling the wagons around really bad _implementations_ (the ideas aren't bad) - I'm sure you can thing of some. If you are lean agile Mongol (hacker) you can easily run around them and attack them from the back. Your OODA loop is much tighter. You can maneuver and decide much better than a big hierarchical organization. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop See: The Smartphone Wars: Tightening the OODA Loop http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=2975 http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=2975

zeteo 15y ago
The phalanx was a really bright idea for its day. The Greeks were able to defeat much larger Persian armies (Marathon, Plataea) with their phalanxes. And the phalanx was a crucial part of Philip II and Alexander's combined arms system and their maneuver warfare. "Phalanx" vs. "maneuver warfare" is, at best, a false dichotomy.
- hugh3 15y ago
  Indeed, this was my main issue with the article. As technology has developed, the advantage has switched back and forth from attackers to defenders, and from big heavy stuff to rapid manueverable stuff.
brudgers 15y ago
>"The relevant part (to us hackers) is the use of maneuver warfare vs "phalanx" fighting." As the author points out, the battleship was the fastest thing afloat which makes it more akin to Stonewall Jackson's foot cavalry and the first principal of maneuver doctrine - "get there fastest with the mostest." It is only in hindsight and perhaps anachronistically that one classifies battleships as the phalanx rather than the mongol horde - or perhaps more appropriately Viking Longship. I will add that the scale and costs of aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines dwarf those of the battleship - there is some evidence that pouring money into holes in the water such as the Alpha and Typhoon classes played a significant role in the collapse of the Soviet Union. [edit] All this to point out, that the distinction between maneuver and phalanx isn't always obvious and neither is the choice as a matter of tactics - when the enemy masses on your front, digging in and calling for aircover is may be the preferred alternative - even for highly mobile force.

arethuza 15y ago

Having a large battleship collection does allow you to line them up nicely for review: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Fleet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Fleet

Luc 15y ago
I don't think that postcard picture is giving a wholly realistic view of the Grand Fleet at the time. It seems like there's twice as many capital ships in the picture as there should be according to the text. EDIT: Actually, if you click on the picture, the description does mention it's "likely an artist's vision".
- astrodust 15y ago
  Photoshopped, I knew it!

FlowerPower 15y ago

"Just as Western Civilization staggered and faded after the fall of Rome, Western Civilization has never really recovered from the shock of the Great War. Cultures which endured and developed over a thousand years were wiped out, never to return again. Western culture, abstract thought and artistic development: nothing important has developed since 1919; we’re still reeling from the shock." What a load of bollocks. The author hasnt heard of the situationism, dada-ism, Zerzan or Sartre but for sure the western civilization has. Further on "The Mongols never had the societal organization the West did, so they could never take advantage of their successes, and their various empires only served to make the Russians and Chinese paranoid, and Eastern European women more exotic looking.". This is also bollocks, the mongols successfully ruled a vast area from China to Europe, the silk road was again revived, you could travel from Poland to Peking and not get robbed. The mongols collected all the taxes from such a vast region, even after Djenghis Khan died, thats some hell of organization right there. On manuvre warfare, Alexander The Graeat (or as persions like to call him Alexander the Gay) certanly knew about this.

hernan7 15y ago
Or maybe he heard of situationism, dada, etc., and classifies them under "nothing important".
- philwelch 15y ago
  Frankly, I would too--but in terms of culture and philosophy there were certainly significant advances post-1919.
gwern 15y ago
> This is also bollocks, the mongols successfully ruled a vast area from China to Europe, the silk road was again revived, you could travel from Poland to Peking and not get robbed. The mongols collected all the taxes from such a vast region, even after Djenghis Khan died, thats some hell of organization right there. They successfully ruled.. for a very short period of time even by empire standards, before splitting up into various dynasties and going native and whatnot. Why did Subutai stop in Eastern Europe, after destroying all opponents and units on par with the best Western Europe could offer, and with every prospect of conquering the Holy Roman Empire and extending the Mongolian empire to the Atlantic? Because Ghengis Khan's successor, Ogedei, had died and the succession process was so ill-defined and chaotic that Subutai had to stop everything and travel a continent back to Mongolia. Succession and peaceful transfers of power, among other things, was never something the Mongols managed to deal with competently. We can admire them for their military prowess, we can admire individuals like the sinicized Kublai Khan for being good peace-time rulers, but we can't admire them for ruling competently 'from China to Europe' because they didn't.

