7 ms·

From my understanding of the period, one might describe WWI as "anticipated, but not comprehended;" one of the catalysts for the war was a general understanding

From my understanding of the period, one might describe WWI as "anticipated, but not comprehended;" one of the catalysts for the war was a general understanding on the European continent that France and Germany were going to re-litigate the Franco-Prussian war at some point, as well as an understanding in Germany that time was not on their side due to the demographic changes in France - higher relative population growth - and economic changes in the Russian Empire allowing for more rapid and effective military deployment. However, the types of wars in which the Great Powers of the time were involved - and from which their military planners derived their assumptions about war with modern weaponry - were mainly colonial conflicts against relatively under-armed opponents, eg. the Boer war, which the Great Powers typically "won." The outcome of the Russo-Japanese war (1904-05) was shocking enough to change the calculus for planning the European war, as Russia was now seen as a less able ally for France... and on and on such analysis could go! With respect to this article, I would take the lesson of the early 20th century and WWI and ask: Is there any major geopolitical development that is generally assumed to be inevitable, and how might modern technology upset the assumptions of the powers-that-be in their planned response to that event?

Nomentatus 6y ago
The Russo-Japanese war (1904-05) illustrated both the strength of trenches, and how they might be overcome. But the foreign military observers had all gone home before things became really interesting.
- emidln 6y ago
  The American Civil War demonstrated the horrors of trench warfare back in the 1860s. The penultimate Union campaign in which Grant took Petersburg, Virginia and Richmond, Virginia was primarily a 10 month long series of trench maneuvers costing some 70,000 casualties on both sides. In particular, The Battle of the Crater would play on repeat 50 years laters as a mine opened a hole in the line only for thousands to be slaughtered trying to go through it. A similar scene played out a year prior when Grant assaulted Vicksburg[2]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Petersburg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Petersburg [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Crater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Crater [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Vicksburg#Crater_at_the_Third_Louisiana_Redan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Vicksburg#Crater_at_t...
  - Nomentatus 6y ago
    Yes, I've said the same, earlier, here. Smokeless powder created trenches.
    - emidln 6y ago
      The American Civil War in the 1860s didn't feature smokeless powder, which wasn't produced in a stable manner until 1884.
      - bluGill 6y ago
        It wasn't the poweder it was the rifle. Before the rifle you could have armies face each other in a sword type formation and shoot, so few bullets would hit that this wasn't that costly in lives. By the civil war a good shooter could always expect to hit where he aimed. The civil war sometimes had 3 people reloading guns for the marksman. The faster loading guns to come latter just eliminated that. Even today, the machine gun isnisn't expected to hit. Sharpshooters are one shot one kill and take time to aim. The machine gun is about keeping the enemy undercover while your guys do something. Anyone who dies in machines gun fire it was their own stupid fault.
        emidln 6y ago
        > It wasn't the poweder it was the rifle. Before the rifle you could have armies face each other in a sword type formation and shoot, so few bullets would hit that this wasn't that costly in lives. By the civil war a good shooter could always expect to hit where he aimed. While certain rifles were fairly accurate on man-sized targets at 100-150 yards (Springfield 1861 being the most common), being able to visually identify a target at 100+ yards, even at 50 yards didn't matter much after the shooting started. The black powder from a mass of rifles causes a thick fog to form on each side, obscuring individual targets. This leads to a lot of massed volley firing tactics (and most of the rifled muskets used were lethal to 300-400 yards) similar to what were used with smoothbore muskets of the previous 100 years. You can read a lot of stories were officers were picked off behind the lines or when riding between