8 ms·

Lasers or Longbows? A Paradox of Military Technology (2010)

30 points by MichaMeier 3y ago

MichaMeier 3y ago
Modern military technology seems to become too costly. Recent conflicts in the middle east seem to indicate that low-cost approaches can have some terribly effective successes against much more sophisticated militaries.
- dredmorbius 3y ago
  NB: HN frowns on general article summaries: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39187161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39187161> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39180235 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39180235> Appropriate practice: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39213144 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39213144>
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- dmoy 3y ago
  The US military has known this for a long time, it just chooses to bury its head in the sand and ignore it. See e.g. MC02 where they lost to opfor with what was literally like a cheaply thrown together zerg rush, and then just reset the scenario for a do-over.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    Ah, that one war game. Reality is more complicated than that, as all wars since WW2 have shown us. I agree so, not all lessons from that particular wargame seem to have been learned. Calling what mounted to a quite brilliant, unconventional strategy a "cheaply thrown together zerg rush" is just blatantly wrong so.
  - sornaensis 3y ago
    MC02 had a lot of problems but calling it a zerg rush exposes your ignorance-- it was a very sophisticated and well-coordinated surprise attack. The people running the wargame rejected the outcome as a likely tactic to be used by the hypothetical adversary and guess what, they have been proven right, see: the war in iraq. The iraqi army completely failed to hold initiative against the coalition or organize coherent resistance nevermind launch a coordinated surprise attack ahead of the invasion. The other aspect that is missed in criticisms of this particular wargame is the fact that there were specific doctrine elements that were to be tested-- now the claimed outcome of those can be debated, for instance the fact that opfor had many restrictions on how they were allowed to employ their anti air defenses-- but a wargame is NOT meant to be a giant game of paintball where when one side gets hit they just pack up and go home, that would be incredibly wasteful. In many cases you have formations planning and training for months to participate in the exercise. The purpose is testing out many different aspects of doctrine, and often times that involves 'ignoring' results of one part of the wargame.
    - dmoy 3y ago
      Cheap as in material cost, not cheap as in subpar tactics. No doubt the Marine dude in charge of that was very good at strategy, but by definition he had less resources for the exercise do anything he did would have to be cheaply thrown together. And a successful zerg rush kinda has to be well coordinated, with pretty tight timing, otherwise it doesn't work. It wasn't meant negatively. Maybe I've just watched way too much OGN StarCraft. That's precisely why I'm calling it a zerg rush. It's cheaper units, en masse, defeating a technology and cost-wise much more expensive foe. You make a good point about the reset though, it would be a waste of resources to not reset at that point.
      - dmoy 3y ago
        Maybe there's some negative context I'm missing about the phrase zerg rush. I like zerg rushes, they're difficult to execute in high level competition, and there's comparatively fewer dominant zerg players (compared the one zerg bonjwa savior vs like alllll the terran from the heyday of sc1)
- thriftwy 3y ago
  Modern consumer drones are of great use now - these do not cost that much but are basically only produced in China. FPV drones can almost be crafted locally, though, using off the shelf components.
  - stavros 3y ago
    Nothing "almost" about it, they're very easy to build. I've built a few of them.
  - ovi256 3y ago
    > FPV drones can almost be crafted locally, though, using off the shelf components. The COTS components are all made in China. That's why no Western military is planning to use them in wartime - that supply chain is depending on the good will of an adversary.
    - thriftwy 3y ago
      They're going to have a very hard time then. Your military has a small number of larger and way more expensive drones which require specialized training. Your adversary also has a large number of cheap Chinese drones and the expertise to use them is widespread. Guess who gets a grenade in their tank hatch and who gets their mortar fire corrected. They will be sitting ducks to FPV unless they have enough electronic warfare to reliably close the entirety of 200 km front. On Ukrainian front both sides go as far as to install CCTV to watch their adversaries' movement while in their improvised bunker. These are also civilian systems which get delivered to the front by volunteers. Ukrainian war is notably BYOD. It helps that both sides figured out to pay good money to soldiers on the ground.
- dgan 3y ago
  While Ukrainian conflict shows the opposite?
  - thriftwy 3y ago
    Does it? FPVs and Lancet drones and anti-ship missiles and Shahed/Geran' reliably show their ability to hit many of orders of magnitude value targets. The future of the warfare is when you have no high-value targets at all on the battlefield and everything is spread out as evenly as possible.
    - geraldhh 3y ago
      > The future of the warfare is when you have no high-value targets at all on the battlefield and everything is spread out as evenly as possible. that would put the utmost importance on communication and orchestration
  - gpderetta 3y ago
    I think it is more complicated. Both sides are consuming huge quantities of cheap artillery, drones, SAM, anti-tank mines and vehicles. HIMARS and smart artillery shells can make up for differences in fire powers, but only up to a point. Better tanks and IFV increase crew survivability, but they still get taken out of combats by drones, artillery and mines. I'm sure Ukraine air force would love long range AA missiles (to counter the Russian ones) and stealth planes to avoid SAM (but Russians are not using theirs, probably because they suck, but still...).
    - jojobas 3y ago
      Artillery wasn't cheap in WW1 and it isn't cheap now. Dumb 155mm howitzer shells are ~$3k apiece. The cheapest SAMs (ex-Soviet MANPADs) are easily 20 times that.
      - badpun 3y ago
        > Dumb 155mm howitzer shells are ~$3k apiece. In the West. In Russia (according to NYT piece), it's $600.
- loceng 3y ago