_djo_ 15y ago

This is not exactly convincing. Battleships, far from being a ridiculous idea, were a logical and necessary step for any navy wishing to project power at sea. They were so heavily armoured and gunned that for a long time, from the late 19th Century to just before WWII, the only realistic defence against a battleship was another battleship. While the Battle of Jutland may seem silly, the alternative would have been a bunch of smaller ships duking it out (probably for a similar result) or only one side possessing battleships and annihilating the other side. Manoeuvre warfare with a lighter fleet was not an option, as smaller vessels had smaller guns that frequently could not even penetrate a battleship's armour. So a battleship would've been able to pick off opponents at ease while they struggled to cause any damage. It's no good getting inside your opponent's OODA loop if you can't cause any damage. And the technology that would have permitted another nation to bypass the idea of a battleship altogether and attack it from a different angle just did not exist at the time. It was only decades after Jutland that naval aircraft and aircraft carriers became fast and advanced enough to make the aerial bombing and torpedoing of enemy vessels a real possibility. These days missiles are the great equalisers. Manoeuvre warfare is fantastically effective when the circumstances allow for it, but the available conditions, technology and personnel can sometimes make it ineffective. For instance, the German Blitzkrieg was extraordinarily effective against the static French defences in 1940, but the same forces and tactics came unstuck in 1941 when faced with a vicious winter and the Russian scorched earth style of defence. With reference to the hacker context, the lesson is that simply moving quickly isn't enough. You also need to understand what a competitor's real weaknesses are as well as understand which parts of their strengths you're incapable of attacking. If your enemy has battleships and all you have are frigates, then maybe you shouldn't be fighting them at sea.

eqdw 15y ago
You've actually got a really good idea. The author touches on it VERY briefly when he says "If the nations of the world had the equivalent cost invested in submarines or destroyers, maybe the same thing would have happened.", but I get the feeling that that is more lip service than him providing (what he thinks is) a legitimate counterpoint. Good insight!
crikli 15y ago

werpon 15y ago

Big warships could accomodate bigger cannons. Bigger cannons could deliver bigger shells further, enabling your warships to hit the enemy while keeping out of their range. These capital ships aren't being built today because missiles and fighter planes suddenly negated their advantage, not because they weren't a good idea to begin with. IMHO it's an overwhelming act of condescension pretending to be smarter than thousands of admirals and military advisors, many of them with lots of real world experience fighting wars and stuff.

jhamburger 15y ago
I don't think it's necessarily condescension to second guess decisions made 100 years ago. I can think of plenty of examples of clearly horrible decisions agreed upon by the consensus of elite thinkers 100, 50, 20, 10, or 5 years ago...
isleyaardvark 15y ago
> IMHO it's an overwhelming act of condescension pretending to be smarter than thousands of admirals and military advisors, many of them with lots of real world experience fighting wars and stuff. I thought the same thing, but then I remembered that the military leadership and tactics during The Great War were pretty damn lousy (e.g. trench warfare). For some reason it seems like it's surprisingly common for wide varieties of armies to repeat history.
- hugh3 15y ago
  then I remembered that the military leadership and tactics during The Great War were pretty damn lousy (e.g. trench warfare) What's so lousy about trench warfare? I mean, yes, it sucks, but it's a Nash equilibrium given the technology at the time (very good machine guns, lousy tanks and aircraft). If your enemy has trenches, you need trenches too. What else would you have done?
  - bdunbar 15y ago
    What else would you have done? I'd do what actually happened: innovate with technology and tactics to break through the trench line.