lines, largely because of the accuracy of these for a handful of shots (and a well-trained individual could fire 3-5 shots per minute), but this accuracy simply didn't matter once the literal fog of war set in. The salient difference in technology between Napoleonic conflicts and the ACS is the rifled barrel both in small arms and in field artillery. The reason this mattered was the Napoleonic tactics were formed with the idea that outside 100 yards is relatively safe. A mass of bodies 400 yards away poses no threat, so you can casually march forward. The most famous example of this backfiring is Picket's Charge on the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg. Fifteen thousand men plodded forward for several hundred yards while being mowed down by masking fire from rifled muskets. Picket's subordinates ordered the quickstep and the charge a bit earlier than convention (by 1863, both sides understood the tactics they had learned at military academies to be somewhat outdated and almost succeeded for it). This wasn't done soon enough, and resulted in their attack failing due to lack of manpower. This same masking fire made assaulting trenches nearly impossible. Sappers/miners and siege artillery were required to poke holes in the lines, and in most cases this wasn't enough. The tactics that worked were spreading thin and outflanking the lines. It's worth noting that there were some engagements that did show the power of rapid firing machine guns and rifles with magazines to offer less reloading time. The Gatling Gun, and a few similar machine guns were designed and first deployed in the ACS. While these were rare (typically purchased privately by commanders or supporters instead of being government issue), they were devastating when in operation. The first repeating rifles were deployed effectively (again, privately purchased) by dismounted calvary at the Battle of Petersburg to offer unprecedented firepower from a small group.
Nomentatus 6y ago
>> Is there any major geopolitical development that is generally assumed to be inevitable, and how might modern technology upset the assumptions of the powers-that-be in their planned response to that event? My guess: Asymmetric warfare suddenly becoming very weak. I think there's more than one way that could happen; but won't say more lest it cause more things to hit the fan than are hitting now.
- salawat 6y ago
  I see you've been paying attention to why surveillance states becoming the norm really matters.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    The increase in surveillance states is potentially countered by the increased velocity by which ideas can spread and people can communicate with each other. We don't yet know which way things will tip.
    - salawat 6y ago
      Nah. That doesn't counter it, because that sword cuts both ways. You know the thing I don't want you to know, but I can figure out you know it just as fast.
      - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
        They can't kick down all the doors. If ideology spreads faster than doors can be kicked down the increased velocity of information is a net win for the offense.
        wait_a_minute 6y ago
        And I would die on the hill of plugging the 2nd Amendment as a damn near sacred and last insurance policy for the average person. That it is attacked when it's the obvious conclusion or tool of choice for the scenario you two are describing in this thread, is just evidence that it must continue to exist.
solresol 6y ago
Both China and the USA think that any invasion into their territories will inevitably fail because of the strength of their armies and because of the long supply chains that their enemy would need to maintain to hold a position. Both sides also believe that the other side will inevitably fail because the other side's political system and ideology is so broken. But because of the first point they both feel confident that the collapse of the other is going to be containable and controllable. The technological developments (even if morally wrong) are autonomous fighting vehicles that rain mayhem and destruction; and engineered viruses. A failed state can still cause the other side to lose a war, leaving no winners.
- georgeecollins 6y ago
  That is a brilliant summary of the US China strategic situation! I normally think of it from the US point of view-- China can't really invade us, a war would be catastrophic for them economically. You made me realize how symmetrical that thinking is. Yikes!
  - bluGill 6y ago
