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Keys to winning high intensity conflicts
- klodolph 4y ago> It is also challenging to produce and transport the mind-boggling mass inaccurate weapons require. “Garden path sentence.”
- readthenotes1 4y agohow so? is "mass inaccurate weapons" a term I'm unfamiliar with?
- jessaustin 4y agoIf you really didn't read this as "the mind-boggling mass that inaccurate weapons require", QED.
- michael1999 4y agoIt is also challenging to produce and transport the mind-boggling mass THAT inaccurate weapons require. The sheer mass of steel and explosives that have to run on railways to the Ukrainian front means inevitable shell-hunger. The war is being fought in a kind of slow-motion since materiel is the limiting reagent. I found the author's explanation helpful to find the wisdom in the fancy high-tech US path.
- amluto 4y agoIt’s hard to partially parse the sentence until the very end. If you remove the word “require”, then “mass” seems more likely to be an adjective, along the lines of “mass destruction” or “mass casualty”. Inserting a “that” would help. …mass that inaccurate…
- pphysch 4y agoYou don't "win" a world war in the nuclear era. Everyone loses, guaranteed.
- hash872 4y agoIndia and Pakistan fought a war in 1999 despite both sides having nuclear weapons, if I'm not mistaken
- pphysch 4y ago"World war" being the operative term. Border skirmishes are not.
- Xylakant 4y agoAfghanistan won a war against both nuclear powers, first against the UDSSR, later against the USA.
- 123pie123 4y agowhen I see statements like this I suspect (disclaimer - I have zero knowledge, apart from reading the news) that america lost the war and definately not.. Afganistan won the war, due to fact there was politics involved in setting the objectives lets face it, if america REALLY wanted to win at all costs (like the british did) Afganistan would be a complete and utter wasteland - but the political costs would have been too high
- Xylakant 4y agoAlmost no war is won by entirely defeating the opponent. Most wars end because the costs of continuing the war exceed the acceptable threshold for one party. The Taliban got what they fought for - they won. (Whether the Taliban represent the majority of the Afghan Population is a separate matter)
- 123pie123 4y agoI agree, but a lot of people seem to confuse the fact that america "losed the war" from a political perspective from a technical perpective people did not 'buy' in to the reason of invading iraq. but from a technical angle america could have obliterated the entire countries of both iraq/ afganistan with out nukes - something USSR could not have done >Almost no war is won by entirely defeating the opponent no convential / historic war has been done like this - yes. but newer weapons / tech could do this. again in theory with the correct politics. Russia has given the world a bit of a wake up. China seems to have bought in to this crazy thinking (I've always thought that China is not very foward thinking) and they do have the politics and tech to wipe out countries like russia wanted to do with UKR
- jessaustin 4y agoLots of this seems plausible at a glance, but overall it is highly theoretical. USA hasn't "won" a war since 1945. That result was mostly determined by USSR. The USA portion of the result was determined by a quickly-assembled force of farmboys and factory workers led by the same rather than by a professional standing army led by the Pentagon. The Pentagon is incapable of developing weapons and tactics that win wars, because for its entire existence it has been judged by a different metric. We should expect conflicts over which the Pentagon has some influence to be extended and made more resource-intensive than even the marketing can justify. The Pentagon always does that, because that's how armaments manufacturers make more money. We should avoid wars in general, but we should especially avoid a world war with China, Russia, India, and the rest of their many allies. We got beaten by the Taliban, but if we fight 3 billion people we'll get curb-stomped.
- hash872 4y agoDidn't the US win the First Gulf War? What else would you call that?
- jessaustin 4y agoIf you win the war you get to go home. USA presence in the Arabian peninsula was cited by ObL as the reason for 9/11. Kuwait does export useful hydrocarbons, but much less than the Kingdom which could have increased production to make up for a temporary pause of Kuwait exports. The pause would have been temporary because Iraq would have restarted the export of Kuwaiti hydrocarbons as soon as possible. If anything, fighting a war disrupted the market more than not fighting it would have. A war that was fought for no reason, that didn't end before causing the most disastrous attack on USA soil since 1814, I would call "dumb".
- HideousKojima 4y agoSeems like a like of armchair general theory-crafting without much substance. Yeah, a $75,000 gravity bomb with some form of guidance to target ships is cheaper than a cruise missile, but a bomber capable of getting within range of a carrier group to drop such a bomb is far more expensive than the cruise missile. And it misses the single most important rule of war: weapons don't win wars, logistics does. See Russia's failed push on Kiev last year for an example of this, or Germany for the entire eastern front of WW2.
- radicalbyte 4y ago..and this is why the American war machine is so effective. Their logistics are absolutely amazing. You know who else is really really good at Logistics? China.
- klooney 4y agoAlso, they have a large and still functional industrial base.
- yamtaddle 4y agoUS industrial production is at or near all-time highs, no?
- gumby 4y agoIn dollar volume yes. In mass of materiel, or flexibility, less so.
- klooney 4y agoThere was a great econtalk episode that I can never dig up claiming that even that was mostly about hedonic adjustments for the quality of Intel chips.