crikli 15y ago

I've observed a principle that militaries build to win the last total war they fought. This is why guys like Billy Mitchell (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Mitchell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Mitchell) were ignored about the importance of air power leading up to WWII. The status quo was to gear up for another WWI, complete with entrenched and barely mobile front lines. But of course the German Blitzkreig, a brilliant archetype of maneuver warfare, overran these emplacements, the fixed system of defense built by the French being the best example (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maginot_Line http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maginot_Line). The US military has been developed for the last 60 years to re-win World War II; even the Cold War was really just the US and Russia building to re-win WWII until Russia ran out of cash. As one can see given the issues that the US military has had in Iraq and Afghanistan the WWII methods of battle, which have devolved back to phalanx warfare, are struggling (again) to defeat maneuver warfare.

Symmetry 15y ago
But it was the Siegfried Line[1] in WWII that let the Germans concentrate their whole army against the Poles and defeat them before turning west, and that let them attack where the French weren't rather than have to defend the current border. So German tactics in WWII were dependant on the same static defenses that the French used, but they took that and added a maneuver component instead of replacing it entirely. Manuever warfare often relies on a static force to pin the enemy in place while the mobile elements do their thing. Saying "Maneuver good, static bad" is just as silly as the reverse, whats needed for success is to understand the advantages and disadvantages of the various tools available and intelligently choose the right tool or combination of tools for the task at hand. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried_Line http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried_Line
- jcnnghm 15y ago
  I was thinking exactly this. As I recall modern tactics call for suppressing fire to pin the enemy down while friendlies maneuver. It would seem that static and maneuver warfare are intertwined. Additionally, I believe the rule of thumb is that it takes five times as many people to capture a position as it does to defend a position. Like many things, there is probably an element of balance here.

nickpinkston 15y ago

Looks like The Battle of Jutland actually had 78 torpedo boats on the German side - didn't they get the maneuver memo? http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jutland http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jutland

zeteo 15y ago

"in their heyday of displacement speed vessels, [battleships] were the fastest things on the high seas" Cruisers and destroyers were always faster than battleships (they had to be), displacement hull and all. It gives no confidence when you start the article with a glaring factual error. "The idea of battleships duking it out in the high seas is pretty ridiculous when you stop to think about it. It never really happened unless you count the Battle of Jutland." If you write such an article, you should do a bit of research and be at least dimly aware of the battles of Tsushima, Heligoland Bight, Moon Sound etc. etc. etc. Battleships were indeed a bit slower, but when they showed up they instantly dominated the field with their range and firepower. Even in WW2, when the carrier greatly reduced their importance, battleships fought a few very important engagements, e.g. Denmark Strait and second battle of Guadalcanal. It's easy to deride things you don't understand as "tumescent penii". But the historical fact is, for about half a century after 1890, battleships were indeed the most effective (and also expensive) naval weapons system in existence.

lionhearted 15y ago

Actually a pretty good article, despite the inaccuracies noted here in other comments. The author uses some hyperbole and makes some errors, but still an interesting discussion regarding phalanx vs. maneuver warfare. While we're picking on individual parts, though - > For missile silos, just target the enemy’s silos with lots of missiles and you can duke it out and win (just like the phalanx). If he puts his missiles on rail cars, you haven’t got a chance of hitting them all. Technically that's true, but I think the reason countries use missile silos and stationary bases is actually for ability to protect key installations and arms during domestic unrest and rioting, which is a statistically much more likely problem for a world power than getting hit with a first strike from another major world power without any warning or preparation time. Still, even with some errors and exaggerations, it was quite an interesting read.