    A us China war would be ecconimc suicide to the wrold ecconomy. To the point that countries we think of as poor come out ahead. (Where would Brazil cast their alliance is an interesting question, as one of the few powerful countries that could make a difference that isn't commited already. Whoever wins will have lost a lot.
    - bohadi 6y ago
      Definitely, to mix metaphors 'when the mighty quarrel the meek inherit'.
      - lostlogin 6y ago
        Are there examples of this?
        6y ago
ben_w 6y ago
Predicting that some tech will surprise us is easy, predicting which one and how is almost impossible — in part because any obvious consequence will be defended against. I don’t expect, yet also wouldn’t be surprised if, an Islamic fundamentalist group genetically modifies a pig-specific retrovirus so that any pig which catches it will start internally producing enough capsaicin that nobody will even want to eat pork. I do expect software based attacks to achieve government goals. I would be only a little surprised by private nukes or lunar mass drivers. If mind-uploading becomes a thing, I expect totally novel forms of interrogation in addition to virtual hells (a la Surface Detail by Iain M Banks), and several other legal and political messes outside the scope of this thread. 3D printing, protein engineering, AI controlled mining robots, etc. will lead to synthetic von Neumann machines that radically transform industry, giving small states or mid-sized criminal gangs significant war-fighting capacity. AI can out-strategise humans. Who trusts it, wins — unless the AI was made wrong, in which case who trusts the AI, loses. Nobody will know if the AI is right or not until too late. A/B testing propaganda, so perhaps you can fool all of the people all of the time. Most of these are better as Hollywood plots than as real concerns. Whatever does eventually happen will seem obvious after the event, but will seem like science fiction right up until that point.
- pjc50 6y ago
  The pig thing is absolutely ridiculous. > A/B testing propaganda, so perhaps you can fool all of the people all of the time. Dominic Cummings boasted about doing this for Brexit: it was where the "£350m for the NHS" slogan came from.
  - eric-hu 6y ago
    > The pig thing is absolutely ridiculous. That was my first thought as well. My second thought was that the parent got it backwards; self spiced pork would sell like sliced bread.
    - Mordisquitos 6y ago
      I agree that I would also thoroughly enjoy self-spiced pork (hopefully the retrovirus also mutates pigs' TRPV1 protein to be the bird variant, which is unaffected by capsaicin)... but was it really the commenter who got it backwards? Or is it the hypothetical Islamist fundamentalist group who does, with their lack of understanding of consumer preferences causing them to not realise the paradoxical consequences of their action in this scenario?
abetusk 6y ago
Interesting. Yes. AI. I'm reminded of a passage in Neuromancer: "Screaming Fist." "Famous. Don't they teach you history these days? Great bloody postwar political football, that was. Watergated all to hell and back. Your brass, Case, your Sprawlside brass in, where was it, McLean? In the bunkers, all of that. . . great scandal. Wasted a fair bit of patriotic young flesh in order to test some new technology. They knew about the Russians' defenses, it came out later. Knew about the emps, magnetic pulse weapons. Sent these fellows in regardless, just to see." Deane shrugged. "Turkey shoot for Ivan."
- neffy 6y ago
  It was quite similar. Generals like Haig the Incompetent, had very little reliable information what was happening in the major offences on the German side. So when the massive French and British losses piled up, they assumed that this meant that German losses were as bad or worse. (They weren't) And the consequence of that at the middle army management level was bragging rights about how many of your men you'd managed to get killed. Source: Hochschild, To End all Wars.
cpleppert 6y ago