- klooney 4y agoTim Cook: “In the US, you could have a meeting of tooling engineers, and I’m not sure we could fill the room. In China, you could fill multiple football fields" And that story repeats all the way up and down the supply chain. In WW II the USA was basically China- they had a thick supply chain from raw materials up, and could spin up factories because they had experienced people who could bring along new employees. We still think of ourselves as being that country but we're not, and a new serious war would play out with a very different script.
- giraffe_lady 4y agoThe horniness for war machines on this site has just gotten too extreme in the last year. Y'all need to stop fantasizing about the killing machines for entertainment it's bad for your soul.
- samsolomon 4y agoA year ago a war broke out in Europe—it's still happening. Worldwide that has caused an increased interest in war and technologies associated with it.
- crazygringo 4y agoIndeed. Two years ago an interest in tanks and artillery shells was about last on my list, almost a historical curiosity. But suddenly I've become extremely interested, as it's become one of the top geopolitical focus points of our time. But "horniness for war machines" is as far from the truth as you can get. It's really just an interest in what it takes to preserve democracy. We can go for decades of peace and forget that sometimes preserving democracy really does depend on tanks and bullets, when an autocrat decides to attack.
- l33tbro 4y agoPreserving democracy? Ah yes, those fine captains of industry from the Military Industrial Complex. Deeply enmeshed in the fabric of Washington policy and always acting for the benefits of freedom and democracy. "A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes." - Smedley Butler
- tgsovlerkhgsel 4y agoThe war in Ukraine has demonstrated that even if you have no intention to fight a war, an aggressive neighbor may have other ideas, so you don't have a choice other than being ready for it, if you want to continue existing as an independent country. How you're ready for it can vary, but deterrence by having better weapons is one effective way. In the best case, it works and you don't have a war. And if it doesn't, you still have better weapons to end the war - and preferably keep it on the enemy's territory so the destruction happens there and not in your country. Right now, Ukraine has its cities leveled, while Russia is (with a few exceptions) "only" losing military gear and personnel.
- TheGigaChad 4y ago[dead]
- pelasaco 4y agoWe know everything about the US systems, tactics and weapons, but we dont anything about the chinese.. thats for sure an advantage to the chineses..
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- klooney 4y ago> Even if the Russians got to fight in their perfect scenario of an artillery slugfest, the US Army could still defeat the fully-mobilized Soviet Union. US artillery and armor could cut down any combination of human waves and simple tank attacks the Soviets could manage. Important asterisk- this war was never fought and this is all speculation.
- actionfromafar 4y agoAlso, the European NATO/Soviet theatre was supposed to be faught in a nuclear hellscape. The reason BMPs and T-72s are so flimsy, is not because they are "bad". They were designed to be used with ABC packages and crawl through corridors already nuked "clean" by nuclear artillery. Even NATO anti-tank helicoptors would have a hard time going in when there at any moment could be a nuclear fireball in your path. We will never find out if they are any good for what they were designed. Most of them are destroyed now.
- ltbarcly3 4y agoYou are just speculating that its speculation, reality is fundementally unknowable.
- red-iron-pine 4y agoFurthermore this would have changed or been different depending on what stage of the Cold War you were in. Draw downs, shifts to hard fighting in Vietnam, stripping US divisions to supply Israeli forces during the YK War, etc. would have seen very different scenarios play out if shooting started in Europe. By the time of Able Archer it's likely that NATO would have been able to (eventually) outfight USSR/WARPACT forces, but not without huge losses and devastation -- and maybe nuclear war.
- AtlasBarfed 4y agowow is drone warfare going to go under RAPID evolution, but... https://austinvernon.site/blog/starshipsuperweapon.html https://austinvernon.site/blog/starshipsuperweapon.html Nuts and bolts: if the economics mature Starship can deliver kinetic weaponry that is more effective and cheaper than any major artillery round within 30 minutes of anywhere in the world. ... that makes big assumptions about achieving 10$/kg, but likely with the capabilities it enables, the pentagon would be happy with 50-100$/kg. Starship is a pure economic strategic weapon. It is very difficult to engineer some sort of launch platform with such (purported) economics. While the US is usually the one playing loss leader in weapons usage, Starship would reverse this against any nation state. It's not just artillery, imagine drones and troop delivery in 30-60 minutes around the world. BUT, we'll see. Orbital test of Starship missed 2022, it's supposed to be attempted soon? Starship also enables orbital battle platforms with the mass it can load. Alas, militarization of space seems inevitable. One of the fermi filters? everyone has nukes, someone gets to space, and has strategic nuke delivery advantage (you can delivery a nuke from orbit to surface a lot faster than an intercontinental arc), that may trigger the nuke exchange before the space militarization finances a piggybacked space economy.
- KineticLensman 4y ago> imagine drones and troop delivery in 30-60 minutes around the world. To win the fight, you have to get to the fight. Starship re-entry would be challenging in contested air space. > Starship also enables orbital battle platforms with the mass it can load. Some ball bearings in a counter-orbit would be a good asymmetric countermeasure.