bluekeybox 15y ago
> I think the reason countries use missile silos and stationary bases is actually for ability to protect key installations and arms during domestic unrest and rioting, which is a statistically much more likely problem for a world power than getting hit with a first strike from another major world power... You are very mistaken. The only reason domestic unrest is a more likely danger for a world power is because the country we are speaking of already has missile silos and stationary bases in the first place. Ownership of missile silos with nuclear warheads reduces chances of attack by a foreign power by such a huge amount that domestic unrest becomes a more realistic threat.
- lionhearted 15y ago
  > You are mistaken. The only reason domestic unrest is a more likely danger for a world power is because the country we are speaking of already has missile silos and stationary bases in the first place. Actually, I think you're mistaken, but let's think this through - There's 200 countries in the world, roughly. Call the current world powers America, China, UK, Russia, and maybe a couple other European countries. In any given year, there's a lot more chance of any given country having a riot/unrest than there is an attack by America, China, UK, or Russia. Like, much higher. And usually, there's considerable advance warning before attacks so you could prepare. If you like, you can add in places with a decent mix of either high troop strength or very technologically advanced military - even adding in places like North Korea, Iraq before losing its various recent wars, and Israel doesn't seem to change the numbers that much. The chance of serious unrest in any given country in the world is much higher than the chance of attack by a militarily powerful nation. We could check actual numbers if this isn't convincing, but the number of domestic insurrections every year are much higher than attacks by a major world power. And also, those usually come with more telegraphing beforehand than domestic unrest does.

dolvlo 15y ago

I don't find this article applicable to hacking at all. Maybe running a business, but I don't follow the necessary relationship between hacking and business.

burke 15y ago
What to Submit On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

lefstathiou 15y ago

I believe the article misses the point that America, through it's complete dominance of the air and seas, has made naval warfare largely irrelevant for 99% of countries - hence their lack of will or desire to build them. The world saw centuries of naval proliferation up to WW2.

cafard 15y ago

a ridiculous and not especially awesome post....

icarus_drowning 15y ago

He also misrepresents the view of Victor Davis Hanson-- I think he's referring to "Carnage and Culture", which has a much more nuanced (and thus far different) argument.

neutronicus 15y ago

In my admittedly ignorant opinion, he uses the terms "maneuver warfare" and "phalanx warfare" so broadly as to make them almost meaningless.

StuffMaster 15y ago

The Mongols could defeat regular armies because they had many thousands of men who lived their lives on horseback, with bow in hand. It's not that they were smarter, it's that they had the option.

troutwine 15y ago
It's also worth noting that the Mongols were turned back by the Germanic tribes because, well, compound bows simply don't work in damp European forests whereas francesca _do_. Phallanx tactics versus maneuver, as the author has it, is meaningless in the face of the inability or unwillingness to adapt to your environment.
- nl 15y ago
  Reference? The Mongols easily won the Battle of Legnica in Poland: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Legnica http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Legnica That's really the most Western of their major battles, and they were turned back by choice, not by losses in battle. Were there any cases where they had anything other than skirmishes with Germanic tribes?
- sedachv 15y ago
  Mongols? Germanic tribes? Damp forests? You have a very interesting view of that period of history.

StuffMaster 15y ago

>nobody wanted to risk their big expensive battleships in such an engagement again This is his only proof that they're useless? Sorry, I need a lot more than that. Anybody who's played Civilization will know that you keep your battleships safe due to their cost, but they're supremely powerful nonetheless.

akdubya 15y ago

Any battle tech that's an order-of-magnitude cheaper to kill than to produce is destined for obsolescence. You can see this happening now with main battle tanks, which are easily knocked out by IEDs and increasingly sophisticated man-portable missiles. It will be interesting to see what happens to the manned air superiority fighter over the next couple of decades now that unmanned drones are being deployed on a wide scale.

gaius 15y ago
Probably nothing. Remember that unmanned drones were used in combat in Vietnam. They were quite short ranged of course, and could only be used for one mission: Sidewinders.
smallblacksun 15y ago
Few M1s have been destroyed or badly damaged by insurgents in Iraq. Their use has declined since the invasion not because they are too vulnerable, but because they are less useful without enemy tanks to engage and using them against infantry in urban environments risks heavy civilian casualties.
- philwelch 15y ago
  Also, they're harder to fit on the streets.
  - hollerith 15y ago
    And they ruin streets.
- akdubya 15y ago
  I was thinking less about the conflict in Iraq than the conflict in and around Israel, where small groups of insurgents have over the past decade mounted increasingly sophisticated attacks on Israeli armor in the open. The deterrent factor here is just as important as the ability to blow stuff up.