>> demographic changes in France - higher relative population growth I think you have it exactly backwards. France had a significantly slower population growth. To give one example of how this impacted the military caculus: Germany was able to easily expand its army in 1911 and 1913 and still have a large reserve pool of manpower but France had to increase the term of service from 2 to 3 years and expand its conscription to almost the entire adult male population of fighting age; which led to riots and political chaos. At the time of the outbreak the French army had been expanded so rapidly that training had to be cut significantly. >> However, the types of wars in which the Great Powers of the time were involved - and from which their military planners derived their assumptions about war with modern weaponry - were mainly colonial conflicts against relatively under-armed opponents, eg. the Boer war, which the Great Powers typically "won." The outcome of the Russo-Japanese war (1904-05) was shocking enough to change the calculus for planning the European war, as Russia was now seen as a less able ally for France... and on and on such analysis could go! I would strongly disagree. Russia lost the Russo-Japanese war mostly due to inept military execution and the difficulty of troop transportation through an incomplete Trans-Siberian railway; hardly relevant to a european total war. You could argue( and some less astute observers at the time did) that Japan's victory through aggressive assaults on static russian positions 'proved' that offensive power would carry the day to a decisive conclusion.
dirtyid 6y ago
>Is there any major geopolitical development that is generally assumed to be inevitable, and how might modern technology upset the assumptions of the powers-that-be in their planned response to that event? PRC reclaiming Taiwan. Probably biggest friction point for hot war between great powers in 5-30 year time scale. Technologic assumptions is ability to complete / disrupt kill chains of modern anti ship missiles and implications on expensive naval assets to maintain hegemony. My long term assumption is that cost benefit analysis will favour missiles. Interception typically requires multiple equally expensive interception vehicles + limited magazine depth means navies outside of friendly A2AD will be difficult to sustain long term. Right now it's a battle between unverified Chinese ability to complete kill chain which requires a host of external inputs versus US ability to shoot down increasingly sophisticated missiles. I think technology is going to make kill chain increasingly irrelevant, cheap disposable UAVs + machine learning means eventually there's going to be cheap monitoring systems and shortened local kill chain - no need to use satellite or other sensors to track target if processing shifts onboard. I remember someone speculating about kamikaze commercial drones that target airplane intakes autonomously with sufficient training dataset. My personal assumption is past the missile/interception conundrum is a world where naval force projection is supplanted by system of global UAV networks and mutual air superiority - it's easier to shoot down manned vehicles than unmanned because unmanned doesn't have to limit maneuverability to keep meat bag alive. Basically a status quo where defense becomes impossible. I'm imagining a conventional UAV first strike that wipes out an adversaries ability to make war, but in context of mutual air superiority between large power blocks, this works out to conventional MAD where starting war means immediately losing capability to sustain a war. Flournoy said she wanted Pentagon to develop capability to sink entire Chinese Navy in 72 hours. Imagine that but for assets and industrial base, in a world of UAVs, where more money goes into acquisition costs, I can imagine smaller countries being able to build sufficient arsenal to upset balance and unseat hegemons.
- bluGill 6y ago
  The counter to that is missiles have limited fuel. Those shooting them down have a larger fuel budget because the missile is coming to a known target, and forcing the missile off course is as good as destorying it.
inglor_cz 6y ago
Interestingly, the trench war episodes during the Russo-Japanese war (siege of Port Arthur) were a good demo-version of the Western Front ten years later. The observers from the West were very clear in their warnings towards the General Staff back home that the combination of barbed wire and rapid firepower was massively deadly and led to stalemates. Also, that cavalry was becoming outright obsolete in such conditions. They were mostly ignored because they were young.
- tomasdore 6y ago
  There just wasn't another way in sight. Everyone knew what didn't work. Nobody knew what did. The tech wasn't yet there for tanks - those that were built for WW1 looked impressive but changed little, like bringing elephants to a battle.
  - inglor_cz 6y ago
    Unfortunately the belligerent parties were all too good in propaganda for their own sake. Even if the war was going nowhere, the civilian population was whipped into such hatred of the other that "old fashioned" peace talks just weren't on the table.