  The rent seeking aspect of the any industrial complex is driven by manufactured consent, for politicians to pillage the public coffers they have access to, and so it's heavily overpriced - the price not driven by free market but by war profiteering. In Elon Musk biography by Isaacson, Elon explains the importance to why he sued NASA on behalf of SpaceX - in regards to the $227 million sole-source contract NASA awarded to Kistler in 2004; the strength or weight of the importance here outweighed any personal-emotional feelings and relationships he had, he stuck to his guns of seeing the corruption and understanding the negative impact and unfairness to SpaceX - perhaps selfish in nature but if Elon's nature is for fairness and justice, long live Elon. But yes, save blanket bombing a whole territory, guerilla warfare with necessity-survival will lead to the most creative possibilities.
- hef19898 3y ago
  Asymetric warfare is very different from the near-peer conventional warfare we see in Ukraine. One cannot occupy a region milotarily if a large enough portion of the local population is hell bent to oppose that accupation. That's what happened in Vietnam and Afghanistan. Ukraine is what happens ofnthe imvasion force is met by defenders capable of stopping the invasion. And the war in Ukraine cannot be fought with low tech weapons, heck, everything older than the Vietnam War won't cut it anymore.
  - genman 3y ago
    Actually no, it is not what happened in Vietnam and Afghanistan. In Vietnam there was constant foreign infiltration by the enemy and they used quite nasty "tactics" to gain local influence. Afghanistan is not much different. In principle the side that was more willing to instill more terror into local populace won. The same problems of logistics also do apply to the local opposition. If you run out of weapons or ammunition then you are done. If your supply lines are cut then you are done. It is also the main reason why the two wars mentioned were lost - incapacity of political will to cut the enemy supply lines.
    - suoduandao3 3y ago
      The best rebuttal I've heard to this line of thinking is: "Some say we lost Afghanistan because we weren't willing to be brutal enough. Well, the Russians were willing to be brutal enough, yet they also lost Afghanistan."
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - thriftwy 3y ago
        I don't think so why there is this underlying assumption that Russians were "brutal", but when USSR took their forces from Afghanistan, they actually left a secular regime there that has survived for a few years and actually significantly outlived the USSR itself. Maybe it would hang around longer if USSR was intact and assisting.
kakaz 3y ago
Funny. Induatry transformed tobbe one of the most profitable public2private transfer is not suitable to produce even more robust things. It works perfectly however - they will propose even photovoltaic propelled tanks in the near future, just to get the money
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Archelaos 3y ago
The license terms of the article seem contradictory in a way. When I download the PDF it includes an appendix stating: > Copyright of Full Text rests with the original copyright owner and, except as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, copying this copyright material is prohibited without the permission of the owner or its exclusive licensee or agent or by way of a license from Copyright Agency Limited. For information about such licences contact Copyright Agency Limited on (02) 93947600 (ph) or (02) 93947601 (fax) However, in the margins of the whole text and also on the appendix page'S margin it says: > Available under a Creative Commons Attribution Licence Does this already count as a license from Copyright Agency Limited? What does the law say about such potentially conflicting terms?
- bartlettD 3y ago
  Thats odd, I can't see any reference to Creative Commons in my copy. The copyright rests with the Australian Defence Force Journal and is administered by Copyright Agency Ltd as far as I understand.
  - Archelaos 3y ago
    First I clicked on "View PDF". Then on the PDF page I clicked on the Download button in the upper right corner. This gives me a PDF with the Creative Commons notice in the left margin of every page.
ouked 3y ago
This reminds me of this low tech magazine article: What if We Replace Guns and Bullets with Bows and Arrows? https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2022/11/what-if-we-replace-guns-and-bullets-with-bows-and-arrows/ https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2022/11/what-if-we-replace...
- AlgorithmicTime 3y ago
  [dead]
jokoon 3y ago
Isn't it easy enough to make ammunition for modern rifles? I'm not a gunsmith or gun engineer, but it doesn't sound difficult to reuse casings and make ammunition. Of course, one would still need to make: * pointy bullets with steel scraps and some cast/mold and some coal-powered oven (you see a lot of youtube guys melting metal with not that much equipment) * gunpowder and a primer, and might not require a lot of chemistry. Smokeless powder is hard to do, but normal powder should be easy enough. Even in the end times when there is no oil or industry, it seems that making rifle ammunition is still better, modern rifle are quite accurate and deadly at 100m, maybe even with low quality ammunition, while you need a very skilled archer to hit a target at that distance.
- thriftwy 3y ago
  "Normal" powder will clog your automatic rifle real fast. No problem if you're doing single shots with it, I guess.
  - uticus 3y ago
    Is an additive or something used to help with lubrication?
    - thriftwy 3y ago
      The problem is that "normal" powder produces a lot of residue, which does not have any easy way out so it will remain somewhere in your gun until it interferes with any subsequent firing. A musket would need to be thoroughly cleaned after every hunt (or battle), so obviously after a few shots were fired.
- bluGill 3y ago
  The best marksmen in competitions make there own bullets because they want to control all the variables. So yes bullets are easy to make and you can buy the equipment for affordable prices from many suppliers. Factory ammo is just as cheap (even though labor is free, and equipment costs are not counted at all for the make your own) and takes less time so militarizes use it as does anyone who doesn't need the best quality.
credit_guy 3y ago
> A current example is the oil industry, which some argue could require as much as US$100 trillion over coming decades just to replace ageing and rust-affected infrastructure. This aged like milk. 15 years later, and the US extracts 2.5 times more oil.

