10 ms·

"RSD"? (Rapid Scheduled Disassembly)

• SoftTalker 2y ago
  German V1 or V2, presumably.
  • tialaramex 2y ago
    Only the V2 is a rocket, the V1 is a flying bomb. They're both terror weapons, as actual products they have no direct military value, they exist solely in order to scare the shit out of enemy civilians, but liquid fuelled rockets are an invention with a whole lot of interesting practical applications - the V1 is just a bad idea (unless you have unlimited resources, which the Germans did not, and your goal is to terrify enemy civilians, which is not a legitimate military strategy).
    • EasyMark 2y ago
      V1: didn't they have to start somewhere?
    • ElevenLathe 2y ago
      V2 was of questionable legitimate military utility too. Sure you can hit a target the size of a city, but unlike carpet bombing, the payload isn't enough to guarantee that something specific is destroyed. So you can only use it to randomly harm civilians and maybe every once in a while hit a military target. Compare this with the Western Allies' approach where they also killed and maimed tons of civilians but at least stood some chance of also destroying the building-sized thing they were aiming at, given the stupefying tonnage of bombs involved. "Once the rockets go up, who cares where they come down? 'That's not my department,' says Werner Von Braun." -- Tom Lehrer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro
      • amanaplanacanal 2y ago
        Firebombing whole cities in Europe and Japan is still a black mark in US history. It’s really hard for me to get “holier than thou” on other terror campaigns when I remember that.
        • stctw 2y ago
          It's easy to say that now. Have you lived through unrestricted, total warfare, where one side intends to conquer a continent or the world, invades without provocation, and won't stop until brought to submission through extreme force? The Allies did not initiate war and did not want war. How many of your country's people should you sacrifice to end a war of aggression started by the enemy? Should you not use the means that will preserve as many of your lives as you can? This century has yet to see anything like WW1 and WW2, and those who are alive today are incredibly disconnected from our recent past.
          • czl 2y ago
            > Allies did not initiate war and did not want war. An argument made that WW2 was continuation of WW1 and that WW1 was wanted by British leadership who were locked in an arms race with Germany that they could not sustain much longer and wanted a war with Germany while they were ahead so the assassination that triggered WW1 was the pretext tobstart WW1. If you disagree please try to answer why leaders are regularly assassinated and that does not cause a world war.
            • lupusreal 2y ago
              Listen, while I broadly agree with your grander point (Britain wanting a war with Germany and taking any excuse given for it) your argument for this is flatly moronic; the assassination of the archduke was not Britain's pretext for entering the war! That was Austria-Hungary's pretext for invading Serbia. Britain's pretext was the German invasion of Belgium. Read a fucking book.
              • robbiep 2y ago
    • TMWNN 2y ago
      V2 had no direct military value. V1 was a very cost-efficient weapon.
    • saati 2y ago
      The V1 is the ancestor of all cruise missiles, pretty far from no military value.
      • andrewflnr 2y ago
        It was an ancestor of things with military value, but it had little to none itself. You need a guidance system for a useful cruise missile, and the V1 had essentially none. No points for "military utility" as a "research program" when you're actively launching them at civilians; whatever it is, that's not a research usage anymore.
        • dotancohen 2y ago
          The German strategy was to pressure the British civilians into pressuring their government for an end to hostilities against Germany. They were demoralizing the British, and to that end the weapon was actually effective though the government did not capitulate. Additionally, reports of damage to the British capital city was very morale-raising for the Germans who saw mostly the destruction of their own cities. That also has military value.
          • tialaramex 2y ago
            V1 launches begin in June 1944. One week after Overlord ("D-Day") and prompted by it. The obvious release for the London public's fear of these weapons was to destroy the capability not capitulate to Germany, and by October of the same year V1 launches against Britain were no longer possible because Allied forces controlled all the launch sites in range.
          • andrewflnr 2y ago
            > though the government did not capitulate. Weirdly, that's how it almost always works out. Didn't work in England, didn't work in Germany, not working in Ukraine. Kinda makes that "though" look silly in retrospect. That's why today we consider bombing civilians to have no military utility.
            • 2y ago
    • Aeolun 2y ago
      > your goal is to terrify enemy civilians, which is not a legitimate military strategy This seems like a perfectly legitimate military strategy? It’s a strategy which the allies used to great effect in Germany and Japan :/ The Germans used rockets instead of bombers because they couldn’t, not because they didn’t want to.
      • arrowsmith 2y ago
        I think by "legitimate" they meant morally legitimate. Humanitarian, honourable, chivalrous, whatever you want to call it. Intentionally targeting noncombatants isn't any of those things, even if it's effective at demoralising the enemy. Of course we bombed the hell out of German noncombatants too, so we don't exactly have an unsullied record.
        • zardo 2y ago
          Or not a violation of the Geneva convention that was a response to exactly those practices. > even if it's effective at demoralising the enemy. It wasn't.
    • me_me_me 2y ago
      I agree with all but last statement > and your goal is to terrify enemy civilians, which is not a legitimate military strategy That just doesnt work, pretty much never. Yes civilians will be terrified but that is all you will achieve. It holds true during 2nd world war, it holds true now with every single ongoing conflict. Going after civilians changes nothing, often results in the opposite - even harder resistance.