Nomentatus 6y ago

The Russo-Japanese war (1904-05) illustrated both the strength of trenches, and how they might be overcome. But the foreign military observers had all gone home before things became really interesting.

emidln 6y ago
The American Civil War demonstrated the horrors of trench warfare back in the 1860s. The penultimate Union campaign in which Grant took Petersburg, Virginia and Richmond, Virginia was primarily a 10 month long series of trench maneuvers costing some 70,000 casualties on both sides. In particular, The Battle of the Crater would play on repeat 50 years laters as a mine opened a hole in the line only for thousands to be slaughtered trying to go through it. A similar scene played out a year prior when Grant assaulted Vicksburg[2]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Petersburg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Petersburg [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Crater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Crater [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Vicksburg#Crater_at_the_Third_Louisiana_Redan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Vicksburg#Crater_at_t...
- Nomentatus 6y ago
  Yes, I've said the same, earlier, here. Smokeless powder created trenches.
  - emidln 6y ago
    The American Civil War in the 1860s didn't feature smokeless powder, which wasn't produced in a stable manner until 1884.
    - bluGill 6y ago
      It wasn't the poweder it was the rifle. Before the rifle you could have armies face each other in a sword type formation and shoot, so few bullets would hit that this wasn't that costly in lives. By the civil war a good shooter could always expect to hit where he aimed. The civil war sometimes had 3 people reloading guns for the marksman. The faster loading guns to come latter just eliminated that. Even today, the machine gun isnisn't expected to hit. Sharpshooters are one shot one kill and take time to aim. The machine gun is about keeping the enemy undercover while your guys do something. Anyone who dies in machines gun fire it was their own stupid fault.
      - emidln 6y ago
        > It wasn't the poweder it was the rifle. Before the rifle you could have armies face each other in a sword type formation and shoot, so few bullets would hit that this wasn't that costly in lives. By the civil war a good shooter could always expect to hit where he aimed. While certain rifles were fairly accurate on man-sized targets at 100-150 yards (Springfield 1861 being the most common), being able to visually identify a target at 100+ yards, even at 50 yards didn't matter much after the shooting started. The black powder from a mass of rifles causes a thick fog to form on each side, obscuring individual targets. This leads to a lot of massed volley firing tactics (and most of the rifled muskets used were lethal to 300-400 yards) similar to what were used with smoothbore muskets of the previous 100 years. You can read a lot of stories were officers were picked off behind the lines or when riding between lines, largely because of the accuracy of these for a handful of shots (and a well-trained individual could fire 3-5 shots per minute), but this accuracy simply didn't matter once the literal fog of war set in. The salient difference in technology between Napoleonic conflicts and the ACS is the rifled barrel both in small arms and in field artillery. The reason this mattered was the Napoleonic tactics were formed with the idea that outside 100 yards is relatively safe. A mass of bodies 400 yards away poses no threat, so you can casually march forward. The most famous example of this backfiring is Picket's Charge on the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg. Fifteen thousand men plodded forward for several hundred yards while being mowed down by masking fire from rifled muskets. Picket's subordinates ordered the quickstep and the charge a bit earlier than convention (by 1863, both sides understood the tactics they had learned at military academies to be somewhat outdated and almost succeeded for it). This wasn't done soon enough, and resulted in their attack failing due to lack of manpower. This same masking fire made assaulting trenches nearly impossible. Sappers/miners and siege artillery were required to poke holes in the lines, and in most cases this wasn't enough. The tactics that worked were spreading thin and outflanking the lines. It's worth noting that there were some engagements that did show the power of rapid firing machine guns and rifles with magazines to offer less reloading time. The Gatling Gun, and a few similar machine guns were designed and first deployed in the ACS. While these were rare (typically purchased privately by commanders or supporters instead of being government issue), they were devastating when in operation. The first repeating rifles were deployed effectively (again, privately purchased) by dismounted calvary at the Battle of Petersburg to offer unprecedented firepower from a small group.

Nomentatus 6y ago

>> Is there any major geopolitical development that is generally assumed to be inevitable, and how might modern technology upset the assumptions of the powers-that-be in their planned response to that event? My guess: Asymmetric warfare suddenly becoming very weak. I think there's more than one way that could happen; but won't say more lest it cause more things to hit the fan than are hitting now.

salawat 6y ago
I see you've been paying attention to why surveillance states becoming the norm really matters.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  The increase in surveillance states is potentially countered by the increased velocity by which ideas can spread and people can communicate with each other. We don't yet know which way things will tip.
  - salawat 6y ago
    Nah. That doesn't counter it, because that sword cuts both ways. You know the thing I don't want you to know, but I can figure out you know it just as fast.
    - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
      They can't kick down all the doors. If ideology spreads faster than doors can be kicked down the increased velocity of information is a net win for the offense.
      - wait_a_minute 6y ago
        And I would die on the hill of plugging the 2nd Amendment as a damn near sacred and last insurance policy for the average person. That it is attacked when it's the obvious conclusion or tool of choice for the scenario you two are describing in this thread, is just evidence that it must continue to exist.

solresol 6y ago

Both China and the USA think that any invasion into their territories will inevitably fail because of the strength of their armies and because of the long supply chains that their enemy would need to maintain to hold a position. Both sides also believe that the other side will inevitably fail because the other side's political system and ideology is so broken. But because of the first point they both feel confident that the collapse of the other is going to be containable and controllable. The technological developments (even if morally wrong) are autonomous fighting vehicles that rain mayhem and destruction; and engineered viruses. A failed state can still cause the other side to lose a war, leaving no winners.