- Qem 4y ago> Some ball bearings in a counter-orbit would be a good asymmetric countermeasure. Artificial Kessler syndrome probably the cheapest superweapon available. Probably won't require even an unreasonable amount of bearings. Just enough to shred some satellites do generate more shrapnel.
- ianburrell 4y agoI need to dig into this more cause I generally dislike kinetic weapons cause they are overhyped. But I have a few issues. Starship needs to launch, drop, projectiles, and then land. The problem is without of cross range fuel, it is likely to come within range of the enemy. Who will shoot it down and out the cost of whole Starship. He mentions guidance but guidance is a huge problem with hypersonic missiles and orbital would be worse. Anti-ship are right out but GPS guided is probably doable. He also mentions projectiles but it might be projectile. The problem is that it takes a large projectile to make it to Earth since smaller ones burn up. Smaller things can return from orbit but they use heat shields to slow down; ICBM warheads slow down to Mach 10. I haven't seen any studies about how projectile needs to make it down. Also, using Starship like this is really destabilizing. It looks like a reusable ICBM. Starship can carry hundreds of nuclear warheads. Them coming down looks like a first strike. The enemy has to assume that they are nuclear not kinetic. This is why ideas of conventional ICBM for prompt strike fail cause of the risk.
- _a_a_a_ 4y ago> Improved optics and computing allowed the M1 to fire inexpensive shells accurately for thousands of meters I don't buy it. Optics and computing might well help but you're still dealing with crappy data like quantity and quality of the propellant that throws the shell and you can't account for that. Accuracy of unguided shells doesn't seem high - "An unguided shell will normally land within 267 meters of where it is aimed at maximum howitzer range (18 kilometers)." (https://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htart/articles/20171104.aspx https://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htart/articles/20171104.as...) And of the estimates I've come across, this is one of the more generous in accuracy claimed. Guided shells by comparison aren't cheap - "at $68,000 per [excalibur] shell compared to an $800 unguided M777 shell," (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M982_Excalibur https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M982_Excalibur)
- CapricornNoble 4y agoThere's a huge difference between an M1's high-velocity direct fire weapon firing unitary ammunition at 4km, and a howitzer pushing shells with bagged propellant indirectly at 18km. The author is referring to the accuracy of the former.
- _a_a_a_ 4y agoISWYM, yep
- solarmist 4y agoOh. I was hoping for tips on communication in high-stakes "conflicts."
- rascul 4y agoI saw the title "The Weapons That Win World Wars" and was expecting a list or some information about weapons that won world wars. This does not appear to be that.
- egirl_respecter 4y agoI'm not a fan of a lot of the assumptions and hand-waves deployed in this article. As soon as we get out of theory land and start talking about the artillery fight, things start getting weird. Both the soviets and the US prioritized SPGs, mobility, networking with their artillery. It's just that the soviets and now the Russians had/have a lot more of it at all organizational levels. M777 is a US towed gun at use right now in Ukraine to great effect. He talked a ton about DPICM. A weapon that the US signed a treaty against using and Russia uses constantly. He talked about mass vs precision and speed. Russia has highly networked and automated their artillery killchain. They can go from intelligence gathering to rockets/rounds leaving the barrel in minutes sometimes with very minimal human involvement. This was all the talk since 2014 when Russia started obliterating entire Ukranian battalions with MRLS strikes guided by UAS. The US Army has been talking about an artillery gap, an IRBM gap. This isn't because they're worried about ineffectual ww1 style barrages against static positions, it's because they're worried about highly accurate, lighting fast fire strikes deep into our rear against targets of opportunity, guided by an advanced network of UAS, ELINT, counter battery radars etc. This is why they spent millions sticking an absurdly long barrel into the already ship-of-Theseus style hodge podge of upgrades that is the M109... It's because they've seen pictures from 2014/2015 that look like the highway of death, with roads littered with destroyed vehicles with burnt bloated bodies hanging out of trees. Now lets get down to the real real. Us rapid reaction forces in Europe, in the baltics mostly consist of light and medium brigades using towed guns anyway. Stryker and airborne units. its just the further from theorycrafting to reality, the more out of touch the article becomes. m109 and msta are PEER weapons m1 and T80b, t80bvm, t90b3, t90a are PEER weapons if you like it or not they share the same general features, accuracy, armor, mobility. Differences in their doctrine and TOE are more important and completly missed in this article. >cut down any combination of human waves and simple tank attacks the soviets could manage THE US COPIED THE ENTIRE CONCEPT of operational art from the soviets. Airland battle doctrine was a direct reaction to the fact that the soviet conception of land warfare was operating on a mental level an entire echelon above NATOs tactical obsession. You can argue the pro's and cons of each doctrine, its implementation, levels of training and equipment efficiency for either side you prefer. But 'human wave and simple tank attacks' is just vastly misinformed.
- deepsun 4y ago> The US won World War II Oh here we go again. It's Allies who won. Yes, USSR would not have won WW2 without immense supplies from the US, but they suffered the most. Many European countries, and I'm not sure US would win without USSR. Of course now in Russia they teach that USSR won it almost on its own, and barely even mention the Pacific theater.
- andromeduck 4y ago> Many European countries, and I'm not sure US would win without USSR. Many wouldn't have been invaded either.