30 points by MichaMeier 3y ago

Modern military technology seems to become too costly. Recent conflicts in the middle east seem to indicate that low-cost approaches can have some terribly effective successes against much more sophisticated militaries.

dredmorbius 3y ago
NB: HN frowns on general article summaries: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39187161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39187161> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39180235 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39180235> Appropriate practice: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39213144 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39213144>
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
dmoy 3y ago
The US military has known this for a long time, it just chooses to bury its head in the sand and ignore it. See e.g. MC02 where they lost to opfor with what was literally like a cheaply thrown together zerg rush, and then just reset the scenario for a do-over.
- hef19898 3y ago
  Ah, that one war game. Reality is more complicated than that, as all wars since WW2 have shown us. I agree so, not all lessons from that particular wargame seem to have been learned. Calling what mounted to a quite brilliant, unconventional strategy a "cheaply thrown together zerg rush" is just blatantly wrong so.
- sornaensis 3y ago
  MC02 had a lot of problems but calling it a zerg rush exposes your ignorance-- it was a very sophisticated and well-coordinated surprise attack. The people running the wargame rejected the outcome as a likely tactic to be used by the hypothetical adversary and guess what, they have been proven right, see: the war in iraq. The iraqi army completely failed to hold initiative against the coalition or organize coherent resistance nevermind launch a coordinated surprise attack ahead of the invasion. The other aspect that is missed in criticisms of this particular wargame is the fact that there were specific doctrine elements that were to be tested-- now the claimed outcome of those can be debated, for instance the fact that opfor had many restrictions on how they were allowed to employ their anti air defenses-- but a wargame is NOT meant to be a giant game of paintball where when one side gets hit they just pack up and go home, that would be incredibly wasteful. In many cases you have formations planning and training for months to participate in the exercise. The purpose is testing out many different aspects of doctrine, and often times that involves 'ignoring' results of one part of the wargame.
  - dmoy 3y ago
    Cheap as in material cost, not cheap as in subpar tactics. No doubt the Marine dude in charge of that was very good at strategy, but by definition he had less resources for the exercise do anything he did would have to be cheaply thrown together. And a successful zerg rush kinda has to be well coordinated, with pretty tight timing, otherwise it doesn't work. It wasn't meant negatively. Maybe I've just watched way too much OGN StarCraft. That's precisely why I'm calling it a zerg rush. It's cheaper units, en masse, defeating a technology and cost-wise much more expensive foe. You make a good point about the reset though, it would be a waste of resources to not reset at that point.
    - dmoy 3y ago
      Maybe there's some negative context I'm missing about the phrase zerg rush. I like zerg rushes, they're difficult to execute in high level competition, and there's comparatively fewer dominant zerg players (compared the one zerg bonjwa savior vs like alllll the terran from the heyday of sc1)
thriftwy 3y ago
Modern consumer drones are of great use now - these do not cost that much but are basically only produced in China. FPV drones can almost be crafted locally, though, using off the shelf components.
- stavros 3y ago
  Nothing "almost" about it, they're very easy to build. I've built a few of them.
- ovi256 3y ago
  > FPV drones can almost be crafted locally, though, using off the shelf components. The COTS components are all made in China. That's why no Western military is planning to use them in wartime - that supply chain is depending on the good will of an adversary.
  - thriftwy 3y ago