pizza_ 15y ago

Hindsight is 20/20. Current missile and nuclear weapons technology obsolete monolithic armored weapons, just like gunpowder and cannons obsoleted medieval castles. No doubt the same argument will be trumpeted across the interplanetary neural net in a few generations against nuclear submarines, ICBMs and capitalistic culture. The answer is: they aren't perfect, but they get the job done.

joeburke 15y ago

Interesting article but the grammar and the typos... ouch. Especially when he's trying to use some uncommon words.

Jd 15y ago

I don't think anyone has pointed this out in a comment yet... What is better with very expensive but obsolete machinery than to people use their machinery to duke it out. Will things explode and sink "at great cost" ? Well yes, that's sort of the point. It is even more costly to keep them afloat and maintained. To those who think this is cruel, European powers periodically fought wars with each other for thousands of years before 1914, they just never were quite as catastrophic (enter chemical weapons and, later, nukes). Hell, the Catholic church tried to ban jousting many times since... you guessed it, people frequently died trying to poke each other with sticks for the sake of scarves from pretty ladies. Hooah!

bitwize 15y ago

If he puts his missiles on rail cars, you haven’t got a chance of hitting them all. So it was, metaphorically, with the actual battlewagon; when it was at the peak of its capabilities, it was overcome by the manoeuvre warfare tactics of the aircraft carrier (which is itself probably made obsolete in real modern warfare by the cruise missile, the internet and the satellite). Don't forget robots! Man, you think the guided missiles in the first Gulf War were cool? Now we can kill people entirely by electromechanical proxy, staying out of the line of fire and incurring little to no risk ourselves! Man, we're living in the future! What a bunch of pussies we are. Like Bill Hicks said, why can't we use this technology to shoot food into the mouths of hungry people instead?

rubergly 15y ago

I had a very hard time taking the article seriously after reading "penii". I hate when people try to sound smart by incorrectly pluralizing this word.

Jd 15y ago

I had an interesting conversation with Martin van Creveld not long ago about fighter jets. Since he is one of the more famous military historians out there, he often gets asked for advice by senior defense personnel. Lots of European governments asked him if they should purchase F22s, etc. from the US. His advice, get UAVs, fighters don't matter any more (He just wrote the definitive book on the history of Air Power, btw). Anyways, no one actually takes his advice. Acquisitions are always busy buying supplies for the last war. Surprise, surprise.

gonzo 15y ago

He seems to have forgotten about the Bismarck http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_battleship_Bismarck http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_battleship_Bismarck true fact: my wife's great uncle, Tuck Smith, is the US pilot who spotted the Bismarck, back when the US (supposedly) wasn't involved in WWII. http://www.navytimes.com/legacy/new/0-NAVYPAPER-1642064.php http://www.navytimes.com/legacy/new/0-NAVYPAPER-1642064.php (Interesting fact, he was flying over Wake island on 12/7/41)

nl 15y ago

Some guy called Napoleon seemed to know a little bit about maneuver warfare, and he was around before battleships. There was this little thing called the Battle of Austerlitz[1] that the author may be interested to read about. Napoleon kind of knew what he was doing. His use of position and movement is actually mentioned in the Wikipeda's article on maneuver warfare [2]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Austerlitz http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Austerlitz [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneuver_warfare#Napoleon.27s_use_of_manoeuvre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneuver_warfare#Napoleon.27s_u...

JabavuAdams 15y ago

> Western culture, abstract thought and artistic development: nothing important has developed since 1919; we’re still reeling from the shock. Information theory? Software? Modern quantum mechanics? Yeah, I know there's been no important stuff except that important stuff.