georgeecollins 6y ago
That is a brilliant summary of the US China strategic situation! I normally think of it from the US point of view-- China can't really invade us, a war would be catastrophic for them economically. You made me realize how symmetrical that thinking is. Yikes!
- bluGill 6y ago
  A us China war would be ecconimc suicide to the wrold ecconomy. To the point that countries we think of as poor come out ahead. (Where would Brazil cast their alliance is an interesting question, as one of the few powerful countries that could make a difference that isn't commited already. Whoever wins will have lost a lot.
  - bohadi 6y ago
    Definitely, to mix metaphors 'when the mighty quarrel the meek inherit'.
    - lostlogin 6y ago
      Are there examples of this?
      - 6y ago

ben_w 6y ago

Predicting that some tech will surprise us is easy, predicting which one and how is almost impossible — in part because any obvious consequence will be defended against. I don’t expect, yet also wouldn’t be surprised if, an Islamic fundamentalist group genetically modifies a pig-specific retrovirus so that any pig which catches it will start internally producing enough capsaicin that nobody will even want to eat pork. I do expect software based attacks to achieve government goals. I would be only a little surprised by private nukes or lunar mass drivers. If mind-uploading becomes a thing, I expect totally novel forms of interrogation in addition to virtual hells (a la Surface Detail by Iain M Banks), and several other legal and political messes outside the scope of this thread. 3D printing, protein engineering, AI controlled mining robots, etc. will lead to synthetic von Neumann machines that radically transform industry, giving small states or mid-sized criminal gangs significant war-fighting capacity. AI can out-strategise humans. Who trusts it, wins — unless the AI was made wrong, in which case who trusts the AI, loses. Nobody will know if the AI is right or not until too late. A/B testing propaganda, so perhaps you can fool all of the people all of the time. Most of these are better as Hollywood plots than as real concerns. Whatever does eventually happen will seem obvious after the event, but will seem like science fiction right up until that point.

pjc50 6y ago
The pig thing is absolutely ridiculous. > A/B testing propaganda, so perhaps you can fool all of the people all of the time. Dominic Cummings boasted about doing this for Brexit: it was where the "£350m for the NHS" slogan came from.
- eric-hu 6y ago
  > The pig thing is absolutely ridiculous. That was my first thought as well. My second thought was that the parent got it backwards; self spiced pork would sell like sliced bread.
  - Mordisquitos 6y ago
    I agree that I would also thoroughly enjoy self-spiced pork (hopefully the retrovirus also mutates pigs' TRPV1 protein to be the bird variant, which is unaffected by capsaicin)... but was it really the commenter who got it backwards? Or is it the hypothetical Islamist fundamentalist group who does, with their lack of understanding of consumer preferences causing them to not realise the paradoxical consequences of their action in this scenario?

abetusk 6y ago

Interesting. Yes. AI. I'm reminded of a passage in Neuromancer: "Screaming Fist." "Famous. Don't they teach you history these days? Great bloody postwar political football, that was. Watergated all to hell and back. Your brass, Case, your Sprawlside brass in, where was it, McLean? In the bunkers, all of that. . . great scandal. Wasted a fair bit of patriotic young flesh in order to test some new technology. They knew about the Russians' defenses, it came out later. Knew about the emps, magnetic pulse weapons. Sent these fellows in regardless, just to see." Deane shrugged. "Turkey shoot for Ivan."

neffy 6y ago
It was quite similar. Generals like Haig the Incompetent, had very little reliable information what was happening in the major offences on the German side. So when the massive French and British losses piled up, they assumed that this meant that German losses were as bad or worse. (They weren't) And the consequence of that at the middle army management level was bragging rights about how many of your men you'd managed to get killed. Source: Hochschild, To End all Wars.