    They're going to have a very hard time then. Your military has a small number of larger and way more expensive drones which require specialized training. Your adversary also has a large number of cheap Chinese drones and the expertise to use them is widespread. Guess who gets a grenade in their tank hatch and who gets their mortar fire corrected. They will be sitting ducks to FPV unless they have enough electronic warfare to reliably close the entirety of 200 km front. On Ukrainian front both sides go as far as to install CCTV to watch their adversaries' movement while in their improvised bunker. These are also civilian systems which get delivered to the front by volunteers. Ukrainian war is notably BYOD. It helps that both sides figured out to pay good money to soldiers on the ground.
dgan 3y ago
While Ukrainian conflict shows the opposite?
- thriftwy 3y ago
  Does it? FPVs and Lancet drones and anti-ship missiles and Shahed/Geran' reliably show their ability to hit many of orders of magnitude value targets. The future of the warfare is when you have no high-value targets at all on the battlefield and everything is spread out as evenly as possible.
  - geraldhh 3y ago
    > The future of the warfare is when you have no high-value targets at all on the battlefield and everything is spread out as evenly as possible. that would put the utmost importance on communication and orchestration
- gpderetta 3y ago
  I think it is more complicated. Both sides are consuming huge quantities of cheap artillery, drones, SAM, anti-tank mines and vehicles. HIMARS and smart artillery shells can make up for differences in fire powers, but only up to a point. Better tanks and IFV increase crew survivability, but they still get taken out of combats by drones, artillery and mines. I'm sure Ukraine air force would love long range AA missiles (to counter the Russian ones) and stealth planes to avoid SAM (but Russians are not using theirs, probably because they suck, but still...).
  - jojobas 3y ago
    Artillery wasn't cheap in WW1 and it isn't cheap now. Dumb 155mm howitzer shells are ~$3k apiece. The cheapest SAMs (ex-Soviet MANPADs) are easily 20 times that.
    - badpun 3y ago
      > Dumb 155mm howitzer shells are ~$3k apiece. In the West. In Russia (according to NYT piece), it's $600.
loceng 3y ago
The rent seeking aspect of the any industrial complex is driven by manufactured consent, for politicians to pillage the public coffers they have access to, and so it's heavily overpriced - the price not driven by free market but by war profiteering. In Elon Musk biography by Isaacson, Elon explains the importance to why he sued NASA on behalf of SpaceX - in regards to the $227 million sole-source contract NASA awarded to Kistler in 2004; the strength or weight of the importance here outweighed any personal-emotional feelings and relationships he had, he stuck to his guns of seeing the corruption and understanding the negative impact and unfairness to SpaceX - perhaps selfish in nature but if Elon's nature is for fairness and justice, long live Elon. But yes, save blanket bombing a whole territory, guerilla warfare with necessity-survival will lead to the most creative possibilities.
hef19898 3y ago
Asymetric warfare is very different from the near-peer conventional warfare we see in Ukraine. One cannot occupy a region milotarily if a large enough portion of the local population is hell bent to oppose that accupation. That's what happened in Vietnam and Afghanistan. Ukraine is what happens ofnthe imvasion force is met by defenders capable of stopping the invasion. And the war in Ukraine cannot be fought with low tech weapons, heck, everything older than the Vietnam War won't cut it anymore.
- genman 3y ago
  Actually no, it is not what happened in Vietnam and Afghanistan. In Vietnam there was constant foreign infiltration by the enemy and they used quite nasty "tactics" to gain local influence. Afghanistan is not much different. In principle the side that was more willing to instill more terror into local populace won. The same problems of logistics also do apply to the local opposition. If you run out of weapons or ammunition then you are done. If your supply lines are cut then you are done. It is also the main reason why the two wars mentioned were lost - incapacity of political will to cut the enemy supply lines.
  - suoduandao3 3y ago
    The best rebuttal I've heard to this line of thinking is: "Some say we lost Afghanistan because we weren't willing to be brutal enough. Well, the Russians were willing to be brutal enough, yet they also lost Afghanistan."
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - thriftwy 3y ago
      I don't think so why there is this underlying assumption that Russians were "brutal", but when USSR took their forces from Afghanistan, they actually left a secular regime there that has survived for a few years and actually significantly outlived the USSR itself. Maybe it would hang around longer if USSR was intact and assisting.

