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I wouldn't be surprised if the man hours per equipped soldier its much higher in a modern army. If you account for all the individual bits and bops, plus vehicl

by tokai 4y ago

I wouldn't be surprised if the man hours per equipped soldier its much higher in a modern army. If you account for all the individual bits and bops, plus vehicles and modern weapon systems. That would follow the trend from the last +100 years where the price tag for the individual soldier sky rocketed.[0] [0]https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna21105586 https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna21105586

notahacker 4y ago
The other interesting angle is if you measure it per population unit defended, on the basis the point of all the heavy equipment is the ability to win wars without having to call up a particularly large fraction of the population to fight in them (the Romans are also outliers in history for ruling a large population with a relatively small skilled standing army rather than mass conscription) But still not convinced that comes out at lower cost than the Romans. Lucky we've got a bit more productive capacity not devoted to producing food and basic infrastructure than they did...
- jabl 4y ago
  IIRC there's a long series on the acoup blog referenced elsewhere in this discussion, that deals with the logistics of moving and feeding an army in pre-modern times. Tl;dr: When you're limited to beasts and wagons, the possible size of your army is severely curtailed. Also foraging for food (again, with beasts and wagons there's only so much food you can transport over any non trivial distance) puts a quite low limit on the size of an army you can have in an area. IOW, the modern mass army enabled by conscription is also dependent on a modern logistics system to supply them.
skybrian 4y ago
I’m no expert, but it’s my understanding that modern war uses huge amounts of ammunition for suppressive fire.
ElevenLathe 4y ago
This is true, but there are a lot more hours available now than then. Global supply chains mean a modern "legion" can draw from the labor of 8 billion people. Those workers live longer lives, and far far fewer of them are working in agriculture just to keep themselves fed. This is before factoring in their productivity -- an hour of 2023 globalized labor is presumably many times more productive than an hour of 500 BCE Roman labor.

by tokai 4y ago

notahacker 4y ago

The other interesting angle is if you measure it per population unit defended, on the basis the point of all the heavy equipment is the ability to win wars without having to call up a particularly large fraction of the population to fight in them (the Romans are also outliers in history for ruling a large population with a relatively small skilled standing army rather than mass conscription) But still not convinced that comes out at lower cost than the Romans. Lucky we've got a bit more productive capacity not devoted to producing food and basic infrastructure than they did...

jabl 4y ago
IIRC there's a long series on the acoup blog referenced elsewhere in this discussion, that deals with the logistics of moving and feeding an army in pre-modern times. Tl;dr: When you're limited to beasts and wagons, the possible size of your army is severely curtailed. Also foraging for food (again, with beasts and wagons there's only so much food you can transport over any non trivial distance) puts a quite low limit on the size of an army you can have in an area. IOW, the modern mass army enabled by conscription is also dependent on a modern logistics system to supply them.

skybrian 4y ago

I’m no expert, but it’s my understanding that modern war uses huge amounts of ammunition for suppressive fire.

ElevenLathe 4y ago

This is true, but there are a lot more hours available now than then. Global supply chains mean a modern "legion" can draw from the labor of 8 billion people. Those workers live longer lives, and far far fewer of them are working in agriculture just to keep themselves fed. This is before factoring in their productivity -- an hour of 2023 globalized labor is presumably many times more productive than an hour of 500 BCE Roman labor.