cpleppert 6y ago

>> demographic changes in France - higher relative population growth I think you have it exactly backwards. France had a significantly slower population growth. To give one example of how this impacted the military caculus: Germany was able to easily expand its army in 1911 and 1913 and still have a large reserve pool of manpower but France had to increase the term of service from 2 to 3 years and expand its conscription to almost the entire adult male population of fighting age; which led to riots and political chaos. At the time of the outbreak the French army had been expanded so rapidly that training had to be cut significantly. >> However, the types of wars in which the Great Powers of the time were involved - and from which their military planners derived their assumptions about war with modern weaponry - were mainly colonial conflicts against relatively under-armed opponents, eg. the Boer war, which the Great Powers typically "won." The outcome of the Russo-Japanese war (1904-05) was shocking enough to change the calculus for planning the European war, as Russia was now seen as a less able ally for France... and on and on such analysis could go! I would strongly disagree. Russia lost the Russo-Japanese war mostly due to inept military execution and the difficulty of troop transportation through an incomplete Trans-Siberian railway; hardly relevant to a european total war. You could argue( and some less astute observers at the time did) that Japan's victory through aggressive assaults on static russian positions 'proved' that offensive power would carry the day to a decisive conclusion.

dirtyid 6y ago

>Is there any major geopolitical development that is generally assumed to be inevitable, and how might modern technology upset the assumptions of the powers-that-be in their planned response to that event? PRC reclaiming Taiwan. Probably biggest friction point for hot war between great powers in 5-30 year time scale. Technologic assumptions is ability to complete / disrupt kill chains of modern anti ship missiles and implications on expensive naval assets to maintain hegemony. My long term assumption is that cost benefit analysis will favour missiles. Interception typically requires multiple equally expensive interception vehicles + limited magazine depth means navies outside of friendly A2AD will be difficult to sustain long term. Right now it's a battle between unverified Chinese ability to complete kill chain which requires a host of external inputs versus US ability to shoot down increasingly sophisticated missiles. I think technology is going to make kill chain increasingly irrelevant, cheap disposable UAVs + machine learning means eventually there's going to be cheap monitoring systems and shortened local kill chain - no need to use satellite or other sensors to track target if processing shifts onboard. I remember someone speculating about kamikaze commercial drones that target airplane intakes autonomously with sufficient training dataset. My personal assumption is past the missile/interception conundrum is a world where naval force projection is supplanted by system of global UAV networks and mutual air superiority - it's easier to shoot down manned vehicles than unmanned because unmanned doesn't have to limit maneuverability to keep meat bag alive. Basically a status quo where defense becomes impossible. I'm imagining a conventional UAV first strike that wipes out an adversaries ability to make war, but in context of mutual air superiority between large power blocks, this works out to conventional MAD where starting war means immediately losing capability to sustain a war. Flournoy said she wanted Pentagon to develop capability to sink entire Chinese Navy in 72 hours. Imagine that but for assets and industrial base, in a world of UAVs, where more money goes into acquisition costs, I can imagine smaller countries being able to build sufficient arsenal to upset balance and unseat hegemons.

bluGill 6y ago
The counter to that is missiles have limited fuel. Those shooting them down have a larger fuel budget because the missile is coming to a known target, and forcing the missile off course is as good as destorying it.

inglor_cz 6y ago

Interestingly, the trench war episodes during the Russo-Japanese war (siege of Port Arthur) were a good demo-version of the Western Front ten years later. The observers from the West were very clear in their warnings towards the General Staff back home that the combination of barbed wire and rapid firepower was massively deadly and led to stalemates. Also, that cavalry was becoming outright obsolete in such conditions. They were mostly ignored because they were young.

tomasdore 6y ago
There just wasn't another way in sight. Everyone knew what didn't work. Nobody knew what did. The tech wasn't yet there for tanks - those that were built for WW1 looked impressive but changed little, like bringing elephants to a battle.
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  Unfortunately the belligerent parties were all too good in propaganda for their own sake. Even if the war was going nowhere, the civilian population was whipped into such hatred of the other that "old fashioned" peace talks just weren't on the table.