kakaz 3y ago

Funny. Induatry transformed tobbe one of the most profitable public2private transfer is not suitable to produce even more robust things. It works perfectly however - they will propose even photovoltaic propelled tanks in the near future, just to get the money

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Archelaos 3y ago

The license terms of the article seem contradictory in a way. When I download the PDF it includes an appendix stating: > Copyright of Full Text rests with the original copyright owner and, except as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, copying this copyright material is prohibited without the permission of the owner or its exclusive licensee or agent or by way of a license from Copyright Agency Limited. For information about such licences contact Copyright Agency Limited on (02) 93947600 (ph) or (02) 93947601 (fax) However, in the margins of the whole text and also on the appendix page'S margin it says: > Available under a Creative Commons Attribution Licence Does this already count as a license from Copyright Agency Limited? What does the law say about such potentially conflicting terms?

bartlettD 3y ago
Thats odd, I can't see any reference to Creative Commons in my copy. The copyright rests with the Australian Defence Force Journal and is administered by Copyright Agency Ltd as far as I understand.
- Archelaos 3y ago
  First I clicked on "View PDF". Then on the PDF page I clicked on the Download button in the upper right corner. This gives me a PDF with the Creative Commons notice in the left margin of every page.

ouked 3y ago

This reminds me of this low tech magazine article: What if We Replace Guns and Bullets with Bows and Arrows? https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2022/11/what-if-we-replace-guns-and-bullets-with-bows-and-arrows/ https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2022/11/what-if-we-replace...

AlgorithmicTime 3y ago
[dead]

jokoon 3y ago

Isn't it easy enough to make ammunition for modern rifles? I'm not a gunsmith or gun engineer, but it doesn't sound difficult to reuse casings and make ammunition. Of course, one would still need to make: * pointy bullets with steel scraps and some cast/mold and some coal-powered oven (you see a lot of youtube guys melting metal with not that much equipment) * gunpowder and a primer, and might not require a lot of chemistry. Smokeless powder is hard to do, but normal powder should be easy enough. Even in the end times when there is no oil or industry, it seems that making rifle ammunition is still better, modern rifle are quite accurate and deadly at 100m, maybe even with low quality ammunition, while you need a very skilled archer to hit a target at that distance.

thriftwy 3y ago
"Normal" powder will clog your automatic rifle real fast. No problem if you're doing single shots with it, I guess.
- uticus 3y ago
  Is an additive or something used to help with lubrication?
  - thriftwy 3y ago
    The problem is that "normal" powder produces a lot of residue, which does not have any easy way out so it will remain somewhere in your gun until it interferes with any subsequent firing. A musket would need to be thoroughly cleaned after every hunt (or battle), so obviously after a few shots were fired.
bluGill 3y ago
The best marksmen in competitions make there own bullets because they want to control all the variables. So yes bullets are easy to make and you can buy the equipment for affordable prices from many suppliers. Factory ammo is just as cheap (even though labor is free, and equipment costs are not counted at all for the make your own) and takes less time so militarizes use it as does anyone who doesn't need the best quality.

credit_guy 3y ago

> A current example is the oil industry, which some argue could require as much as US$100 trillion over coming decades just to replace ageing and rust-affected infrastructure. This aged like milk. 15 years later, and the US extracts 2.5 times more oil.